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“The other argument for war, that Saddam’s evil is proved by his war against Iran and his treatment of Kurds, is poetic in its hypocrisy. It’s true he did both those things but we were backing him at the time. The Americans shot down a civilian Iranian plane, vetoed a United Nations resolution condemning the attacks on the Kurds and dismissed anyone who pointed out this barbarism.” -  Mark Steel

Are you currently unemployed? According to the new Canadian citizenship guidebook for prospective immigrants, over 8.6% of unemployed Canadians are not fulfilling the Canadian responsibility of having a job, which now comes with the rights of having a Canadian citizenship.

The new Canadian citizenship guidebook was unveiled last week, redefining what it means to be Canadian. After all, new Canadian immigrants are more likely to be unemployed, which must mean—according to the authors of the guidebook—that their economic difficulties are a result of their failure adopt Canadian values. In addition, the new guidebook tells prospective immigrants, “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation, or other gender-based violence.”

Firstly, earlier this year, a University of British Columbia study found that resumés with English names received 40 percent more callbacks from Toronto employers than identical resumés with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani names. Canadian employers are engaging in name-based discrimination against job applicants, which has a substantial effect on the employment rate of immigrants, since most Canadian immigrants today originate from Asia (58.3%).

Secondly, the new guidebook suggests that non-Canadians who are thinking of acquiring Canadian citizenship are more prone to barbarism compared to people who were born inside Canada. Additionally, the authors of the guidebook make special mentions of “honour killings” and “female genital mutilation” among non-Canadian prospective Canadians, which normalizes the culture of post-9/11 Islamophobia into government documents.

Most Canadians seem to believe that the post-9/11 rise in news coverage of “honour killings” and “female genital mutilation” done by Muslims reflects an increase in “Muslim fundamentalism” post 9/11. According to their worldview, after September 11th, 2001, Muslims all over the world (separated by different languages and geography) collaborated together to further incense the global anti-Muslim anger by engaging in cultural practices that offended Western sensibilities, and it has nothing to do with U.S. propaganda using Orientalism to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sadly, the new Canadian citizenship guide for immigrants reflects what most Canadians fear the most about immigrants (i.e., that they might be Muslim or Arab, and that they might be “barbaric”), not what most immigrants are (i.e., Chinese, Indian, and Filipin@, of various faiths and non-faiths, and, of course, decent people of all ethnicities and religious/non-religious identities). Like before, the federal government under Conservative leadership entrenches more xenophobic attitudes into the institutional systems of Canada.

In 2007, Hérouxville, Quebec—a small rural town where almost everyone is white, French-speaking, and Catholic—created a code of conduct for immigrants, and it was widely criticized for being ridiculous and xenophobic. The code of conduct ruled that immigrants should not stone women in public, burn them alive, burn them with acid, or circumcise them.

Back in 2007, the world rightly recognized that the Hérouxville code of conduct for immigrants was xenophobic and absurd. However, in 2009, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney unveils an eerily similar Canadian code of conduct for immigrants, and very few Canadians recognize it as the very same xenophobic absurdity on a larger scale.

This is life under Islamic law -sharia- the blessings of which the jihadis of al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other allied salafist groups want to bring to us all:

Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka.

An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby.

Islamist groups run much of southern Somalia, while the UN-backed government only control parts of the capital.

This is the third time Islamists have stoned a person to death for adultery in the past year.

Al-Shabab official Sheikh Suldan Aala Mohamed said Mr Abdirahman had confessed to adultery before an Islamic court.

“He was screaming and blood was pouring from his head during the stoning. After seven minutes he stopped moving,” an eyewitness told the BBC.

The BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says that if the woman is also killed, her baby would be given to relatives to look after.

Al-Shabab’s concern for the welfare of the child is touching.

The President of Somalia (or, what’s left of it) decried the stoning:

Meanwhile, President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has accused al-Shabab of spoiling the image of Islam by killing people and harassing women.

“Their actions have nothing to do with Islam,” said the moderate Islamist…

Bunk. Just ask the Iranians, who stone women and execute gays as prescribed by sharia law. Just ask the Saudis, who whip rape victims. Just ask the Jordanians, who refused to pass a law against honor killings because it would go against religion. (And they meant Islam, in case you didn’t guess.) It is part and parcel of Islam, as attested by the hadith in the Sahih Buhkari, one of the most revered collections of hadiths in Islam:

Narrated Ibn ‘Abbas:

‘Umar said, “I am afraid that after a long time has passed, people may say, “We do not find the Verses of the Rajam (stoning to death) in the Holy Book,” and consequently they may go astray by leaving an obligation that Allah has revealed. Lo! I confirm that the penalty of Rajam be inflicted on him who commits illegal sexual intercourse, if he is already married and the crime is proved by witnesses or pregnancy or confession.” Sufyan added, “I have memorized this narration in this way.” ‘Umar added, “Surely Allah’s Apostle carried out the penalty of Rajam, and so did we after him.”

(What is a hadith?)

The difference between “moderate” Islamists and full-throated Islamists is one of degree, not kind.

(hat tip: The Jawa Report)

Asalamu Alaikum.

I remember a few years ago, when I would hear people say about Muslims: “they just don’t value life like we do.” First of all, it must be said that this is a racist and Islamophobic comment meant to characterize all Arabs and Muslims as lunatics.

This comment was made in particular as a reference to “suicide bombers.”

This blog post is not about the politics of “suicide bombers.” With that said, I think it is important to quickly say that first of all, I call “suicide bombers” “Martyrs.”

Why do people martyr themselves?
Well for starters, lets put a the situation of martyrdom in context.

I think that it is central to understand the situation a martyr is in: they want to fight back against NOT ONLY an occupying force, but a MILITARILY AND ECONOMICALLY SUPERIOR occupying force.

For a martyr, the only way to stand up to the most advanced tanks, drones, jet fighters, heat seeking missiles, spy satelites, etc. is to use domestic products to create homemade bombs. The only reason a martyr uses their body as a weapon is because that martyr does not have access to advanced military equipment. I assure you, if a martyr was government funded, they would not need the rode of martyrdom.

————

But insh’Allah, let us look at this a little closely, and in broader context. Insh’Allah anyone who reads this blog has read something about history.

“They just don’t value life like we do.” Ok, well lets see.
Many people may have heard of World War I and World War II.

BOTH TIMES, EUROPE BLEW ITSELF UP AND EACH OTHER ACROSS THE ENTIRE CONTINENT. Martyrs are small change compared to the level of brutal, raw, mass destruction during WWI and WWII. Moreover, while martyrs kill themselves as an act of resistance, subhanAllah, both of the World Wars were intended to spread Imperialism.

————

World War I about 16.5 million deaths, and about 21 million wounded.
Europe in particular, was basically destroyed. And for what? For the re-division of the world by the Imperialist European powers.

By the time of WWI, the imperialist powers had carved up every possible section of the world into colonies or “spheres of influence.” Now those colonies and sphere’s of influence were running into collisions with each other, and each imperial power wanted to take over each other’s territories. The cost was 16.5 million dead and 21 million wounded. So, who exactly “just doesn’t value life?”

World War II would happen 21 years after World War I. Some people have claimed that WWI so completely decimated Europe, that Europe needed time to create give birth to more children, to be able to continue the war again. WWII happened for basically the same reasons of WWI. WWI was not able to satisfy the imperialist powers in their redivision of the world, so WWII would be the final episode, ending with the sole standing super powers being the US and the USSR.

WWII would kill an estimated 60 million people internationally. Again, Europe would be decimated completely, with Western Europe relying on the US to rebuild it, and Eastern Europe relying on the USSR to rebuild it. Of course, both the US and the USSR did not rebuild Europe out of benevolence, but out of self-interest in creating modern day spheres of influence, and as bulwarks against each other.

And again, with the understanding that 60 million people died (and this includes the deaths created by THE HOLOCAUST), the question must be repeated: exactly whom is it that “doesn’t value life?”

While I could go on and on and on with examples of “western savagery” and the way in which capitalism creates these acts of institutionalized mass murder, I will stop here and end with some subhanAllah horrifying pictures.

I want everyone to remember, the pictures you are about to see are not only real, but are taken from one of the most industrially advanced places on Earth, particularly back in the 1910’s, 1930’s, and 1940’s. I would also like to remind everyone that the working class build these cities, and then rebuilt these cities, and then again rebuild these cities.

I would also like to remind everyone that the Jewish people were systematically slaughtered in the concentration camps, but they were not alone. The concentration camps were also for Communists, Socialists, Gays, Transgenders, Elderly, Disabled, Roma, and “criminals.”

I figure I should add in Picasso’s Guernica as well to depict the bombing of that. I like art and I love anti-war art.

I often wonder how accurate our discoveries of the past are. We believe Stonehenge was a burial ground where rituals may have also taken place. This is because we found human and animal remains in the earth near the henge. But the only thing scientists can do to determine the purpose of an ancient site is look at artifacts found nearby in an attempt to formulate a history. But what if the evidence we’ve located has no significant meaning, or at least not what we suspected.

I had this thought as I was removing staples from a packet of paper and realized that the staple remover looked somewhat sinister. The thing has four spikes and could cause substantial harm to anyone stupid enough to put their fingers inside it. But it’s obviously designed this way for its function – to remove staples. So what if a thousand years from now, the foundation of my office was discovered and in it they unearthed this staple remover? They may determine that this place used to be a torture chamber and that the steel device with four spikes on a hinge was a torture device used to pierce and shear skin from a person’s finger. They might even conclude that the residents of New Jersey were a barbaric people, evident in their affinity for pollution.

When I was 12 years old I fell off my bike riding it around the street near my friend’s house. I had braces at the time and one of the braces got stuck on a bit of gravel on the road and pulled one of my two front teeth clear out. The braces managed to hold it in face, floating in front of my mouth while it bled all over the place during the trip to the emergency dentist. They managed to reattach it by installing this bizarre Cronenbergian contraption of metal on both sides of my gumline and thread that with 18 gauge wire or something that held the tooth in place. I barely remember most of it because it was a long time ago I was on a lot of drugs at the time.  I do remember the sensation of having thick wire pulled out of my gums when they removed it.
Anyways, 18 years later I’m eating some corn at the kitchen table and feel a snap in my mouth, nothing is broken but my tooth is loose. I guess it broke. Of course, I guess I’m lucky to get 18 years out of a replaced tooth, and I can accept that it had a good run.

So I go to my dentist and of course they tell me it has to come out, I know this, they know this, but we go, its the system. We discuss my options. Well there are 3 options. What dentists do most commonly is a ‘bridge’ where they use two healthy teeth nearby the bad tooth to hold a fake new tooth in place. The problem with this is that the two healthy teeth have to be physically destroyed to make this happen. They use a dental drill and cut them down to nubs that barely cover the root and then replace all 3 teeth with a fake piece of tooth chicanery that is supposed to replace them all. So to save 1 bad tooth I have to sacrifice 2 good ones. In the front of my mouth, where people will see them. Of course, after all of this work they have an expected lifetime of 10-15 years before they need to be replaced.

There are two other options, a more modern ‘Maryland Bridge’ where they make a sort of dental implant that is held in the same way but without destroying the two neighboring teeth, and a full on implant where they basically give you a fake root and then put a dental cap on top of that new root. Neither of these approaches are covered by dental insurance. And the calls from the right wing,’get better insurance yeeeeop’ well yeah, fuck you, almost no insurance policies cover these options even though they are both immensely better than a standard bridge. The Maryland Bridge is less invasive it doesn’t require two teeth to be destroyed to work, and the dental implant will most likely last longer than I will.

Insurance covers purely cosmetic work that they know I will have to replace 3-4 times before I die, but not two other purely cosmetic options that will either last longer or do less damage to my face. Fuck the insurance industry and fuck you if you support it. How short sighted and barbaric is the notion that my only option is to completely destroy 2 perfectly good teeth to replace them with something that they know is going to fail when there is a tremendously less invasive, permanent option they ignore?And we have a ‘flex spending’ account where we can deposit some money and use that as discretionary health spending for the year for expenses that aren’t directly covered, and this includes things as oblique as buying Slimfast to lose weight or neosporin. Doesn’t cover this dental implant buisiness though because that is cosmetic. When I get my bad too removed if it will be awhile before I get it replaced either as a bridge or an implant I can get hat is called a ‘flapper’ from my dentist, its basically a retainer with a fake tooth on it at I can wear so it doesn’t look like I’m missing a tooth. THIS IS COVERED BY MY INSURANCE A FAKE TOOTH. That I can’t even use while eating. Is covered. A permanent replacement tooth that affixes to my jaw is not. If they remove the toot and there is bone loss in my jaw (which there is) and they do a bone graft, this is covered. Replacing the tooth they remove is not. Its infuriating.

All dental work is cosmetic, even fucking cleaning your teeth. Its god damn sadistic is what it is, dentists just like carving up perfectly good teeth and we all know that anyone involved in the insurance industry uses pain and suffering as lubricant. Its collusion, against me. And you, but hey you might not ever have a problem like this so why worry about it.

Chers amis,

I am rapidly learning that Paris is very different from Amsterdam. It is far more reserved, far more refined, and far less ridiculous, in both good ways and bad. But what we Cousbros have experienced in the past few days here is nothing short of astounding – we have begun somewhat of a cultural camouflage. Much like the clever chameleon alters its colors to blend in with its surroundings, my family and I have begun to assimilate into the Parisian lifestyle in a very subtle way: by becoming a bit classier.

This is not to say that our habitual actions or mental functions have become classier in any way. We still display the same thick-skulled barbarism that has earned us such a shameful reputation in even the most despicable neighborhoods of San Francisco. But our touristic activities have certainly been a bit more elegant of late.

Just a few days ago, we decided to head down to one of the most famous museums on earth: the Louvre. Housing many of the most famous paintings and sculptures covering a plethora of genres, the Louvre has established itself as a must-see for any art fans. However, Jean-Pierre, the least intelligent and most barbaric member of the family by far, was not particularly enthused at the prospect of going on any cultural expeditions. As we hit the market, or marché, right beforehand, his anger was beginning to show itself.

Once we got to the museum, however, Jean-Pierre lightened up. Within the gigantic (and highly controversial) glass pyramid of the Louvre, we wandered aimlessly and stumbled upon legendary works that had lasted throughout the ages.

After a lengthy spell at the Louvre, we rested our legs at a nearby café before heading to our second “musée” of the day, the Musée d’Orsay. I actually enjoyed it more than the Louvre, especially considering the inside looked more like a train station than a museum.

The rest of the day was spent pontificating about our favorite things we saw that day and arguing heatedly over our differing interpretations of the Mona Lisa’s smile. My assertion that it was more of a whimsical grin than a full-blown smile earned me some stern rebuttals, particularly from Benoît, who summed up her expression in one word: “gas”. For an older gentleman, Benoît certainly has some childishness left in him.

The day had been dedicated to expanding boundaries, experiencing the unexperienced, and opening the mind. Thus, that night as we dined to celebrate Odette’s birthday, I ordered up a batch of snails, also known as the world-renowned escargots of France.

The texture was like that of a shrimp, the flavor like that of an overly salted game hen. Once I deluded myself into thinking I was not actually eating a snail, I concluded that it tasted quite good, actually.

It seemed for a moment, then, that the Cousbros were having a rebirth, a “renaissance” of sorts. Ignorance had been replaced by worldliness, fear by courage. All that went out the window, though, when I had the bright idea of teaching my parents the legendary game of Fingerblaster, first practiced by the Ancient Romans to decide upon members of their famed Senate. Though there was some difficulty understanding the rules, the game was an instant hit.

What a relief – the Cousbro family had returned to its roots, descending from its cloud of unspeakable snobbery. The night was capped off by Benoît hitting it off with our waiter, who, revealing that he was a Paris Saint-Germain fan (the Parisian professional soccer team), earned himself a ticket to Sunday’s game.

I purchased two tickets for PSG vs. Lille about a week ago only to find that Odette would be unable to join me. Thus, I will now be attending the game with Nicolas, a completely random (and hilarious) French waiter who will undoubtedly teach me many things about the city, game, and my favorite player, Guillaume Hoarau.

It should prove to be yet another eye-opening experience, my friends, and I will be sure to tell you every last detail. Until next time, dear readers!

Warm regards,
Jacques

What do you think would happen to this country without Medicare? I had a nice chat with my wife’s grandparents last night about the state of the healthcare industry, which got me thinking (look out, no good can come from me thinking). Medicare covers most of their medical expenses. The insurance that my wife’s grandpa has included in his pension covers most of what Medicare doesn’t. Without serious healthcare reform, what will happen in the future?

I’m not sure if any companies include paid insurance in their pension plans anymore. This is a thing of the past. When most of America retires, we will be faced with having to pay extra for a secondary insurance and rely on Medicare as our primary means of medical coverage. If conservatives get their way, Medicare will also become a thing of the past.

No, they don’t come out and openly say it. But they do say that the federal government has no business being involved in covering medical costs for Americans. It’s only a matter of time before they come after Medicare, too.

I read in the paper this morning about a town hall meeting here in Utah. Some lady stood up and said something to the effect of “We should care about the health of Americans, it’s just not the government’s job to force us to care.” Can’t the same thing be said about Medicare? Why don’t you hear grumblings of being forced to care for the elderly? You want to talk about death panels? Just imagine what the policy de jour would be regarding euthanasia if healthcare for the elderly was strictly covered by private insurance companies. I have a feeling that the pockets of politicians would be lined with enough cash to change most of their minds on the topic of assisted suicide. Dr. K would be welcomed back with open arms. “Death with dignity” would suddenly become an acceptable phrase.

The selfishness of the people of this country astounds me. They constantly fight to maintain the everyone-for-themselves attitude of the Wild West. Where does it come from? Who do we think we are? What kind of people are we?

For the most “civilized nation in the world,” we still have such deep roots in barbarism. Evolve already, citizens. Evolve.

[photo credit]

For all you who have read Atlas Shrugged, I would just like to post an excerpt from an article I read :

“Prime and Alt-A mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures are climbing rapidly, and are the true canaries in the banking industry mineshaft. Homeowners evicted by foreclosure trash their homes in rage on the way out the door, with an estimated 50% of such dwellings damaged. Looters and squatters destroy many of the rest, stealing copper pipes, wiring, granite counter tops and anything else of value.”

“(…) the Internet, in exposing the breathtaking money manipulations of the monetary elite, is likely in the process of reducing social morality to rubble.”

At the beginning of this crisis, people said that the resemblance to Atlas Shrugged was near breath-taking. We’re at an intermission phase right now, so people are mostly throwing around green shoots, home sales data and the decline in the acceleration of unemployment. Meanwhile, under the surface, there is a very arcane evil brewing in the american society. Barbarism.

More from The Daily Bell.

After the probably trillions of words that have been devoted to the Israel/Arab conflict, it is no small achievement to approach the matter from a unique vantage point. Gilder’s thesis is this: Today’s hatred of Israel is feeding off the same poison that has nourished anti-Semitism throughout history — envy, resentment, and misunderstanding of economics. Gilder asks: “Are you for civilization or barbarism, life or death, wealth or envy? Are you an exponent of excellence and accomplishment or of a leveling creed of troglodytic frenzy and hatred?”

Jewish accomplishment is an undeniable fact of history. Many, Murray included, have speculated about the disproportionate number of Jewish intellectuals, musicians, millionaires, scientists, and others. Gilder, a gentile, is interested less in the why of Jewish excellence than in its consequences. A society that is organized to permit individuals to flourish and to realize their potential, like the United States and post-1980s Israel, will broadly share in the increased prosperity those individuals help to create. A society or a global system that misunderstands wealth creation and wishes to level society by penalizing success will make life poorer for everyone.

Gilder boldly declares that Jewish genius laid the foundation for winning the Second World War and for the prosperity that followed. Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Europe provided much of the brainpower for the Manhattan Project. And Jewish geniuses including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heinrich Hertz, John von Neumann, and Richard Feynman, and entrepreneurs like Andy Grove, made indispensable contributions to the information technology that forms the scaffolding of modern prosperity.

This will be a difficult week.  I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it.  The past few weeks have required me to exercise (increasingly extreme) control of mind over body. I’ve become accomplished at that.   This week, however, reverses things: my body will have to take control of my mind.   (Faith, I think, is located in the body? Still formulating thoughts on this.)

Directives are few & my schedule is fluid, but I must work with three separate–  externally imposed, complicated, rigid, & (to me!) highly counter-intuitive– belief systems.  Worst of all, this is happening over Pride Weekend!  I’ll have to be a Mormon on the day of the Pride Parade.

Well, the first thing I did was take my dog for a walk.

Whenever she sees a bird I tell her "We can kill it tomorrow."

It was a hot, sunny day.  Too hot for thinking.  & nobody else was out– because of the heat, probably.  So I let Bella off leash for the first time since I’ve been in Vancouver.  She was very good.

Upon arriving home I lazed around.  Then went shopping.  I was hoping to find some modest clothes, as some of my days will call for modest dress… but no luck.  No luck finding anything modest, that is.  I mailed some of the postcards I made during Week 3 (it now seems so distant!) & had a lunch of sushi.  I’ve lost my appetite since this project began.  It’s the most I can do to choke down a full order of sashimi.

I find people respond to me differently as the project goes on.  In one of the stores I visited, the salesgirl began following me around solicitously.  I’ve been there before & she never paid me any notice.  Today was different.  She came up to me with a Tupperware container.  “Take some grapes!” she implored.  I ate them.  “Take more!” She poured a whole pile into my hands.

When I tried on a dress she told me to take my hair down.  She took it down for me & smelled it (?!) “Smells good!”  she said.  I was obviously weirded out, if flattered.

I found the most amazing (if immodest) dress & bought it.  I won’t budget that in, it’s my own foolishness.  As I paid she asked me how old I was (“Twenty-five? You look nineteen!” — yeah right) then implored me to come back to the store anytime.  “You don’t have to buy anything.  We can just talk.”

After all the research I’ve been doing on modern religions, I’ve begun to think about starting my own.  I’m sure I could get at least five followers, her among them of course.

Returning home, I began my research in earnest.  The Scientology website is very difficult to navigate.  The most peculiar thing, to me, is that the primary tenants of their faith seem very carefully concealed.  I searched & searched, but couldn’t find an awful lot of specific information.  I avoided Wikipedia & expose-style articles as these are denounced by the church for inaccuracy– I want to stick as closely as I can to their own representation of themselves.  After several hours of browsing, this is what I emerged with:

• Scientology coincided with the development of the atom bomb.  It appeared as a natural response to the dangerous prioritzing of science over faith & knowledge.
• Scientologists hold that man is more than a material object.  Man is good by nature & capable of spiritual betterment, but suffers from diminished awareness of himself & his environment.  (Scientology prefers, apparently, to use the male pronoun exclusively.  I shall do the same.)  Man is more than a mind & body– there is a pre-existing essence to man referred to as the “thetan”– similar to the concept of “soul” in other religions.  Accomplished Scientologists can “exteriorize,” or separate the “thetan” from the body/mind.
• One can be simultaneously Scientologist & affiliated with other religions.
• The church opposes psychology & psychiatry for discouraging the concept of the soul.  They denounce psychiatric treatments as “barbaric.”

I’ve also learned about “mental image pictures” & the “analytic” & “reactive” minds, “engrams,” “Clears,” “auditing,” “dynamics” & the “Tone Scale.”  There’s a lot of information & I can’t figure out a comprehensive way to boil it down for you.  But check out the website yourself, if you’re so inclined.

Somebody at the church might want to look into making the website a little more PC.  In addition to the exclusively male pronouns, there are a lot of references to mystical Native American shaman blood brothers, “primitive tribes,” & the “Orient.”  There was also a poignant typo about “children who were less than rags.”

Also, L. Ron Hubbard (apparently a friend of Ptolemy’s dad!) learned to ride horses at 3 1/2 & he was the youngest Eagle Scout ever at 13.

Anyway, I set up my appointment for Monday today & the people on the phone were very sweet.

I also researched Mormonism.  The Scientology people might want to take a page from the Mormon web design book.  The Mormon website was soothingly simple, easy to navigate, & full of direct answers to basic questions.

Mormonism seems like any other basic Christian off-shoot, with a few exceptions:

• Mormons hold that Joseph Smith was a prophet who came to restore God’s truth to the Church in (& I must fact-check this?) 1880.  The Christian church fell away from Christ as years went on & Smith restored it to its rightful structure (with a prophet & 12 apostles, etc.) after a vision of God & Jesus.  Mormonism is believed to renew Christianity to its original form.
  
• The church has a unique structure, with its most unusual feature being a succession of God-appointed prophets, beginning with Joseph Smith & ending with Thomas S. Monson who is the current prophet.

I’ve also learned about the term apostasy, which I like a lot.  I think being Mormon might be easier than being Scientologist.  I wish I’d been to the temple in Salt Lake City! (or… is that where it is?) I’ve heard a lot about it from friends.

Contemplating God in new immodest dress

All I have left to do is research the particular evangelical church I’ll be attending.  I think that will be the easiest.  Traditional Christianity is the least foreign to me: the Bible is one of my favorite books, I was baptised Catholic, & I attended a Catholic school for years.

I should let you know, before this adventure begins, that I am an atheist.  But I also generally abhor the company of atheists– at least those who talk about it.

This may change as the journey continues.

Those of you out there who are questioning your faith, I would like to remind you: if an atheist can will herself to  believe in Mormonism for a day, you’re probably just being self indulgent.  Letting God into your heart is easy.  That’s what this project is really all about.

Sidenote:  Friends have already started to worry about me.  I don’t think any of us realized how extreme this project would be when I began to undertake it.  I’m soldiering relentlessly onward, despite public outcry.  So I will certainly appreciate your continued support.

Tomorrow, if my memory serves me correctly, I will wake up a Christian [edit: not true. Only more research]. I’m looking forward to it [I'm still looking forward to it].

Her alleged lover is critically ill in hospital after a gang poured sulphuric acid down his throat and stabbed him.

The man, a 24-year-old Danish Asian, is now blind, his tongue has been destroyed and he suffered 90% burns.

Both live in the Asian community of East London, where their relationship is said to have angered her family for bringing dishonour on them.

Scotland Yard has given her an Osman warning, a formal alert that she is in grave danger of being killed.

But it is understood she has told police she is not aware of any threat. Officers are assessing how best to protect her.

The man was attacked by a masked gang near his home in Leytonstone in the early hours of July 2.

More here and here.

Is civilization too civil?

Sometimes I wonder if everything we do in our modern world makes us intrinsically less human, distilling passion and instincts into gray suits and briefcases. Are most of the populous really living to the full potential of our race? Where is the action, the desperation of true love, and the intricate sword play in our every day lives?

Promotional art for HBO's "Rome"

In ancient Rome, people walked around armed with swords. There was always a potential threat. A word could get you killed if it landed on the wrong ears. Sex was for anyone who had but a need or a whim for release and everyone was doing it openly with everybody else. If the husband didn’t like being cuckolded, he could simply go out and kill the man his wife was sleeping with. No one would begrudge him this satisfaction.

Today, we have the right to bear arms in this country, but the majority of people that I associate with on a daily basis don’t. Some even openly reject that right, supporting many gun control laws that would keep guns out of the hands of most American citizens.

One observation I’ve made is that the interpretation of the right to bear arms has been distorted. It was originally intended to describe the right to form a militia in order to defend our rights. Now people see the right to bear arms as the right to protect themselves with hand-weapons as opposed to the right to defend the belief system upon which our country was founded. People want to be able to carry concealed weapons or keep guns locked in their cars while they’re at work, or even keep rifles in their homes as if they lived in the Old West.

I am aware that my view on gun control is based mostly on my urban upbringing. If New Yorkers were allowed legally to carry concealed weapons, I think all hell would break loose. Even without a law allowing us to carry lethal weapons, there is sometimes a persistent sense of compression in the city, like at any moment something might pop. Objects could be set in motion that could change our circumstances or our lives at any moment. I feel it often when it’s late at night and I’m taking the subway home with only one or two other occupants in my car. I’ve also felt it as a scuffle between a few men catches my eye from across a crowded street. That sense of compression stays in tact because people do whatever they can, for the most part, to keep themselves cool and contained, with a few exceptions.

Most of the time, when we get angry, it festers with no outlet, eating us alive from the inside out. Rather than attack others, we attack ourselves and blame ourselves for not being able to keep things together. Sure, sometimes we’ll talk things out behind closed doors, but very rarely is there the possible threat of one of us killing another.

Be assured that I am talking from the perspective of a young, private school educated, urban woman. I know that crimes of passion happen every day, but they certainly aren’t happening in my every day life or within the circle of people I normally associate with. I’m also not suggesting that we should all be barbarians and begin killing each other every five seconds and gnawing on turkey legs in our spare time.

Blizzard's concept art for a Female Barbarian in "Diablo 3"

The word “barbarian” perplexes me. What does it really mean? The vision of Ancient Rome I described earlier certainly had some barbaric elements, but there was a general movement towards an organized government, which, by definition, is not barbarism.

Then again, I think what I admire most about interpretations and historical accounts of ancient Rome are the more impulsive, passionate qualities of the culture. That is what I mean when I say I wonder if we are “distilling” humanity in our modern culture. I think a lot of people have lost touch with what it means to live in a high stakes environment, to feel the life coursing through their veins or to act on their needs with conviction on a daily basis.

I began thinking about all of this a few weeks ago when a friend of mine from Florida mentioned that people there are allowed to shoot trespassers who come onto their property on sight.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed incredulously, always the articulate blogger. “But you can’t kill them, can you?”

He just laughed at me and shrugged. “Sometimes when you shoot ‘em, you kill ‘em.”

So even though I often wonder where the passion has gone while I’m making my commute to and from work amidst the milling herd, wondering when we all got slipped our daily dose of “soma,” I am also horrified at the opposite end of the spectrum. It just shocks me that in some parts of the country, entering someone’s property is enough to warrant violence without warning and murder without much punishment. There’s just something about that idea that doesn’t sit comfortably in the pit of my stomach.

It gives me this image of an orange farmer screaming, “This. is. FLORIDAAAAA!” while brandishing an AK-47.

When I was a kid, I used to play with flashlight lightsabers and go to the movies with my friends. From what I hear of rural childhoods, “blowin’ shit up” is a regular after-school activity. YouTube is overflowing with videos of kids from throughout the center of this country blowing up whatever they can find in front of a camera. I even stumbled across one video where a few teenagers were wading into the Mississippi River to find tube worm mound colonies, a staple of that particular ecosystem, and setting them on the ground, followed by shooting them to kingdom come with rifles. The had no clue that they were probably destroying the ecology of that part of the riverbed and were more interested in seeing the strange gooey blobs get blown to smithereens. I also got the impression that they wouldn’t have cared much if they did know about their possible eco-footprint.

This sort of dispassionate violence is what frightens me. A majority of our youth is disconnected from the fact that guns are not toys. They are absolutely lethal. The NRA famously insists that “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” However, I’m going to have to jump on the band wagon with British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard here and say, “Yes, but the guns certainly help.”

I remember holding a water gun and pointing at my Dad when I was a little girl.

“Bang, bang, Daddy!” I shouted, holding the gun at his face, point blank.

He moved the gun away from his face with the palm of his and looked at me very seriously. “Never point a gun at someone unless you mean to kill them.”

Sure, it was just a water gun, but my father made certain that I knew what that toy represented. He said his father had imparted the same wisdom to him.

Dispassionate people own lethal weapons in states like Texas and Florida and they can use them without much cause or repercussion. I’m perplexed and torn. On the one hand, I think it is our right to protect ourselves and our families and that people, given the proper licencing, should be able to own guns, though I realize it’s still hard to control how many guns get into unqualified hands. Plus, the dramatic part of me wants my life to be an epic and adventurous tale worthy of the Odyssey. On the other hand, I don’t think we should be teaching our children that guns are a worthwhile “pass-time.” Hunting for food when food needs to be hunted is one thing. Blowing up bear bottles and Indiana Jones action figures for no reason is another. Plus, in terms of our humanity, I don’t think we need the danger of weapons or our lives constantly hanging in the balance to spur us into living a fulfilling life.

Violence isn’t the answer, but I think dispassion is an epidemic.

How do you cure dispassion? How do you light the proverbial fire under humanity’s ass?

Statue of Prometheus by Paul Manship in Rockefeller Center

When Prometheus stole fire from the Zeus on Mount Olympus and brought it to the mortals below, he took a risk. He wagered his life to bring warmth and knowledge to his fellow man. His story isn’t famous today because of violence, but because of his daring and his contribution to mankind. There is also the bit about how he was punished by having his liver be eaten out by vultures only to grow back every day for all of eternity, but that’s beside the point.

Maybe, what we all need to spice up our lives is a little calculated risk taking. Set your sights on something and go for it. Don’t let opportunities pass you by. Listen to that little voice in your head when it tells you to do something. Listening to your instincts is what keeps you from being a sheep in the middle of a herd.

Perhaps that’s the cure. Only time will tell.

As Bush-era episodes of torture have became almost daily hand ringing fare for establishment politicians and the media, calls for national soul-searching and reform arrive with a predictable litany of myths and illusions. Mainstream scrutiny peaked with the April release of incriminating “torture memos” issued by the Office of Legal Council spanning the years 2002 to 2005 – memos that involved clear violation of the Geneva and Torture Conventions. The issue has touched a raw nerve in the political culture, with government and military leaders – echoed by media pundits – quick to parrot two comforting discourses: abuses were the product of a few wayward (low-level) military personnel, a violation of sacred U.S. practices and values including the “rule of law”. The first myth necessarily disappeared from view after several reports (including one conducted by the U.S. Army) had shown culpability extending all the way to the summits of power. But the fiction about torture being a radical departure from American traditions persists.

In a recent speech at UCLA, former NATO commander and 2004 presidential candidate General Wesley Clark denounced torture as an evil blight conflicting with the well-known American dedication to international rules and laws. “Law is sacred to the American system”, pronounced Clark. “A retreat from Geneva means nothing less than abandoning American values.” In the aftermath of the 2004 Abu Ghraib revelations, President George W. Bush said that prisoner abuse was an embarrassing exception to time-honored national precedents, for “that’s not the way we do things in America” – a sentiment repeated by politicians and commentators across the ideological spectrum. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in December 2005, claimed: “With respect to detainees the United States government complies with its Constitution, its laws, and its treaty obligations. Acts of physical or mental torture are expressly prohibited. The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under U.S. law, wherever they may occur in the world.” She described atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib as sickening aberrations from the norm, thus unlikely to be repeated. More recently, Rice denied altogether that the U.S. practiced torture in a heated exchange with Stanford University students.

In the midst of these platitudes, liberals, more troubled by the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib events, have simply added their own myths. Media figures like Rachel Maddow, Randi Rhodes, and Ron Reagan have denounced Bush-era crimes as counter to the American character: the torture of detainees is a uniquely wicked invention of Bush, Cheney, and the neocons. A major problem, according to the liberals, is that harsh interrogation methods “never work” since they undermine intelligence-gathering, eliciting nothing but false information. This contention only reveals a shallow understanding of how torture has historically “worked”. Commenting on her April 22nd MSNBC show, Maddow roundly condemned torture carried out by the CIA and Pentagon, intoning “We have been doing things [torture] we have never done before in the United States. We never did that stuff before. How did that ever happen?” Human-rights abuses, like the doctrine of preemptive war, were the brainchild of the Bush clique. “It was the Republican Party that gave us torture as practiced by the U.S. government”, Maddow informed her April 27th audience, adding “either we have a Constitution or we don’t”.

It takes little investigation to see that such views have little basis in actual U.S. history. Torture has always been a staple of U.S. military interventions, built into its very logic of imperial agendas. A nation that has launched warfare dozens of times, repeatedly attacked civilian populations, destroyed entire societies, used weapons of mass destruction, and deployed massive armed force to crush popular movements around the world – killing millions and displacing tens of millions more in the process – could hardly be expected to shy away from smaller-scale criminality in its pursuit of Manifest Destiny. Illegal detentions, denial of due process, kidnappings, assassinations, death-squad murders, and cruel interrogation techniques have long been just another valuable (if illegal) tool of imperial power. U.S. exterminationist policies against Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century, involving widespread torture, served as a prelude to later barbarism in the Philippines, Mexico, the Pacific Theater in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East. Decades of Indian Wars brought not only the Sand Creek, Washita, and Wounded Knee massacres but unspeakable acts of everyday brutality: beatings, scalpings, mutiliations, sexual assaults, kidnappings, prisoner mistreatment, and shootings, often along with larger-scale attacks on civilian encampments. Captives were often summarily executed, including women, children, and elderly. Dwellings were routinely burned to the ground, food stores destroyed, ponies and buffalo slaughtered by the thousands. Dying Indians were frequently tortured, killed, and mutilated. Such atrocities reached new heights when General George Armstrong Custer attacked a defenseless settlement of Cheyenne women and children at the Washita River in Oklahoma in 1868, a massacre solidifying Custer’s credentials as heroic Indian fighter.

At Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864 the carnage wrought by the fanatically pious Colonel John Chivington was especially savage. Reflecting on Chivington’s God-ordained massacre, a lieutenant from the New Mexico Volunteers wrote: “Of from five to six hundred souls [killed] the majority of which were women and children . . . I did not see a body of a man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in a most horrible manner – men, women, and children’s privates cut out. I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman’s private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick. I heard another man say he had cut the fingers of an Indian to get the rings on the hand . . .” According to this and many similar reports, soldiers used knives to rip apart bodies, and none were spared. Torture, butchery, mutilation – there seemed to be no limits to U.S. military barbarism on the frontier. Those horrors were repeated time and again, culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 where hundreds of defenseless women and children were slaughtered, many tortured before the last fatal assaults.

Slavery? That was an institutionalized system of torture – indeed terrorism – from beginning to end. The “war to end slavery”? Well, the Civil War produced four years of unbelievable butchery and torture on both sides, both within and outside the many notorious prison camps maintained North and South.

As international law became refined since the early twentieth century, following the two Hague Conventions, prohibitions against torture and similar abuses were established and codified, but U.S. global behavior took no heed, persisting in its earlier criminal pattern. By the 1890s U.S. imperialism and outlawry was expanding outward, shifting its targets to Latin America, Asia, and later the Middle East. In World War II, the fabled “good war”, torture became routine practice in the Pacific Theater were the U.S. carried out a war of attrition against the Japanese culminating in months of saturation bombing raids and two nuclear horrors. In what John Dower calls a “war without mercy” (on both sides) the Japanese were irredeemably evil, a monolithic race apart, so subhuman that the most extreme barbarism could be justified. Racial stereotypes of savage Asian hordes permeated U.S. media both in the military and home front, sustaining a racially-charged milieu in which rules of engagement were thrown to the wind. Aside from incendiary aerial bombardments of every Japanese city, repeated smaller atrocities were common: shooting of prisoners, torture, lifeboat strafings, attacks on hospitals, civilian abuse, wounded buried alive, mutilated corpses. When such criminality became known to general military and political circles, it was fiercely defended, even celebrated in an atmosphere of vengeful racial hatred.

In the aftermath of World War II and Korea (laden with even more atrocities), the Vietnam War produced near-total collapse moral and social constraints as U.S. criminality behavior achieved new records. Testimony of first-hand witnesses at the 1971 Winter Solider Hearings and elsewhere showed that rules of engagement applied only in military textbooks. There were no limits to the barbarism. Vietnamese running from combat, taking evasive action, or giving the “appearance” of combatants were regularly detained, kept captive, and more often than not tortured – when not immediately fired upon. American troops rarely tried to distinguish civilians from combatants, a difficult task in any event under conditions of guerrilla insurgency. The prevailing idea was that, in the midst of combat and “free-fire zones”, any Vietnamese encountered was a “gook” who, by definition, was the enemy. The Vietnam brutality was never-ending – burning homes, mass killings, torture, rape, murder of wounded prisoners, beatings, destruction of animals and life-support systems, use of chemical weapons, all fueled by some combination of revenge, sadism, combat stress, intimidation, and in certain instances sexual pleasure. Such practices were routinely tolerated or even sanctioned at the very top of the command structure.

In Vietnam ordinary troops, as well as military intelligence personnel, soon became well-versed in methods of harassment, intimidation, and torture as they detained, questioned, and punished North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops in the field. Methods included throwing people out of helicopters, electric shock treatment, severe beatings, and mutilation. Prisoners were often taken for “flying lessons” or “half a helicopter ride” as interrogators kept throwing people out until someone “cooperated”. Other creative torture methods were employed to break down possible informants. When a captive proved stubborn, according to one U.S. soldier, “the answer is invariable, you take a field telephone, wire it around a man’s testicles, you ring him up and he always answers. It’s known as the Bell Telephone Hour. You won’t find it in the curriculum.” Torture could be randomly used, the assumption being that civilians were likely to be “VC supporters” or at least hostile to American troops. Those captured were tortured not only to gain information but more often out of hatred, sadism, or sexual pleasure. No U.S. military figure in Vietnam was likely to argue that torture somehow “didn’t work”.

Rape became a medium of combining sex and violence. According to one macabre account: “ . . . maybe four or five of us would go into a village and take a girl and bring her out to the jungle. . . . Explain to her to lie on the ground and don’t scream, otherwise she’ll be killed immediately, and however many guys there are – well, they all do what they want. And if the guys are in a good mood, they let her go. If not they kill her.” Sexual assault was often followed by torture. According to widespread testimony and reports, some women were burned to death after gasoline was poured over their body and troops stood around and sadistically watched. Routine sexual encounters between GIs and Vietnamese women frequently grew violent, leading to rapes, beatings, and murder.

None of this could be dismissed as the isolated or aberrant behavior of a few undisciplined soldiers, nor was it related manly to intelligence operations. Recycling racist imagery that gave wars against Native Americans, Japanese, and Koreans added savagery, military leaders called the Vietnamese gooks, thugs, and vermin, with General William Westmoreland preferring the label “worthless termites” – the same “termites”, presumably, that were to be given the blessings of freedom and democracy. Extreme racist attitudes permeated the military culture from top to bottom, as would later be the case in Iraq. According to one participant in the field, “the voices of authority in the company – the platoon sergeants and officers – acknowledged that [executing prisoners] was a proper way to behave. Who were the grunts to disagree with it? We supported it . . .”

By late 1960s the CIA Phoenix Program had been responsible for the illegal detention and torture of untold thousands of captives. Under this program U.S. operatives assassinated an estimated 21,000 Vietnamese officials in the South. As the war expanded, Navy SEALs and other units mounted raids to destroy homes, capture and torture people, and conduct summary executions at random. Many hundreds of thousands (mostly civilians) were rounded up, detained, and subjected to unspeakable brutality – all condoned or at least ignored all the way to the top of the military and government leadership.

The U.S. criminal record in Central America, while perhaps less egregious than that in Asia, spans a lengthier historical period during which the CIA, Pentagon, and U.S. proxy groups detained, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of people in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua. Such atrocities flowed from official policies at a time when U.S.-supported corporate and oligarchical interests were being challenged or overturned by popular forces. As Jennifer Harbury shows in her well-researched study of torture across Central America, Truth, Torture, and the American Way: “A review of the materials leads relentlessly to just one conclusion: that the CIA and related U.S. intelligence agencies have since their inception engaged in the widespread practice of torture, either directly or through well-paid proxies.” Counterinsurgency campaigns gave rise to regular kidnappings, detentions, torture, and executions. The U.S., often through its infamous School of the Americas and other domestic military bases, provided finances, training, logistics, and weapons – the work of mostly secret projects organized by the CIA. In Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua local atrocities reach their peak during the 1980s as the linkage between the U.S. and Central American agencies of death and destruction intensified, leading to a wave of abductions, torture, and murder.

As in Vietnam, torture and related atrocities in Central America were rarely the outgrowth of excesses, mistakes, or the work of a few renegade troops; nor were they usually motivated by the quest for reliable intelligence. They were rooted in the logic of control and repression. What was understood as necessary “dirty work” took years to plan and refine, much of it carried over from the Vietnam experience. Such methods as solitary confinement, beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and sexual humiliation – to be replicated later at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – had been de rigeur in Vietnam. One difference in Central America was that the U.S. chose to work through local military units and death squads, that is by proxy, so that atrocities could never be traced by the the guilty Washington operatives. Still, as Harbury points out, there were few doubts in the field as to who was calling the shots: “The Yankees in the torture cells were not working for local military officials at all. To the contrary, they were very much in charge, and had clear authority over the torturers themselves. The Americans were not taking orders, they were giving them. At times they were even supervising the entire torture session.”

The postwar years witnessed a wide U.S. legacy of illegal detentions, torture, assassination, and other mayhem as tried-and-proven instruments of imperial power, from Latin American to Indonesia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Balkans as well as Korea and Vietnam – not only through the CIA but Special Forces units, Navy SEALs, Delta Force operatives, and other military actions. “Harsh interrogation methods” were always just one facet of this worldwide terror apparatus.

The events at Abu Ghraib were thus simply one more episode in the overall trajectory of U.S. imperialism, subordinate to a brutal military occupation bringing endless horrors to the Iraqi population. Prison abuse was built into the general mosaic of domination, set up in Washington and pursued with cruel rationality in the field where U.S. troops, as in Vietnam, were constantly surrounded by “enemies” or “terrorists”. Not only detention centers but homes, checkpoints, urban neighborhoods, and roadways served as arenas of armed combat, leading to recurrent arrests, beatings, home invasions, shootings, bombings, and massacres (as at Hadditha in 2006). Reports of U.S. military officers ordering beatings of Iraqis were common from the 2003 invasion onward. Troops were ordered to “crank up the violence level” in the struggle to quell insurgency – violence that included assaults, torture, and random killings, both in and out of the many prisons – little of it designed to secure “intelligence”. Following a procedure called “dead-checking”, it was a recurring practice for American troops to murder wounded Iraqis according to the maxim “if somebody is worth shooting once, they’re worth shooting twice.”

One instigator of the Abu Ghraib torture, Pfc. Lynndie England, said in an interview that such practices were essentially business-as-usual – just troops behaving “normally” in a combat environment filled with stress,anger, and fear. No moral scruples or rules of engagement entered the picture. Others described the events as a matter of bored soldiers simply passing time, having fun. That so many prisoners were stripped naked, sexually intimidated or violated, beaten, hooded, shackled, handcuffed, and forced into stress positions – not to mention sleep and food deprived – provoked little if any outrage at the scene.

In the film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, one convicted soldier, Specialist Sabrine Harman, spoke at length about the atrocities as if she were describing a movie or tennis match: it was all in a day’s work, nothing special. Photographed laughing next to an Iraqi corpse, she was unapologetic, explaining that she always liked to smile for photos. What emerges from Abu Ghraib and other U.S. gulags like Guantanamo and Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan is a bleak and frightening picture of sadistic military behavior devoid of moral, legal, or social restraints, with virtually nothing to do with procuring information. (The CIA and military did try to force some prisoners to supply “information”, under duress, that would justify the fraudulent basis of U.S. intervention in Iraq – a miserable failure – but that is another tale. Accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed recently admitted that he had lied to the CIA after being harshly treated.) Still, recent atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – waterboarding, sleep and food deprivation, sensory abuses – hardly compare to the routine barbarism practiced in Vietnam and earlier U.S. wars.

History shows that present-day U.S. torture and other similar outlawry has deep roots in the past, the byproduct of an ever-expanding imperial apparatus of control and repression. In hundreds of pages of long-classified but recently-disclosed files, CIA documents alone describe an immense variety of illegal activities: secret holding cells around the world, unlawful detentions without due process, vast surveillance, plots to assassinate foreign leaders, severe interrogation methods. Such outrages are outgrowth of established patterns rather than deviations from (romanticized) historical norms, integral to the far greater savagery of aggressive warfare. U.S. militarism has routinely embraced criminal behavior sanctioned, more often than not, at the highest levels of Washington officialdom. The CIA torture networks in place across several decades, but only recently a focus of mainstream political concern, represents just one cornerstone of U.S. imperial efforts to maximize its global surveillance, intelligence, and control potential.

Ref: counterpunch

Carl Boggs is the author of The Hollywood War Machine (Paradigm) just and Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War, which appeared last year. He can be reached at: cboggs@nu.edu