List of Assassins

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This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

The following is a list of some of the most famous assassinations and assassination attempts. It is not intended to be exhaustive.

Assassin(s)	Year (AD format)	Target	Result	Notes
Ehud	ca. 1200 BC	Moabite king Eglon	Killed	Stabbed to death in his throne room (Judges 3:12-30).
Arda Mulissi	681 BC	Assyrian king Sennacherib	Killed	Stabbed to death while at prayer in a temple, or possibly crushed under a winged bull colossus.[1]
Jing Ke	227 BC	Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang	Survived	One of the earliest documented attempts.
A strongman hired by Zhang Liang	218 BC	Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang	Survived	Long-distance heavy hammer (30-kg) throwing; the origin of a Chinese idiom 誤中副車 ("mistakenly hit the escort carriage").
Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and others	44 BC	Roman Dictator Julius Caesar	Killed	Resulted in Civil War and indirectly in the end of the Roman Republic
Fan Jiang, Zhang Da	221	military general of Shu Han Zhang Fei	Killed
Hashshashin	1192	Conrad of Montferrat	Killed
Pazzi Conspiracy	1478	Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici	See notes	Giuliano died, after being stabbed 19 times, but Lorenzo escaped.
Oda Nobunaga	1557	Sengoku period Oda Nobuyuki	Killed
Balthasar Gérard	1584	Dutch Stadtholder William the Silent	Killed	The first assassination carried out with a firearm.
Jacques Clément	1589	King Henry III of France	Killed	Religious-political antagonism.
Guy Fawkes	1605	King James I of England, Parliament of England	Survived	See the Gunpowder Plot.
François Ravaillac	1610	King Henry IV of France	Killed	Religious-political antagonism.
Army officers	1747	King Nader Shah	Killed	He was able to kill two of the assassins before dying.
Jacob Johan Anckarström	1792	King Gustav III of Sweden	Killed	The king was shot at a masquerade ball and died two weeks later from his wounds.
Charlotte Corday	1793	French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat	Killed	Later often seen as a patriotic act.
François-Joseph Carbon	1800	French Emperor, King of italy Napoleon I of France	Survived	Detonated an explosion by the roadside in an attempt to kill Bonaparte, which he narrowly missed. The attempt is referred to as the Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise.
John Bellingham	1812	UK Prime Minister Spencer Perceval	Killed	First and only U.K. Prime Minister to be assassinated.
Richard Lawrence	1835	US President Andrew Jackson	Survived	First attempt to kill a US President, Jan. 30. Both guns misfired.
Edward Oxford	1840	Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom	Survived	Oxford fired twice, but both bullets missed.
Unknown	1842	Former Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs	Survived	Orrin Porter Rockwell, a close associate of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., charged but acquitted of all charges.
János Libényi	1853	Austrian Emperor, King of Bohemia Franz Joseph I of Austria	Survived	Attacked with a dagger to the back of the neck. Survived due to the thick collar of his uniform.
John Wilkes Booth	1865	US President Abraham Lincoln	Killed	First assassination of a sitting United States President. See Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Patrick J. Whelan	1868	Canadian Member of Parliament Thomas D'Arcy McGee	Killed	Only Canadian victim of assassination at the federal level.
Charles J. Guiteau	1881	US President James Garfield	Killed	Died 80 days following the shooting. See James A. Garfield assassination.
Ignacy Hryniewiecki	1881	Tsar Alexander II of Russia	Killed	Assassination plot concluded with bombs.
Tsuda Sanzo	1891	Tsar Nicholas II of Russia	Survived	The Tsar was attacked with a sabre during a state visit to Japan.
Mirza Reza Kermani	1896	King Naser al-Din Shah Qajar	Killed	Ironically assassinated on the day of his fiftieth kingship ceremony.
Frederick Russell Burnham	1896	Mlimo, the Ndebele religious leader	Killed	Effectively ended the Second Matabele War.
Luigi Lucheni	1898	Empress Elisabeth of Austria	Killed	Lucheni attacked the Empress randomly on the street of Geneva, in a senseless act of violence. Elisabeth was stabbed in the heart once with a sharp needle file. Due to her extremely tight corset, she had no idea she has been wounded and collapsed suddenly two hours later due to slow internal hemorrhaging.
Gaetano Bresci	1900	King Umberto I of Italy	Killed
Leon Czolgosz	1901	US President William McKinley	Killed	See William McKinley assassination.
Eugen Schauman	1904	Governor-General of Finland Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov	Killed	Happens on day described in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, is briefly mentioned in the book
An Jung-geun	1909	Prime Minister of Japan Itoh Hirobumi	Killed
John Schrank	1912	former US President Theodore Roosevelt	Survived	Shot at campaign event; Roosevelt continued with his speech.
Alexandros Schinas	1913	King George I of Greece	Killed	Possible conspiracy.
Gavrilo Princip	1914	Austro-Hungarian Archduke Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria	Killed	Considered the start of World War I.
Raoul Villain	1914	French socialist leader Jean Jaurès	Killed	The assassin was tried and acquitted in 1919.
Fritz Joubert Duquesne	1916	Lord Kitchener, British Field Marshal and Secretary of State for War	Killed	Killed on the HMS Hampshire after the cruiser struck a mine; Duquesne falsely claimed to have sabotaged Hampshire.
Fanny Kaplan	1918	Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin	Survived	Shot on factory meeting, Fanny Kaplan was captured and executed by Bolsheviks. Lenin died 6 years later due to unrelated causes, but within Russian pop culture, Kaplan is still widely considered to have killed him.
Unknown	1922	Michael Collins	Killed	Killed in an ambush firefight near the end of Irish Civil War.
Eligiusz Niewiadomski	1922	First Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz	Killed	Killed five days after his inauguration, while attending the opening of an art exhibit at the Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw.
Giuseppe Zangara	1933	Anton Cermak	Killed	Killed in Miami, Florida during a visit of president-elect of Franklin Roosevelt.
Vlado Chernozemski	1934	Alexander I of Yugoslavia	Killed	Killed in Marseille during a state visit.
Carl Weiss	1935	US Senator Huey Long	Killed	Shot in a Louisiana State Capitol hallway.
Ramón Mercader	1940	Lev Bronstein Trotsky	Killed	Killed by a pick-hit on head.
Vasil Laçi	1941	Victor Emmanuel III	Survived
Jan Kubiš, Jozef Gabčík	1942	SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich	Killed
Claus von Stauffenberg	1944	Chancellor and Führer of Germany Adolf Hitler	Survived	See the July 20 plot.
Nathuram Godse	1948	Political and Spiritual Leader Mahatma Gandhi	Killed
Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola	1950	US President Harry S. Truman	Survived	Attempt to draw attention to the Puerto Rico independence movement, in which both attempted killers were active. See Truman assassination attempt.
Talduwe Somarama	1959	Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Solomon Bandaranaike	Killed	Assassinated by a Buddhist monk as part of a conspiracy.
Otoya Yamaguchi	1960	Inejiro Asanuma	Killed	Asanuma was pierced to assassin's bayonet while making a speech.
Richard Paul Pavlick	1960	US President-elect John F. Kennedy	Survived	Dec. 11   See: John F. Kennedy
Jean Bastien-Thiry and the OAS	1962	French President Charles de Gaulle	Survived
Nguyen Van Cu and Pham Phu Quoc	1962	President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem	Survived	See 1962 South Vietnamese Presidential Palace bombing
Byron De La Beckwith	1963	Medgar Evers	Killed	Evers, an African American activist and NAACP leader, was shot by De La Beckwith, a Ku Klux Klan member, who was convicted in 1994.
Generally believed to be Nguyen Van Nhung and Duong Hieu Nghia, on orders from Duong Van Minh	1963	President of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem	Killed	Part of the 1963 South Vietnamese coup. See Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.
Believed to be Lee Harvey Oswald	1963	US President John F. Kennedy	Killed	For general information on the incident, see John F. Kennedy assassination. The US Government's official report concluded that Oswald acted alone, however a subsequent investigation contradicted the Warren Commission's findings. See: House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979)
Jack Ruby	1963	Lee Harvey Oswald	Killed	First live murder ever seen on US television
Norman 3X Butler, Thomas 15X Johnson, Talmadge Hayer	1965	Activist Malcolm X	Killed	Tensions and departure from the Nation of Islam
Uncertain, believed to be James Earl Ray or Loyd Jowers	1968	Political activist Martin Luther King, Jr.	Killed	Ray was convicted on a guilty plea but later recanted, while a 1999 civil trial convicted Jowers and 'unknown others', while also noting that 'governmental agencies were parties' to the plot. See Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sirhan Sirhan	1968	US Senator Robert F. Kennedy	Killed	See Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Huang Wen-hsiung	1970	Vice Prime Minister of Republic of China Chiang Ching-kuo	Survived
Members of the Front de libération du Québec	1970	Vice Premier of Quebec Pierre Laporte	Killed	Kidnapped and later killed. One of only two political assassinations in Canadian history.
Arthur Bremer	1972	US Presidential candidate George Wallace	Survived	Wallace was paralyzed for life
ETA	1973	President of the Government of Spain Luis Carrero Blanco	Killed	The murder of Luis Carrero Blanco was, according to ETA, then to intensify existing divisions within the Franco regime between the "openness" and "purists".
Samuel Byck	1974	US President Richard Nixon	Survived	Attempted to hijack a commercial jet with the intention of crashing it into the White House.
Prince Faisal bin Musa'id	1975	Saudi King Faisal	Killed
Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad and coup	1975	First Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman	Killed	The coup was planned by disgruntled Awami League colleagues and military officers who were led by Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, and they targeted to exterminate his entire family.
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme	1975	US President Gerald Ford	Survived
Sara Jane Moore	1975	US President Gerald Ford	Survived
Chilean DINA agents	1976	Orlando Letelier	Killed	Killed by a car bomb, September 21, 1976, along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt.
Dan White	1978	San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk	Killed	Killed over not reappointing Dan White supervisor. See Moscone–Milk assassinations.
Larry Layton and other members of the Peoples Temple	1978	Leo Ryan, Congressman from California	Killed	Killed in Guyana during an official visit to investigate allegations of abuse of American citizens at the Jonestown compound of the Peoples Temple religious organization. See Leo_Ryan#Jungle_ambush.
Kim Jae-kyu	1979	South Korean President Park Chung-hee	Killed	See Park Chung-hee assassination.
Thomas McMahon	1979	Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma	Killed	Killed along with three others while on a fishing trip with his family by a bomb planted onto his boat by McMahon. McMahon was a member of the Irish Republican Army, who claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mark David Chapman	1980	John Lennon	Killed	Obsession with The Catcher in the Rye. See Assassination of John Lennon.
John Hinckley, Jr.	1981	US President Ronald Reagan	Survived	To impress actress Jodie Foster. See Reagan assassination attempt.
Khalid Islambouli	1981	Egyptian President Anwar Al Sadat	Killed	Rare attack carried out by a group.
Mehmet Ali Ağca	1981	Catholic Pope John Paul II	Survived	See Pope John Paul II assassination attempt.
Group of army officers	1981	Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman	Killed	Plotted by a faction of officers of Bangladesh Army led by General Abul Monjur.
Habib Tanious Shartouni	1982	Lebanese President Bachir Gemayel	Killed	Bomb explosion in the Phalange's Beirut headquarters.
Uncertain believed to be Rogelio Moreno instead of Rolando Galman	1983	Philippine Senator Ninoy Aquino	Killed	Believed to have been ordered by then President Ferdinand Marcos.
Satwant Singh and Beant Singh	1984	Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi	Killed	Assassinated by personal bodyguards.
Provisional Irish Republican Army	1984	British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher	Survived	Detonated a bomb at the Grand Hotel during the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton.
Unknown	1986	Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme	Killed	Shot on his way home from a cinema on a street in central Stockholm. See Assassination of Olof Palme.
Dieter Kaufmann	1990	German Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble	Survived	Shot in back and face after an election campaign event in Oppenau. Has been paralysed and confined to a wheelchair ever since.
Provisional Irish Republican Army	1991	British Prime Minister John Major	Survived	Mortar attack during a meeting at 10 Downing Street
Thenmuli Rajaratnam	1991	Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi	Killed	Killed in an explosion triggered by a LTTE suicide bomber. See Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
Janusz Walus	1993	South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani	Killed	Anti-Communist killing
Unknown	1993	Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa	Killed	Attack carried out by an LTTE suicide bomber on May Day parade.
Mario Aburto	1994	Mexican Candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio	Killed
Uncertain; see main article for theories	1994	Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira	Killed	Plane carrying the two leaders shot down by unknown attackers with a surface-to-air missile. The attack was the catalyst for the Rwandan Genocide. See Assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira.
Yigal Amir	1995	Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin	Killed	Attack carried out by Israeli opposed to Oslo Accords. See Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Michael Abram	1999	George Harrison	Survived	Abram broke into Harrison's house and repeatedly stabbed him.
ETA	2000	Member of the Basque Parliament Fernando Buesa	Killed	Car bombing
Dipendra	2001	King Birendra of Nepal and other royal family members of same country	Killed	See Nepalese royal massacre.
Volkert van der Graaf	2002	Dutch Election Candidate Pim Fortuyn	Killed	The attack took place in a parking lot outside a radio studio in Hilversum, where Fortuyn had just given an interview.
Maxime Brunerie	2002	French President Jacques Chirac	Survived	Brunerie attempted to shoot the President during the Bastille Day Military Parade.
Mijailo Mijailović	2003	Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh	Killed	Lindh was stabbed while visiting a shopping centre in Stockholm. She died the following morning.
Zvezdan Jovanović	2003	Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić	Killed	Jovanović killed his victim with a sniper rifle (a relatively rare type of assassination); he is suspected to have acted for organized crime backers. See Assassination of Zoran Đinđić.
Chen Yi-hsiung	2004	President of Republic of China Chen Shui-bian	Survived	See 3-19 shooting incident.
Unknown	2005	Former Lebanese Prime Minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri	Killed	Assassination via car bomb in Beirut.
Vladimir Arutyunian	2005	U.S. President George W. Bush and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili	Survived	Threw a hand grenade at Bush, which failed to detonate.
Unknown; many theories	2006	Journalist Anna Politkovskaya	Killed	Shot in the elevator block of her apartment in Moscow. See Assassination of Anna Politkovskaya.
Unknown, though believed to be figures within the government of Russia	2006	Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko	Killed	Acute radiation syndrome via ingestion of polonium-210. See Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
Unknown, widely believed to be Islamic militants	2007	Former Prime Minister of Pakistan and Pakistan Peoples Party Chair and Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto	Killed	Killed while entering a vehicle upon leaving a political rally for the Pakistan People's Party in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. See Assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Soldiers	2009	President of Guinea-Bissau João Bernardo Vieira	Killed	Hacked to death during armed attack on his residence in Bissau.
Karst Tates	2009	Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and royal family	Survived	Attempted to ram the Queen's bus with his car. See 2009 attack on the Dutch Royal Family.
Men under his aide de camp	2009	President of Guinea Moussa Dadis Camara	Survived	Currently in Burkina Faso
Unknown, widely believed to be Mossad agents	2010	Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, senior Hamas military commander	Killed	Exact cause unknown; possibilities include suffocation, strangulation, and electrocution. See Assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Casey Brezik	2010	Missouri Governor Jay Nixon	Survived	Mistakenly stabbed a college dean in a hallway by a lectern where Nixon was to speak. Brezik told police that he thought he had stabbed Nixon.
Unknown, believed to be two ranch workers	2010	Eugène Terre'Blanche, founder of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging in South Africa	Killed	He was found hacked and beaten to death at his farm, allegedly killed by two of his workers.
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri	2011	Salmaan Taseer, 26th Governor of Punjab	Killed
Jared Lee Loughner	2011	Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative from Arizona	Survived	Shot, along with several staffers and U.S. District Judge John Roll (killed), at a constituent event in her district. There were a total of at least 6 deaths and 12 injured.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/introduction/murderersennacherib.htm Parpola, Simo, "The Murderer of Sennacherib", from Alster, Bendt (ed.), "Death in Mesopotamia", XXVIème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Akademisk Forlag, 1980.

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Constitution Worship: Jill Lepore in The New Yorker

Worth reading is a commentary by critic Jill Lepore in the January 17 issue of The New Yorker entitled The Commandments: the Constitution and its worshippers.
Lepore (pictured right) puts the current highlighting of the Constitution, including its (edited) reading in the House of Representatives, in historical and critical perspective.  Lepore writes:

If you haven’t read the Constitution lately, do. Chances are you’ll find that it doesn’t exactly explain itself. Consider Article III, Section 3: “The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.” This is simply put—hats off to the committee of style—but what does it mean? A legal education helps. Lawyers won’t stumble over “attainder,” even if the rest of us will. Part of the problem might appear to be the distance between our locution and theirs. “Corruption of Blood”? The document’s learnedness and the changing meaning of words isn’t the whole problem, though, because the charge that the Constitution is too difficult for ordinary people to understand—not because of its vocabulary but because of the complexity of its ideas—was brought nearly the minute it was made public. Anti-Federalists charged that the Constitution was so difficult to read that it amounted to a conspiracy against the understanding of a plain man, that it was willfully incomprehensible. “The constitution of a wise and free people, ought to be as evident to simple reason, as the letters of our alphabet,” an Anti-Federalist wrote. “A constitution ought to be, like a beacon, held up to the public eye, so as to be understood by every man,” Patrick Henry argued. He believed that what was drafted in Philadelphia was “of such an intricate and complicated nature, that no man on this earth can know its real operation.”

This could be the basis for a great first assignment for the new semester's Constitutional Law class, in law school or as an undergraduate offering, as a way to open a discussion of the Constitutional text and its interpretations.

RR

January 11, 2011 in Current Affairs, Interpretation, Teaching Tips | Permalink

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What a refreshing look at our sacred bovine of bloviators!
Few documents cry out for clinical and expert modification more than this wonderful creature. Nothing would honor it more than its informed modification, and nothing insures its irrelevance like the almost universal indifference to its currency, which it now suffers.

President Obama as a Constitutional Law Professor:

President Obama as a Constitutional Law Professor:

Here is one of his Exams - and the outline of suggested answer providing his feedback to students.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2009/05/obamas-constitutional-law-exam-and-feedback-.html

Excuse the Expressions -- "Science" and "Religion"

There is no excuse for refusing to honor Science and Religion, and their exceptionalist and universal roles in the life of any creature.  Those creatures inhabiting the higher forms of Consciousness are expressing a longing for Truth and Faith, complimentary and opposed indices.

We are given only Scientific Truth and Religious Faith.  We are not permitted "Scientific Faith"; we cannot give credence to "Religious Truth".

Consciousness is a vector.  On this arrow we know we move to and from.  Take our comfort in this Truth. Have Faith, as this is what we have.

"Per Scientiam ad Justitiam" ("through science to justice").

Do not forget.  The Nazi also confiscated the wealth of and attempted to destroy "homosexuals".  Without evidence, and slapping the face of science, the Nazi targeted largely unarmed creative and productive people, and seized their property.  The thugs funded their rise to power by stealing from hard-working but defenseless and law-abiding people.

Ironically, not only was Hitler part Jewish, but most of his cadre was remarkably repressed and sexually frustrated.  Hitler never married and his mistress was sexually unsatisfied.  Goering was an infamous cross-dresser and spent hours putting on his lipstick, foundation, and blush.  Himmler surrounded himself with homosexuals and was notoriously uncomfortable around healthy people with "normal" relationships.  The Nazi did persecute the gay population, but the fictional puffery of the Nazi is a pink swastika.

The brilliant scientist, Magnus Hirschfeld, was both gay and Jewish.  His career of scientific and empirical study was destroyed by the Nazi. Hans P. Soetaert & Donald W. McLeod, "Un Lion en hiver: Les Derniers jours de Magnus Hirschfeld à Nice (1934-1935)" in Gérard Koskovich (ed.).

Ironically, another "school" of thought developed in Germany which was offended by science and particularly by the "feminine" side of men.

The other faction was organized by Adolf Brand, publisher of the first homosexual magazine, Der Eigene (The Special). Brand, Benedict Friedlander and Wilhelm Janzen formed the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (The Community of the Special) in 1902. What divided these groups was their concepts of masculinity. Ulrichs' theory embraced a feminine identity. His, and later Hirschfeld's, followers literally believed they were women trapped in men's bodies.

The followers of Brand, however, were deeply insulted by Ulrichs' theory. They perceived themselves not merely as masculine, but as a breed of men superior in masculine qualities even to heterosexuals. The Community of the Special (CS) asserted that male homosexuality was the foundation of all nation-states and that male homosexuals represented an elite strata of human society. The CS fashioned itself as a modern incarnation of the warrior cults of ancient Greece. Modeling themselves after the military heroes of Sparta, Thebes and Crete, the members of the CS were ultra-masculine, male-supremacist and pederastic (devoted to man/boy sex). Brand said in Der Eigene that he wanted men who "thirst for a revival of Greek times and Hellenic standards of beauty after centuries of Christian barbarism." 

One of the keys to understanding both the rise of Nazism and the later persecution of some homosexuals by the Nazis is found in this early history of the German "gay rights" movement. For it was the CS which created and shaped what would become the Nazi persona, and it was the loathing which these "Butches" held for effeminate homosexuals ("Femmes") which led to the internment of some of the latter in slave labor camps in the Third Reich

The point is that not only were the controlling Nazis driven by a sexuality they did not understand, but they were themselves perverted by their own unwillingness or inability to BE who they were.  How different the world could have been, had they been able to be gay.

The Middle - the class position on prosperity

Why is there ONLY ONE "class" whose growth is helpful for everyone?  The truth is, the Middle Class is the only class the everyone should cultivate and care about. The rich and the poor we have with us, whether or not we want them or try to grow them.  In terms of peace and prosperity, only one class makes any difference. But exactly why is this so?


Our economy relies on strong consumers. 


The poor are unable to buy, and rich rarely do -- they have everything they really need, and the rest they have the power to take without buying.  Today, wealthy people put their wealth into off-shore accounts and engage in socially useless speculation and non-productive investments.  For example, nothing is produced and the infrastructure of society is not enhanced by a "credit default swap" or a debenture or any "creative financial product".  The rich and the poor are socially useless burdens, bless their hearts. 

Hence, the great and unique economic contribution of the middle -- they have some money, and individually they do not have much power.  The only real power they have is as consumers.

The more money consumers have, the more goods and services they buy.  As their transactions increase, the need for sensible long-term infrastructure becomes clear.  The need for roads, utilities, information, and even health care and schools, becomes obvious and self-fulfilling.  Rising prosperity creates expectations and hopes, and as families are raised, the infrastructure takes shape which cultivates more prosperity.

The Middle class is the only class that cares about infrastructure.  No one else needs hospitals and schools -- the poor need food and water, without which they would die before they could use health care and books. The rich of course, have their own medical care, and it is a historical fact that very few rich people have any personal interest in education or learning.  The rich rarely educate themselves, much less provide information of any real use to anyone else.

The poor people are the first to celebrate their long-sought extinction. We cannot have "too few" who are living hand to mouth, or exposed to the exigencies of nature and trouble.  The rich cling to their existence, and devote themselves to the extinction of the Middle Class, as if threatened by its mere existence.  The rich classes thrill to the abundance of the poor.  The rich appear to be uplifted by masses willing to serve them for pittances or for their forebearances -- for the privilege of not being beaten, or actively oppressed.

The Middle class stands alone, offering accessibility to the poor, and recovery from the rich, for the usurpations of both.

Poem, of something rising

Oyez! All Beloved who gather here
Listen
    is how the dream began
You striding across the Campo
down by the school-yard
And I opening
    the heavy doors of a dark prism

Oyez!  Beloved, it appeared, as if
    the wood horses stopped in their grazing among the trees
being wheeled aside and light fell deep in the knell
to wolf and bear witness, as war burst out
of the belly up to the Bar.

I saw you as if a fragrance of my youth
    had been spilt and splintered
upon the gold and scarlet song of a sunset.

I rode hard and wet upon the galloping emu of my hopes and found you feathers
and all perched and dry high among the rafters of birds winging back and forth
between the mud and the sky

Love comes in a dream to the bridging of us
    to the meet of our desire
where you are this Appaloosa of my eye,
this reigning rein pulling an erasure across
my spotted memory of women who came and went,
    and now is a tower together.

In my dream you were a moon beam
    stuffed with personality like a congress making sausages,
a tube of round light being squeezed together from pig’s lips
and a turkey gobbling a language
    and I dreamt I woke baffled
    in the batter of something
        Rising 

What would Children do?

Is anyone else deeply troubled by the absence of a credible Biblical preacher today?  Is there ONE that has not been sucked into the political obsession over abortion (never mentioned by Christ) and homosexuality?

Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 18:3)

Children read Harry Potter books.  They can be cruel and petty, but most kids are very sensitive about the many children who are unwanted and not cared for by anyone.  And most kids are not at all perturbed by gay parents or diversity in the playground. Most kids think life is wonderful, magical....

And in large numbers, most children seem to have read 7 large books about magicians and spells.  Apparently this is how children are.  This, not the hatemongering of the Churches, should be the theology to provide the spine for Christians, if any of them are left today.

It is my observation that most of the followers of the teachings of Christ are extinct, and have been so for centuries.  The real believers in the teaching of Christ were called Manicheaens by the followers of Helena, the mother of Constantine who had her own take on the Pauline message.  Between the Helenists and the Islamicists, the true Christians were annihilated -- they were everyone's favorite heretic because they were prosperous and would turn the other cheek when assaulted.

The point is, there are many wonderful children on the path to salvation, but NONE of the hatemongers obsessed with condemnation and purification are among them.  Islamicists and Fundamentalist "Christians" are remarkably similar doctrines.  They want to purify everybody but themselves.  This is opposite what children are all about.  Children are closer to "natural" concerns, and the idea of purity does not even occur to them. 

Health Care Reform - with a Public Option (Psst we already have one)

It is fascinating to see how predators seize upon public subsidies and pass burdens onto tax payers while claiming their right to do "business" and make enormous profits in the name of "capitalism".  First of all, the medical insurance industry as we observe it today is not part of "free enterprise", it is simply a means of carving an escalating profit out of sick, ill and helpless people while passing the burden back to tax payers. Who ultimately pays for MediCare, MediCal, and all the poor who go to the Emergency Rooms for treatment?

I asked the most intelligent medical doctor in the country, Doctor Sam Metz, what he observed can be done. Here is his practical, necessary, and cost-effective plan:

You asked this question of the right person or the wrong person, depending on your political bent and time available for an answer. Attached are essays that appeared in the Oregonian and in Anesthesiology News, and a PowerPoint presentation to be given next month. I will condense everything you need to know about health care reform into three questions, with three answers each. Once these points are understood, much else will make sense.

1. Why does this country need health care reform?

            Americans pay twice as much per capita as the average industrialized country.

            Our public health results (maternal mortality, infant mortality, life expectancy, lives lost to preventable conditions) are among the worst of industrialized countries.

            We are the only industrialized country in which non-wealthy citizens lose their homes or lives if they have insufficient money to pay for needed health care.

2. What must legislation achieve to be considered health care reform?

            It must provide universal access to primary care regardless of health, wealth, or employment.

            It must lower health care costs for everyone, not just the government, the wealthy, or the insurable.

            Our national public health must improve.

3. How do all other industrialized countries provide universal health care at lower cost with better results?

            All citizens are in a single risk pool with the same set of benefits.

            There are no impediments to primary care.

            Financing of health care is done by not-for-profit agencies. Profit can be made providing health care, but not financing health care.

If a country follows all these rules (as most every other industrialized country does), universal health care can be achieved at lower cost with better results then we have now. If the country follows all these rules and uses a single not-for-profit financing agency rather than multiple financing agencies, this is called “Single payer health care.”

I favor single payer financing of health care.

However, changing how we finance health care is only the start. The next step is revising which health care providers we pay how much for what services under what conditions for which patients. The incentive for salaried physicians is to undertreat. The incentive for fee-for-service physicians is to overtreat. Under capitated payments, the provider takes the risk if a condition is more expensive to treat than expected. Under salaried or fee-for service payments, the financing agency takes the risk.

That should be fun.

If you still have questions, I am full of answers.

Thanks for asking.

Sam

Family Values and Neo-conservatives - the Idiot's Guide to Hypocrisy

The so-called Red State Reagan Conservatives associated with Tea Parties and Mega-Churches are not factually aligned with their rhetoric. Examples:

1. DIVORCE. If you live in a red state, you're 27 percent more likely to get divorced than if you live in a blue state. (Source: National Vital Statistics Report, 2003).

2. HOMOSEXUALITY. All of the politicians who have been "outed" as gays in the US Congress were all neo-conservatives. The preachers who were caught with gay prostitutes were neo-conservatives preaching against homosexuality. Neo-conservatives are much more likely than liberals to be secretly gay.

3. FAMILY VALUES. There is no indication that "conservative" parents are raising better children. Many parents have children whose values contradict the values of the parents.

History – Mesopotamia and Persia, preserved by Jews and European Archeology.

The Empires of Mesopotamia and Persia, which lasted for 3 thousand years, came to an end when a 22 year old Macedonian crossed the Aegean with a small army and proceeded to defeat Darius III. Syncretic Hellenic influences remained long after Alexander’s short life. However, the scribal tradition of three millenia was almost immediately lost in the near and middle east. The indigenous people forgot how to read and write cuneiform texts, and the unity of the people collapsed.

Not until the rise of Judaic Islam did the region once again unite. Unfortunately, Islam completed the annihilation of whatever remained of the intellectual heritage of civilization. The wisdom of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, the Hittites, and the Medes and Persians was burned and buried.

Fortuitously, the Hebrews (diaspora during the Babylonian epoch) and Greeks (during their brief Asiatic rule) managed to preserve some of the accumulated wisdom of the ancient civilizations. Indeed, the authenticity of the Jewish and Helenist accounts has been corroborated by the archeological discoveries made by Europeans since the 19th century. The digging has often been dangerous and always over the objections of the Islamic schools. The scholars living under the veils of Islam have been silenced for a thousand years.

The interesting point is that without Jews and Westerners, the Mullahs and Ayatollahs would have almost no information about the greatness of their own people. Islam systematically erased history in order to make it appear that “Islam” was some kind of improvement over the “primitive Arabs” and “fire worshiping pagans” of Persia. The fact is, those pre-Islamic Arabs and Persians built beautiful buildings and gardens, composed music, and wrote literature reflecting the highest sensibilities and soulfulness.

It is no wonder that the Arabs and Persians today are being taught by their religious oligarchs to hate the Jews and the West. Through the scholarship of Jews and Greeks, corroborated recently by European archeologists, the lost heritage of the ancient civilization is preserved. This pre-Islamic heritage contradicts most of the Quran. The spirituality of Mazda/ Zoroastrian teachings is not primitive paganism, but is superior in grace to the current crude hate-mongering of the Ayatollahs and Mullahs.

The ironic point is that the Jews preserved the wisdom of the Persians, which the Persians themselves have now lost in the devotions of their current version of "religion". Using the semitic alphabet on papyrus and parchment scrolls, the Jews kept remembering what the Persians themselves have now forgotten.

In their turn, the Arabs also now forget their history. Ironically, they forget that they are Jews. All Arabs, today, remain Jews both genetically and culturally. Their dialects, diet, sex laws, theocracy, angel-prophet-mediated monotheism, and their us/them community orientation, are identical. Of course, conversely, all Jews also remain Arabs. Nevertheless it is Islam which drives a unilateral wedge of predation between the tribes: Portions of the Quran which appear for the first time almost a century after the death of Mohammad expressly exhort the pillage and slaughter of Jews and Christians.

Islam is a syncretic belief system, cobbled together over several centuries after the death of Mohammad. The primary sources are Aramaic Christian teachings and Hebraic traditions. As Jews, the Arabs had been making the pilgrimage to the covered cubic Kaba in Mecca for centuries before Mohammad. As Christians, the Arabs taught children in schools, and acquired the skills required for building beautiful mosques. Those schools and skills, as well as the importance of humble prostration in daily prayers, are Manichaean contributions which Islam rewarded with annihilation. Now Islam credits the long-dead Mohammad for everything great the people have done. The credit is sadly misplaced.

The Bush-Cheney-Rove Legacy - the gift that keeps giving.

To the credit of Great Wealth, we are on the eve of a "close" mid-term election. We are also witnessing the end of representative republican democracy (a poor means of conducting government, but which is superior to all alternative forms).

Unprecedented amounts of money (during a depression!) are pouring into this mid-term election. Because of a Supreme Court appointment by the previous administration, by one Judge's vote, we now have a system which permits corporations, and unidentified "persons", to electioneer. We have no idea who is funding the political ads, and MOST of them are factually misleading.

This de-regulation and privatization of public elections will live in infamy along other Bush era catastrophes:

(1) Appointing inexperienced and "political" judges.

(2) Tax cuts to the Super Rich - with ZERO economic benefit for anyone else.  The fact that the rich are richer while the middle class has collapsed, is the single achievement of the neo-Conservative take-over.

(3) Changing the laws so that "investment bankers" could destroy banking system. Glass-Steagal Act passed in the 1930's prevented banks from taking savings and putting money into investments with risk. The "new" (actually resurrected 1920's products) mortgage-backed securities, negative default swaps, and fraudulent investment "products" (literally toxic), destroyed the financial system.

(4) Oct 2008 tax payer bail-out for Wall Street -- unprecedented transfer of the risks to the public, providing yet another splurge of billion-dollar commissions to the bankers who had destroyed their institutions.

(5) Selling WMD to Iraq, then ignoring the UN inspection and attacking Iraq without a plan, leaving us with an un-winnable war, and the spectacle of rising religious intolerance and mass migration of refugees.

(6) Ignoring bin Laden in Afghanistan - repeatedly, and in spite of his large family, known relationships, and his control of a network of
(7) Ignoring terrorism until after 9/11,
(8) Ignoring deterioration of infrastructure with results such as the Katrina disaster,
(9) denying Global warming,
(10) destroying the civil justice system,
(11) making our schools the most expensive and least effective among nations,
(12) making our health care the most expensive and least effective among nations.
(13) starting with an income surplus, creating the biggest debt in history.

(14) Creating a hostility to independent journalists: Is it coincidence that in the Bush decade, journalists were increasingly singled out and killed by organized crime?  This global rise of tyranny reached its apex in 2009, with the murder of 76 journalists killed in connection with their jobs. Organized crime and right-wing militias became the biggest threats. After Obama took over, the murder rate plummeted. In 2010, the death toll was down 25% to 57.  Reporters without Borders, annual report from Paris.


(15) destroying the military - exhausting the Forces, and crippling the National Guard concept by pulling the citizen-soldiers out of their civilian employment for year-long war duty tours.

(16) privatizing the military and support services - Halliburton black no-bid "contracts" which guarantee huge profits to short-term fortunes while soldiers facing more risks have less to gain.

(17) Indifference to infrastructure - what utilities were not "sold" with corrupt discounts to private enterprises which promptly raised rates, were left languishing without maintenance and repair. Bridges, dams, highways, parks, water and power are all collapsing and deteriorating.
 
For the past couple years, many people have been working on this large hole which the Bush-Cheney-Rove Enron Halliburton cabal placed us into. 

Jerusalem - the Manichaean City

Jerusalem was the largest fortified city in the world during the Republic. However, a within a few decades after the Empire, and in the face of an intense Zionist revolt against the Empire, Rome razed the city. To punish the Zionists, the Roman Emperor decreed that the land would not be called Judah, but "Palestine".

The Roman general, Pompey, destroyed the walls of Jerusalem in 70 a.d., and sold many Jews into slavery, spreading them throughout the world. Josephus claims that hundreds of thousands of Jews were hunted down. There were driven out of Jerusalem. Unlike many other tribes on the losing side, however, the Jews maintained the integrity of their community after forced expulsion, because they had a written language and a "Biblical" reference. They set up trade routes and communities throughout Europe offered protection to them to encourage trade. The fact that the Jews did not spend time and treasure on arms and military training, but devoted themselves to trade and prosperity, was noticed by a Persian holy man. We will mention Mani again.

Prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, but after the first Zionist objection to the authoritarian rules of the Empire (another great story), Jesus Christ began preaching an extraordinary message of Peace. He urged the Zionists to "turn the other cheek". This was not exactly an unheard of technique for any oppressed people. Many wives faced with a bullying husband will survive by being passive and take revenge by raising sons who hate their father. Perhaps Jesus understood the analogy to Rome, which was at its peak of power. It is certain that Zionism was defeated by Roman arms, but by alienating a large literate network, Rome itself became ungovernable. Rome was never again able to franchise the Middle East.

After the destruction of the Walls of Jerusalem, the message of Jesus was taught by Greek-Ptolomaic missionaries traveling throughout the world. The teachings reached Persia. Approximately 200 a.d. a prophet began writing and preaching the Christian message to Zoroastrian congregations. This Prophet, Mani, wrote many books, and he was described as a man to be emulated. He synthesized Buddhist and Zoroastrian teachings with the message of Jesus Christ appended to Judaism. "Manichaeian" became the most dominant religion of its day over a broad region from India to Europe for hundreds of years.

One of the main seats of Manichaean learning was Jerusalem. Unlike the Christians of the day who had abandoned it for Rome and Constantinople, the Manichaeans focused on the importance of Jerusalem to their beliefs. They revered Jesus Christ as holy, and the land where he was born, lived and taught, as important. Unlike the Christians of the day, the Manichaeans continued to believe in the Message of the Messiah, including the response of "turning the other cheek" to persecution.

As the Christians became ascendant (literate Greeks living for the hereafter were hired by Roman lords for their trustworthiness in a time of increasing corruption), they militantly wiped out the Manichaeans in Europe and systematically destroyed their literature -- the many books written by Mani and his followers. The "Catholics" of Rome and the "Orthodox" of Byzantium began fighting each other, but found resistance. Killing Manichaeans, however, was less dangerous, so in the hunt for heretics, the other great Christian sects systematically wiped out the numerically superior Manichaeans, and filled their respective coffers with the rich booty of the Manichaean civilization. This increased the chaos under the disastrous reign of Emperor Phocas.

In Jerusalem (known as Aolia Capitolina by all but the Jews and their Manichaean allies of the day), the Christians built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on the place of Crucifixion where a Manichaean temple had been built. One of the main reasons for the Council of Nicea in 326 a.d., held in Constantinople, was to rebut the Manichaean "heresy" which did not exclude Jews.

Then the Mohammedans joined the fray. In approximately 570 a.d. Mohammed was born in Mecca. He never set foot out of Arabia and never indicated his intention to start a new religion. Like other Arab chieftains, he was a warrior, law-maker and judge, but unlike all others, he united the Arab tribes, and separated them from the Jews and Manichaeans. According to the contemporary accounts, Mohammad the tribal raider regarded Jews and Christians/Manichaeans as prey, for which he thanked Allah.

After the death of Mohammad in 632 a.d., without any successor to rule the newly-unified Arabia, the unity fractured. Arab historians refer to this period of years as the "Wars of Apostacy". The Persians and Turks in their contest with Rome and each other, saw opportunity. The Turks made a deal with the Meccan warlords (Sunni), and the Iranians made a deal with the Medina warlords (Shia). This remains the unresolvable schism in Islam.

By 638 c.e. the Turkic/Arab Caliphate rapidly expanded and by force of arms supplemented by Jewish troops from Arabia, seized Jerusalem from the Manichaeans. Curiously, Persian forces then occupied Jerusalem, slaughtering its largely Manichaean-Christian occupants and burning the city. Islam became a unifying "religion", although as the conquering armies advanced, no government or unified civic structure was created. Even the Ottomans (Turks) never established unified control, for example, over Spain, Africa, or Persia, even though Islam became required of all the inhabitants.

Manichaean temples in the East were converted into mosques, just as they had been converted into Churches in the West. The Manichaeans became everyone's favorite "infidel" or "heretic", because their persecution created no risk of revenge. Manichaeans were builders of wonderful buildings and their many innovations were usurped. After Christianity dug into Europe, and after Islam dug into the East, the innovations and spirituality of life rapidly ceased. When the pillagers had nothing left to pillage, life went back to daily survival around decentralized "feudal" estates -- with little lords conducting ceaseless feuds in the name of the one Lord, "no God but God".

In 691 c.e., six decades after the death of Mohammad, the Islamic Umayyad Caliph completed the Dome of the Rock. The Manichaean-Christian Church already on the site was destroyed, down to the foundations. The beauty of this inspired structure has not been surpassed to this day. Of Byzantine craftsmanship, it stands asymetrically upon a platform built in Herodian times (1st century c.e.) as the second Jewish Temple, and may have been the site of the first Temple. The Dome surrounds a large native stone supported by two sets of colonnades and an octagonal exterior wall. The central colonnade made of four piers and twelve columns supports a rounded drum that transitions into the two-layered dome, which is more than 20m in diameter. Light enters from grilled windows pierced in the drum and glitters on golden be-jeweled mosaics within.

The purpose of this structure is disputed. It may or may not be a "mosque", but prior to its construction there was no mosque in Jerusalem that Mohammad could have visited on a "Night Journey" carried on the back of a very fast and winged' horse. No contemporary texts, even on the walls, mention such an event until several decades later. Manichaean texts referring idiosyncratically to Jesus are translated into Arabic and quoted on the interior walls.

What is not disputed is that the Dome transects all of monotheism's divisions, is one of the most beautiful structures in the world, and is forbidden for "infidels" to enter. Archeologists are not permitted to excavate any portion in any manner.

It is true that by approximately 900 a.d., the Manichaeans were exterminated. Thousands of libraries with millions of books had been destroyed. The great Manichaean civilization of Central Asia, running along the Silk Route, with some of the most beautiful cities in the world, was completely and systematically destroyed by Islam's armies. We find remnants of learning and arts and science in remote caves as unarguable proof of what was destroyed.

In Europe, some of the temples were saved by "converting" them into Jewish houses of worship. A Manichaean foundation is under many Churches and even Jewish temples in communities which had few Jews. The Jews, for their part, never persecuted the Manichaeans, but aided in hiding them. To some extent, Manichaean influences can be found in the Rabbinic traditions and in the astounding patience the Jews demonstrated in the face of pogroms in Eastern Europe. The divergent Ashkenazi/ Sephardic traditions can be explained by Manichaean influences. Many Turkic Manichaean believers who were not Semitic adopted "Jewish" traditions and became Jews to avoid the persecution by and between Christians. Interestingly, a Persian Jewish/Arab alliance (non-Islamic) captured Jerusalem in 614 c.e. (The Jews and Arabs occupied Arabia for 600 years celebrating the same holidays, prayer five times a day, and the same dietary laws. Most of the inhabitants were either Jews, or followers of Mani or other sect of "monotheists").

Perhaps the last "Manichaean influence", and one of the most remarkable, is the Crusade of 1094. "Out of the blue" from a Christian perspective, a de-centralized and feudal Europe suddenly lit up with the idea of re-capturing Jerusalem. Rome and Constantinople were the only cities deemed worthy of their attention for an entire millenium, but suddenly the liberation of Jerusalem was widely accepted as an important goal. It was the discovery of remaining Manichaean texts in Europe, preserved by Jews, which were quoted from prior to the consignment of the books to flames by Catholic Priests. The holiness of Jerusalem was revivified for these Christians and they hurled themselves into a haphazard Crusade to liberate Jerusalem.

In 1099, the Christian Crusaders fought their way across the Levant and recaptured Jerusalem. The significance here is that the First Crusade was not an aggressive invasion of another country. Rather, it was an attempt to recover a City which had been invaded by a foreign power. The Islamic armies were invaders.

...[In 1187, the brilliant re-taking of Jerusalem by Saladin and the Kurds; Christian Crusaders briefly re-take it back twice. Then 1250 the Muslim Caliph dismantles the walls, and the population dramatically declines; finally in 1538, Seleiman the Magnifent [sic] restores some of the mosques in Jerusalem.]

It us true that all of Arabia and the Levant was ruled by the Ottomans until the end of World War I. Since the turn of the century, after the trial of Dreyfus, Herzl began his effort to find a homeland for the Jews. The Zionists' effort is delayed by the War, for which Jews were also blamed. Zionists begin fleeing from Europe to destinations all over the world, and many go to Jerusalem. Arabs also begin migrating to Jerusalem where new jobs were being created.

In 1917, the British fight the Ottoman Empire, liberate the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia. Jerusalem is captured and for the first time in its history, it is not sacked. The British do not kill all of its inhabitants.

The only significant Arab tribe to rebel against the Ottomans were the Saudis, who were then attacked by the other tribes and the Turks. Ibn Saud led his tribe to victory with the aid of the British.

In 1948, the State of Israel was established. The Jews agree not to make Jerusalem their capital city. The Israelis make a new city -- Tel Aviv.

In 1967, Israel captures the Old city and reunifies the City. Israel now occupies land which had been given to Jordan and Egypt.

Islamic Demographics

The Veil of Islam has descended over 57 countries. All of them are locked into medieval feuding intensified by the obsession with "purity" which is the gift of Islam. Since women are 2d class citizens, children are effectively raised in a seraglio -- a wife, even if only one wife, is regarded as a concubine since there is always a potential for another wife arriving at the whim of the man. Thus, all the sons are sons of "wives" who are really concubines. Thus, the leadership is always deprived of having legitimacy -- the absence of a Queen/wife.

What the multiple concubines do provide, of course they MUST provide, is babies. By reducing the "choices" for a woman, she is then free to devote herself to reproduction. The bomb of the womb is set, where copulation lights the fertile fuse.

Louisiana Purchase - the impact on the Continent

My British wife is visiting Louisiana...

The United State purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 from Napoleon. This transaction rewarded the post-Revolutionary French Government as if it was the successor to the Ancien Regime which had in fact stolen it from the Creek Confederacy, and other Mississippi delta tribes. The funds given to Napoleon, who was a brutal tyrant, enabled him to launch an invasion across Europe to the gates of Moscow. Had Napoleon given more thought to the weather calendar, he would have attacked in the other direction, against Britain.

Intercontinental - beyond international and getting to global

We have become intercontinental. There are no nations, no races of men. There are no tribes. As for families, they have not existed since Religion took the oxygen, the power, away from parents.

When Louis XIV answered the inquiry of the physiocrat with the irreducible, "l'etat, c'est moi", he revealed naked truth. The "Government" is abstract and to be understood must be filled by a person, who in turn is a symbol. A person who used Government as a means to power.

Yet Government has existed in certain times and places. Now that the US Government has collapsed, now that the California Government has been reduced, we are left feeling insecure. How we long for the security.

The l'etat, c'est trahison / betrayed

Theodore Parker and his monumental manifesto. Influences.

One of the invocations of Justice with impressive allure is the assertion that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." This phrase keeps cropping up. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. frequently used it, crediting the Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker:

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe: the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards Justice."

Parker fought those who sought to justify slavery and oppression from Biblical, or any other, authority. In 1841 he wrote the greatest of the Transcendentalist manifestos, compounding the republicanism of the authors of American Constitution with the liberalism of the true Church. Parker defined democracy, for the first time, as:

"...Government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people."

President Lincoln adopted this phrase in his pithy elimination of the "all", perhaps as a concession to the political reality.

How the Republicans plan to govern: The Same Way

From John Kerry: Yesterday, the Republicans released their "Pledge" of how they'd govern, and Republican Leader John Boehner let the truth slip out:

"We are not going to be any different than what we've been."

They are the gift that just wants to keep giving -- OUR money.

What remains, at the end of a life spent meaning well?

To my friend Quyen, who reminds me of Franklin in France, flirting and writing bagatelle's to the ladies as he negotiated the long-range brass naval canon with which the French battered Cornwallis in Yorktown to its surrender. Franklin visited the estate of the great insect philosopher, Claude-Henri Watelet, in the company of his frequent and vivacious companion, Madame Brillon de Jouy. She was, Quyen, one of the hotties among the educated women of Paris.

Franklin concludes an essay, "The Ephemera", in the voice of one of these insects that only lives for a few hours each day:

"To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemerae, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante."

Victims of Corporate Fraud - a Compensation Fund

In 2002, after the Halliburton no-bid profiteering in Iraq and the Enron bankruptcy revealed the depths of the Cheney-Lay-Skilling predatory mind-set of CEOs willing to pillage their own companies, AB 55 added a new Section to the California Corporation Code. Section 1502.1 establised the Victims of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund (VCFCF) in the State Treasury administered by the Secretary of State.

The purpose of the Fund is to provide restitution to the victims of corporate fraud. Once a fraud judgment is obtained, if collection efforts are fruitless, victims can turn to the Fund. Apparently, however, since 2002, no victim has recovered.

Survey - Does the State Bar protect consumers?

To my astonishment, the State Bar prosecutors' office takes the position that it has no obligation to prosecute the attorneys who have enabled the investment bankers to take down this entire country. I have repeatedly given names to the Prosecutor -- and pointed to Enron and Madoff, as well as other high level white collar predators, all of whom have law firms assisting them.

While few individuals can respond or even protect themselves from large-scale piracy, the State Bar has the power and resources to help. Yet, the State Bar does nothing about the trillion-dollar predation going on in this country. The State Bar is supposed to protect consumers from attorneys who violate the rules and cause harm. Yet not one attorney who ENABLED and IS ENABLING the ongoing financial predation in the country has been disciplined!

Consumers have never been surveyed to respond about whether they feel protected, after this onslaught of high-level white collar predation:

Click here to take survey

What is the effect of Love?

Love is something
that fills. I am bulging.

It means union can be taken
seriously, even when expressed
improbably
speechlessly
in the yearnings of skin and
braided bone.

Love reaches down the throat and
seizes the heart, grabs, and
pulls hard.

I am inside out.

Blues for a friend - red-eyed loneliness {chord}

Blues among friends - {singing - or weeping}

I got the red-eyed yellow-lit green-zone blues
I’m not awake and I just can’t sleep.
Got the red-eyed yellow-lit green-zone blues
and I can’t get out ‘cause I’m in so deep.

Side by side like a pair of dice
we roll across the green-zone blues
My number’s up but I’m not done yet
tell the bottle we’re paying our dues.

Tumble me now, tumble me then,
Blues gonna get me so tumble me again.
Side by side another cornering roll
hope you know you got a friend.

The Meaning of Mean; the significance of meanness; the recremental case.

"I've seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away." From Outer Dark, by Cormac McCarthy

This is from the parable of The Creation. It is not possible for The Creator to be God of THIS creation. Such a "creator" begs the question of what was At the Beginning -- what created The Creator? -- and abandons us at what obviously should be The End of the erstwhile business. We are AT the "gone away" been done.

Believers who cling to this parable are perhaps not coming to terms with the depth, the extent and variety, of the unkind things that have been done among men. The belief that any God worth its station in any pantheon of divinity would stand for THIS "creation", this abomination, can only stand upon idiocy or blindness.

Such a belief is itself a form of indifference, a kind of sin. Like Prussians pretending that the Third Reich was not loading Jews and Gypsies and lawyers into cattle cars assigned and logged into any of 1200 camps built for unpleasant dying. Like Saudi princes pretending that Saudis did not train and fly pirated aircraft into the World Trade Center. Like all of us who try to pretend that innocents have not been tortured on our watch, the tyrants using our money and our indifference.

We try to get rid of evil, expel it. But it is recremental. It is quickly re-absorbed even as we identify it. The Creation is wallowing in its dross.

Regret - remorse, remonstration, reproach, rue,

Regret is so much better than mere Gret. Remorse, more convincing than Morse. Reproach has better mouth-feel than mere Proach. I listen to the affectations of the Pure, and it sounds like Rue.

Parable of the Shepherd and the Shoemaker

Parable. There was once a shepherd renting land from an absentee landlord. The land was too salty to raise crops but the shepherd could raise sheep and goats, and he built a house on the land. One day the absentee landlord stopped collecting the rent and the man stopped paying for the land. A few years later, a shoemaker from a faraway land arrives and claims that he bought the land from the absentee landlord.

This shoemaker knows nothing about farming or raising sheep. But he does some engineering and draws water from the nearby shore of an inland sea, and although it is brackish water, he uses it to wash the salts from the soil. The shoemaker is desperately hungry so he buys meat from the shepherd, and then starts planting in his newly-flushed soils. To everyone's surprise, the soil is made fertile again after several thousand years of over-tilling. The shoemaker brings his friends, a candlemaker, and a watchmaker. They all start farming and building new buildings.

Now the shepherd can sell more goat meat to the new arrivals. Also his sons start working in the construction industry. Some more friends of his arrive from distant lands looking for work, and the farmers and goat-herds together raise enough food for everyone. Although the first man had to move out of the first house he had built, he just went and built more houses. Together, the families begin to build graceful cities. People are working and have jobs.

Together, they all built a garden in what had become an infertile desert. Together, they built some of the most beautiful cities in Africa.

Then one day a mob of idiots started making speeches on the radio. They talked about killing "cockroaches" with machetes. They taught hatred in schools. Mothers would raise their sons to hate other tribes they heard described on the radio. One day, at a signal from the idiots, thousands of people who had been shepherds and had immigrated into the garden, began killing tens of thousands of craftsmen who had become gardeners. After a few months of this genocide, there were many broken families and hopes, and destroyed cities.

And although many died, and now we are trying to forgive the killers, and repair the orphans, still, after all the deaths, life did not get better for anyone. It got worse.

It is better, perhaps, instead of leading chants -- "Death!" "Kill!" -- perhaps it is better to just build homes, plant your gardens, raise the goats. What did all the killing and hatred accomplish?

Depression is psychological. So is Recovery. But empty suits are not the answer.

We do not have a "broke" economy. Our house has been burgled, from inside. All our intelligence, information and good humor remain available to us. We can use what we have to refill the house, looted as it may be.

Remember the "Peace Premium" and the budget surpluses set up after the Carter and Clinton Administrations?

In eight years, Reagan managed to convert the world's largest creditor nation into the world's largest debtor nation, with virtually nothing to show for it. We bought B1 bombers and Space War systems which do not work and cannot be built, and Polaris submarines with nuclear weapons which cannot be used.

In eight years, Bush Jr managed to appoint people who despise "government" and had no experience with large organizations (public or private) into positions of authority, doing nothing. The people in charge of the SEC (under Orange County's politician, Cox!) devoted their entire working days in the entire year of 2008 to collecting pornography. Apparently they believed it was not necessary to glance occasionally at the nonproductive re-tranching of low-risk mortgages into high-risk securities which could be used by predators to bet against in forms of credit default swaps which had been illegal since the Great Depression, but which were made available once again by a Congress owned by the Lending Industry.

Now, the people who own this country--having seized most of its real estate in foreclosure and shipped most of the industrial capacity off-shore--have frozen credit and refuse to make loans. This leaves any possible "recovery" at a stand-still, and they know it. They want to find another empty suit to run as President so they can take back that branch of government which they lost. The surest and really at this point only viable way to pull this off in 2012 is simply continue to refuse to make sensible old-fashioned secured loans to small business, which has always been the fastest, surest, most reliable engine of recovery. The Lenders can put anyone they want up for President, and the voters will vote against all incumbents because "it's the economy".

Is the Lending Industry making loans to the middle class? No. Why not? This is the same group of people who created the financial crisis by making highly leveraged high risk investments in which they lost their shirts, in which the CEOs destroyed the institutions they were managing, only to turn to taxpayers and, during the Bush Administration (we have to remember this little detail), extorted a bail out to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars. Remember, the Lenders got this bail out with the "promise" they would then loosen up credit and have it to make available to borrowers and business once again. They did not do this, in spite of being GIVEN the money and having made that solemn promise.

So, here we are waiting for the benefit, the loan availability accommodated by the tax payers' cash through the banks...and we are still waiting. It simply looks like the predators, having given themselves additional commissions and billion-dollar bonuses AGAIN as a result of taking tax payer bail-out money, are once AGAIN looting the country.

The good news is that at some point, the middle class, or you or I, or even some civic authority that has not already handed all of its collection to a predator, will set up a new, fresh and actual, "bank". This new bank will loan money to the middle class. The producers will get back to work producing value. And rapidly, and surely -- nothing miraculous or remarkable about it -- the whole country and the world will start to enjoy prosperity and good business.

Of course, bear in mind that the Lending Industry is still huge, and they own everything and they do not want this to happen -- because we have elections coming up, and they badly want to put another tranche of empty suits into Congress and the Executive Branch. The same people who stole our infrastructure also own our media, including the blogosphere and the twittering venues. They overwhelm us with their naysayings and attacks, without offering solutions or even mentioning implementation.

Kotlikoff is simply one of these Voices of Dooooooom. Where was he when the bankers were earning billion-dollar bonuses to perform non-productive conversions of wealth into air? Where was he when banks became bingo parlors, gambling our pension funds into toxic dumps? What possible insight does this obviously blinded and blinkered man have for us now when we need ... real insight?

For that matter, where did Kotlikoff just now get this expertise on "bankruptcy"? Where was he when the Lending Industry fought against bankruptcy reform and left consumers trapped in nondischargeable credit card schemes that treble the cost of purchases? Where was he when the bankers systemmatically went after municipalities and States and drew the entire country down into a spiral of debt? A million towns are now "bankrupt"!

If we stopped paying bankers enormous amounts of money to steal from the public weal, or stopped rewarding CEO's who destroy their own companies -- these are extraordinary times -- the engine of recovery can rapidly turn on.

Within a few months, think "over-nite", people could be hired to rebuild the infrastructure which has been completely ignored for the previous 8 years. We need engineers and designers. We need scientists to engage the stem cell, solar, and toxic clean up industries which are so promising. These would not be the low-wage jobs offered by the lame "tourist" hotels and patronizing "service" industries so eagerly touted by well, Las Vegas style cities.

The solution, in sum: Loans should be made available -- obviously not from the bailed out predator banks -- they simply refuse and will continue to withhold money in order to kill the recovery which they do not want. Go to credit unions and small banks. Start a bank on your own. Loan to small businesses, using traditional collateral. Multiply. Ignore the fact that the headlines continue to scream "Greece" and "distress". In the history of economics, business profits have never been bigger. There is plenty of money. Vast treasures were not actually destroyed. Just...stop giving it to predators. Stop.

And stop electing empty suits into positions of authority. We will prosper. Good health will break out like a pandemic. Intelligent people are much more fun than the hate-mongering little bashers who are confused and baffled by this utterly natural world.

Leaving Religion in the name of God/Allah/Enlightenment

One of Catholicism's most notable adherents recently announced her withdrawal from the Church, "in the name of Christ". Twelve years after her conversion, and while retaining her belief in God, she renounces the Pope, the Church, the bizarre political agenda: "I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life".

It is significant that it is BECAUSE of her faith, and BECAUSE of her love of the core principles of the teachings of the Christ, that she raises her voice, Je'Refuse!

It was not just one thing; there were many. The Pope went to Africa, where genocidal campaigns continue to break out, where Islam is terrorizing Christians and infidels, and where Africans are facing a widespread AIDS epidemic. His Holiness' big message, his choice of focus, was on same-sex marriage.

And "the very last straw" was when the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, publicly condemned Sister Margaret McBride for authorizing a life-saving abortion to save a dying mother.

It remains significant that there are impulses today which have usurped Religion with an idiosyncratic agenda; the agenda is not Biblical. There is nothing in Paul's letters or in Christ's teaching that supports the Pope's hierarchy, or a virulent position on natural behavior and re-victimization of victims. Would Christ ignore molested children, or the suffering in Darfur and Congo and on the streets of all major cities? How can the leader of the Church be silent in the face of the genocide of Armenians by Islamic Turks, or the extermination of Christians in Ethiopia and Egypt(Copts), Iraq (Chaldeans), and Turkey and Lebanon (Orthodox)?

What distortion of the mind enables one to ignore these facts while devoting oneself to making sure there is clarity and certainty in completing the excommunication of Sister McBride whose heart was entirely charitable. In the name of Christ, has the Pope YET managed to name and condemn the "money-lenders" whose devotion to greed managed to impoverish entire nations?

ShariaPetition.com Welcome.

ShariaPetition.com Welcome.

Shorn Again Believers: America is waging a war against Islam - Say What?

Shorn Again Believers: America is waging a war against Islam - Say What?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/pat-condell-on-ground-zero-mosque-is-it-possible-to-be-astonished-but-not-surprised.html