Dan Lyons

ARGUMENTS FOR AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER BEHIND EVOLUTION:
Let’s just consider the showing up of the first,incredibly complex, live cells.
‘Natural Selection’ can’t explain THIS seeming design; natural selection presupposes creatures that replicate (but not with 100% accuracy) and multiply so thoroughly that they shortly feel pressure from habitat constraints --thus the less-than-optimal gene-lines are de-selected. None of these conditions held before the first live cell showed up.
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Some say, "Oh, well, with billions of stars out there, many presumably with planets, sheer blind chance explains, after billions of years, the showing up of live cells on this one planet at least."

Trouble is, that explains too much--and what explains too much explains nothing.

Suppose our telescopes suddenly noticed that on a distant planet, never touched by man, the sentence ‘Lyons sucks!’ showed up (in very big font, of course). Our first thought would be that some intelligent Being inscribed that sentence..though we’d have no idea why this Mind would WANT to do that!

But then, on second thought, we might reflect that with the billions of planets around, and the billions of years since the universe began [both limited, though vast numbers...not infinity] practically every combination of elements had to happen, so this inscription eventually had to happen, just by chance.

Bull-shit. Nobody would accept that chance explanation of that inscription. On third thought, we’d accept our first explanation, that the inscription must have from some (strange) designing mind.
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Now our section of the universe somehow produced the planet Earth, with many circumstances coinciding to make Earth hospitable to life. (I believe they now say that Pluto protects our corner from completely destructive forces.)

Hydrogen and carbon atoms showed up (enormously complex) having the tendency to combine in even more complex compounds.And then finally these compounds combined in just the way needed to produce replicating, live cells.

All that process is MUCH MORE COMPLEX AND SEEMINGLY DESIGNED than the mere inscription far away of ‘Lyons sucks!’ Just as we would not say that inscription could happen just by chance--no matter how many planets are available and no matter how many ages of ages-- so we should deny that the first live cells could happen just by chance.
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Suppose we discovered that, built right into hydrogen and carbon atoms is a tendency to develop ultimately, after huge time-span filled with chance events, into live cells. Then we should say that these fantastically complex atoms could not have happened through sheer chance!
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Analogously: suppose we found a strange bar of soap, with little wires coming out in strange ways. Now suppose we hung this item into a river, subjecting it to chance currents. Now suppose finally, the soap wore away so as to produce a perfect statue of Donald Duck!

In this situation, we’d be sure that the original bar of soap couldn’t have ‘happened’ by sheer chance. We have no idea why some mind would want to produce a DonaldDuck statue in this strange way--but we’d think the design was all the more clever because it could HARNESS CHANCE WAVES to produce such a complex, obviously-designed item!

So obviously the hydrogen/carbon atoms were designed so cleverly that they could HARNESS future chance events to produce live cells.(We have no idea what the mechanism thrusting toward live cells is in primitive atoms.)

Similarly, the first live cells were so cleverly designed that they could harness future chance events (by natural selection) to produce ever more complexly designed organisms.
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Suppose some great scientist cleverly designs lab-equipment such that, putting together the chemicals involved and using electric jolts, etc., to provide extra energy, LIVE CELLS show up.

Big deal--he already knew this was possible..he just had to tinker with various methods to make it happen. HIS LIVE CELLS WERE DESIGNED!
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So I don’t think the theory of evolution shows that we need not posit a Designing Mind behind evolution. What is threatening is that it makes us wonder if this Mind is a fatherly, caring mind.

It seems not to mind using millenia of misery (in the deselection process) to produce, say, a dog.

The awful part of this deselection process is the ‘excess reproduction’ part. Put a few mice in a large meadow. At first they’ll have all food they could ever want. Then they’ll rapidly multiply (with no natural enemies) until the enormous multitude are all half-starving.

The less-than-optimal mice in this new situation will have their gene-lines ‘deselected’, and finally a balance between food-supply and new ‘super-mice’ might be reached. But generations of starving mice will have been the direct means to achieve this clever result.

The Thomistic principle of ‘double-effect’ says that it’s wrong to use evil means to directly effect a good goal. The Mind behind Evolution seems to be condemned morally by this principle.
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We should refer to ‘the problem of horror’--not,blandly, to ‘the problem of evil’) I heard that a leopard will play for hours with a terrified fawn before it kills and eats the fawn. (Nor can we explain away this horror by citing God's enormous respect for human free-will! Nor does his respect for free will explain away his allowing the horrific Holocaust.)
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However, this horror in our world does not prove decisively that this Mind is NOT benevolent.

Perhaps the Mind,though of stupendous power, is not quite all-powerful. It could produce our world of beautifully-designed creatures (from tape-worms to soaring eagles) ONLY by this cruel process. So, IF It was to produce any universe with animals at all, it had to produce one that involves all this suffering. Ours IS the best of all possible worlds--or rather, the least bad of all possible worlds.

It’s conceivable that the value of our present world is so great that it’s ‘worth’ the great price in suffering and horror. (Our world also includes a stupendous amount of sublime beauty and pleasure, not just pain and horror. )

Or there may be other explanations of how a benevolent MIND would produce such a painful world. The question is whether there is enough positive evidence of a benevolent MIND to make us search for such absolving explanations...or should we just settle for the mystery of a strange, cold (‘Deistic’) Mind that sets the whole system up--for some strange reason--and then turns away from it.
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For people who find the Gospels convincing--they might say this: God can't explain to us why horror is a necessary component of His universe, any more than a mother can explain to her baby why she lets someone stick that awful needle in his arm. PRECISELY because of this problem, God became man and endured horror Himself, just to show us that,however mysteriously, He does care for us (enough to want to share our misery) ! "He hid not His face from shame and spittting."

INTELLIGENT DESIGNER: SO WHAT?
"The ball moves after it leaves the bat, because the bat imparts momentum to the ball."Why did such explanations fall out of favor? Because they were of no heuristic USE; they didn’t lead to any other interesting questions.

Similarly, why should we CARE if there was an INTELLIGENT MIND behind the origin of the universe? This doesn’t imply at all that there is a Mind that micromanages the universe now--there seems to be no sign of that. Indeed, when lowlanders hike in the mountains, the rangers try to warn them that ‘The mountains don’t CARE!’ (You’d better look out for yourself.)
Another plausible saying is this: "Nature nurtures us without love--and destroys us without hate."

As far as evidence goes, that seems to be true. What good is a Creator you can’t pray to? Not only do petitions not get answered, but there’s no sign that the Deistic Creator is aware of our praise (or curses!)
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Well, then, what’s the cash-value of the difference between saying, "a)The universe is somehow such that live cells appeared."
..and saying "b) An intelligent mind so shaped the universe that live cells would appear."

The second formulation reminds us that, as Aristotle noted sagely, in blind change, there are more ways to go wrong than to go right. There are only a tiny number of ways that the huge boulders on that distant planet can be arranged to spell out an English sentence--ANY English sentence--compared to the enormous number of ways that the boulders could be arranged ‘randomly’. So it is a priori improbable that the boulders would have ‘just happened’ to get arranged that particular way, by chance, without any mind intervening.

The ways the universe could be ‘such that live cells would appear’ seem intuitively to be of a tiny number compared to the vastly numerous ways one could imagine a universe where this would never happen. So it’s improbable that the appearance of cells was from sheer chance.
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Obj: "Well, ANY particular arrangement of those boulders is greatly outnumbered by ALL THE OTHER ways they COULD be arranged. So on your argument, ANY arrangement, no matter how ‘random’, must imply a Designer!"

Ans: All the ‘complexly ordered’ arrangements, taken together, are far outnumbered by the OTHER conceivable arrangements. This is more true as the order is more complex--for instance, boulders might by chance be arranged into a ‘V’--but we’d be surprised if they were arranged to spell ‘Victory Dance’--surprised enough to posit a Writer.
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A corollary of this principle is that, when organisms have adjusted to a certain stable general environment, a sudden and blind change is UNLIKELY to IMPROVE things--because the ways the environment could change harmfully (e.g. to humans) far outnumber the ways it could change beneficially.

So people are just wrong who say, "OK, the planet’s mean temperature is rising very fast..who’s to say that won’t IMPROVE living conditions, rather than DEPROVE them?" We have every reason to ASSUME that such a radical and sudden change will HARM the world of organisms (in the net--that it will do more harm than good.)

More generally, we have reason to suspect that megatechnological ‘progress’ will do more harm to the human race than it will do benefit.
This is a non-trivial, quite controversial claim.

This is the general principle of Lyons’ LUDDISM, his general suspicion of wave after wave of dramatic technical ‘improvements’, not coordinated by a guiding reason.

See ch1 &ch2 of Lyons’ DEMOCRACY,RIGHTS, AND FREEDOMS, along with comments on those chapters in Lyons’ other (philosophical) web-site: lamar.colostate.edu/~dlyons

So Lyons’ interest in the question of ‘intelligent mind behind the universe’ is just to remind people of the general principle behind his luddism: that blind, dramatic change(e.g., technical ‘progress’) is usually harmful.
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DO CHRISTIANS, JEWS,& MOSLEMS HAVE A VESTED INTEREST in belief in Intelligent Designer behind Evolution?

Suppose one of these believers DENIED the rational need to posit such a
Designer--as many believing scientists do! Then he’d say, "I didn’t find out about God through science; I read the Scriptures (or Talmud or Koran) and found out that God has spoken to man--that’s how I know God exists! And if I do believe my God created the ‘heavens and the earth’, it’s because He told me so!"

So one could say to these believers: "Intelligent Design--so what?" The Creator behind evolution seems to be quite nasty (or heedless of animal & human suffering). God's Greatness as Designer may be seen IN HIS CREATION, but NOT God's Goodness. God the caring Father is known only through Revelation.

The whole ‘intelligent Design’ debate seems overheated; the stakes are quite small.

LATE WAKEUP: (letter to RMNEWS) Finally the NEWS has heard the word about 21,000 U.S. casualties--one in five with spine or brain damage--airlifted to the German hospital from Iraq & Afghanistan (not counting those airlifted directly to U.S..)

Although U.S. Media counts only the dead as 'casualties', the official Pentagon definition includes all military personnel taken out of commission even for a short time.

The Pentagon has always lied about the number of wounded and ill Gis in these pointless wars.United Press published this knowledge about the number of GIs medically airlifted out of the area months and months ago; and indeed I reminded RMN of this news months ago. But, unsurprisingly, they ignored it until after the election. Today they printed the news on p.22a.

The self-censorship of the U.S. Press, to accomodate Pentagon deceptions, has been alarming all along.

By the way, when we add the 1250 dead to the 17,900 wounded, we get almost 20,000 casualties just from Iraq (more when we add in those airlifted to America). That is about ONE casualty for every FIFTEEN GIS rotated in and out of Iraq. Then we add in the 1 in 5 Gis who return home 'whole', but suffering from (perhaps long-lasting) shell-shock (now called 'post-trauma-stress-disorder.)

That's the grisly toll SO FAR--more on the way!--from Bush's needless, pointless, winless war..including 135 GIs dead and 1000 wounded in Iraq JUST THIS MONTH--all for nothing. (Of course we won't count the 50,000 Iraqi women and children slaughtered.)

Let the Bush-supporters, who care so intensely about 'moral values', reflect on these figures as they go comfortably to sleep at night.

ABOUT 'COMMENTS': sometimes Haloscan won't print all the comments & answers. Then, if you type in just 'abc' into the big box below, and click on 'OK', all the missing entries will show up.

WHY DON’T THE SHIITES HELP US? The right-wing pundit Chas.Krauthammer raises an interesting question: why don’t the Iraqi Shiites help us fight down the Sunni guerilllas?

--firstly, many Shiites SYMPATHIZE with the guerillas--especially followers of SADR (e.g., in Sadr city). While other Shiites stayed strangely silent over our massacre in Fallujah (though they spoke up indignantly against our sacrilegious attack on a sacred Sunni shrine!) Sadr denounced the slaughter vigorously.

--Secondly, Iraqi Shiites do not have a militaristic tradition. They have been in submission to Sunnis for centuries. They did revolt earlier against crude British occupation--but they used such clumsy tactics that the Brits could slaughter them easily...(though they did kill enough Brits that Brit leaders saw they couldn’t go on with open occupation..they set up a fake king, and this worked to pacify the Iraqis for a couple of decades.)

The Kurds have developed a military capability, with Israeli experts training them. And they have (wisely or not) sent in whole units to help Americans pacify Mosul.
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Once the Shiites are officially in control of Iraq (after the election and the new constitution)--once the Americans are ejected--then you can bet that, if the small-minority SunniArabs continue to make trouble, the Shiites will unite with the Kurds to crush them ruthlessly.

‘ FIRST RESPONDERS’ HORRIBLY UNDERFUNDED:(Letter to USATODAY)
In our unique crisis (threatened not by nations, but by thousands of individual terrorists) the ‘front-line’ of our defense is NOT bombers, missiles, or marines, but the people who would be the first-line of defense against terrorist attacks on our oh-so-vulnerable cities: e.g. policemen, firemen, and medical personnel.

Yet these agencies are woefully underfunded by the feds--and the cities are financially strapped, so--all across America--they are woefully undermanned and undersupplied. [USATODAY]

Meanwhile, the Bushies shovel $1200 millions each DAY to the irrelevant Pentagon, and spend $6 billion a month on the irrelevant Iraq fiasco.

It is unutterably sad that so many millions of Americans were gullible enough to think that the Bushies could be counted on for our ‘security’.

We should trust them to deal with a germ-attack, after their bungling a mere ‘flu-vaccine’ problem ? !

STILL NO WATER! Red Crescent orgn. did finally get to enter Fallujah with aid.
They estimate that 6000 people have died there; THERE IS STILL NO RUNNING WATER!
(People drink from incredibly polluted river.) AlJazeera

CUT MY INVECTIVE? NEVER! A journalist has suggested that I might 'tone down' my invective. But I share the prophetic rage (if not the talent) of H.L. Mencken. He allegedly said something like this: "As democracy ripens to its fullest, the common people will demand to be ruled by someone who really represents them. We will then have as President a complete moron." Yeah.

Our times are apocalyptic. I sometimes worry that I am too calm about all this; the Bushies deserve FROTHING denunciation.

BUSH CONTINUES TO RECRUIT NEW TERRORISTS: A group in Iran (tolerated but not quite endorsed by government) says they have had 4000 new sign-ups volunteering as suicide bombers, vs. GIs in Iraq, or vs. Israel. AssocPress,cited in DesertSun
(Volunteers could also sign up to die while assassinating Salmon Rushdie! He must be comforted that they haven't forgotten him.)
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Iranian leaders, in openly defying Bushies, are perhaps too confident of the effectiveness of their '2d-strike deterrents' ("You can destroy our cities--but you'll regret it; FROM OUR GRAVE we can damage you considerably!")

This effectiveness depends on Bushies being sane enough not to be willing to risk this considerable damage to U.S., just to pound Iran. I'm not at all sure Bushies are this sane.

Another possibility: that the Iranian mullahs are not that sane themselves.
They may be willing to have sinful big cities like Teheran obliterated; they may be willing to rule over rubble, as the Taliban did. This,of course, after they damage OUR vulnerable cities.

Both countries may be in the hands of crazy people.

LET ‘INTELLIGENT DESIGN’ BE TAUGHT! (letter to USATODAY)
Higher-brow people are enraged that anti-evolution is coming back in America--(why not? Our collective IQ seems to be plummeting.) The yahoo-leaders want to put notices in textbooks that ‘evolution is a theory, not a fact’, and that there is a Mind behind evolution. [USATODAY29Nov]

Evolution IS a theory, if also a fact (like the Newton/Einstein version of gravity, which is based on complex theory, but is factual enough to ground the sending of spaceships to Mars. )And it IS hard to explain the shift from non-life to life without positing a MIND behind the whole process.

Even if rival theories are clearly wrong, it may be a good idea to let them be taught in our school. J.S. Mill, in his timeless classic ON LIBERTY said that even when the ‘standard’ view of any important issue is right, and the ‘heretical’ view is wrong, it’s a good thing to have the erroneous heretical view expressed publicly.

The standard view, once it is accepted by everyone, and never doubted, is also boring and rarely thought about; the reasons for holding it are forgotten; and even its deeper meaning may be lost.

Take for example, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It is ‘accepted’ by almost every Christian sect. Churches are named "Trinity Methodist" and so on; one Sunday a year is called "Trinity Sunday"--but who ever gives the Trinity a thought? Christians long ago cared deeply about the Trinity, when the doctrine was vehemently denounced by Islamic forces which surged against Europe.

Today, Jews and Muslims and Unitarians and Mormons(?) still firmly reject the paradoxical doctrine of the Trinity: 3 distinct Persons somehow constituting only One God (!) But in Christian countries these heretics keep a tactful silence--not from fear of persecution, but just from fear of a chilly reaction from their neighbors. As a result, regular Christians almost never think of the Trinity; indeed, (outside of ‘born-again’ Evangelicals and really sophisticated and pious people in the Catholic tradition), most standard Christians rarely think of the Holy Spririt!

If Christian leaders wanted to cause a revival of interest in the Trinity, they should invite the Jews, Muslims, Unitarians to express publicly their amused contempt for this doctrine. Then standard Christians would ‘study up’ on the doctrine, and think deeply about it. Some would then reject the doctrine, but most would reaffirm it with equal vehemence.
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Analogously, Mill would say, we should welcome heretics who denounce the ‘standard view’ of evolution. Arguing against them, our young folks would usually continue to accept the standard view, but would get more interested than they are now in biology (and logic).

Indeed, Mill says, if we want to revive interest in standard doctrines, we should, if necessary, INVENT heretics to challenge them! For instance, we should have someone show up in chemistry classes denouncing the idea of oxygen and pushing for phlogiston. Students would then wake up and think about how to explain combustion.

Well, with evolution we’re lucky to have real (if often goofy) heretics in America who are straining at the bit to question the standard view. We should encourage them, expose at least our brighter students to them. (Our weaker students couldn’t follow the arguments!)

Even the really dumb opponents of evolution should get a hearing--even those who claim that the world is only 6000 years old--which means that the Grand Canyon had to be carved by Noah’s flood (in 40 days?) [Such a belief IS actually promulgated in books in America--books on the shelves of NationalPark bookstores! ]

Bright youths from fundamentalist families, exposing their views on evolution to public debate, would likely come to see through such nonsense--and will perhaps then come to doubt the whole fundamentalist mind-set.

TEN GOOFY REASONS: One of my interlocutors in COMMENTS ('Josam') has referred me to a guest-column :
"TEN REASONS WHY THE IRAQ ELECTIONS WILL SUCCEED: "
Pittsburgh-live
These ‘reasons’ are goofy enough to cite as an example of the desperation of optimistic hawks:
This columnist says:
--" 'countless other countries' will contribute troops to control guerillas at election time." In the next 9 weeks? Wanna bet?

--"the liberals are worrying that Saddamites will come back into power.." Not by the election!; if the 60% Shiites don't come into power, there'll be a REAL CIVIL WAR. However, U.S. is desperately recruiting former Saddamites as commandos, for its new 'offensive' So. of Baghdad. What is that an omen of?

--"Only 20% of Iraqis are Sunnis." So? it's an axiom of guerilla-war studies that 20% of population supporting them is enough to sustain guerillas indefinitely.

--"Kurds & Shiites are OK for the election." Of course, and they'll vote. The worry (by all informed experts) is that a Sunni boycott (or low vote) will dramatize for the Sunnis that they are excluded from power now--and this will motivate more guerilla activity.

--"Sunni boycott would be counter-productive." Absurd. Even if they joined in, they'd get only 20% of the parliament, outnumbered by their enemies, the Kurds and Shiites. They have nothing to lose by boycotting. (Their boycott is even more likely, now that our puppet govt. has refused their request to postpone the election.)

--"Iraq army is main force now." This is laughable. The last time we leaned on our native militia, they completely deserted their posts in Mosul. One top commander was assassinated; the other was just arrested FOR HELPING THE GUERILLAS!

--"Iraq people are fed up with war." No doubt, but we keep increasing their hatred for us--e.g., by the Fallujah slaughter of civilians--and hatred is as ‘unselfish’ as love, as heedless of its own self-interest--ESPECIALLY AMONG IRAQIS.

--"Iraqis now have access to non-governmental news." Yes, especially about the Fallujah slaughter, and especially the picture of the Marine shooting a half-dead man, with his companions watching approvingly.

--"Arabs like all humans, want to be free." It’s not at all clear that most humans (including Americans) want freedom so intensely as to be willing to sacrifice for it. (What Iraqis want most is clean water and lawn'order..which we can't provide.) Arab nations have made NO movement toward democracy. In SaudiArabia, women can’t vote.
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This column beautifully exhibits the fantasy-world of many U.S. Hawks. However, the top D.C. hawks, the ones who helped Bush lie us into war, are pretty well agreed now that our troop-presence, by ever increasing Iraqi hatred of us, does more harm than good--they say GIS should be sent to borders,pretending to patrol them, to get them out of sight. Then, as soon as possible, we should bug out. Click on HAWKS

MONEY COMES FIRST: letter to J.A. Farrell(DenverPost)
Your column on 28Nov (unavailable by link) was excellent: you pointed out, following IMPERIAL HUBRIS author M. Scheuer, (a) that our feds (under Clinton and Bush) didn't make a really serious attempt to eliminate binLaden before he struck on 9/11.

Also, (b) you pointed out that if we keep giving a policy blank-check to Sharon, Muslim hatred of us will get implanted semi-permanently.
You say very well, "The choice is not between war and peace (we're already at war); the choice is between war and ENDLESS war."

You DON'T mention Bush's shameless underfunding of Homeland Protection vs. terrorist attack.We should be inspecting the thousands of huge ship-containers entering our ports every day, each of which could contain an atom bomb.

We should be recruiting nursing professors to train the many who would like to be nurses, if they could find a training program; we already face an urgent shortage of nurses, even before the inevitable first germ-attack.

And so on..there are many obvious precautions we could take to ward off attack (or to repair and heal after the attacks that get through)--but these are neglected because they're expensive. The Bushies spend all our money on tax breaks for the rich, the $1100 millions per DAY shovelled to the Pentagon, and the $6 billion per month we spend on the Iraq fiasco.
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In the same issue of the POST is an important column on China-American tensions. One main source of Chinese worry is not mentioned: the 'strategy' document issued by the Bushies in Sept.'02 threatening (preposterously) a first-strike at any nation that dared to try to catch up with us in weapons!
(The whole world is taking that as Bush's MEIN KAMPF; their response, presumably, is to develop 2d-strike deterrence capacity(nuclear or germ-war) : "You can destroy us--but FROM OUR GRAVE we can cause you unacceptable damage."
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The ridiculous part is that, while claiming to fear great danger from China, the Bushies are helping them to get rich at our expense by letting them flood the U.S. with imports, while our corporations replace American workers with Chinese workers, by outsourcing.

In both cases (our danger from Muslim terrorists, and an eventual threat from China), all foreign-policy considerations are swamped by the concern to further swell the pockets of Bush's wealthy friends.

What to do about Iran? D.C. hawks would love to attack--but only if Iraq is stable enough after another year..(likely!) "Iran could make Iraq into a living hell for America!"

"We should encourage anti-regime forces..CIA should put spies on the ground.."(Likely!!)

They've quit chattering about 'regime-change'.

"We have no policy.." /"It's a mess." FinancialTimes
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Gen.Abizaid (our top Middle-East commander, and perhaps smarter than the average general--he speaks Arabic!) is quite puzzled at the way other countries think they can defy America and get away with it. Don't they understand about our apocalyptic nuclear force?

Abizaid, like most Americans, has not thought carefully enough about the concept of '2d-strike-deterrent capacity': "Your h-bombs can destroy us--but FROM OUR GRAVE--with our nukes or germs--we can damage you considerably!")

SOCIAL SECURITY SCAM WILL COST: The Bushies want to help their stock-selling buddies by offering ordinary Americans the choice of buying stocks instead of getting standard fixed payments for social security.

To critics they'll say, "Oh, you don't trust Americans to manage their own finances." Of course not--many, many Americans are fools about money, trusting their own ignorance to pick football winners in pools, and stocks.

Many Americans will grab this chance to gamble away their money even more. But it turns out that 'in the short run' this move will plunge U.S. even deeper in debt! This scam could require MORE borrowing of up to trillions of dollars (that's millions of millions). NYTIMES

However, in the long run (they say..) REUTERS

INSURGENTS GRAB CITY FOR HOURS: 100 insurgents attacked a city north of Baghdad. They held the city hall & 2 police stations for a couple of hours, before being driven out.CNEWS

What these hit-and-run attacks demonstrate is how vulnerable Iraq is to the guerillas, who can attack anywhere. (U.S. troops are occupied in Fallujah and in a 'sweep' through an insecure area south of Baghdad.)

Earlier an 'insurgent' posting on internet said they planned to kidnap relatives of our top puppet, Allawi. Later, by God, they DID manage to kidnap 3 of his relatives( releasing them later).ABC/NEWS Once again, this caper was meant to show,presumably, that if even Allawi's relatives can't be protected by U.S. and allies...
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A U.S. officer near Mosul said, "This is a war driven by intelligence..doing the job with a conventional army is like teaching an elephant to ballet dance."
(Intelligence?! Their ONLY INTERPRETER was wounded, replaced later.)

The native militia collapsed earlier before insurgent attack. They're trying to recruit and train a militia. Desertions are high.

Informers sneak in with names of 'insurgents'...but these might be just names of the informer's enemies...

"Insurgencies take years to put down..this one is just a toddler." Fin.Times

50 assassinated bodies (presumably of people who have collaborated with U.S.) have been found in Mosul streets this week. GUARDIAN
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Maybe we can persuade voters of the folly of this fiasco NEXT ELECTION, when it's still going on.

NUNS ! The piece below on Sister Philomena ('the most impressive human I've ever met') shows how wonderful nuns can be. But the stories remembered most vividly by people who attended Catholic schools are about the ferocious nuns (often from Ireland).

We were taught in Cresco,Ia. by the Sisters of Charity of the BlessedVirginMary, called the 'BVM's'--or, by my one bitter cousin, the 'BlackViciousMaggots'. This was an overstatement, but... I met one young BVM and she told me that, teaching 60 kids in a room (2 grades) she was being turned into an animal. Many of the ones I dealt with had already turned.
One picked me up when I was in 3d grade and hurled me at a radiator--at least that's how I remember it--maybe she just shoved me..

I took piano lessons at the convent. Above the piano was a six-foot horizontal photo of a dead nun, Mother Mary Clark, foundress of the BVM Order. What fascinated me morbidly was not that she was in a coffin, but that on her head was just a white bed-cap, not the full square box these nuns usually wore. (My mother taught in a bigoted Baptist Kansas town; the students asked her if the nuns wore those strange boxes on their head to hide their horns. Mother said, "Of course not!" but then she got wondering..why else would you wear a box on your head? )

In 5th-grade a BVM (Sister Mary Basile--young and beautiful--she later left the Order) said, "It's time you learned to spell!" She heard my spelling with a yardstick over my head. She didn't hit me hard, but she hit me often, at every mistake. To this day, I am a magnificent speller. When young people tell me "You can't force a child to learn!", I demur.

We may not have faced a random sample of BVMs. In high-school I made friends with a sensible Sister Mary Cletus..I asked her once if she was happy to be assigned to my home-town.
"Sonny," she replied, "Cresco is where bad nuns go." I nearly said that was my impression, but I had the good sense to shut up.
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I was reminded of all this by the ad on blogspot.com for the Sisters of St.Joseph, recruiting girls to offer 'loving service'. My brother was taught by these Sisters; he said most of them were nice. But there was a Sister Samuela, who resembled a gorilla in a nun's habit--resembled in build, but not with the gentle temperament gorillas are now reputed to have.

One time my brother was standing in line going up some stairs; he felt someone cuff him on the back of the head. Thinking it was the guy behind him, he gave him a very vigorous elbow in the ribs, without looking around. Then he turned, to see Sister Samuela tumbling down the stairs. Fifty years later he still dreams of seeing her hit the ground and rebound instantly, charging UP the stairs like a locomotive. He fled prudently and stayed out of school for a week while my mother explained to Sister Samuela about his mistake.
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The nuns gave us a very good basic education. (I said afterwards, it's better to twitch after graduation than to go to a gentle public school where you're not educated, and then have REASON to twitch after graduation.) They also taught us sublime Latin hymns and great folk-songs. We even learned to dance the Irish jig.
And the Irish folk-lore! for instance, this tale:

This lad had two unfortunate habits. a) He entertained dirty thoughts, each instance of which is, of course, a mortal sin, meriting Hell--if before death you don't go to Confession. (b) he loved to listen to oncoming trains, with his ear right against the tracks. Well, a train cut off his head.

But LUCKILY he was wearing his BROWN SCAPULAR (a small, complex piece of cloth which guaranteed that you would not die without access to a priest.) So the severed head lived long enough to confess his awful sins and get absolution.
(Later I discovered a very similar story in a Calderon play of the sixteenth century.)
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But once again, to get all this nun-slander out of your system, click on this wonderful nun PHILOMENA.

The following appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on 11/16/04 written by Joe Blundo, a Dispatch columnist.
-----------------------------------
Canada is busy sending back Bush-dodgers. The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, andagree with Bill O'Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night."I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whoseacreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry."He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields."Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk.

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves."A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.

When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watchNASCAR.

In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border.Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers."If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show,we get suspicious about their age," an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating and organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies."I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada,Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close toCheney said."We're going to have some Peter, Paul &Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."
----------------
This is funny but misleading. The proper attitude of emigrants is contempt, not fear--contempt not just for the Bushies, but for 51% of their fellow citizens,.
No matter how many thousands of votes Bush stole this time, we must face it that about half the voters, after 4 years of clear experience, REELECTED THOSE BLOODTHIRSTY CROOKS AND FOOLS.

Emigrants should feel as Jesus told the apostles to feel about towns that didn't welcome the Gospel: "Shake the dust from your feet."

During the Viet war, so many U.S. philosophy profs emigrated to Canada that questions were asked in parliament about too many foreign philosophy profs.
(One dept. chairman told me, "We hired a peacenik U.S. prof--only to find out that he carried a gun!")
-------------
Why don't I emigrate? Actually, because my wife would never leave her hundred sensible friends here and her grandchildren. But I can tolerate staying:
I have my front window blocked by a huge pinyon pine, so I don't have to see my neighbor across the street with his 'Freedom First: Peter Coors" sign. (Besides, Pete lost!) We have a store of books and classical music CDs, so I can spend hours not thinking about the awful 51%.

In fact, in Ft.Collins, probably more than 1 in 2 strangers you meet are sane.
When we were waving anti-war signs on corners, every week (as the Iraq war was more obviously a disaster) we got more waves and very few fingers.

(I kind of missed the shouts of 'GET A JOB!' aimed at my 74-year-old carcass. When people yelled 'Commie!', Mary responded "You're SO twentieth-century!" Such responses reasssured us that our opponents were not thinking better than we were.)

So far, America controls people by greed, not fear. Since we are financially secure, we can be TRULY FREE here..so far.

GRADES PUMPED UP: (ltr to RMTNNEWS)
It's understandable that you use CU as your example of inflated grades(27Nov)--as certified right-wing fanatics, you're always out to discredit the school from 'the People's Republic of Boulder'. But profs from other Colorado universities may feel left out: their schools also pump up grades.

The trouble starts with the admissions process: to my knowledge, CSU has never voluntarily raised its entrance standards--only when the State Government has demanded it. Even so, 20% of our freshmen can be admitted ignoring ANY entrance standards--to allow for athletes and children of state legislators. [I haven't checked these claims recently.]

And the universities must accept students from junior colleges, who may get their 'tough' required courses out of the way there. I served on the 'flunk-out' committee; an unduly high proportion of potential flunk-outs were transfer students; as lax as CSU standards are,the junior college standards are even laxer, and many transfer students just can't adjust to tougher standards.
(I say 'potential' flunkouts, because only a tiny proportion of students ever flunk out finally; one committee-member said wryly, "The only way to get rid of an incompetent CSU student is to shoot him.")

Easy admissions may sound like merciful consideration for weak students. But add to that the custom of grading 'on the curve'--( almost every prof avoids giving a lot of D's and F's. In fact, most F's go to students who quit taking tests at some point and don't bother to drop the course. The adjunct-instructors with no tenure-security, you can bet, give almost none. SO: admitting and retaining incompetent students requires ever laxer 'curves'.

So the brighter students get automatic and effortless 'B's. That would be OK except for several considerations:

--first, let's consider the worldly students who understand the process cynically. A few of the brighter students work hard anyway, motivated by their own standards. But many are worried by the prospect of 'being a sucker' (a dreaded label in America); they don't want to work harder than they have to, and they can get a 'B' without studying much--which they do. Thus the low standards actually harm the typical brighter students--at least they encourage these students to harm themselves.

--As a result, they spend 17 years in school (often, they need more than 4 years to get a degree--partly because they can drop any course half-way through without penalty, if they're getting a 'C' or lower.) Then they still are weak in reading comprehension, grammatical writing, and algebraic-type analytic skills. [See the NAEP annual surveys of college grads' competence.]

Earlier that wasn't so bad, because they competed only with other U.S. students, equally qualified. But now, what with outsourcing, they'll be competing with the top 1% of Chinese and Indian students: millions of youths who are well-trained, hard working, and available for pennies on the dollar as wages.

Awful trouble lies ahead--I can even see the possibility that the economic value of a U.S. bachelor's degree will sink so far that college enrollments here will drop significantly--if, for instance, younger siblings and cousins see that our graduates can't pay off their educational loans.

--Before, liberal arts departments had trouble lining up enough students to justify their large faculties, while technical departments had a surplus of applicants. Natrurally, the liberal arts standards were much, much easier than those in technical departments. Unfortunately, many students concluded from this that liberal arts studies were B.S.,[not realizing that at real universities, l.a.studies could be quite challenging] while technical studies were serious.

However, the technical departments are now REALLY short of applicants, especially with fewer foreign students applying..so, presumably, they have lowered their standards to graduate as many students as they can--so this particular differential problem has gone away. The cynically aware students now think that ALL U.S. college studies are B.S.
---------------
What of the students too naive to realize that their 'B's are fake? They think,sadly, that they have actually learned adequately.

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know important things. He can always learn. But if this person thinks he DOES understand, he then counts as STUPID. Because these latter types don't see the need to learn, they can't and won't learn. Thus the slogan: "THE WICKED CAN REPENT--BUT STUPID IS FOREVER."

The profs who make typically weak students self-confident about their learning are converting them from merely ignorant to stupid.

Small wonder that Americans with bachelor's degrees said they'd vote for Bush.

FROTHING CONDEMNATION: The head of the HumanRtsCommission of Turkish parliament, a big gun in majority party, has denounced U.S. activities in Iraq as genocide, as atrocities worse than those of pharaohs or Hitler. Inform.ClearingHouse

Turkey used to be a main ally of Israel and U.S. Their sudden refusal (by the Islamist Parliament) to let our troops cross Turkey interfered tellingly with our invasion. Turkish army used to put down Islamist majority..but now Turkey wants into European Union, so they are acting democratically.

SADR SAYS, 'BOYCOTT THE ELECTIONS!' One of 2 top Shiite leaders says that proper elections can't be held while U.S. army is in control.
IslamOnline (for what that source is worth.)

(The other Shiite leader,Sistani, has issued fatwa ORDERING Shiites to vote, as a very strict obligation!)

Sadr has accused Shiite rivals of backing Allawi's regime in violating the terms of the peace agreement between Sadrites and govt.
---------
Top Sunni parties are calling for delayed election; but top SHIITE parties demand election on 30 January.

Allawi has acknowledged the Sunni demands, based on fears that few Sunnis will have the courage to vote..but Allawi makes this sensible point: who says that, after six months, the security situation will be any better ? !
YAHOO/NEWS

Allawi now says the election will NOT be postponed.ABC/NEWS

A DAILY EYE-WITNESS REPORT FROM BAGHDAD CIVILIAN can be read at RIVERBEND

CHAOS OR ELECTIONS? 50 Bodies have shown up in Mosul in the last 10 days. 2 more GIs died in Fallujah (how many more injured, to add to the about-1000 GIs killed,maimed,wounded so far in Iraq JUST THISMONTH ? !) ---------
Few U.S. reports put it this way: the guerillas responded to our Fallujah seige with a counter-offensive all over the map. Attacks doubled, to 100 a day.

Generals are calling for thousands more GIs in Iraq (never mind the reason).
Pentagon is finding it very difficult to round up extra GIs to send there.
Knight-Ridder

Natl.Guard batallion complains publicly that they're being sent to Iraq under-trained and under-equipped..(They seem to think that
Regular Army regards them as cannon-fodder.) LATIMES
========================
Prominent Kurds & Sunnis met in Baghdad--to sound of gunfire outside-- to ask that elections be delayed for 6 months. (But why should they count, when Shiites are 60% of total population, and they want elections now?

Sooner or later, Kurds AND Sunnis will be (in terms of legal-political situation) at the mercy of Shiite super-majority..whether Sunnis boycott election or participate--why delay? The newly elected parliament will either have sense to guarantee concessions to Kurdish & Sunni-Arab minorities, or they won't..Postponing elections will not affect that situation.)

There's little reason to think the guerilla attacks will be lessened in the next 6 months, so election would be more feasible then. However, Allabi's govt. is going to 'talk to' some Baathist leaders, outside the country. (When?) The hope is, I suppose, to 'buy off' the Baathists, to break up the present alliance between militarily-sophisticated Baathists and fanatically dedicated Islamists.

Perhaps in writing the constitution, Kurd/Sunni vetoes could be offered for key issues--e.g., these laws could pass only by 75% vote of Parliament, and Sunnis were guaranteed at least 30% of the seats. If this were offered AND GUARANTEED, then Sunnis would have reason to join in--not boycott--election..due in less than 10 weeks!

Shiites would be really crazy not to offer generous guarantees to the Kurds, who have the only real Iraq army (trained by Israeli experts!) and whose population wants complete independence from rat's-nest of Southern Iraq.
(Their leaders are asking for 'federalism' (i.e., de facto independence camouflaged as EXTENSIVE regional autonomy.)
==============
SECURITY OF ELECTION: The election ID will be ration-cards. So the grocery stores are ordered to give out registration forms with the standard bag of groceries--if they don't, the grocers lose their jobs. But in one section of Baghdad, grocers whisper:"Don't even tell your children I gave you these forms; I could be killed!"

And those who take the forms are endangered. In one place, half of those eligible for groceries this month are passing them up, for fear guerilla spies will think they're registering ! But if they don't pick up the groceries this month, they're told, they won't get any next month! INDEPENDENT

Headline: BUSH SEEKS FUNDS FOR ABSTINENCE EDUCATION.

He has to make gestures to repay pious yahoos who voted for him.

Abstinence makes sense among 12 years olds.
But people are getting married later and later. NO SOCIETY, I believe, HAS EVER ASKED TYPICAL PEOPLE TO ABSTAIN FROM SEX UNTIL THEY'RE 30 YEARS OLD!

Headline: BUSH WILL TRY TO HELP IRELAND PEACE (thinking to equal Clinton's successful efforts.) Actually, Bush has united North Ireland and Eire--people in both countries LOATHE BUSH.

WIND POWER: Advocates claim it can provide 12% of Europe's power-needs by 2020--and that an area the size of Greece can supply all the power needs of Europe! Opponents cite the danger to birds--SciNews

Another sci.study said that wind-turbines did NOT kill birds!

The likelihood is that windpower progress will be in Europe, and when U.S. finally wakes up, we'll have to pay for patents, just as we'll have to pay for medical treatments using stem-cell research.

Handing over power to representatives of the dumber half of Americans will cost us in the long run.

MORE ON UNCOUNTED CASUALTIES:
the STARS & STRIPES is a paper for U.S. military,authorized by DofDefense, but editorially independent.

In their edition for overseas (not read in America?) on 26 NOV, this paper buried (in the middle of a story about VA chief) this bombshell:
OVER 20,000 GIs have been medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan--practically all from Iraq--presumably for serious troubles; scratches are treated in Iraq--to German hospital (let alone those evacuated directly to America.)

Add to this the 1200 GI dead (100 just this month) and the one in 5 GIs who come home 'whole' but shell-shocked, and you glimpse the incredible human cost we're incurring for Bush's unnecessary and now pointless war..all this suffering is for nothing!

All this is plus the 50,000 Iraqi women & children killed, and the $6 billion-per-month money cost of this fiasco.

Not to worry--this Bush-team is safe in power for 4 more years.

Laugh at Bushie folly during the day; weep for their victims by night.

DESTROY, BUT NOT DEFEND:

GREEN ZONE VULNERABLE: 4 Brit-employees INSIDE THE SACRED GREEN ZONE were killed by shells, 15 wounded. REUTERS

We can destroy Fallujah in a week, but we can't protect the haven of our top honchos; we can't protect the oilfields; we can't protect our native militia, who are slaughtered regularly, nor our police stations. We can't protect the airport, nor the short road to the airport.

[Earlier, we came across 40 tons of HIGH-EXPLOSIVES; we didn't defend them--we let looters remove them.]

We can't protect our GIs: over 25,000 casualties during this war. (see piece
above). That's almost one in ten of the 300,000 troops we have rotated in and out of Iraq. (133 GIs killed THIS MONTH, over 900 wounded.)
---------------------
This situation reflects our broader world situation: we can destroy any 2 nations in a day(with our H-bombs) , but we can't defend our HOMELAND from dozens of kinds of terrorist attack.

Bush's America is like a helpless, muscle-bound Giant facing agile, death-defying jiu-jitsu foes.

GUERILLA STRATEGY IN FALLUJAH: It was perhaps a tactical mistake for the guerillas to set up Fallujah as a 'safe-haven'. Then, when U.S. attacked, many, many guerilla weapons were lost.

But the 'safe-haven' move still may count as a strategic plus. The incredible brutality of the U.S. 'collective punishment' of all Fallujans--e.g., CUTTING OFF WATER to the city for more than a week!--has been circulated all over the Muslim world (e.g., TV shot of marine shooting half-dead Iraqi!)
Presumably these atrocities will recruit even more Muslims worldwide as terrorists or terrorist-supporters.

One would guess that ordinary people--even terrorist-supporters--in other cities (e.g., Mosul) will not stand now to have their city turned into a guerilla safe-haven. But guerillas may not NEED a city-wide safe-haven!

LONG-DISTANCE ATROCITIES: [letter to various papers]
It's interesting that this historic story has been ignored by most U.S. media:

In REUTERS, 21 Nov, a marine officer in Fallujah (by now mostly retaken) said, "We want to make the situation secure enough so we can turn on the Power and WATER supplies again..it's not secure enough."

An Iraqi journalist stuck in Fallujah (one of 30-50 thousand civilians who foolishly remained, even after being warned by U.S. to get out) mentioned 'no WATER' as one awful aspect of the seige. Indeed, until now there has been no announcement that the water for Fallujans has yet been 'turned on'.

This confirms the suspicion that our Fallujah attack was all along intended, not just to drive out the guerillas--with plenty of warning, most of them got out beforehand!--but to destroy the city as collective-punishment inflicted on all the inhabitants for 'not turning in' the guerillas.

The civilians who fled will find their houses are rubble when they return. The Allawi regime has said they will rebuild..when, & how much?

This seige resembles (on a much smaller scale) our fire-bombing of Tokyo, our destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as an atrocity deliberately aimed at civilians.

Decades ago we were horrified when the Nazis, to punish the killing of a German officer by local partisans, executed a dozen men from Lidice, Czechoslovakia. Such pedestrian, face-to-face atrocities are nothing compared to the long-distance atrocities cited above.

Of course the guerillas are also to blame, for making Fallujah into their 'safe-haven'. But responsibility for murder is NOT LESSENED BY BEING DIVIDED. Both sets of hands are dripping with innocent blood.

CONFLICTS HERE & THERE: 2 bombs killed, wounded many in Samara (a town recently 'conquered' by U.S.)/ Oil-pipeline blown up/ Oil exports from South cut in half. TurkishPress/AgenceFrancePresse

[This web-site doesn't pretend to be objective. I present the bad news about Iraq & Bushies. I figure the Bushie/Pentagon spin dealers, working with their tame U.S. media, publicize the good news enough.]

KREMLIN BACKSLIDING TOWARD AUTHORITARIAN GOVT. CONTROL OF ECONOMY: but is this all bad?

Russia has experienced social disaster by its lunge toward capitalist democracy.
Their population is actually DROPPING--unheard of till now in a big country without war or famine!

It's conceivable that Russia is not 'ready for democracy'. It's conceivable also that U.S. is not 'ready'--but the dictatorship that would replace our regime would be even worse.

However, for countries that have not yet moved toward complete capitalist democracy (China has gone capitalist, but not democratic) world experience may dictate a very slow move in that direction.

HOW LONG ? ! GIs found a 'stunning' number of weapons in a Fallujah mosque--(also in Mosul)--'enough to take over the country!'. But a London analyst says "They have a limitless supply of weapons."
He says GIs will have to stay on in Iraq for TEN OR TWENTY YEARS.
BLOOMBERG

60 Sunni factions are boycotting the election, but 200 'political entities' have signed up for it. IndiaTimes
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CHEMICAL WEAPONS? Iraqis claim they found a small factory for chemical weapons in Fallujah. U.S. authorities doubt this. REUTERS

Iraqis seem to have no motive to lie about this. U.S. spokesmen do have a motive--to avoid undermining the morale of our troops and their families at home. The new gases can kill with one drop on a fingertip.
----------
MEANWHILE, IN MOSUL: While we were conquering Fallujah(300,000 population)--at the cost of 1000 GIs killed or wounded-- we incurred much weaker control in MOSUL (2 million people). The battle is still going on, with a small unit of Americans, and many Kurdish troops, trying mainly to protect Kurds and Christians & Turkomen living in Mosul.

But the Sunnis may get further enraged by this Kurdish 'incursion'into a mainly Sunni city--the chance for civil war is increased. GUARDIAN

THE UNCOUNTED CASUALTIES: Besides the 1200 dead GIs and the over-9000 admittedly wounded in combat BOSTON,

..Besides these, thousands of GIs have been evacuated to German or U.S. hospitals in the category of 'ill or injured in non-combat situations.'

This has been obvious for months-- but finally (under pressure from 60MINUTES) the Pentagon admits that 'more than 15,000' of the 'non-combat' casualties have been evacuated. CBS/NEWS

That adds up to over 25,000 U.S. admitted casualties in this war (a 'casualty', by official Pentagon definition, is any GI out of commission for even a short time..tame U.S. media have simply redefined 'casualty' as a GI killed.)

The Pentagon takes advantage of the American tendency not to count the wounded (pretending to themselves that all wounds are slight). But now it's pretty clear that at least half of Americans don't care that much about the dead or wounded GIs (100 dead and 900 wounded this month; 800 wounded--admitted--in August.)

After all, war isn't real; it's a TV event. Gay marriage is a more important issue.
All that Pentagon sneaky pretence was pretty well wasted.

COULD THE SUNNI GUERILLAS BE BOUGHT OFF? There are about 6 million Sunni Arabs(20% of 30 million Iraqis). Suppose they were each ASSURED of getting an annuity for the rest of their lives..would that persuade them to quit the guerilla war? (At least, would it persuade the 'active sympathizers', who hide and finance the actual guerilla killers, to cease such support?)

Of course they wouldn't trust the new Shiite government to keep paying the annuity. But $3000 per year for each Sunni would amount to only $20 billion a year--while we are now paying $6 billion EACH MONTH ($72 billion a year) to fight them. $12,000 a year for each Sunni--a fortune in that part of the world--would cost no more than the war is costing us now. ($72 billion a year equals about 60 days of money shovelled to Pentagon now.)

Suppose the $3000 annuity, for 10 years, were financed through some trusted world bank. The money could come from U.S. (which has most to gain) and from other countries, who PROFESS to want peace in Iraq.

One problem: Shiites might say,"Well, we'll go guerilla too, to get paid off." But Shiites have a fortune in oil on their lands, if only guerillas would quit sabotaging their facilities. (Exports were just cut 40% by very recent sabotage.)
Shiites and Kurds would gain enormously just from peace.

Another problem: the Sunni guerillas might be so consumed by hate for Americans that they'd scorn the payoff. (They might even use the money to buy more weapons! ) But it's said now that they have 'endless supply of money' for killing already. (On the other hand, note this curious fact: even with a TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLAR BOUNTY on his head, Zarqawi has NOT beeen turned in--and he is a foreigner.)
----------------
Bushies would never be sensible enough to even consider a solution like this; but it would be nice to know that such a solution to this nightmare could even be described plausibly.

'GI SNIPERS KILLED CHILDREN' in Fallujah, say witnesses, and medical clinics were shelled knowingly. U.S.. spokesmen say they may have been killed by INSURGENT snipers. INDEPENDENT

Once again: in the long run, what counts is not what really happened, but what typical Iraqis--and Muslims worldwide--BELIEVE. Guess which story they're going to believe here!

'OVER NINE HUNDRED GIs WOUNDED IN NOVEMBER', army spokesmen admit.

A huge guerilla arms-cache found near Mosul: e.g., 25 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.

SADR spokesman says rival Shiite parties are encouraging govt. to violate peace-agreement by continuing to arrest Sadrite followers, and not releasing those in captivity.

SISTANI is trying to organize a comprehensive Shiite slate for the Jan.elections.

but, says a Shiite leader ,"We're urging Sadr's followers to remain calm, so a SHIITE WAR WILL NOT ERUPT." !! FinancialTimes

In Middle East, oil money commonly goes to elite controlling govt. Common people are subsidized more or less, not taxed, not represented in govt.

Iraq oil people say that their oil money (once the sabotage lets up!) will go to rebuilding oil infrastructure and education. They talk of the oil money being divided 'equitably' among Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Shiites. REUTERS

Right now, Sunni guerillas don't seem to count on such equitable distribution; else they'd cut the sabotage. (As I understand it, a relatively small part of the oil is on Sunni-Arab land.)

It's conceivable that the guerillas could be 'bought off' by being promised a disproportionate share of oil money. But why would they trust the new Shiite govt. to continue this subsidy?

ELECTIONS SAFE? Iraq's interim defense minister says no...besides, Iraqis don't know what elections are, who are the candidates, what voters are...(he is alienated from the rest of our puppet govt.)
----------------
DIFFERENT TACTICS FROM FALLUJAH CAMPAIGN IN NEW OFFENSIVE: This may be because this time U.S. forces are not out to destroy a region as collective punishment for 'harboring terrorists', as they seem to have been in Fallujah. CNN

Without mentioning 'collective punishment' in Fallujah, U.S. spokesmen say this operation is 'surgical' vs. a 'mass assault'. It's mentioned again that in Fallujah they nabbed 1000 men..one U.S. officer admitted that most of these are not insurgents.
Brag is that communications have been cut between insurgents in Fallujah and those in Baghdad--which should interfere with big attacks in Baghdad, like suicide bombings. We'll see. Iraqi official predicted attacks in Baghadad also vs. insurgents before January election. REUTERS
==========
THANKFUL? A Sports-columnist cites a woman soldier who's thankful this year that she lost only one hand in Iraq. Bush-supporters (those without friends or relatives serving in Iraq) may feel thankful, subconsciously, that we can inflict war-horrors on another country without suffering them ourselves.

However, every knowledgeable observer expects more big terrorist attacks on our Homeland. We are vulnerable in dozens of ways, even more so because the Bushies have shamelessly underfunded Homeland Defense. BinLaden has said publicly that he plans 'collective punishment' for the Americans who have harbored what he considers the Bush 'terrorists'.

Such 'collective punishment' is as senseless against Americans as it was vs. Fallujans. U.S. children are not guilty; nor are the 49% who voted against Bush!

The puzzle is why such attacks on our Homeland haven't happened yet. Such thankfulness may be premature.

WHAT ABOUT THE KURDS? One in five Iraqis in the North are Muslim but not Arabs.They were swallowed up in the English conquest of Mesopotamia. For the last decade, they have been de facto independent, with their own civil administration and army independent of Baghdad.

Most Kurds want complete independence from Baghdad--but the leaders know that this move would lead to open civil war. The compromise is a 'federal' arrangement, but problems still remain in the details.

Saddam ejected Kurds from the city of Kirkuk (sitting on a sea of oil) and sent in subsidized Sunni settlers. Now the Kurds want those settlers ejected, and the former inhabitants restored. But Baghdad balks.

Kurdish soldiers have been incorporated into our native militia (our most reliable allies). But Sunnis resent, say, Kurdish militia enforcing U.S. rule in Mosul. Trouble lies ahead. INDEPENDENT

NATO VOTED TO HELP TRAIN IRAQ POLICE, but then many NATO countries have refused to do so. GUARDIAN

CHINA TELLS OFF BUSHIES! The biggest part of our trade deficit (imports outweighing exports) is because of our super-cheap imports from China.
Every time we cheapen our dollar(to help our exports), China automatically cheapens their currency to match. We complain about this!

A Chinese banker just said that U.S. always blames others for its problems.
Since Chinese labor-costs are only 3% (per hour) of U.S. labor costs, U.S. should quit trying to compete in textiles, shoes AND SHOULD GIVE UP AGRICULTURE. FinTimes

( Imagine the rage of Wyoming & NorthDakota Senators--who have equal power with California's 2 Senators !!)
-----------------
OPTIMISTS NOTE THAT PRESENT OUTSOURCING HAS TAKEN RELATIVELY FEW U.S. JOBS SO FAR.. but what about the future? Any job where problem and answer can be stated in words or numbers--such jobs can be outsourced costlessly and almost instantaneously--and this outsourcing is rewarded by Bushie tax-breaks.

Our college grads (often semi-literate, semi-numerate, lazy, and childishly addicted to spending ! ) will be competing with, say, the top 1% of Chinese youth--maybe half a million Chinese who are well-trained and hard-working, and willing to work for 3 cents on the dollar!

A friend just self-published a book; he found it cheaper to have this book printed in China, then shipped back here!

This competition will be a slaughter--unless our govt. puts a tariff on Chinese imports..but that would be WICKED PROTECTIONISM.
-----------
MORE FOREIGNERS WILL WORK HERE: Congress just approved of adding to the 65,000 elite foreign workers (mainly in InformationTechnology) coming into America each year, another 20,000. FinancialTimes

(One wonders how many U.S. IT workers,threatened in many ways by foreign competitors, voted for GOP this year.)

A headline says "2d-TERM CHANGES PUT BUSH FIRMLY ON TOP." No, they put Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice firmly on top.

HAVE WE REALLY HELPED IRAQIS? UN says malnutrition among the Iraq children has NEARLY DOUBLED since we invaded. GUARDIAN
----------------------
AID CONVOY TURNED AWAY: The first independent aid-convoy trying to help Fallujah 'had to turn back because of security concerns.' Boston.com

Ours was a LIMITED triumph in Fallujah.

Actually, the aid-convoy reached an aid-site, but then was 'advised' by U.S. officers 'not to give out aid.' Could all this be a continuation of collective punishment for the Fallujans? After all, what good is aid when the Americans have cut off WATER for the Fallujans?
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ANOTHER OFFENSIVE: 5000 U.S., Brit troops attacked 'triangle of death' insurgent hotbed South of Baghdad. Boston.Com

Guerillas in this 'triangle' have severely cut highway connections between Baghdad and Shiite areas in South. REUTERS

After each such offensive, don't pay much attention to how many guerillas we allegedly captured or killed. Ask instead whether the guerilla attacks were weakened after the offensive.

EVEN THE HAWKS NOW SAY 'BUG OUT' ! They finally realize what should have been obvious all along: that the presence of our troops, for one reason or another, so enrages many Iraqis as to strengthen the resistance--in other words, that our troop-presence there does more harm than good.

Some want us to begin in January (others in April) to pull out and engage only in guarding the borders vs. guerilla infiltration (a trivial task). The point is to get our troops out of the firing line, and let happen what will happen. BostonGlobe

On the one hand, why should anyone heed these bloodthirsty fools, who helped get us into this mess? On the other hand, we should rejoice that they finally agree with sensible observers that the badly-trained GIs are doing more harm than good among the the over-excitable Iraqis.
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It's disturbing that, just when it's obvious we should pull out (a 'cutting back' of troops would leave the remaining troops more than ever at the mercy of the guerillas!)...just now the military honchos want to send over thousands more GIs! (see piece below.) Perhaps the game is to bugout of Iraq so we can attack Iran !

MORE TROOPS ON THE WAY: Three to Five thousand more U.S. troops are needed in Iraq. (added to the 140,000 there now.)Perhaps an airborne division will be sent.

Why? The official story is that, now that we have the guerillas on the run, we need extra troops to keep up the offensive pressure. [WashPost, cited by DenverPost22Nov]

C'mon. What offensive pressure? We had to pull marines out of Fallujah (in spite of grave warnings) to try to regain control in Mosul. U.S.general says there is no reliable police-force now in Mosul...what about elections? A whole warehouse full of voter-registration cards was burned. Several election officials have fled.

'No Fallujah-type campaign by U.S. is planned. said the general. Fallujah was accepting of the insurgents, while most in Mosul are not..well, in a few neighborhoods.." GUARDIAN

(This confirms the suspicion that the carnage in Fallujah was intended as such, as collective punishment for the ordinary citizens of Fallujah.)

Baghdad has turned into an absolute battleground, not a city.

Two possible real explanations for the troop increase:

1) We've given up hope of having our native militia maintain lawn'order for the election. So we must bring in reinforcements. But what about after the election? Will we let chaos reign then?
or
2) We plan to bomb the hell out of Iran, then rush in airborne troops to grab their oilfields.

You can bet Iran is bracing itself for such an attack. As I said earlier, they have several forms of retaliation available.

"LEAD, OR FOLLOW,OR GET OUT OF THE WAY !" is a favorite pseudo-macho slogan of the GOP cheerleaders who like to WATCH war.

Well, I don't have the deceptive skills to lead the 51%, the dumbbells who control this country.And I certainly don't intend to follow. Nor to get out of the way; I'm not emigrating to Canada. I'm just going to keep bitching, pointing out the crimes and follies of the Bushies back in power.

The Bushies now control firmly all 3 branches of fed.govt, and the media: Fox viewers outnumber CNN viewers nearly 3 to 1. You'd think they'd relax, dismiss criticism with a shrug. But tyrants don't like criticism; look at all the pains they go to, to cover-up their crimes and follies, even when their power is not threatened. So I'd expect that dissenters will be pressured more than ever.

BRITS IN IRAQ DANGER FOR YEARS, says Brit commander in Iraq.
Blairites say 'BlackWatch' will be 'homefor Christmas' (the survivors) but they can't say beyond that...INDEPENDENT

There's a chance that Laborites, fearing their drop in public support, will quit backing Blair on Iraq..might even dump Blair. Luckily the Tories are still loathed, so beneficiaries might be the sensible Social Democrats.

DOLLAR KEEPS SLIDING: Till now 2/3ds of world's cash-reserves have been in dollars (providing U.S.with cheap loans)..but that tower may be tipping. Central banks could quit buying U.S. dollar-bonds, sink their cash instead in Euros.

If a couple of small nations started the outflow, a panic could start. Everyone would suffer, because sinking dollar means that bonds bought previously with expensive dollars must be sold for cheap dollars. Interest rates in U.S. would jump.
REUTERS

Asia owns more than $2 trillion (2 millions of millions) of our bonds. Private investors have cut back on their buying of U.S. bonds; only central banks are holding up their price. (They don't dare sell out quickly; the dollar's value then would sink like a stone, and with it the value of the bonds they hold. But sooner or later....) The U.S. is behaving like a BananaRepublic.THE ECONOMIST

Trouble is: the first to sell sinking dollars will lose less--so it will pay, even with losses, to sell early!

A rumor that the Chinese would cut back on dollars (after the Russ said they'd go more for Euros) plunged the dollar..it recovered a little when the rumor was denied..but suddenly the danger seemed more real. REUTERS
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As of 26Nov, dollars has sunk for 7 straight weeks. And even Central bankers talk openly of cutting their gigantic holdings in dollars. (Private investors have already cut back on buying dollars.) BLOOMBERG
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As long as China's currency is automatically tied to value of dollar, every U.S. devaluation will be matched by Chinese devaluation, making exports of BOTH countries cheaper and imports more expensive..Chinese economy is by far the greater exporter--U.S. is top importer...poor European exporters are the victims.
Sooner or later, they'll have to try to devalue the Euro!
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Problem is that Bushies have recklessly abused the system, running up gigantic trade deficits and govt.deficits.
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Victor Keegan, prestigious Brit economist, lists reforms that would prevent a sudden, cataclysmic dollar decline. Reading them over, one sees it is practically impossible that the Bushies would institute such reforms. GUARDIAN

Trade dollars for Euros now!

WEEKS OR MONTHS IN FALLUJAH to make it safe for people to return, says Marine Officer. Theyre searching thru rubble for weapons, finding an incredible number of them. But they're slowed by random snipers (they unleashed a terrific barrage at one guy, but hit the wrong house. He got away.)

Some guerillas swim the Euphrates to get back into Fallujah for martyrdom.

One marine looked at a deep bomb-crater, said, "Hey, just put in a slide here and you'd have a theme-park, courtesy of U.S. airforce!' Cute.
REUTERS

Presumably they won't yet provide water for the thousands of civilians still in Fallujah.

MAJOR SOUTHERN PIPELINE is blown up, cutting Iraq oil-exports by FORTY PERCENT. Internatl. oil prices worked back up past $49 per barrel.
REUTERS

We'll see if such news dampens Bushie enthusiasm for bombing IRAN !

EGYPT CONFERENCE 'LEGITIMIZES OCCUPATION', says Muslim Scholars'Conference (Sunni group calling for boycott of Iraq election). Our puppet Allawi said the opposition are 'eventual losers' (meaning all Sunnis?)

The conference did not call for a definite timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops, but did say blandly that the mandate for these troops was not 'open-ended'. (The hell it's not.)

The conference called for Allawi to meet with all groups to get widest registration for voting. (Allawi meeting guerilla leaders ? ! ?) Conference called for an end to 'terrorism'. Boston.com/News

COMMISSION WON'T MEDDLE WITH LISTS: The Iraqi election-commission (a creature of our puppet regime) assures us it won't meddle with the candidate-lists submitted by 'political entities' (e.g., Sistani's movement)--it won't, for instance, ignore the list after the first 10 names. Instead it will use lists from 12 names to 275 names. XINHUA

The question is,will Sistani or Sadr stand for such meddling? They can fill the streets with protesters any time they choose.

Sadr has just thundered that our puppet regime has 'violated the agreement' that ended the Sadrite uprising in Najaf..so what now?
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We're reminded that 'it doesn't matter who votes--it's who counts the votes.'
Voting nowadays (e.g., in America) is a religious ritual, having little effect on who rules.

SUPERMAN HASN'T NOTICED THE KRYPTONITE (Ltr to USATODAY)
One StephanieLoranger (22Nov)worries about germ-war possibilities. She says we're relying only on 'defense'; we must also go for 'offense'. Apparently she means that our scientists must go on developing new virulent strains of microbes--e.g., one team just produced a new version of the 1918 flu virus that killed 20 million people. "The potential for such research to enhance human welfare far outweighs stopping it for fear of misuse." She offers no evidence for this comparison.

Of course she wants our government and the scientific community to monitor such pioneering for possible abuse...perhaps in the tough way the Bush FDA monitored the Chiron makers of flu-vaccine.

We constantly hear that the U.S. is the 'sole superpower' because of our superb bombs and missiles. But germ-war is the poor nation's H-bomb. We are about the only industrial country that neglects the public health needs of poor regions. The Bush team does nothing to recruit and train nurses, when we face a crucial shortage even before the inevitable first germ-attack.

A terrorist team (eager for martyrdom) could infect themselves and tour our Southern tier of states by Greyhound bus. By the time the new epidemic got diagnosed, it would have spread to our well-to-do, who will well deserve it.
We had better get over our arrogant assurance that we are a super-power. Superman doesn't realize that germ-war kryptonite makes him as helpless as mere humans.

BODY ARMOUR: low # of deaths, high proportion of maimed or wounded GIs.
At our German hospital where maimed or wounded or ill GIs are evacuated,
a top officer said that our very good body armour resulted in fewer deaths than expected. But of course the armour doesn't protect arms, legs OR HEADS.
DenverPost
In other words, we have a higher proportion than usual of maimed or wounded GIs...and some injuries (e.g., to brain or face) may be as bad as death, or even worse.
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The GI death-count for November is nearing 100. The Pentagon count of injured is only 325...but there's good reason to think Pentagon is taking advantage of Americans' not counting the wounded. DenverPost

SISTANI 'OVER THE TOP' on elections. This top Shiite cleric has issued a FATWA ordering Iraqis to vote, making this obligation equal to the central obligations of Islam. His writ will run among the Shia, even in the face of danger and intimidation. LATIMES

But what about the Sunnis? Their top clerics have called for a boycott of the election (which they couldn't win anyway, comprising only 20% of the Iraq population) and the guerillas say they'll kill anyone organizing for the election.

The Kurds will vote; so if only the 20% Sunnis abstain, will the elections mean much? Sistani is including non-Shiites among the slate he is backing, but will that be enough?

Which way will Sadr jump? How many votes can he muster for his slate (or will he back Sistani's slate?)

Why would we expect the guerilla violence to lessen after the election? (Only if the new Constitution gave unfair advantages to the Sunni would the ordinary Sunni be likely at all to quit backing the guerillas. ) It's pretty clear now that we cannot count on 'our' native militia to replace GIs to enforce lawn'order!

It's interesting that in his push for his people to vote, Sistani is saying that the election is the best or only way to get the Americans to leave!
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Sistani (silent about Fallujah slaughter of Sunnis) did condemn U.S. raid on a sacred Baghdad Sunni mosque. GUARDIAN

WHEN IS WAR JUSTIFIED? (A person in COMMENTS asked 'Well, then, when is war justified?" For a person who is not a complete pacifist,this is a complex question. After years of study on this topic, I've sketched out here a relatively brief answer--about 15 pages in print. Here I just present the first few paragraphs as a sample, for those who might be interested in this line of thought.
FIRST: WHEN IS KILLING AN INDIVIDUAL JUSTIFIED?

Most of us (philosophically, not leaning on 'God said so!') would reject a 'no-exception' rule against killing: for instance, if a raving lunatic is in your family's bedroom, waving a machine-gun--if you could kill him, you should. Sometimes a worthy end DOES justify a seemingly evil means!

But there are moral rules that are PRESUMPTIVE, not absolute. Such rules say that certain actions are to be PRESUMED wrong UNTIL they are satisfactorily justifed (e.g.) by real,proved NECESSITY. This kind of rule can be quite strict.
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And of course, any meaningful rule against KILLING HUMANS must be quite strict. Conrad Lorenz pointed out that, unlike wolves, we do not have strong, instinctive inhibitors against killing our own species..he says we should not say "Homo lupus hominis', but 'Homo raton hominis'--only the brown rat kills its own species with human-like enthusiasm.

Evolution is very,very slow; and Humanity is newly armed with cannons, machine-guns, bombers, nukes, and war-germs--we have changed our world far faster than evolutionary changes in our 'instincts' can keep up with. We have to deal with modern murder with instincts designed for a primitive world of thousands of years ago; back then, with feeble teeth and claws, we didn't really NEED instinctive inhibitors against killing our own kind. NOW WE DO! but we can't develop them in time.
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SO: for the species to survive, we need super-strong SOCIAL RULES against murder. Such a rule, I believe, was found in ancient Greece (against killing someone from your own group).If an important killing went unpunished, the whole city fell under a 'MIASMA', (e.g., a plague). This miasma was both deserving of punishment and 'unclean' (shaming). That's why (unlucky) King Oedipus of Thebes had to investigate the killing of the former king--because the priests said that a current plague was such a MIASMA.

In Greece, of course, killing people outside your own City was not just allowed, but was much admired. Only the heretic Socrates said that even just killing was, though often necessary, never splendid.

And then (after Alexander's Empire and the Roman Empire had made people think more easily of foreigners as truly human--with more common inter-city marriages, it was hard to see your mate and in-laws as non-human!)--then Jesus came along and said, "Love your Enemy...the Samaritan alien counts as your neighbor..those who live by the sword will die by the sword.." So (again only in theory!) killing foreigners was also presumed wrong.

I believe that in the Middle Ages, a man who had shed human blood, EVEN JUSTLY, could not be ordained a priest (in theory! exemptions must have abounded!)--hands with invisible blood on them should not, presumably, handle the Holy Bread at Mass.

[I don't know about Zoroastrian theory or Hindu or Confucian theory..It would make a good study to find out what attempts were made to curb by moral exhortation the strong human tendency, when angered, to slaughter other humans. Buddhists, I believe, say we shouldn't kill beasts, let alone people!
But such a 'no-exception' rule is against common-sense. I don't know if they have studied when exceptions are justified. ]

Anyway, Lorenz' point is well-made: humans (in the time of modern weapons) had BETTER learn to abhor unjustified killings. [We won't..and that means we're doomed..but we SHOULD.]
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[I've finished the first part, 7 pages, of this essay, on justifying the peacetime killing of individuals. Anyone interested in this line of thought could give me their e-mail address here under COMMENTS; then I'll e-mail you this first part.]