from Machiavelli, 'The Prince'

"When the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak
masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave
them more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was
full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing
to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it
necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer
Ramiro d'Orco [de Lorqua], a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the
fullest power. This man in a short time restored peace and unity with
the greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not
advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but
that he would become odious, so he set up a court of judgment in the
country, under a most excellent president, wherein all cities had
their advocates. And because he knew that the past severity had caused
some hatred against himself, so, to clear himself in the minds of the
people, and gain them entirely to himself, he desired to show that, if
any cruelty had been practised, it had not originated with him, but in
the natural sternness of the minister. Under this pretence he took
Ramiro, and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the
piazza at Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The
barbarity of this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied
and dismayed."

In a thread about the value (or lack of value) of "pressure points" in martial arts (Systema), Charles wrote as below:

From my experience as a lawyer, the most permanently damaging or fatal, situation in real life comes not as a result of any pressure point or exotic manuever.
The worst nightmare is simply is a bouncer/drunk/nitwit punching someone who is rendered unconscious and then falls, striking his head on the pavement. I have had 3 clients victimized in that fashion with catastrophic results. And another 2 beaten by police with flashlights and then falling unconscious and striking the back of their head on the ground.
When the victim does not die outright, they lead the rest of their a shell of their former selves.
In my opinion, study this art, or any other, for purposes of self-improvement and union of mind and body. Prisons and jails are full of dangerous men and boys. I doubt if any of them knew pressure points, but they sure knew how to ruin or take the lives of others.
Oh, if it matters 5of the 6 above did not start a fight and in fact did not even know they know their attackers etc. And yes, not one of them has any memory of what happened, bystanders witnesses and videocams filled in the story. I will not discuss these cases more than I have, except to warn you that there are gangs or loosely associated young men who simply enjoy hurting people. Perhaps they did not intend the grievous results, but they intentionally threw savage, full body weight punches. Punches you dont want to even watch on tape.

“When you have robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power. He is free again.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Bless what you call your misfortune. It created the strength of your
beautiful soul.

— Socrates

"Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans."

-Spock

Democratic Party talking heads are already out there talking about how the election results are not only the best thing since sliced bread, not only the biggest political event of the last 200 years, but also an abrupt end to everything that the neo-cons stand for.

According to these characters Bush and the neocons were uniquely responsible for the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the erosion of civil liberties, the legal threats that they claim point in the direction of martial law or fascism, the economic changes that have resulted in the rich getting richer, and all else that's not right with the world.

Okay...then it's put up or shut up time!

Let's see the Democrats rescind the complete Patriot Act. No tinkering around the edges - the whole thing has got to go.

And while they're at it, let's see them dismantle the 1996 Anti-terrorism and pro Death Penalty Act that Clinton signed.

Let's see them restore the right to habeas corpus.

Let's see them end the use of torture by the US military, CIA, private armies paid for with tax dollars, and countries whose governments are under US control.

Let's see them declare to the world that the US will no longer try to overthrow Castro, Chavez, Ortega or any other progressive leader who stands up to the US government and tries to bring about better conditions for their people.

Let's see them reject every appointment of another war-mongerer that Bush tries to make. Let's see them start with Bush's new Defense Secretary. Filibuster until January and then vote it down.

Let's see them put a litmus test on ALL nominations to the federal courts: either you're going to strike down anti-civil liberties laws or you don't get appointed.

Let's see them immediately withdraw (not redeploy) all US troops from the mideast. Moving them from Iraq to Saudi Arabia or Jordan is simply not enough. Get them out of there.

Let's see them end the blatant imperialism of the last 2 decades. No more US soldiers stationed anywhere outside the US. They should be a defense force. Defense of the people of the US NOT the defense (or offense) for every corporate executive that decides to wave a flag while he steals and exploits from the people in other lands.

Let's see them tie Bush's hands with a law that says the US will never again attack another country in a so-called "preventive" or "pre-emptive" war.

Let's see them cut the US military down to a size that could only be used for defensive purposes - say a 90% cut in the military budget to begin with.

Let's see them end the use of eminent domain. People should feel secure in their homes and that they won't be destroyed by the government for private profit.

Let's see them end the whole regimen of high stakes testing in schools that subjects our young people to a regular racist assault on their futures.

Let's see them end the current abuse of the legal system that results in the arrests of about 900,000 people a year for marijuana with the result that the rich get their records expunged while the poor are faced with reduced economic opportunities due to their police records in addition to jail time.

Let's see them end the stealing under the name of privatization that has been accomplished by Halliburton and their allies. But let's see them also end the stealing by the Democratic allied corporations like the ones building the useless arena in Newark or the shopping center next to Giants Stadium (soon to be renamed with some corporate logo.)

We have a chance to see if there really is a difference between Democrats and Republicans.

But the signs are already out there. Conyers has been told to shut up. And he's obeyed. No more talk of impeachment said Pelosi and she's going to be the new Speaker of the House. (Talk of impeachment benefited the Democrats during the election campaign by making them appear to be anti-Bush, but now reality sets in.)

Somehow, I foresee that rather than any real pro-people changes, we're instead going to see a lot of posturing, spin control, excuse making and blatant lying about why they can't do any of these things...and then they'll ask us to vote for more Democrats in 2008 to "solve" the problem.

Bob

“I made my money by selling too soon.”
– Bernard Baruch

"I'd much rather have a soccer player beside me in a fight than a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. The soccer player can dodge and dive."

- Bert Rodriguez

The Ultimate Ensemble is a speculative possible feature of theories of everything (TOEs), suggested by Max Tegmark. Related to the Anthropic principle and Multiverse theories, the Ultimate Ensemble suggests that not only should worlds corresponding to different sets of initial conditions or different physical constants be considered real, but also worlds ruled by altogether different equations. The only postulate in this theory is that all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically. In those mathematical structures complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real" world. Tegmark observes that this simple theory, which has no free parameters at all and may thus be preferred over all other TOE's by Occam's Razor, is not observationally ruled out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_ensemble

November 02, 2006

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INVESTMENT DETAILS
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Peak Oil: A Pass/Fail Intelligence Test
by Dan Ferris

You know about peak oil.

That’s the idea that the world is running out of oil, that the price is going sky high as the global supply of oil shrinks to nothing.

It’s going to happen so fast, say true believers, that we won’t have time to develop new alternatives. We’ll be caught with our pants down, and the world will plunge into chaos.

C. J. Campbell, geologist and author of The Coming Oil Crisis, says, “We have come to the end of the first half of the Oil Age.”

As if the Stone Age ended because we ran out of stones.

Peak oil theory is wrong because it demands a repeal of the laws of economics, the simple dynamics of supply and demand. It also endows prognosticators with the ability to see the future, an ability, unfortunately, which no one actually possesses. Finally, like all Malthusian theories, it ignores the fact that every human mouth comes with one human brain attached (and at no extra charge, I might add).

I recently gained a new respect for the folks at Morningstar, who wrote recently (and correctly), “The laws of economics have not been repealed… Canada alone has almost 300 billion barrels in its tar sands, economical to process at prices above $30 per barrel and astonishingly profitable at $70. Ratchet prices up to $40 per barrel and coal-to-liquids (gasoline, diesel, etc.) becomes realistic, providing more than 50 years supply alone. At $70, oil shale – which could supply the world at current consumption levels for 100 years – becomes realistic. Finally, above $80, biomass-to-liquids, an essentially limitless source, becomes economical.”

Peak oil, like every apocalyptic depletion argument, is one of life’s little intelligence tests. If you believe it, you’re stupid and you fail. If you know it’s crap, you’re smart enough to pass. It’s like Y2K. If you moved your family to the hinterlands of Arkansas and predicted violence in the streets, you failed that little test. If you ignored it, you passed.

As for your money, you can take the peak-oil test with your portfolio on the line. Accepting peak-oil nonsense requires ignoring the highly cyclical nature of oil (it was near $80 a couple months ago; now it’s under $60). That, in turn, could lead you to downplay the role of savvy management, like that of, oh… say… ExxonMobil (XOM).

ExxonMobil’s management knows that the company has to make investments work across cycles and in many different pricing environments. That’s why its deepwater Gulf leases only go out to 2008. Management knows the company will get a chance to buy in cheaper at some point. Charley Maxwell’s recent piece in Barron’s is wrong about this. He says they’ll miss out… but Maxwell believes in peak oil, so he fails the test.

ExxonMobil’s management buys to make money, to earn a return on investment, not to indulge fears about paranoid theories. And ExxonMobil has done a better job of earning shareholder returns than most of the companies that now exist or have ever existed.

Since 1950, when it was known as Standard Oil of New Jersey, ExxonMobil has generated average annual shareholder returns of more than 14% a year. More than 5% of that was from dividends. ExxonMobil has raised its dividend every year since 1983. Think about how oil prices hovered in the teens from 1983 to 1998, and you’ll appreciate that dividend record even more. In 1999, when hardly anyone made money in the oil business and a barrel cost about $10, ExxonMobil earned 12.1% on capital. That’s its worst performance: 12.1%. These days, it exceeds 30%. If ExxonMobil can make money at $10 oil, it’s going to be raising its dividend forever.

ExxonMobil’s managers have made it clear that the company doesn’t buy into the peak-oil nonsense. They pass the test.

Good investing,

Dan Ferris

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A LITTLE EXTRA VALUE
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Peak oil isn’t the only fearmongering the financial and political mouthpieces try to ram down your throat. Here’s a smattering of other issues you’re admonished to become paranoid about:

Market crashes
Trade deficits
Foreigners owning “too many” treasury securities
The tapped-out American consumer
Interest-rate hikes (that will kill stocks)
A falling dollar (that will take stocks down with it)
Recession/depression
Hyperinflation
War

All these fears are part of the pervasive idea of the decline of Western civilization, popularized by Nietzsche and others in the 19th century. Ever since then, modern man has always been seen as materialistic and morally bankrupt. Modern people are always displaced, alienated, and isolated.

Arthur Herman wrote a book about all this called The Idea of Decline in Western History. It’s worth a read, and the basic idea is right. Western civilization isn’t in decline. That’s just something people say to sound cool, or to get in with a certain crowd, or succeed in politics, or what have you.

At Extreme Value, we’re finding one bargain after another among large, well-known, extremely well-capitalized companies. It makes no sense to avoid buying great businesses at once-a-decade prices because you think a twice-a-century event might happen.

The only thing you have to fear in the market is fear itself. Get control of your reason, and start making some money.




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Visit www.stansberryresearch.com
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The proof is simplicity itself; if something COULD be done, someone in all of history would have thought of it by now, as they have all, at one time or another, been in the throes of this exact same, sorry economic situation of a huge government needing hugely more money. And although everyone furiously tried everything they could think of, including ruinous taxation, robbing the Jews, the churches or the nobility, and even declaring war on another country to confiscate their wealth so that they could pay some bills, nothing worked. Nothing. Nothing has ever worked. And it won't this time, either.

-MG

"La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid"

(Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de LaClos - 1782)

Imperialism And Slavery
By Herbert Spencer


"You shall submit! We are masters and we will make you acknowledge it!" These words express the sentiment which sways the British nation in its dealings with the Boer republics; and this sentiment it is which, definitely displayed in this case, pervades indefinitely the political feeling now manifesting itself as Imperialism. Supremacy, where not clearly imagined, is vaguely present in the background of consciousness. Not the derivation of the word only, but all its uses and associations, imply the thought of predominance - imply a correlative subordination. Actual or potential coercion of others, individuals or communities, is necessarily involved in the conception.

There are those, and unhappily they form the great majority, who think there is something noble (morally as well as historically) in the exercise of command - in the forcing of others to abandon their own wills and fulfil the will of the commander. I am not about to contest this sentiment. I merely say that there are others, unhappily but few, who think it ignoble to bring their fellow creatures into subjection, and who think the noble thing is not only to respect their freedom but also to defend it. Leaving this matter undiscussed, my present purpose is to show those who lean towards Imperialism, that the exercise of mastery inevitably entails on the master himself some form of slavery, more or less pronounced. The uncultured masses, and even the greater part of the cultured, will regard this statement as absurd; and though many who have read history with an eye to essentials rather than trivialities know that this is a paradox in the right sense - that is, true in fact though not seeming true - even they are not fully conscious of the mass of evidence establishing it, and will be all the better for having illustrations recalled. Let me begin with the earliest and simplest, which well serves to symbolize the whole.

Here is a prisoner with hands tied and a cord round his neck (as suggested by figures in Assyrian bas-reliefs) being led home by his savage conqueror, who intends to make him a slave. The one, you say, is captive and the other free? Are you quite sure the other is free? He holds one end of the cord, and unless he means to let his captive escape, he must continue to be fastened by keeping hold of the cord in such way that it cannot easily be detached. He must be himself tied to the captive while the captive is tied to him. In other ways his activities are impeded and certain burdens are imposed on him. A wild animal crosses the track, and he cannot pursue. If he wishes to drink of the adjacent stream, he must tie up his captive lest advantage be taken of his defenceless position. Moreover he has to provide food for both. In various ways, then, he is no longer completely at liberty; and these ways adumbrate in a simple manner the universal truth that the instrumentalities by which the subordination of others is effected, themselves subordinate the victor, the master, or the ruler.

The coincidence in time between the South African war and the recent outburst of Imperialism, illustrates the general truth that militancy and Imperialism are closely allied - are, in fact, different manifestations of the same social condition. It could not, indeed, be otherwise. Subject races or subject societies, do not voluntarily submit themselves to a ruling race or a ruling society: their subjection is nearly always the effect of coercion. An army is the agency which achieved it, and an army must be kept ever ready to maintain it. Unless the supremacy has actual or potential force behind it there is only federation, not Imperialism. Here, however, as above implied, the purpose is not so much to show that an imperial society is necessarily a militant society, as to show that in proportion as liberty is diminished in the societies over which it rules, liberty is diminished within its own organization.

The earliest records furnish an illustration. Whether in the times of the pyramid-builders the power of the Egyptian autocrat, which effected such astounding results, was qualified by an elaborate system of restraints, we have no evidence; but there is proof that in later days he was the slave of the governmental organization.

"The laws subjected every action of his private life to as severe a scrutiny as his behaviour in the administration of affairs. The hours of washing, walking, and all the amusements and occupations of the day, were settled with precision, and the quantity as well as the quality of his food were regulated by law." (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, Birch's ed. of Wilkinson, vol. I, 166.)
Moreover the relation between enslavement of foreign peoples and enslavement of the nation which conquered them, is shown by an inscription at Karnak, which describes "how bitterly the country was paying the price of its foreign conquests, in its oppression by it standing army." (Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, ii. 252.)

Turn we now to a society of widely different type but exhibiting the same general truths - that of Sparta. The conquering race, or Spartans proper, who had beneath them the Perici and the Helots, descendants of two subject races, were not only supreme over these but twice became the supreme race of the Peleponnesus [sic - RTL]. What was the price they paid for their "imperial" position? The individual Spartan, master as he was over slaves and semi-slaves, was himself in bondage to the incorporated society of Spartans. Each led the life not which he himself chose but the life dictated by the aggregate of which he formed one unit. And this life was a life of strenuous discipline, leaving no space for culture, or art, or poetry, or other source of pleasure. He exemplified in an extreme degree the Grecian doctrine that the citizen does not belong to himself or to his family but to his city.

If instead of the small and simple community of Sparta we take the vast and complex empire of Rome, we find this essential connexion between imperialism and slavery even more conspicuous. I do not refer to the fact that three-fourths of those who peopled Italy in imperial days were slaves, chained in the fields when at work, chained at night in their dormitories, and those who were porters chained to the doorways - conditions horrible to contemplate - but I refer to the fact that the nominally free part of the community consisted of grades of bondmen. Not only did citizens stand in that bondage implied by military service, complete or partial, under subjection so rigid that an officer was to be dreaded more than an enemy, but those occupied in civil or semi-civil life, were compelled to work for the public. "Everyone was treated in fact as a servant of the State ... the nature of each man's labour was permanently fixed for him." The society was formed of fighting serfs, working serfs, cultivating serfs, official serfs. And then what of the supreme head of this gigantic bureaucracy into which Roman society had grown - the Emperor? He became a puppet of the Pretorian guard, which while a means of safety was a cause of danger. Moreover he was in daily bondage to routine. As Gibbon says, "the emperor was the first slave of the ceremonies he imposed." Thus in a conspicuous manner Rome shows how, as in other cases, a society which enslaves other societies enslaves itself.

The same lesson is taught by those ages of seething confusion - of violence and bloodshed - which the collapse of the Roman empire left: an empire which dwells in the minds of many as something to be admired and emulated - the many who forgive any horrors if only their brute love of mastery is gratified, sympathetically when not actually. Passing over those sanguinary times in which the crimes of Clovis and Fredegonde and Brunehaut were typical, we come in the slow course of things to the emergence of the feudal régime - a régime briefly expressed by the four words, suzerains, vassals, serfs, slaves - a régime which, along with the perpetual struggles for supremacy among local rulers, and consequent chronic militancy, was characterized by the unqualified power of each chief or ruler, count or duke, within his own territory - a graduated bondage of all below him. The established form - "I am your man," uttered by the vassal on his knees with apposed hands, expressed the relation of one grade to another throughout the society; and then, as usual, the master of slaves was himself enslaved by his appliances for maintaining life and power. He had the perpetual burden of arms and coat of mail, and the precautions to be taken now against assassination now against death by poison. And then when we come to the ultimate state in which the subordination of minor rulers by a chief ruler had become complete, and all counts and dukes were vassals of the king, we have not only the bondage entailed on the king by State-business with its unceasing anxieties, but the bondage of ceremonial with its dreary round. Speaking of this in France in the time of Louis le Grand, Madame de Maintenon remarks - "Save those only who fill the highest stations, I know of none more unfortunate than those who envy them. If you could only form an idea of what it is?"
Merely referring to the extreme subjection of the ruler to his appliances for ruling which was reached in Japan, where the god-descended Mikado, imprisoned by the requirements of his sacred state, was debarred from ordinary freedoms, and in whose recluse life there were at one time such penalties as sitting for three hours daily on the throne - passing over, too, the case of China, where, as Prof. Douglas [Online editor's note: probably Robert K. Douglas, turn-of-the-century author of a number of works on China. - RTL] tells us of the emperor "his whole life is one continual round of ceremonial observances," and "from the day in which he ascends the throne to the time when he is carried to his tomb in the Eastern Hills, his hours and almost minutes have special duties appointed to them by the Board of Rites"; we may turn now to the conspicuous example furnished by Russia. Along with that unceasing subjugation of minor nationalities by which its imperialism is displayed, what do we see within its own organization? We have its vast army, to service in which every one is actually or potentially liable; we have an enormous bureaucracy ramifying everywhere and rigidly controlling individual lives; we have an expenditure ever outrunning resources and calling for loans. As a result of the pressure felt personally and pecuniarily, we have secret revolutionary societies, perpetual plots, chronic dread of social explosions; and while everyone is in danger of Siberia, we have the all-powerful head of this enslaved nation in constant fear for his life. Even when he goes to review his troops, rigorous precautions have to be taken by a supplementary army of soldiers, policemen, and spies, some forming an accompanying guard, some lying in wait here and there to prevent possible attacks; while similar precautions, which from time to time fail, have ever to be taken against assassination by explosion, during drives and railway-journeys. What portion of life is not absorbed in government-business and religious observances is taken up in self-preservation.

And now what is the lesson? Is it that in our own case imperialism and slavery, everywhere else and at all times united, are not to be united? Most will say Yes. Nay they will join, as our Poet Laureate [Online editor's note: Alfred Austin. - RTL] lately did in the title to some rhymes, the words "Imperialism and Liberty"; mistaking names for things as of old. Gibbon writes: -
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." (Decline and Fall, i. 68.)
"Free!" thinks the Englishman. "How can I be other than free if by my vote I share in electing a representative who helps to determine the national transactions, home and foreign?" Delivering a ballot-paper he identifies with the possession of those unrestrained activities which liberty implies; though, to take but one instance, a threatened penalty every day reminds him that his children must be stamped with the State-pattern, not as he wills but as others will.

But let us note how, along with the nominal extension of constitutional freedom, there has been going on actual diminution of it. There is first the fact that the legislative functions of Parliament have been decreasing while the Ministry has been usurping them. Important measures are not now brought forward and carried by private members, but appeal is made to the government to take them up: the making of laws is gradually lapsing into the hands of the executive. And then within the executive itself the tendency is towards placing power in fewer hands. Just as in past times the Cabinet grew out of the Privy Council by a process of restriction, so now a smaller group of ministers is coming to exercise some of the functions of the whole group. Add to which we have subordinate executive bodies, like the Home Office, the Board of Trade, the Board of Education, and the Local Government Board, to which there have been deputed the powers both of making certain kinds of laws and enforcing them: government by administrative order. In like manner by taking for government-purposes more and more of the time which was once available for private members; by the cutting down of debates by the closure; and now by requiring the vote for an entire department to be passed en bloc, without criticism of details; we are shown that while extension of the franchise has been seeming to increase the liberties of citizens, their liberties have been decreased by restricting the spheres of action of their representatives. All these are stages in that concentration of power which is the concomitant of Imperialism.*. And how this tendency works out where militancy becomes active, we are shown by the measures taken in South Africa - the proclamation of martial law by a governor, who thereby becomes in so far a despot, and the temporary suspension of constitutional government: a suspension which many so-called loyalists would make complete.

Passing by this, however, let us note the extent to which the citizen is the servant of the community in disguised ways. Certain ancient usages will best make this clear. During times when complete slavery was mingled with serfdom, the serf, tied to his plot, rendered to his lord or seigneur many dues and services. These services, or corvées, varied, according to the period and the place, from one day's labour to six days' labour in the week - from partial slavery to complete slavery. Labours and exactions of these kinds were most of them in course of time commuted for money: the equivalence between so much tax paid to the lord and so much work done for him, being thus distinctly recognized. Now in so far as the burden is concerned, it comes to the same thing if for the feudal lord we substitute the central government, and for local money-payments we substitute general taxes. The essential question for the citizen is what part of his work goes to the power which rules over him, and what part remains available for satisfying his own wants. Labour demanded by the State is just as much corvée to the State as labour demanded by the feudal lord was corvée to him, though it may not be called so, and though it may be given in money instead of in kind; and to the extent of this corvée each citizen is a serf to the community. Some five years ago M. Guyot [Online editor's note: Yves Guyot, of the French Liberal School. - RTL] calculated that in France, the civil and military expenditure absorbs some 30 per cent. of the national produce, or, in other words, that 90 days annually of the average citizen's labour is given to the State under compulsion.

Though to a smaller extent, what holds in France holds here. Not forgetting the heavy burden of State-corvées which the Imperialism of past days bequeathed to us - the 150 millions of debt incurred for the American war and the 50 millions we took over with the East India Company's possessions, the interest on both of which entails on citizens extra labour annually, let us limit ourselves to the burdens Imperialism now commits us to. >From a statistical authority second to none, I learn that 100 millions of annual expenditure requires from the average citizen the labour of one day in every seventeen, that is to say, nearly eighteen days in the year. As the present permanent expenditure on army and navy plus the interest on the debt recently contracted amounts to about 76 millions, it results that 13 days' labour per annum is thus imposed on the average citizen as corvée. And then there comes the £153,000,000 spent, and to be spent, on the south African and Chinese wars, to which may be added, for all subsequent costs of pensions, repairs, compensations, and re-instatements, a sum which will raise the total to more than £200,000,000. What is the taxation which direct expenditure and interest on loans will entail, the reader may calculate. He has before him the data for an estimate of the extra number of days annually, during which Imperialism will require him to work for the Government - extra number, I say, because to meet the ordinary State-expenditure, there must always be a large number of days spent by him as a State-labourer. Doubtless one who is satisfied by names instead of things, as the Romans were, will think this statement absurd; but he who understands by freedom the ability to use his powers for his own ends, with no greater hindrance than is implied by the like ability of each other citizen, will see that in whatever disguised ways he is obliged to use his powers for State-purposes, he is to that extent a serf of the State; and that as fast as our growing Imperialism augments the amount of such compulsory service, he is to that extent more and more a serf of the State.

And then beyond the roundabout services given by the citizen under the form of direct taxes and under the form of indirect taxes, severally equivalent to so many days' work that would else have elevated the lives of himself and his belongings, there will presently come the actual or potential service as a soldier, demanded by the State to carry out an imperialist policy - a service which, as those in South Africa can tell us, often inflicts under the guise of fine names a slavery harder than that which the negro bears, with the added risk of death.

Even were it possible to bring home to men the extent to which their lives are, and presently will be still more, subordinated to State-requirements, so as to leave them less and less owned by themselves, little effect would be produced. So long as the passion for mastery overrides all others the slavery that goes along with Imperialism will be tolerated. Among men who do not pride themselves on the possession of purely human traits, but on the possession of traits which they have in common withy brutes, and in whose mouths "bull-dog courage" is equivalent to manhood - among people who take their point of honour from the prize-ring, in which the combatant submits to pain, injury, and risk of death, in the determination to prove himself "the better man," no deterrent considerations like the above will have any weight. So long as they continue to conquer other peoples and to hold them in subjection, they will readily merge their personal liberties in the power of the State, and hereafter as heretofore accept the slavery that goes along with Imperialism.

From Facts and Comments (1902) by Herbert Spencer (1820 -1903)

"Socially and psychologically repressed, people are drawn to spectacles ofviolent conflict that allow their accumulated frustrations to explode insocially condoned orgasms of collective pride and hate. Deprived of significantaccomplishments in their own work and leisure, they participate vicariously inmilitary enterprises that have real and undeniable effects. Lacking genuinecommunity, they thrill to the sense of sharing in a common purpose, if only thatof fighting some common enemy, and react angrily against anyone who contradictsthe image of patriotic unanimity."

~ Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets)

Don't cry because it's over.
Smile because it happened.

(Dr. Seuss)

I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for all of us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do any more. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world.

-Rachel Corrie

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours,
and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

ｩ Mary Oliver.

Brave New World Revisited Huxley said:

"'...The older dictators failed because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they possess a really effective system of mind-manipulation. Under a scientific dictator education will really work--with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.'"

Brave New World Revisited Huxley said:

"'...The older dictators failed because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they possess a really effective system of mind-manipulation. Under a scientific dictator education will really work--with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.'"

Contrast [the USA 9/11 reaction, when 19 Arabs with boxcutters, directed by an Afghan caveman, penetrate the multi-billion-dollar U.S. national air defense system and strike deadly blows at the heart of the defense establishment in Washington and the financial center in New York] with the Soviet reaction when a German teenager, Mathias Rust (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena_Rust), landed on a bridge close to Red Square in 1987. Gorbachev fired the defense minister, anti-air defense commander, and more than 2,000 other officers.

This Iraq war idea has been a winner all around. We remove one of Iran's most bitter enemies and replace him with a nascent Muslim theocracy wedded to Tehran. We give radical Islamist groups a once-in-a-lifetime recruitment tool and a training area for their terrorists. We give already violent American street gangs the training they need to turn city streets into free-fire zones. And we spend ourselves into the poorhouse doing it.

Steven Hart

We are almost totally illeterate, milked like cows and sheared like sheep

It is a commonplace that "you can't keep secrets in Washington" or "in a democracy," that "no matter how sensitive the secret, you're likely to read it the next day in the New York Times." These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out that wouldn't in a fully totalitarian society. ... But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public. This is true even when the information withheld is well known to an enemy and when it is clearly essential to the functioning of the congressional war power and to any democratic control of foreign policy. The reality unknown to the public and to most members of Congress and the press is that secrets that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they are known to thousands of insiders.

Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Did the military people that ran Able Danger really say that their pre 911 investigation of 911 was thwarted by their bosses? There are news reports that say it was. Why isn’t this a big story. Shouldn’t any reasonable person be suspicious about this? This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a reasonable question.

Are there really some of the 19 terrorists still alive. There are news reports that say yes. Even if it’s not true, why has the main stream media completely ignored these foreign news stories? Shouldn’t any reasonable person be suspicious about this? This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a reasonable question.

Is there a ISA CIA connection on funding of Atta? News reports say there is. That’s suspicious. Even if there is not any connection, why doesn’t anybody look into it? Shouldn’t any reasonable person be suspicious? Some kids in Florida have discovered more by talking to taxicab drivers than the investigators did. Why? The investigators didn’t ask the questions. “I would have told them, but they didn’t ask me about it.” Where have you heard that before? That is suspicious. It is not a conspiracy theory, it is a reasonable question.

Did the 911 commission really say that the people that funding 911 were irrelevant? That’s suspicious. It can’t possibly be true. But it is. Why won’t they track the money? Shouldn’t any reasonable person be suspicious about this? Do they want to find out who did it or not? This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a reasonable question.

Why don’t they release the tapes of the pentagon? That’s suspicious. Even if the tapes show everything exactly as they say, why don’t they release the tapes? Shouldn’t any reasonable person be suspicious? This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a reasonable question.

Did the people that ran the 911 commission really say that they considered referring NORAD and the FCC to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for lying to the commission? News reports say they did. That’s suspicious. Keen said that they did an internal investigation instead. Isn’t it reasonable to want to know what they lied about? Shouldn’t that make any reasonable person suspicious? This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a reasonable question.

Are they really saying that they couldn’t track airplanes if the US was attacked by Russia, China and Cuba, because they airplanes could turn their transponders off? Shouldn’t that make any reasonable person suspicious? This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a reasonable question.

Could an inexperienced pilot do the maneuver to hit the Pentagon like he did? Some pilots say that he couldn’t. That’s suspicious. Did the G-forces really exceed the limits of the airplane’s software? Some people say it did. This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s a reasonable question.

The Law of Allowing
Stuart Wilde
September 11th, 2006

In a world where everyone likes to insist they are right and people judge and interfere all the time, the law of allowing stands apart as a spiritual idea.

In essence, it says that we ought to live and let live and allow others whatever perspective they wish, even if one thinks that perspective is very wrong. The way to practice the law of allowing is to agree with people you don’t agree with

Watching the news in the US one can see how they pump their views relentlessly. Fox News for example is a crass propaganda show, it has very little to do with the impartial disseminating of the days’ events. The power of a TV show to influence people to accept evil war-like ideas is a great shame. It is a global fault of the western ego to think others have to be like us, and it is a part of your maturity to allow others to be different.

When you watch the ludicrous nature of Blair and Bush with his Redneck Reich insisting on democracy, it looks so much like the southern preachers on TV that offer hell and damnation to all that don’t agree. Democracy never did anything for workers in the west, it has been a terrible disappointment for the most part; all it ever gave us was crippling laws and various political shades of the Fat Controllers. Why does anyone think it might help the Iraqis? Daft…such silliness.

Wouldn’t it be great if the law of allowing was installed and people didn’t have to be ruled by democracy’s endless stream of psychopaths, and people could be allowed to rule themselves. That is a novel idea. Imagine being able to think of your own accord without some redneck bovver boy from Fox News telling you what’s what and what is permissible and what is not.

I have always seen spirituality and individuality as the same thing, the act of developing a new consciousness, one that is original, and then the law of allowing follows naturally, whereby you allow the same individuality and freedom to others. Allowing is benevolent and warm, while insisting is ugly and nasty. And when people have to conform to some silly politician, or to a religious idea then that is usually someone’s ego in the act of empire building, corralling sheep.

And while it may pleasure the ego of those involved in these power trips it’s not a spiritual idea, as the truly spiritual man or woman is not keen on entrapment and empire building, they want to see people as creative and free.

To become that way yourself you have to offer it to others, that is why the law of allowing is a sophisticated idea. Of course, the first beneficiary of your law of allowing must be yourself because, if you are controlling and vindictive towards yourself, you become your own Fat Controller with supreme power over your life.

In letting others free you allow yourself to become more free. Nice

©Stuart Wilde 2006

"Wild chimps reveal the natural contexts of territoriality, war, male
cooperation, solidarity and sharing, nepotism, sexism, xenophobia,
infanticide, murder, cannibalism, polygyny, and mating competition
between kin groups of males -- behaviors that have evolved through
sexual selection. Also significant is the fact that none of these apes
learned these violent behaviors by watching TV or by being victims of
socioeconomic handicaps -- poor schools, broken homes, bad fathers,
illegal drugs, easy weapons, or any other sociological condition. Nor
were these apes spurred to war by any political, religious, or
economic ideology or by the rhetoric of an insane demagogue. They also
were not seeking an 'identity' or buckling under peer pressure.
Instead, they were obeying instincts, coded in the male psyche,
dictating that they must win against other males."


THE DARK SIDE OF MAN: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence,
by Michael P. Ghiglieri; Perseus, 1999; p. 176

"Once I even told Mr. Asahara how I felt. 'Don't you think a lot of the people here are weird?' I asked. 'That's not true," he replied."

- Harumi Iwakura (on her experiences as a young woman renunciate in the Aum Shinrikyou cult)

"Willing too is merely an experience. It comes when it comes, and I cannot bring it about."

- Wittgenstein

The Torah specified that landowners could not harvest the corners of their fields, nor pick up the dropped grain, so that it could be used by the poor and the travelers.

'Let Every Breath ... Secrets of the Russian Breath Masters'
by Vladimir Vasiliev

Product Details

• Paperback: 125 pages
• Publisher: Russian Martial Art (April 17, 2006)
• ISBN: 0978104900
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• average customer review: based on 5 reviews. (Write a review.)
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HEALTH - Want to keep your natural teeth into your golden years?

---

I've known this for years, but my family dentist backs it up with his hearty support. Use a homemade tooth powder made from a 50/50 mix of baking soda and table salt. I use sea salt but any granulated salt will do. Never used tooth powder before? It's easy. Just put a pinch on your palm and wet your toothbrush and push it down into the powder in your palm. Hold it there till the powder gets wet and then turn the toothbrush sideways so you can scrape all the wet powder onto the toothbrush bristles from your palm. It kind of makes a pile of wet powder on top of the bristles. Rinse your mouth and brush as usual.

My dentist tells me that you can brush much harder when using this 50/50 mix of baking soda and salt. In fact, he goes so far as to say that if you're not getting a bit of blood from your gums at each brushing, you're doing something wrong. Some of you might like to disagree with me and my dentist. But I'll be 47 years old this month and I still have all of my original teeth. I've been brushing with baking soda and salt powder for over 20 years now. The baking soda neutralizes the acids that eat away the protective layers of enamel from your teeth. And the salt acts as a soother and anti-bacterial rinse. Try it, you'll like it. And it's WAAAAY cheaper than commercial toothpaste and doesn't have that killer flouride in it. Just food for thought.

Edited to add:

Why use homemade tooth powder instead of colgate or some other commercial toothpaste? Well, commercial toothpastes do their cleaning with abrasives that actually wear away the enamel of your teeth over time. To be fair, some do and some don't. But why take the chance? Make your own tooth powder and don't give it another thought. Keep your natural smile for the rest of your natural life. Ever read the ingredient label on a commercial toothpaste?

__________________
Take only what you need from this world. Not everything you can get your hands on.

"Look, I understand too little, too late. I realize there are things you say and do
you can never take back.

But what would you be if you didn't even try?

You HAVE to try.

So after a lot of thought, I'd like to reconsider.

PLEASE.

If it's not too late -

Make it a CHEESE...burger."


- Lyle Lovett, "Here I Am"

Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.

- Madonna

There is an old good saying: the more we love women, the less they like us.

Darkness can be comforting. It affords one a place to hide, even if the light he is hiding from is actually his salvation. Most often, human beings hide in their concepts of themselves. You wake up in the morning and only feel safe if you know who you are. You think, "I am safe because my name is blah blah. I am special because my girlfriend loves me, I have a good job, my body looks great, and I'm better than most people. Of course, if I lost all of this, I would have know IDEA who I am, and life would lose all meaning."

This is the story of human life, and we all know how it ends. Everything that gives us a sense of who we are is destined to die -- usually long before the deaths of our physical bodies. When this happens suddenly and unexpectedly, it is the most painful and traumatizing event in all of human experience. When we lose our loved ones and most valued relationships, the feeling goes beyond "grief" and "sadness." It is more akin to the amputation of a vital and necessary part of one's inner core. The same can be said of anything that gives one a powerful sense of who one is -- career, wealth, goals, etc.

No matter how much comfort we take in these concepts of ourselves, underneath the comfort is fear. In fact, fear is the main motivator driving people to "succeed" at building bigger and stronger "selves" -- more money, more status, better relationships, a better body. The very word "driven" implies the impulsion to move forward. It is the impulsion to run, but not TOWARD anything -- it is the wish to not be caught by the boogeyman that is chasing you.

The real boogeyman from which we run is not physical death. In fact, when one listens to stories of average people who've confronted death, they almost universally say, "It is not nearly as scary I'd thought." Far more horrific than the death of the body is the death of the concept of self. To not know who one is the shattering of the entire universe.

You probably know what I'm talking about, but if not, this is the best analogy I can think of: Imagine that you are an actor who has been performing a one-person show in front of an adoring audience. This has been your entire life for as long as you can remember. It's who you ARE, and all you want to be. Then one day, a little beam of light shines through a crack in the ceiling and catches your vision. You follow its ray, and you see something that you don't want to see. What you thought was an audience of people is actually nothing more than a cast of shadows distorted by your vision. There never was a crowd admiring your performance. You have been performing a delusional, one-person act all alone in a theater in your head. You are terrified, disoriented. You no longer have any idea who you are. You are abandoned and insane. You crumple to the stage and wish you were dead.

This is what the death of the ego feels like. It's not the death of something evil, sinful, or even in need of correction. It's the death of something that never existed anywhere but in the mind of its owner. Nevertheless, it has all the appearance of tragedy, because the suffering caused by the ego's "life" and inevitable "death" is beyond the scope of human imagining.

The death of the ego is the "dark night of the soul" described by 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross. The laying down of the ego -- or the ability to simply recognize its non-existence -- is far more difficult than merely abdicating arrogance, selfishness, or other "egotistic" tendencies. The ego is a "necessary" defense mechanism for any mind that looks at the world and thinks, "I AM APART." And how could anyone in this world not feel apart? From the moment we are born, we are given a name, race, gender, and social status. We are told that we are "good" or "bad" because we are "fat" or "thin," "attractive" or "unattractive," "rich" or "poor," "smart" or "stupid," and we quickly learn to judge others on these same erroneous bases. It's the only language of thought we have ever spoken.

This delusional perspective is as pervasive collectively as it is individually. "Collective egotism" takes the form of nationalism, racism, and every form of religious and tribal warfare. In his book The Power of Now, author Eckhart Tolle addresses the threat posed by the collective ego to the future of mankind. Tolle writes, "If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity to inhabit this planet. What do you think will happen on this planet if human consciousness remains unchanged?"

Death is not the worst thing that can happen to our species. The worst thing is for us to remain in this interminable state of separation, aloneness, animosity, and fear that drives every act of violence and madness reported on the evening news. Each and every one of us is the actor in the theater, completely isolated, contracted, and insane, performing a meaningless drama for no one and nothing.

Michael Goodspeed

“Our ‘Neocons’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and,
evil as Hell.”

- Edward Abbey

I am reminded of one of the stories from "Tales of the South
Pacific" The guy was concerned about the darkening situation in Europe prior
to WWII. He decided to go live in a far-off paradise, far away from the
world's problems. His choice - Guadalcanal.

Why not? You have lost your job, probably a large part of your identity. Your family is scattered. They only get together to save telephone bills on the feuds going on.

You've been put on a fixed income even though you didn't think your income was broken. You're living on pills, pricking your fingertips with lancets five times a day and sticking needles in your thighs.

It takes 20 minutes to get up and get moving every morning. Your vision and hearing is failing and your hair is falling out.

You get screamed at, cut off and flipped off on the freeway. Punks and the most rude of the bunch, the girls and young women, push in front of you in line. Even if you are in line for the men's roon at the grocery store, a woman with a loaded shopping cart will push in front of you!

You look at your insurance and realise you're worth way more dead than alive.

And the list goes on........and on..........and on.

You realize that, in the past, you were used to making decisions........so you make one.

The last one.

God is generally for the big squadrons against the little ones.
(Dieu est ordinairement pour le gros escadrons contre les petits.)

--Roger, Comte de Bussy-Rabutin (1677)

Now Let Every Breath by Vladimir Vasiliev and Co. is also a really great book. It has more ways and ideas about breathing exercises (including a bunch on how to combine breathing with calisthenics and running). It seems like a graduate text in how to work out and I'm not sure I can use a lot of the info in it now, but, as I become more advanced, hopefully I can in the future.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Anais Nin

Let Every Breath... Secrets of the Russian Breath Masters (Paperback)
by Vladimir Vasiliev
# Publisher: Russian Martial Art (April 17, 2006)
# Amazon.com Sales Rank: #9,672 in Books

Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened?

"Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool - good luck."

George Sanders (1906 - April 25, 1972)

Starred in The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, All About Eve. The voice of Sher Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book. Died from overdose of sleeping pills.

"My passion for freedom is almost an obsession. Writing has always been a means to an end I hoped to achieve. Personal liberty may be a phantom, but I hardly think anybody would deny that there is more freedom in writing than there is in slaving in an iron foundry, or working - as I have worked - from 12 to 14 hours, seven days a week, behind a soda fountain. I have worked as much as 18 hours a day at my typewriter, but it was work of my own choosing."

-Robert Howard

There is a place you can touch a woman that will drive her crazy.
Her heart.

-Melanie Griffith

Listen, put trust in God, don't let your hands and feet tremble with fear:
your daily bread is more in love with you than you with it.
It is in love with you and holding back
only because it knows of your lack of self-denial.
If you had any self-denial, the daily bread
would throw itself upon you as lovers do.
What is this feverish trembling for fear of hunger?
In possession of trust in God one can live full-fed.

- Rumi

The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall,
and falling ...

They're given ... wings ...

- Rumi

"I've been down the self-help path hundreds of times and have returned with
my ego stroked and my wallet lighter."

- Willem

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."

Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

Marathon Dancing
by Butler Shaffer

I just returned from a conference in Prague, where I met a group of young attendees from Spain. Perhaps it was my Spanish sister-in-law – with whom I share opinions about the destructive and dehumanizing nature of the state – who predisposed me to liking these simpaticos; in any event, meeting them was one of the highlights of the conference.

In a discussion of the war system, they raised a point that requires a continuing awareness and emphasis: that in criticizing Americans’ wrongdoing in Iraq we must not overlook the fact that the opposing organized forces have political ambitions of their own; and are just as prepared to inflict death, suffering, and destruction on innocent people as is the United States.

I couldn’t agree more with their comments – and they understood, from my other writings, that I held to this view – but it does need reaffirmation from time-to-time. For those of us who oppose war as a matter of principle – i.e., all wars, not just this war or that war – it is sometimes easy to get trapped into criticizing just your own government, lest the same criticism of the opposing side be misinterpreted as creating some moral – or immoral – equivalency from which an observer is invited to select sides.

Throughout the world and human history, men and women have been conditioned in the view that, because their political system is aligned with the forces of “good,” and opposing groups are the epitome of “evil,” there must be a “good” and a “bad” side in every war. President Bush recites this mantra with nary a break in meter, reminding the boobeoisie that an “axis of evil” threatens their lives. But Osama bin Laden and the forces of al Qaeda are peddling the same mindset to their followers. While the United States employs sophisticated weaponry to kill and maim innocent civilians, al Qaeda recruits suicide bombers to carry out the same insanity. But what is important to understand is that each side is playing the same deadly game and for the same purposes: to control – and, in so doing, aggrandize power over – their own populations.

The vigor that one sees poured into the war system reminds me of marathon dancing, a craze that infected the minds of many in the 1930s. While war is destructive and dancing only tiring, each benefits from a total commitment by its participants. As with fighting, marathon dancing is done only by the young, who have both the energy and innocence to see it through. At the outset, there is a clarity of purpose to it all but, as the action continues, doubts begin to settle into the minds of the participants. But doubt must not beget thoughts of withdrawal from the contest. An enervated spirit combines with a growing uncertainty of purpose to increase the frenzy of one’s participation. One-by-one, the dancers fall by the wayside, until there is a general collapse. In total exhaustion, and anti-climactically, the last-standing couple is declared the winner. The observers – having cheered on their favorites – take advantage of the temporary respite to return to the conduct of their daily lives, while the dance organizers busy themselves with plans for yet another contest in another venue.

War is an activity coolly organized by masters of the state machinery to manipulate – through fear and self-righteous indignation – the populations of their respective states into a frenzied effort to destroy more of “them” than of “us.” Wars require the participation of two or more state systems willing to pair off into the dualistic roles of “good guys” – with which to amass the support of their countrymen – and “bad buys” – around which the other state will mobilize its populace. That tens of millions will die in the bloody processes of a war is of no relevance whatsoever either to state officials or, amazingly, to the citizenry who eagerly and proudly send their own children into the slaughter! Parents who worry that a sexual predator might be prowling schoolyards looking for victims, express no concern for military recruiters using the same school facilities to enlist more cannon fodder for the war machine!

One cannot understand the war system without realizing the symbiotic nature of the undertaking. As in the more peaceful field of sports, there is no purpose to having a baseball or football team, unless there is an opponent to play. Every state requires a threat, an enemy, with which to control its own people. In order to keep the “Cold War” going, the United States needed the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union for the same reason that the Soviet Union needed the “capitalist exploiters” of the United States.

I first became aware of the carefully-orchestrated nature of the war system when I was a child. I was ten years old when World War II ended and, up to that time, I had been carefully indoctrinated in the view that Russia and China were my “friends,” while Germany, Japan, and – for awhile – Italy, were my “enemies.” No sooner was this war over, than members of the repertoire company switched roles to perform in a succeeding play. Now, Germany, Japan, and Italy were my “friends,” while Russia and China had become my “enemies.” It was enough of a paradox to engage an adolescent’s mind but, sadly, not the thinking of adults who made their costume changes and memorized their new lines with the same unquestioning ease that allowed them to support American involvement in World War II. In time, I began to wonder if there were any children in Germany or Russia who experienced the same transformation of “friends” and “foes.”

Wars are intentionally put together by two or more states to enhance their power interests. To be effective, they must be conducted at least every twenty to twenty-five years in order to (a) not totally exhaust a society’s productive base in endless fighting and destruction, and (b) reinvest the minds of the next generation in the “glories” and “necessity” for war. Any warring culture must always have an abundance of military veterans around to instruct the youth in such matters.

In connection with the abattoir now raging in the Middle East, a clear distinction must be made regarding the legitimate role for self-defense. The Iraqi father who, in an effort to protect his family, shoots armed storm-troopers breaking into his home, is engaged in an act of self-defense, as are militia groups whose sole purpose is self-protection against invading forces. But so-called “insurgency” groups may have appetites for political power that go beyond matters of self-defense. This is certainly the case not only with al Qaeda forces, but with such groups as Hezbollah, each of which has ambitions to exercise power over local populations.

How would we know into which category any particular group might fall? An answer may be found by looking to the tactics of a given group. If its members confine the targets of their attacks to invading forces, it may well be a self-defense group. But when a group engages in indiscriminate attacks upon the general population – such as suicide-bombers killing people on a bus, or in a mosque or shopping area – you can rest assured that the purposes of its acts of terror are no different from the terrorism practiced upon the same people by the United States: to reduce the Iraqi people to obedience through “shock and awe.”

It is a deadly mistake for any decently principled person to put himself or herself in a position of choosing between one side or the other in a war. Wars are creatures of state planning and, for this reason alone, cannot be thought of in terms of “good” or “bad” sides. This was a mistake that Jane Fonda – and many others like her – got into during the Vietnam War: that the United States was a clear wrongdoer did not confer any sense of righteousness on the North Vietnamese who, like the Americans, wanted nothing more than to subdue the Vietnamese people.

When the Israelis and Hezbollah go after one another; when the Indians and the Pakistanis conduct their periodic forays into each other’s territories; when American and al Qaeda forces shoot at and bomb one another in Baghdad streets, it serves no principled purpose to take sides. Identifying ourselves with one side or the other is the mindset into which state systems have conditioned our thinking. There never has been, and never will be, a “good” war. The warped minds who think otherwise are telling us that some end they value is worth the deaths of millions of people – as long as they are not among the casualties. When the twisted thinking of a Madeleine Albright can regard the boycott-induced deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as a “price” she was willing to pay – even though it was the children, not Ms. Albright, who paid the price – you can rest assured that the state has abandoned even the pretense of moral direction.

Those who value both peace and liberty should see the death and destruction of war as a signal to withdraw one’s support from all political systems, regardless of who is running them, or under what rationale, or the duration of their respective claims upon the bodies and souls of people. When all casualties of the war system have been accounted for – not only in terms of the dead and the wounded, but those whose lives have been severely affected in other ways – it will be necessary for each of us to assess our contributions to such organized insanity. We may then discover a truth that pervades all of our relationships with others, namely, that anarchy means never having to say you’re sorry!

Meanwhile, the marathon continues, and may soon be coming to a dance hall near you. As with so many other dance teams that have paired off into their deadly choreography, you may select your own partner or allow the state to choose one for you. In the alternative, you may discover more peaceful and productive ways of investing your energies, ways that your children and grandchildren may live to appreciate.

July 19, 2006

tall, dark and hansome lol, tall nice looking funny, likes to dance, funny somone that can make me smile , honest respectful knows wat he wants out of life, i want a guy thats between the ages of 18-31, knows how to treat a lady like a queen, wants to spend time with, knows how to cook but if not love too cook, likes kids, someone who can be a there for me no matter what, someone who i can cuddle with or can make me laugh when im sad, someone to wipe away the tears when im crying, someon who can be my best friends to the end

Expecting girls to notice me instead of the other way around is what works best for me. It should work if you believe in it.

Oscar

The dedicated practitioner
experiences the spiritual way
as a turbulent mountain stream,
tumbling dangerously among boulders.
When maturity is reached,
the river flows smoothly and patiently
with the powerful sweep of the Ganges.

-Song of the Mahamudra (Tilopa's Song to Naropa)

Listen, put trust in God, don't let your hands and feet tremble with fear:
your daily bread is more in love with you than you with it.
It is in love with you and holding back
only because it knows of your lack of self-denial.
If you had any self-denial, the daily bread
would throw itself upon you as lovers do.

-Rumi

A thousand half-loves
must be forsaken to take
one whole heart home.

- Rumi

“The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”

- Sherlock Holmes

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

-Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

"Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine"

-Prof. Irwin Edman

''Soon I'll be fed up with the relativity. Even such a thing fades away when one is too involved with it…''

-Albert Einstein (personal correspondence to Elsa, 1921)

Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls,
something borrowed which we mistake as our own.
Ignorance is better than this; clutch at madness instead.
Always run from what seems to benefit your self:
sip the poison and spill the water of life.
Revile those who flatter you;
lend both interest and principle to the poor.
Let security go and be at home amidst dangers.
Leave your good name behind and accept disgrace.
I have lived with cautious thinking;
now I'll make myself mad.

- Rumi, Mathnawi II: 2327-2332

These high oil prices IMO aren't a "bubble" by any definition. They are a sustained runup based on lack of supply. That supply will NEVER increase to any meaningful degree. Quite the opposite - a long, steady decline is inevitable. The only question is whether or not we can develop alternative fuels at sufficient volume to help us survive. It's already a given that there will be a HUGE gobal dieoff at some point in the relatively near future, once the energy supply hits some as-yet-unknown tipping point. We'll only be able to see "it" after-the-fact. Well after the fact.

The wars will start, and BILLIONS will die. Only once the world population is in balance with world energy supply will things stabilize. All our preps, folks, are just to try and wide the initial shockwave. Because it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to live a self-sufficient lifestyle for a long period. Yes, it CAN be done. But only by VERY few, and most of you/us who THINK you're one of that few... You're NOT...

-Dennis Olson

Russian Systema Self-Defense - What is it?

Is it shown at the link below, filmed at the school of a truly great fighting master?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQDuCRMGJ3Y

Or, is the authentic Systema demonstrated at the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_-5MY7qFWA&mode=related&search=

See how different they are. It is tempting to say "There are as many Systema's as there are practitioners." True to some degree. But the two video clips above show mutually contradictory approaches. It is tempting to say "Training mode is not the real art. True to some degree. But the first clip shows sparring style, mutliple continuous moves, jabbing, parrying, twirling around etc.. The second clip shows the classical single-motion elegant quick takedown approach, as always exemplified in Mikhail's movements.

All people on all clips above are doubtless real hardass, kickass real-world fighters. But only one clip can be "right" about what is Systema. Ignorant onlookers would say of the first clip: "It has some reality, but where is the Systema?" The same ignorant onlookers would say of the second clip "It sure looks like Systema. But are the attacks and defenses real-world credible?"

I do not know the answer.

Yes, I know what you are talking about - the concentration of all your thoughts in the moment, the rush of adrenalin, the profound peace of simply existing when you could be dead the next second.

Combine it with a belief in something, and you have most repeat soldiers.

But it's bullshit. It passes the minute you are hurt.

In Iraq, most of the repeat offenders are there for the money.

And then you have the sick ones; there have always been sick ones.

-Kostas Dervenis

The inevitable fall of the US Dollar is unavoidable, when the charade can no longer be cloaked with smoke and mirrors or tolerable foreign adventures. At that point the calls for a single world currency, administered through a solitary clearing house and autarchic central bank, will be offered as the answer for economic stability. Thus, the ultimate transfer and expropriation of individual wealth will be achieved. The world runs on money, not oil. Those who control it and require legal tender laws, rule the economic and political order. You will come to learn this lesson, no matter what currency you use . . .

SARTRE - April 4, 2003

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic

than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day

to the making of money for money's sake.

-John D. Rockefeller

"In the face of the great superiority of another person there is no means of safety but love."

-Goethe

From: 'When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times'
by Pema Chodron

"The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to
face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we
could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness.
When we feel resentment because the room is too cold, we could
meet the cold and feel its iciness and its bite. When we want to
complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead. When
we worry because the wind is shaking our windows, we could meet
the wind and hear its sound. Cutting our expectations for a cure is
a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot and cold. They
will go on forever. After we have died, the ebb and flow will still
continue. Like the tides of the sea, like day and night - this is the
nature of things.

The present difficulty is that the man thinks that he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power which does everything and the man is only a tool. If he accepts that position he is free from troubles; otherwise he courts them. Take for instance, the figure in a gopuram (temple tower), where it is made to appear to bear the burden of the tower on its shoulders. Its posture and look are a picture of great strain while bearing the very heavy burden of the tower. But think. The tower is built on the earth and it rests on its foundations. The figure (like Atlas bearing the earth) is a part of the tower, but is made to look as if it bore the tower.

Is it not funny? So is the man who takes on himself the sense of doing.

- Ramana Maharshi

The present difficulty is that the man thinks that he is the doer. But it is a mistake. It is the Higher Power which does everything and the man is only a tool. If he accepts that position he is free from troubles; otherwise he courts them. Take for instance, the figure in a gopuram (temple tower), where it is made to appear to bear the burden of the tower on its shoulders. Its posture and look are a picture of great strain while bearing the very heavy burden of the tower. But think. The tower is built on the earth and it rests on its foundations. The figure (like Atlas bearing the earth) is a part of the tower, but is made to look as if it bore the tower.

Is it not funny? So is the man who takes on himself the sense of doing.

- Ramana Maharshi

I’m absolutely certain this stock could deliver 858% by July 1, 2006.

Even if it does half as well as what I expect, you’re talking at least a 400% return. For every $5,000 invested… that’s a $30,000 gain. Invest $10,000 and you could expect a $60,000 return. And let me remind you… that’s $60,000 in three months.

Christian DeHaemer
Editor, Red Zone Profits

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."

-- Adolf Hitler - "Mein Kampf" - (1925)

Frankly, I was rather dismayed by your use of the term "half-breed," Captain.
You must admit it is an unsophisticated expression.

I'll remember that, Mr. Spock, the next time I find myself in a similar situation.

Believe it or not, but to get bit by a snake in a dream is actually a very good thing! A snakebite in a dream is the equivalent to an injection administered by a doctor. It means some sort of emotional and/or physical healing is about to begin as well as a new awareness.

It's a trap.

And a SMART FOX will sniff and walk away!

"In so far as it helps the individual to forget himself and his ready-made opinions about the universe, religion will prepare the way for realization. In so far as it arouses and justifies such passions as fear, scrupulosity, righteous indignation, institutional patriotism, and crusading hate, in so far as it harps on the saving virtues of certain theological notions, certain hallowed arrangements of words, religion is an obstacle in the way of realization."

Aldous Huxley in the Devils of Loudun

Issac Newton and Edmund Haley were friends.  They once had a
discussion on alchemy.  You may know that Newton spent half his labors on the study
of alchemy. When Haley protested this foolishness, Newton responded, "I, sir, have
studied the subject, you have not."

No mercy for first offenders

The laws of thermodynamics allow no leniency in the court of cosmic justice. An inflated
Greenhouse effect due to increased CO2 and CH4 is even now yielding vast pools of
buoyant freshwater from the world’s shrinking icecaps, and these are already beginning to
shut down the giant gyres that drive the world’s abyssal currents. Readings from one arm
of the Gulf stream currently show a 30% decline in just 50 years.33 If that process
continues, fingers of warmth will reach down to unpin the methane hydrates that carpet
many seabeds and methane eruptions will send global temperatures rocketing upwards.
Agriculture will collapse under the climatic onslaught, and our energy-starved civilisation
will implode. Within a century the population will shrink below its 30% point, completing
the symmetry of a transitional pulse. Human population growth and decline will then
display the elegant waveform that typifies all animal plagues.

As one of 30–100 million extant species, ours does not differ from the others in any
fundamental respect. It follows that those who contend we are not in plague and will not
collapse are merely displaying one of our species’ most hallowed (genetic) delusions:
anthropocentrism. Such belief hinges on a bet that has odds of at least 30-million-to-one
stacked against it, and while astronomical odds like those might seduce the odd obsessive
gambler, no respectable scientist should fall for it.

-Reg Morrison

Evolution’s Act-of-God clause

“Our time bomb is mysticism. Its delivery system is language. And its hiding place? The
unfathomable coils of our DNA.” I first wrote those words in 1997 simply because the
process of evolution dictated them. At that time I had no inkling of the immediacy of that
prediction nor did I foresee how this lethal evolutionary mechanism would be launched
on a global scale.

Adaptive specialisation in any species is a two edged sword. Disproportionately
productive in their birth environment, specialisations usually become lethal handicaps
when conditions change. A peacock’s tail is the standard illustration for this crucial
evolutionary principle. The peacock-tail of our species is our predisposition to
mysticise—to assign peculiar, even supra-natural, significance to people, events, places
and things that matter most to us. As the late Carl Sagan wrote: ‘We’re significance
junkies’.

-Reg Morrison

If I tell people here about my plans to buy land, grow my food, get off the grid, etc. and suggest they do the same, it is as if I just told them I was planning a trip to the moon, to collect pixie dust. Most people here can not and will not imagine an energy deficient world.

One more twist to the complexity screw.

Carlo Rubbia Nobel Price ofPhysics, I believe, and director of the CERN center (particle'saccelerator in between Switzerland and France) was the godfather ofthis idea, some 10 years ago. He suggested to transmute Thorium intothe U233 by shooting with a particle accelerator.

I see now the mining of thorium (3 times more abundant than uranium in the Earth crust; that is peanuts also) having a good time in scratching the Earth surface a little bit more (today the Earth movement of materials is about a mountain 16 Km radius (some 256 Kmin the base perimeter) and some 8 Km. Of height; more or less, a newEverest per year).

Plus, of course, the attached device accelerating particles in each of the thorium transmuted nuclear power plants (or at least every few reactors). As I said before, I believe we are all crazy and among us, more the ones resigning from the fight, due to the fact that "nukes are coming, whether we like it or not"

Pedro from Madrid

Subject: Re: Non-agricultural ethanol - assessment please?

How terrific the people may be!

They look at the ground and see a factory. Modern man does not see a
live organism, with nutrients evolving from organic matter into
plants and back to the earth, in a living cycle. They just see a
factory with a programmed annual output of biofuel per hectare, to
feed gas guzzlers, to move humans in a forest of concrete, steel,
asphalt and bricks, to go to routinely jobs at 30 miles from home, or
to entertain at 200 miles from home in the weekends.

This is what the modern man expects from the earth: to behave like a
clock machinery (round the clock manufacturing), because obviously
the modern farmer does not look for his/her own survival and that of
his/her family on the same piece of land, for generations. No. He/she
obviously wants equal rights and the same living standard than an
urban citizen: car, home appliances, holidays in the other side of
the moon, motorized weekends, a 1,000 sq feet home/10,000 cubic feet
conditioned volume of air per family or individual and so forth.

Therefore, modern farmers also see the piece of land as a factory, a
tool to produce a given and pre-fixed output, regardless the weather
or the rain fall or natural, logical nutrients as input, as a return
or gift to earth for the given output. They can not afford the land
the have a breath, in a literal sense, to lie fallow, to rotate to
have a rest, perhaps for years, when the sensible and sensitive eyes
realize the earth is tired. This close relationship of human beings
and earth is lost. Earth is a factory and has to produce as per the
market demand. The god Market is now in the altar, together with the
Goddess economy.

Do not have any doubt that we will pay for this behaviour. I am not a
believer in any faith or religion and less of all, in the Market and
Economy gods. I just try to explain myself something that understand
is common sense, but I do not see much common sense these days. I do
not personally find much sense in discussing Patzek, Pimentel or
Naredo rich sources of information, getting into ratios,
crosschecking piles of data, etc., to see if it is interesting to
produce fuel from food, to feed the uncountable number of machines we
are able to produce in the present industrial society. I see now,
with all respects to those doing it, that he simple time spent in
these analysis is already a hint on our own craziness.

Pedro from Madrid

"The heart of the study of boxing is to have natural instinct resemble the dragon"

- Wang Xiangzhai

"I think we can conclude from this thread that pressure points are the perfect compromise between being unable to grapple and unable to strike."

- hedgehogey

Coal, the world's most deadly power source.

It is said that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal.
That may be more of a curse than a blessing.

"In the United States, 23,600 deaths each year can be attributed
to air pollution from power plants. Those dying prematurely due
to exposure to particulate matter lose, on average, 14 years of
life. Burning coal also is responsible for some 554,000 asthma
attacks, 16,200 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 38,200 non-fatal
heart attacks each year. Atmospheric power plant pollution in the
United States racks up an estimated annual health care bill of
over $160 billion."

<http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update42.htm>

Ahhhh, we all know there death pours from the smokestacks of
coal fired power plants, but at least there is no radiation
danger. WRONG! As far as radiation goes coal is far more
]dangerous than nuclear plants.

"Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to
higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power
plants that meet government regulations. This ironic situation
remains true today and is addressed in this article."

And:
"Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per
typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982,
assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of
1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released
5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and
12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982
(from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium
(containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of
thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from
combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from
worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640
tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and
8960 tons of thorium."

<http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html>

Nikolai Palkin

by Leo Tolstoy

We were spending the night at the house of a soldier ninety-five years old, who had served under Alexander I and Nicholas I.

"Tell me, are you ready to die?"

"Ready to die? How should I be yet? I used to be afraid of dying, but now I pray God for only one thing; that God would be pleased to let me make my confession and partake of the communion; I have so many sins on my conscience."

"What sins?"

"How can you ask? Let us see, when was it I served? Under Nicholas. Was the service then such as it is now? How was it then? Uh! It fills me with horror even to remember it. Then Alexander came. The soldiers used to praise this Alexander. They said he was gracious."

I remembered the last days of Alexander, when twenty men out of every hundred were beaten to death. Nicholas must have been a terror, if in comparison with him Alexander was called gracious.

"I happened to serve under Nicholas," said the old man, and he immediately began to grow animated and to give me his recollections.

"How was it then? At that time fifty blows with the rod was thought nothing . . . one hundred and fifty, two hundred, three hundred . . . they used to whip men to death, and with cudgels too . . . Never a week went by that they did not beat one or two men to death from each regiment. Today people don't know what a cudgel is, but then the word 'palka' was never out of men's mouths. 'Palka!' 'Palka!'

"Among us soldiers he was called Nikolai Palkin – Nicholas the cudgeler. He was really Nikolai Palkin. That was his universal nickname. That's what I remember of that time," continued the old man. "Yes, when one has lived out a century, it is time for one to die, and when you think of it, it becomes hard.

"I have so many sins on my soul! It was a subordinate's work. One had to apply one hundred and fifty blows to a soldier" – the old man had been non-commissioned officer and sergeant major, but was now "kandidat" – and you give him two hundred. And the man died on your hands, and you tortured him to death . . . that was a sin.

"The non-commissioned officers used to beat the young soldiers to death. They would strike them anywhere with the butt-end of the gun or with the fist, over the heart or on the head, and the man would die. And there was never any redress. If a man died, murdered that way, the authorities would write, 'Died by the will of God,' and thus it was covered up. And at that time did I realize what it meant? One thought only of oneself. But now when you crawl up on top of the stove and can't sleep o' nights, you keep thinking about it and living it over again. Good as it is to take the holy communion in accordance with the Christian law and be absolved, still horror seizes you.

"When you remember all that you have been through, yes, and what others have suffered on your account, then no other hell is necessary; it is worse than any hell."

I vividly imagined what must have been the recollections of this solitary old man there, face to face with death, and a pang went through my heart. I remembered other horrors besides the cudgels, which he must have witnessed: men killed in running the gauntlet, put to death by shooting, the slaughter and pillage of cities in war – he had taken part in the Polish war – and I thought I would question him particularly in regard to all this: I asked him about running the gauntlet. He gave full particulars about this horrible punishment: how they drove the man, with his arms tied, between two rows of soldiers provided with sharpened sticks, how all struck at him, while behind the soldiers marched the officers shouting "Strike harder." When he told about this the old man gave the order in a commanding tone, evidently well satisfied with his memory and the commanding tone with which he spoke.

He told all the particulars without manifesting the slightest remorse, as if he were telling how they killed oxen and prepared fresh meat. He related how they drove the unhappy victims back and forth between the lines, how the tortured man would at last stumble and fall on the bayonets, how at first the bloody wheals began to appear, how they would cross one another, how gradually the wheals would blend together and swell and the blood would spurt out, how the blood-stained flesh would hang in clots, how the bones would be laid bare; how the wretch at first would scream, then only dully groan at every step and at every blow; how at length no sound would be heard, and the doctor, who was in attendance for this very purpose, would come up, feel the man's pulse, examine and decide whether the punishment could go on, whether he was already beaten to death, or whether it should be postponed till another occasion; and then they would bring him to, so that his wounds might be dressed, and he might be made ready to receive the full sum of blows which certain wild beasts, with Nikolai Palkin at their head, had decided ought to be administered to him.

The doctor employed his science to keep the man from dying before he had endured all the tortures which his body could be made to endure. And the man, when he could no longer walk a step, was laid flat on the ground in his cloak, and with that bloody swelling over his whole back was carried to the hospital to be treated, so that when he was well again they might give him the thousand or two blows which he had not yet received, and could not bear all at one time.

He told how the victims implored death to come to their relief, and how the officers would not grant it to them, but would heal them for a second and third time, and at last beat them to death.

And all this because a man had either deserted from his regiment, or had the courage or the audacity and the self-confidence to complain in behalf of his comrades because they were ill fed, and those in command pilfered their rations.

He told all this; and when I tried to draw from him some expression of remorse for these things, he was at first amazed and afterward alarmed.

"No," said he, "that was all right; it was the judgment of the court. Was it my fault? It was by order of the court and according to law."

He displayed the same serenity and lack of remorse regarding the horrors of war, in which he had taken part, and of which he had seen so much in Turkey and Poland.

He told about children murdered, about prisoners dying of cold and starvation, about a young boy – a Polyak – run through by a bayonet and impaled on a tree. And when I asked him if his conscience did not torment him on account of these deeds, he utterly failed to understand me.

"This is all a part of war, according to law; for the Tsar and the fatherland. These deeds are not only not wrong, but are such as are honorable and brave, and atone for many sins." The only things that troubled him were his private actions, the fact that he, when an officer, had beaten and punished men. These actions tormented his conscience. But in order to be pardoned for them he had a resource: this was the holy communion, which he hoped he should be enabled to partake of before he died, and for which he was beseeching his niece. His niece promised that he should have it, because she recognized the importance of it; and he was content.

The fact that he had helped to ruin and destroy innocent women and children, that he had killed men with bullet and bayonet, that he had stood in line and whipped men to death and dragged them off to the hospital and back to torture again – all this did not trouble him at all; all this was none of his business, all this was done, not by him, but as it were, by some one else.

How was it possible that this old man, if he had understood what ought to have been clear to him, as he stood on the very threshold of eternity, did not realize that between him and his conscience and God, as now on the eve of death, there was and could be no mediator, so there was and could be none even at that moment when they compelled him to torture and beat men? How is it that he did not understand that now there was nothing that could atone for the evil he had done to men when he might have refrained from doing it? that he did not understand that there is an eternal law which he always knew and could not help knowing – a law which demands love and tenderness for man; and what he called law was a wicked and godless deception to which he should not give credence?

It was terrible to think of what must have arisen before his imagination during his sleepless nights on the oven, and his despair, if he had realized that when he had the possibility of doing good and evil to men, he had done nothing but evil; that when he had learned the distinctions of good and evil nothing else was now in his power than uselessly to torment himself and repent. His sufferings would have been awful.

But why should one desire to trouble him? Why torment the conscience of an old man on the very verge of death? Better give it comfort. Why annoy the people in recalling what is already past?

Past? What is past? Can a severe disease be past only because we say that it is past? It does not pass away, and never will pass away, and cannot pass away as long as we do not acknowledge ourselves sick. To be cured of a disease, one must first recognize it. And this we do not do. Not only do we fail to do it, but we employ all our powers not to see it, not to recognize it.

Meantime, the disease, instead of passing away, changes its form, sinks deeper into the flesh, the blood, the bones. The disease is this: that men born good and gentle, men with love and mercy rooted in their hearts, perpetrate such atrocities on one another, themselves not knowing why or wherefore.

Our native Russians, men naturally sweet-tempered, good, and kind, permeated with the spirit of Christ's teaching, men who confess in their souls that they would be insulted at the suggestion of their not sharing their last crust with the poor, or pitying those in prison – these same men spend the best years of their lives in murdering and torturing their brethren, and not only are not remorseful for such deeds, but consider them honorable, or at least indispensable, and just as unavoidable as eating or breathing.

Is not this a horrible disease? Is it not the moral duty of every one to do all in his power to cure it, and first and foremost to point it out, to call it by name?

The old soldier had spent all his life in torturing and murdering other men. We ask, Why talk about it? The soldier did not consider himself to blame; and those dreadful deeds – the cudgel, the running of the gauntlet, and the other things – are all past; why then recall that which is already ancient history? This is done away with.

Nikolai Palkin is no more. Why recall his regime? Only the old soldier remembered it before his death. Why stir the people up about it?

Thus in the time of Nicholas they spoke of Alexander. In the same way in the time of Alexander they recalled the deeds of Paul. Thus in the time of Paul they spoke of Catharine and all her profligacies, and all the follies of her lovers. Thus in the time of Catharine they spoke of Peter, and so on and so on. Why recall it?

Yes, why?

If I have a severe or dangerous disease difficult to cure, and I am relieved of it, I shall always be glad to be reminded of it. I shall not mention it only when I am suffering, and my suffering continues and grows worse all the time, and I wish to deceive myself; only then I shall not mention it! And we do not mention it because we know that we are still suffering. Why disturb the old man and stir up the people? The cudgels and the running of the gauntlet – all that is long past!

Past? It has changed its form, but it is not past. In every foregoing period there have been things which we remember not only with horror, but with indignation.

We read the descriptions of distraining for debt, burning for heresy, military colonization, whippings and running of the gauntlet, and are not only horror-struck at the cruelty of man, but we fail to imagine the mental state of those who did such things. What was in the soul of the man who could get up in the morning, wash his face and hands, put on the dress of a boyar, say his prayers to God, then go to the torture-chamber to stretch the joints and whip with the knout old men and women, and spend in this business his ordinary five hours, like the modern functionary in the senate; then return to his family and calmly sit down to dinner and finish the day reading the Holy Scripture? What was in the souls of those regimental and company commanders?

I knew such a man, who one evening danced the mazurka with a beautiful girl at a ball, and retired earlier than usual so as to he awake early in the morning to make arrangements to compel a runaway soldier – a Tartar – to be killed in running the gauntlet; and after he had seen this man whipped to death, he returned to his family and ate his dinner! You see all this took place in the time of Peter, and in the time of Alexander, and in the time of Nicholas. There has not been a time when terrible things of this kind have not taken place, which we in reading about them cannot understand. We cannot understand how men could look on such horrors as they perpetrated, and not see the senselessness of them, even if they did not recognize the bestial inhumanity of them. This has been so in all times. Is our day so peculiar, so fortunate, that we have no such horrors, no such doings, which will seem just as ridiculous and incomprehensible to our descendants? There are just such deeds, just such horrors, only we don't see them, as our predecessors did not see those in their day.

To us now, it is clear that the burning of heretics, the application of torture for eliciting the truth, is not only cruel, but also ridiculous. A child sees the absurdity of it. But the men of those times did not see it so. Sensible, educated men were persuaded that torture was one of the indispensable conditions of the life of man, that it was hard, nay, impossible, to get along without it. So also with corporal punishment, with slavery. And time passed; and now it is hard for us to comprehend the mental state of men in which such a mistake was possible. But this has been in all times because so it had to be, and also in our time, and we must he just as reasonable in regard to the horrors of our day.

Where are our tortures, our slavery, our whippings? It seems to us that we no longer have such things, that they used to be, but have disappeared. This seems to us so because we do not wish to comprehend the old, and we strenuously shut our eyes to it.

But if we look at the past, then our present position is revealed to us and its causes. If we only called bonfires, branding irons, tortures, the scaffold, recruiting stations, by their real names, then we should find also the right name for dungeons, jails, wars, and the general military obligation, and policemen. If we do not say, "Why mention it?" and if we look attentively at what was done in old times, then we should take notice of what is doing now.

If it became clear to us that it was stupid and cruel to cut men's heads off on the scaffold, and to elicit the truth from their lips by means of tearing their joints asunder, then likewise it would be also equally clear to us – if not even more so – that it is stupid and cruel to hang men, or put them into a state of solitary confinement, even worse than death, and to elicit the truth through hired lawyers and judges.

If it becomes clear to us that it is stupid and cruel to kill a man who has made a mistake, then also it will be clear that it is still more stupid to confine such a man in a jail, in order to finish corrupting him; if it is clear that it is stupid and cruel to compel muzhiks into being soldiers and to brand them like cattle, then it will seem equally stupid and cruel to make every man who has reached the age of twenty-one become a soldier. If it is clear that stupidity and cruelty are the cause of crime, then still clearer will be the stupidity of guards and police.

If we only cease to shut our eyes to the past, saying: "Why recall the past?" it will become clear to us that we have the same horrors, only under new forms.

We say that all this is past – now we have no tortures, no adulterous Catharines with their powerful lovers, no more slavery, no more whippings to death, and so on – but how is it in reality? Nine hundred thousand men in prison and under arrest, shut up in narrow, ill-smelling cells, and dying by a slow physical and moral death. Women and children are left without subsistence, and these men are maintained in caverns of corruption, in prisons, and in squads; and only inspectors, having full control of these slaves, get any advantage from this senseless, cruel confinement of them.

Tens of thousands of men with dangerous ideas go into exile, and carry these ideas into the farthest corners of Russia, go out of their minds, and hang themselves. Thousands sit in prisons, and either kill themselves with the connivance of the prison officers, or go mad in solitary confinement. Millions of the people go to rack and ruin physically and morally in the slavery of the factories. Hundreds of thousands of men every autumn leave their families, their young wives, and take lessons in murder, and systematically go to destruction. The Russian Tsar cannot go anywhere without being surrounded by a visible cordon of a hundred thousand soldiers, stationed ninety steps apart all along the road, and a secret cordon following him everywhere.

A king collects tribute and builds a castle, and in the castle he constructs a pond, and on the pond dyed with blue, with a machine which raises a wind, he sails around in a boat; but his people are perishing in factories: this happens in Ireland and in France and in Belgium.

It does not require great penetration to see that in our day it is just the same, and that our day is just as fecund with horrors – with the same horrors, with the same tortures – and that these, in the eyes of succeeding generations, will seem just as marvelous in their cruelty and stupidity. The disease is the same, and the disease is not felt by those that profit by these horrors.

Let them profit for a hundred, for a thousand times more. Let them build their castles, set up their tents, give their balls, let them swindle the people. Let the Nikolai Palkins whip the people to death, let them shut up hundreds of men secretly in fortresses; only let them do this themselves, so as not to corrupt the people, so as not to deceive them by compelling them to take part in this, as the old soldier was.

This horrible disease lies in the deception: in this fact that for a man there can be any sanctity and any law higher than the sanctity and the law of love to one's neighbor; in the deception, which conceals the fact, that, though a man in carrying out the demands of men may do many bad things, only one kind of thing he ought not to do. He ought never at any one's instigation to go against God, to kill and to torture his brethren.

Eighteen hundred years ago, to the question of the Pharisees, it was said: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

If there was any faith among men and they recognized any duty to God, then above all they would recognize it as their duty before God to do what God Himself taught man when He said: "Thou shalt not kill"; when He said, "Do not unto others what you would not have others do to you"; when He said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," saying it not in words only, but writing in ineradicable marks on the heart of every man – love to one's neighbor; mercy, horror of murder and of torture of one's brethren.

If men only believed in God, then they could not help acknowledging this first obligation to Him, not to torture, not to kill, and then the words, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," would have for them a clear, definite significance.

"To the Tsar or to any one all he wishes," the believing man would say, "but not what is contrary to God." Caesar needs my money – take it; my house, my labors – take them; my wife, my children, my life – take them; all these things are not God's. But when Caesar requires that I apply the rods to my neighbor's back, that is God's affair. My behavior – that is my life for which I must give an account to God; and what God has forbidden me to do that I cannot give to Caesar. I cannot bind, imprison, whip, kill my fellowmen; all that is my life, and it belongs to God alone, and I may not give it to any one except God.

The words, "To God the things that are God's," for us signify whatever they give to God – kopeks, candles, prayers, in general everything that is unnecessary to any one, much less to God; but everything else; all one's life, all one's soul which belongs to God, they give to Caesar; in other words, according to the significance of the word Caesar as understood by the Jews – to some entire stranger. This is horrible! Let the people remember this.

From Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence, New Society Publishers (1987), and Bergman Publishers (1967)