The Origins of Artificial Intelligence in English Romantic Poetry

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Ada Byron, daughter of the English Romantic poet Lord Byron is – arguably --the world's first computer programmer. She is otherwise known to history as Lady Lovelace. The case on her behalf is so strong that the Department of Defense developed a programming language in her honor: ADA. It was among the first so-called "Object-Oriented Languages," a set of languages dominated by C++, Java, etc. But that gets ahead of the story by some one hundred years or more.

Ada Byron was born in 1815. Divorced from Lord Byron, Lady Byron brought up her daughter, Ada, fearful that she might suffer Romanticist, "poetical" tendencies as did her father. Her education, therefore, consisted of mathematics and science. Predictably, Ada's understanding of mathematics –though profound –was influenced by simile, analogy, and metaphor.

It is not surprising that Ada was fascinated and intrigued when, in 1834, she encountered Charles Babbage's idea for a "calculating machine" about which Babbage offered a daring conjecture: a machine acting upon foresight.
Most of what we know of Babbage's "differential engine" we have learned from Ada Byron. Inspired by the "universality" of Babbage's ideas, Ada proceeded to write more notes on Babbage than Babbage wrote at all. Her fascination with Babbage's "engine" is noteworthy for at least two outstanding developments.

It was Ada, inspired by Babbage's calculating machine, who first articulated, if not invented, the very concept of "software" –a set of instructions to be carried out by a "universal" machine – a machine capable of acting meaningfully upon those instructions. The obvious progeny of this concept is the multitude of software packages that now drive everything from desktops to mainframes.

Of even greater interest to physicists and cosmologists is that Ada's ideas and hopes for the 'computing machine' lead inexorably to Claude Shannon's concept of information as the inverse of entropy – a western version of the yin and yang. Entropy is or is associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a general principle constraining the 'direction' of 'heat transfer'; in the vernacular: things run down. Chaos increases. Organization becomes dis-organization and disorder. Hot things cool down in the absence of new infusions of energy. Eventually all movement ceases entirely. Some have called it the 'heat death' of the Universe –a final and eternal 'thermodynamic state' in which there no longer exists sufficient 'free energy' to sustain motion or life.

Shannon then spent 31 years at Bell Labs, starting in 1941. Among the many things Shannon worked on there, one great conceptual leap stands out. In 1948, Shannon published "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" in the Bell System Technical Journal, along with Warren Weaver. This surprisingly readable (for a technical paper) document is the basis for what we now call information theory--a field that has made all modern electronic communications possible, and could lead to astounding insights about the physical world and ourselves.

Names like Einstein, Heisenberg, or even Kurt Goedel are better known among the people who have led twentieth-century science into the limits of knowledge, but Shannon's information theory makes him at least as important as they were, if not as famous. Yet when he started out, his simple goal was just to find a way to clear up noisy telephone connections.

--Heroes of Cyberspace; Claude Shannon

Shannon wrote A Mathematical Theory of Communication [PDF] for Bell Labs in 1948 –more than a hundred years after Ada wrote what is considered to be the world's first computer program, a plan that she shared with Babbage. In it, Ada suggested how his machine might calculate Bernoulli numbers. This was the world's first computer program.

The second development began the debate about Artificial Intelligence. In his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing, devoted several paragraphs to "Lady Lovelace's Objection" to the very concept of A.I. It was a concept which Ada discounted in her notes:

The analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to [do]. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any...truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we're already acquainted with.

Some 100 years later Turing ascribes to her a cautious "logical positivism:"

It will be noticed that he [ D. R. Hartree ] does not assert that the machines in question had not got the property [ A.I.], but rather that the evidence available to Lady Lovelace did not encourage her to believe that they had it.

The point is not whether Lady Lovelace or Turing is correct with regard to A.I., but rather that it was Ada who foresaw the playing field and terrain, the scope of the debate. It was Turing, however, who defined 'artificial intelligence'. By his definition, computers have already achieved consciousness. Turing had said that we may consider a machine intelligent if, in a blind test, we cannot differentiate the computer's response from that of a living, breathing person. By that standard, computers are now conscious and intelligent. IBM's 'Big Blue' defeated Chess champion Boris Spasky who charged that human beings had directed the machine. I often share that attitude with my own computer's chess program. It actually seems to learn from its mistakes.

Ada understood that the meaning of a machine is what it does. Her contribution is that this meaning may be shaped by what are now call 'programmers' who literally instruct the machine, providing it a well-planned list of discrete tasks, a program –in other words: software.

Computer technologists speak of "state". Each state is particular, analogous in some way, to a particular task that may be accomplished while in that "state." Before computers, machines may have processed information –but in a crude way. The instructions had been built-in. Consider the lever –a simple machine that nevertheless may be said to have two "states" –up or down. The meaning of either state is to be found in the work done by (or in) that state. As a general principle, the meaning of a given state is the utility it creates, the work that it does.

In Ada's wake, early computers were mere assemblages of electrically controlled "levers" called "relays." The origin of binary languages may be found in relays which are either 'on' or 'off' . Mechanical relays would be replaced by vacuum tubes and, later, by transistors. Simple circuits were called either "and-gates," or "or-gates", or, generally –'flip/flop' circuits. Even now, the largest supercomputers, reduced to their smallest components, are capable only of processing just two states: 0 and 1. But upon this basic alphabet, patterns of increasing complexity have grown exponentially. The computer has become an electronic loom in which each pattern represents a "state."

That Ada glimpsed this future almost a century and a half ago is remarkable.

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A Declaration of Class Warfare

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When I started following the flow of wealth upward, the top 10 percent already owned more than the rest of us combined. Now --the 'ruling' one percent owns and/or controls more wealth than is owned by the rest of us combined. Enron was not an aberration. Enron's crime was not only that of putting the screws to California; Enron's crime was 'getting caught'. The sell out to China by Nixon/Bush was not an aberration; it was, like Enron, a part of the game plan. It is no accident that China props up the buck but only because and when it is in their interests to do so. Lately, China, it is said, is reconsidering its 'bargain' with Satan.

Monied interests control our daily lives in ways that we have not fully understood. We need dollars to buy not just 'luxury items' but essentials --housing, food, transportation. But, as a result of Nixon's Faustian bargain with China, our dollars are worth less (worthless?).

In the meantime, the ruling elites own the media that we watch. That's worth repeating: the elites --about a half-dozen huge corporations --own the media! Thanks to the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the media was relieved of its responsibility to serve public interests. Thanks to Ronald Reagan, the Fairness Doctrine was trashed, limits on corporate ownership rescinded. Thanks to Ronald Reagan primarily, the corporate media have no other job but to serve up lies and bullshit and tell you what to think! Fox is but the most obvious and repugnant example, but, in fact, no other outlet is, in any way, encouraged to be factual, fair, or responsible. The 'public interest' is considered to be 'quaint'.

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you.

Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

--Newton Minow, Upon his Appointment to the FCC by President John F. Kennedy

But this article is not solely about the media but about how the ruling 'elites' own and control K-Street and, hence, the government of the United States. It is about how the media is but a means by which the 'people' --you and I --are, in fact, ruled and manipulated. The elites own not only the media but the Military/Industrial complex! They are the sole beneficiaries of wars for which 'we the people' are expected to sacrifice both our lives and our lifestyles. Wars are fought entirely for the benefit of of this ruling elite. Bobby Darin's 'Simple Song of Freedom' nailed it: "....we the people here don't want a war!" Anyone not a member of the elite are cannon fodder.

Every major economist from the conservative Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from Ricardo to Krugman concedes: 'wealth' is created by labor. Ergo: wealth flows upward --never down as the GOP would have you believe. Supply-side ecnomics (trickle down theory) was clearly designed to fool a gullible public. It is nothing more than a disingenuous rationalization, in fact, a bald-faced lie! Understanding this reality explains why no GOP tax cut has ever benefited the U.S. economy. It also explains why, in fact, every GOP administration is defined by the recession/depression that inevitably catches up with them. It is a credit to the great and awesome GOP noise, bullshit and propaganda machine [NBPM] that any intelligent person in the United States should buy into 'supply-side economics', otherwise called 'trickled down theory'.

It is interesting that while 'labor' creates wealth, it is the 'ruling elite' which --alone --benefits! Only the word slavery can describe an absurd upside-down, through-the-looking-glass world in which the rich have acquired the political power required to grant themselves 'largesse' --tax cuts and lucrative contracts!

A perfectly egalitarian society could get along just fine if there were perfect equality, i.,e if there were no rich folk whatever. I would put money on such a society being much more productive, happier, peaceful! Why are wars fought? Wars are fought to seize the resources of other nations and in almost every case the assets seized are distributed in various ways to the ruling elites who are most certainly the most vocal proponents of war. Rome is still the best analogy. Rome was often bankrupt! Rome invaded Dacia for its 'gold'! Why? Roman sesterces were worthless as a medium of exchange. As a mere token to facilitate a head-count, sesterces would get you into the Coliseum. It is doubtful that it was worth a load of bread. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned off the empire, it was purchased by a nobleman --Didius Julianus! He paid in Greek Drachmas --not the worthless roman 'currency'.

Who risks his/her life in wars abroad, wars which benefit only the ruling one percent? It is the poorer classes who are honored with front-line duties. It was those 'left behind' by GOP policies who were, in various ways, rounded up and sent to the front lines in Viet Nam and, more recently, Iraq! Because of the 'draft' --involuntary servitude --Viet Nam was especially troubling. Iraq is no less disturbing; because of a failing economy, recruiting was easy from among those left behind by the GOP and exploitative right wing policies in general. How many members of the 'ruling one percent' have been killed in Afghanistan and/or Iraq? I want names and numbers!

The very presence of elites distort markets. If there were no 'elites' the price of advertising would adjust to reality --a little thing called 'supply' and 'demand'. Basic economic concepts include 'elasticity' or 'inelasticity' of demand, concepts that describe the responsiveness of 'demand' to changes in price. The same concepts describe 'demand' for money, i.e, the effect of great wealth upon money markets. The demand for most necessities (food, medicine, basic clothing) is said to be ineleastic, i.e, people who are very sick, for example, will pay almost any price for relief or cure. The hungry will pay almost any price for food --if they should be lucky enough to have it.

For everyone but the very rich, this is true of money. For us, money is a necessity. Elites, however, increase their holdings most dramatically when the dollar is lowest vis a vis other world currencies. Thus, great wealth controls the world market for money. We are but pawns, monetary cannon-fodder, thrust into the front lines of the money wars. We plebs are but pawns who must inevitably take the fall for 'Queen and country'.

If there were no 'elites' to bid the prices up with their mere presence, ski resorts might enjoy a 'plebeian' clientele. But, because skiing is 'in' among jet setters, playboys and glamorous blondes, folk will spend absurd sums to ski in Aspen. These people are not better than you and I --just richer. I know at least one extremely wealthy health-club magnate drawn to Aspen like a bee to honey. He turned out to be, like many another rich asshole, a psychopath who left his wife, moved in with a hot 'honey' and when things did not go his way hired incompetent hit men who tried but (fortunately) failed to murder the intended victim, a beautiful blonde pageant winner. She recovered, changed her identity and, presumably left the country.

In fact, little would change but for those items in which the ultimate retail price is bid up by big money. But if there is no big money, the production and sale of 'goods' would simply find a new level, a new equilibrium. The elites have bid up prices unnecessarily and there is no evidence that there is or ever has been a rationale, a reason why this must be the case. It is often implied that this is just the way the world works, the 'way things are'! I don't think so! I often got into trouble as a high schooler for daring to ask: who sez?

In fact, many are priced out of markets. But why? What is the net gain to society as a whole? Some items that are prohibitively expensive to produce and/or market might go the way of the dodo unless they are absolutely essential to --say --national security! I don't think Beluga caviar qualifies.

I daresay --more egalitarian economies are the more efficient economies; inequitable economies much less so as inequities increase. In the U.S. the degree to which an economy is determined to be either egalitarian or skewed toward elites is measured by the GINI INDEX. I would urge a bright seeker of a doctorate in economics to make the case (in his/her paper) that in the U.S. the most egalitarian regimes are and have been the most productive as measured by the ratio of GINI to GDP. It is no coincidence that every major recession – at least –since WWII has occurred during and as a result of GOP economic/monetary policies, primarily Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush. Who did I leave out? It must be pointed out that every GOP administration since World War II has, likewise, run up the largest debts and deficits. On this point, it is the administration of Ronald Reagan that is the specimen that is typical of the GOP 'species' as a whole.

Recessions may not be defined by joblessness but are always characterized by it. Typical of the right wing, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter dismissed this result saying that the Great Depression (for example) was simply a 'good, cold douche' for the economy'. Douche! A 'douche', he called it! I don't buy that. I think his argument was and remains shallow and flippant and, rather, missed the point! Rather --recessions benefit only the investor class perhaps by design. It is hard not to conclude that they are manufactured so that the investor class can take its profits, sell short, and, in other ways, consolidate positions. We buy into this because, in America, it is all we've known. Face it ---we've all been brainwashed since birth!

The very, very rich benefit from what I call the 'Malibu Effect' defined by the ability of rich folk to 'price' poor folk 'out of a market'. For a long time, the houses on Malibu were nothing to write home about. Until, that is, the very rich discovered Malibu! Big money wasted no time bidding up the price of wood frames on stilts. You could have had the same house in Lazbuddy, TX for a song. But because it is 'in' or 'fashionable', the word MALIBU on your address is worth a lot of money ---wood frame or not!

But --what if there were fewer inequities in income and wealth? What if it were not possible for the absurdly rich to bid up prices so...well...so absurdly? I can recall a time when 30 thousand bought you a two story, three or four bedroom, den, state of the art kitchen, two car garage with a lawn. Get an old B and W video of "Leave it to Beaver". Check out that house! These people were 'middle class'. Try getting a house like that on what is called a middle class income today!

It was in the late 60s that a distinguished economist (whose name I cannot recall) wrote that 'status symbols' were on the wane as income and wealth inequities declined. His words were written during the administration of LBJ. Perhaps Lyndon had created a 'great society' after all.

I am quite sure that as this economist was writing, the GOP base of elites were already scheming to change all that. Since that time, the GOP has succeeded in proving that they have the power to price you out of the market for many things that are not only desirable but often necessary. Why should the very wealthy be allowed to deny the middle and lower classes of access to health care, quality education, decent housing, transportation to jobs? Health care is often the battleground on which is waged this war between the classes! It is not enough that the elites can afford to get care and you cannot, the elites --by way of their control over both K-street, Wall Street and Congress --deny you what should be declared a universal, human right to 'universal health care'!

Addendum:

Yes, the S.S. Minnow from Gilligan's Island is being restored and will be available for tours. More than one boat was used on the show, but this is the one in the opening credits.

I have special affection for this boat because it was named after my father, Newton Minow, whose famous speech to the broadcasters calling television a "vast wasteland" annoyed "Gilligan's Island" creator Sherwood Schwartz. So Schwartz named the sinking boat after him! My dad got a huge kick out of it and later had a very cordial exchange of letters with Schwartz. It is a great point of pride for our family. [Read more]

Bobby Darin: A Simple Song of Freedom


Lost on Gilligan's Island

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Texas Attorney: the FBI Executed David Koresh, Branch Davidians

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The FBI lied to the media and the American people when it dared claim that David Koresh and the 'Branch Davidians' were responsible for the deaths of some 74 men, women and children that resulted when the FBI ordered an attack on the Waco compound, April 19, 1993. It was a bald-faced lie!

I don’t think that the FBI in Waco was giving full information to Janet Reno or those in Washington that were making the decisions. They had this agenda that they wanted to do this tear gas thing and force them out and make it so the FBI could be the heroes. They didn’t give them the reasons not to do it. They lied to them about child abuse going on at the time. They gave them false information about the type of tear gas that was to be used. It was a deadly form of it.

The people became completely immobilized...it wouldn’t have forced them out. Those that got subjected to a heavy does of it would just collapse. They couldn’t come out. It did create a tremendous fire hazard. A lot of the autopsy reports show a high degree of cyanide in the blood streams of those people who were in a position to have breathed some of the gas. What happens with CS gas is that, when it burns, it creates cyanide gas, the same kind of gas that is used in the gas chamber.

--Dick DeGuerin, Houston Attorney, For the People

I recall a broadcast interview with the sheriff in Waco! He had investigated the Davidians, and found them to be 'law abiding American citizens'. He found no basis whatsoever for the complaints against them. I am hard pressed to find anyone at any time in any office who can tell me --precisely and authoritatively --the laws that had been broken by David Koresh and those living peaceably in the compound near Waco, TX. What crimes were committed? What is the probable cause to begin an investigation of Koresh et al? If crimes had been committed, why could not Koresh have been arrested on one of his regular visits to town?

The sheriff had said that '..these were law-abiding American citizens' who believed in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights which had explicitly guaranteed them 'freedom of religion', the right to practice their faith free of government restraints. They had trusted the government whose only responsibility under the Constitution is the protection of the people. The government not only failed them, it betrayed both them and the U.S. Constitution!

The fact is the Branch Davidians were murdered by FBI agents acting upon orders given them by the U.S. government itself, presumably the Justice Department of one Janet Reno.

Attorney General Janet Reno says she's "very, very frustrated" over recent revelations that the FBI fired explosive devices at the Mount Carmel community outside of Waco, Texas, during the April 1993 siege. I know how Reno feels. I was one of only nine survivors of the Waco blaze -- 74 men, women and children died -- and I've devoted the last six years to understanding what happened there. Frustration is a mild word to describe my feelings about that quest.

Reno's frustration, and mine, has only gotten worse recently as more damaging revelations have surfaced. First there was the CIA agent who told Salon News and the Dallas Morning News that members of the Army's secret Delta Force unit had actively participated in the siege. Then the FBI turned over tape recordings that include audio of an agent requesting and receiving permission to use pyrotechnic devices. Reports on Wednesday revealed the government also used incendiary flares during the Waco siege similar to those used to burn down the hideout of white supremacist Robert Mathews.

The film "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" purported to show infrared images of government agents firing on the building. Now there is also a rumored videotape, uncovered by the film's co-producer, Michael McNulty, that reportedly shows agents in an ATF helicopter shooting into Mount Carmel. No doubt there will be more evidence "discovered," more agents coming forward, their six-year amnesia about April 19 suddenly cured. The FBI has not come close to revealing the full government complicity in the Waco massacre.

--By David Thibodeau, Salon, The truth about Waco: A survivor says the government still isn't admitting its role in the deaths of 74 Branch Davidians

I recall my first reaction to the news feeds from Waco. I asked myself and friends: where and what is the 'probable cause' that Koresh, indeed, any member of his 'compound' had broken the law? Last time I had checked the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, had not been repealed. Last time I had checked, people had a right to believe or not believe as conscience dictates. Last time I checked, any American had a right to belong to a kooky cult if it had not broken the law! The Baptists, a kooky cult if ever there was one, were proof of that! And, as I recall, even Puritans thought Baptists to be 'weird'! And Waco, home to the Baptist Baylor University, was Baptist 'country' to be sure! To this day, no one has cited any 'probable cause' that Koresh or any member of the compound had broken any law whatsoever --not even minor offenses that might have been addressed with a simple arrest upon one of Koresh's regular visits to the town of Waco for provisions.

Simply --the U.S. government, in arrogant violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights --MURDERED some 74 free citizens of the United States of America. By standards established by our founders the U.S. government has broken its 'social contract' with the people and is no longer legitimate!

What I found was a bunch of people who were devoutly religious and dedicated to their beliefs. They weren’t dedicated to David Koresh. He wasn’t to them a savior or some person who held their rapt attention or controlled their actions at all. He was just the latest of their prophets and they believed his view of the Bible but it wasn’t that he was controlling what they did.

He was difficult in that his religious agenda was more important than his personal agenda.

I could make him understand logically that the best thing for him to do was to surrender and go to court and fight in court whatever battles were ahead.

I could also make him understand that he would be better off if he voluntarily walked out with me than if they had to come in and get him.

I could also make him understand that the people who had him surrounded wanted to kill him. They didn’t want him to survive...that we would have to make it work to have him survive. I didn’t predict the fire. I didn’t predict that they were all going to be killed but I told him in no uncertain terms, “Don’t get by the window. They’ll take you out.” I believe they would have. They had snipers all around the place.

--Dick DeGuerin, Houston Attorney, For the People

David Koresh: Like it is!

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How America Lost its Soul

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Literature is characterized by recurring themes. On a short list of archetypal stories is the 'pact' which some are said to have entered into with 'Satan'. In many variations, a protagonist agrees to exchange his soul for worldly or temporary gain. As a 'cultural motif', it is most often associated with or exemplified by the German legend of Faust or Mephistopheles.

It is significant that Faust or Faustus means 'lucky' --or 'auspicious' in the original Latin. It is, I'm sure, merely coincidental that Larry Silverstein who is the most obvious, the most notable beneficiary of 911, is called 'Lucky' Larry! In Latin --Faust!

In Goethe's retelling of this archetypal legend, Faust is unhappy, unsatisfied though he is a highly successful scholar. Mephistopheles makes him a 'bargain' that he cannot refuse. Faust agrees to exchange his soul for 'unlimited knowledge' and worldly pleasures. This motif is archetypal and not unique to Western or Christian traditions. It is found, I am told, in almost all cultures throughout history.

To be expected, the western versions of this legend are heavily influenced by traditional Christian beliefs in witchcraft. The pact is between a person and Satan or any other demon; the person offers his or her soul in exchange for diabolical favors, most often material, monetary or sexual but may include youth, knowledge, wealth, or power in various forms and proportions. It was also believed that some persons entered into such a pact in exchange for nothing; it was a sign of recognizing the devil (Satan) as master.

"I told the invited scientists who the Committee was, the Interim Committee, what it was established for, and then I switched over and told them what we wanted of them, the invited scientists; first, to congratulate and thank them for what they have done and then to get them started in talking and questioning. It was a little slow sledding at first but I think I got some wrinkles out of their heads in regard to my own attitude and that of the Army towards this new project. I told them that we did not regard it as a new weapon merely but as a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe and that we wanted to take advantage of this; that the project might even mean the doom of civilization or it might mean the perfection of civilization; that it might be a Frankenstein which would eat us up or it might be a project 'by which the peace of the world would be helped in becoming secure'. Well after a while the talk went pretty well. I had Marshall in and during a time when I had to be absent to go over to the White House he took a vigorous hand in the discussion and I think impressed himself very much upon them. I think we made an impression upon the scientists that we were looking at this like statesmen and not like merely soldiers anxious to win the war at any cost. On the other hand, they were a fine lot of men as can be seen from their records. Dr. Fermi, Dr. Lawrence, and Dr. Compton were all Nobel prize winners; and Dr. Oppenheimer, though not a Nobel prize winner, was really one of the best of the lot."

--HIROSHIMA: HENRY STIMSON'S DIARY AND PAPERS: Part 5, May 31, 1945 - June 6, 1945

The development of nuclear weapons is often said to be 'Faustian'. Indeed, for a few post war years, the United States, as the sole possessor of atomic power, ruled the world. Even before the bomb was dropped there were doubts about the wisdom of unleashing the atomic genie. It was Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, supervising the U.S. 'Manhattan Project' who quoted the Bhagavad-Gita:

"...now I am become Death [Shiva], the destroyer of worlds..."

Another version differs only slightly:

If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.

Forbidden Planet of 1956 is a classic Sci-Fi tour de force staring Leslie Nielson, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. It holds up surprisingly well against Star Wars of the 1970's and even the most recent digital entries.

The story of Dr. Morbius, re-discovering the technological marvels of a lost race of Krell on the distant planet Altair, is updated Shakespeare: The Tempest. And while Forbidden Planet excels in special effects, it's enduring fascination is found in a parable: technology vs its inventor, the monster vs Dr. Frankenstein, in fact any one at war with the enemy of his/her own making.

Forbidden Planet lays bare the dark side of human kind, a forbidding gestalt of uncontrollable urges, the monster from the ID! Just as Lord of the Rings depicts the absolute corruption of absolute power, Forbidden Planet confronts us with a question we would rather not answer: what are we to do with the physical manifestations of our inmost monsters?

Is "Terrorism" the Monster From the ID?

FBI statistics published by the Brookings Institution repudiate the political exploitation of terror by the recent Bush administration, the right wing in general. The FBI's own statistics indicate that while Ronald Reagan most vociferously waged his famous "War on Terrorism", terrorist attacks against the United States actually increased. There were three times as many terrorist attacks during the Reagan years as were the case under Clinton. Yet --Clinton was criticized for not having waged such a 'war on terrorism'. Either the American right wing has not bothered to check the numbers or it has checked them and lies about them. In retrospect, only the wealthy, elite right wing constituency has ever benefited in any way by various 'wars' on terrorism. The rest of us are cannon fodder. The right wing consisting of powerful lobbies and military contractors has made a Faustian bargain. The U.S. is akin to Morbius of Forbidden Planet --too late do we recognize that the only demons that howl are of our own making.

In the United States, if not everywhere, it is the ruling elite that, like Faust, made the bargain. Scrooge was wrong and so is the contemporary right wing. Scrooge was wrong because the terms 'rich' and 'poor' are subjective and often the 'poor class' is the result of elitist greed. The 'monster' that is thus created is not merely the statistical imbalance between right and poor but the insidious economic inefficiencies that result. For example, in the U.S. just one percent of the population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of the population combined. A inequitable society is an inefficient society. The U.S., for example, seems always to plunge into recession/depression during GOP regimes in which it is also true that the very, very rich have gotten even richer.

By way of influence, lobbies and campaign contributions, et al, the U.S. elite controls the apparatus of government. Naturally, this 'ruling elite' favors economic policies which enrich them to the detriment and/or impoverishment of everyone else. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the Scrooge (Herbert Spencer) position which maintains, wrongly and fallaciously, that the rich are rich because they are smarter and better.

Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project

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Save the Wolves from GOP Predators and Palin

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

A bone-headed decision to remove gray wolves from the federal endangered species list applies to wolf populations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Idaho and Montana, and parts of Utah, Washington and Oregon. Apparently, gray wolves in Wyoming remain protected under terms of the Endangered Species Act. This 'act' has transferred the 'management' of the wolf population from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to state and tribal agencies. In Idaho -- the wolves have become legal targets for hunters in short order.

Idaho Fish and Game commissioners have already adopted dates for the wolf hunting season in the state and will set quotas once delisting takes effect.

"We have to move on and manage them similar to other big-game animals," Idaho Fish and Game Director Cal Groen said. "This is good news for wolves, elk, rural communities and hunters. I believe this action will help defuse the animosity and anger associated with wolves when we can manage wolves in concert with our other big game species."

The Fish and Wildlife Service will monitor the delisted wolf populations for a minimum of five years to ensure that they continue to sustain their recovery. At the end of that time, it will be decided if relisting, continued monitoring or ending service monitoring is appropriate.

Idaho governor C. L. "Butch" Otter has said he supports reducing his state's wolf population from its current level of around 800 animals to 100. "I'm prepared to bid for the first ticket [hunting license] to shoot a wolf myself," he once said.

--Lindsay Barnett

Ranchers are apparently the largest group demanding the eradication of Wolves. Especially troublesome are incidents in which the Alpha male is 'murdered'. In Washington state, an alpha male over several generations was killed, his 'pelt' sent to Canada, presumably for 'sale'. Hideous! And --no ---states do not have the right to eradicate any population! Some laws are unjust if not stupid! Alaskan attempts to eradicate wolves are disingenuous and Sarah Palin knows that that is the case. And, in any case, the wolves were there first! What if a law saying that wolves had a right to 'eradicate' were put into effect?

Ranchers have no legitimate complaint. Many have in fact encroached upon 'ancient' habitats and, in any case, they use land owned by the public for 'free grazing'. Anyone getting a 'free lunch' has nothing to complain about. But now --we are expected to turn a blind-eye to the murder of noble animals. In fact, wolves were never a problem until their habitats were encroached upon. As someone who spent much of his childhood on a ranch in West Texas, I can say with some experience: animals are a threat only when we have trespassed upon them. They have rights too!

Wolves also occupy an essential niche in vast, complicated ecosystems.

Wolves are the top predator in most environments in which they live and the trickle down effect of their presence is astounding. In Yellowstone, prior to the wolves' reintroduction in 1995, elk basically roamed wherever they chose and tended to spend most of their time in the river valleys. This excessive streamside grazing prevented willow and cottonwood tree growth along the river banks. But when the wolf returned, the elk quickly learned they couldn't set up permanent housekeeping in the valleys and they moved on to make a living in other areas. This, in turn, allowed young trees to grow along the riverbeds. The new trees shaded the river water, creating improved habitat for trout, which thrive in cooler, darker waters. The new willows and cottonwoods attract additional migratory birds and provided new food sources and building materials for beavers. The beavers then built dams which created new marshes and wetlands that in turn attracted otters, ducks and other species.

Wolves provide tremendous economic benefits

Ecotourism is quickly moving to the forefront of family recreational activities. The longing to see animals in their natural habitat has created an economic boom throughout the United States. In Yellowstone, fishing has always been a big industry and the improved environment along the river caused by the wolf's presence has improved fishing opportunities. The wolves themselves are also a huge tourist draw, with many people making Yellowstone their vacation destination expressly for the purpose of seeing wolves. Indeed, most sunrises in Yellowstone are accompanied by rows and rows of nature lovers with spotting scopes, all straining for a glimpse of the elusive wolf.

Wolves pose little threat to livestock and humans. In fact, their prey of choice has been wild game like deer and elk for centuries. The same is true for human/wolf interactions. Despite claims by wolf opponents, the fact remains that aggression by wolves against humans is a very rare event.

--Benefits of Wolves : The ecological and economic benefits they bring

The only justification for killing of animals is for food! However, no one has ever said that wolf meat is going to make any difference whatsoever to those who go hungry because the GOP has transferred vast amounts of American wealth upward to a ruling elite of just one percent of the total population. The greatest threat to those who may be near starvation is the GOP --NOT the noble wolf! Again --the American right wing, the GOP in particular, is not only wrong but dead wrong and wrong-headed, and, at their very core, stupid, evil and --charitably --misguided!

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How the U.S. Invented 'al Qaeda'!

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

Al Qaeda was a U.S. creation, specifically a product of inverted right wing psuedo logic. If 'al Qaeda' did not exist, never mind --the shills would invent it and cite it to justify wars abroad, crackdowns on freedom at home! They would bestow upon it a virtual existence via press releases, propaganda and outright lies --deliberate attempts to mislead the American people!

Bin Laden should pay royalties to the U.S. right wing if, indeed, he ever benefited from his new found celebrity, his holographic 'creation' by the mass media, his elevation to arch-enemy status! His is falsely characterized as the 'mega-terrorist' brain behind a sinister world terrorist organization resembling an octopus with tentacles in every real or fictitious terrorist attack. There had not been anything like it since Bond fought SPECTRE --an evil terrorist organization specializing in terrorism and extortion. In the Bushco rewrite the part of Blofeld is played by Bin Laden.

It was a crock!

It was the CIA which bestowed upon Bin Laden himself his near mythical image of sinister master terrorist who commanded a vast world wide network from deep inside a cave in Tora Bora. This was all really, really bad fiction. Many Hollywood producers would have laughed out of their offices anyone daring to pitch it! It was, it seems, a very, very bad rewrite of Ala Baba and his 40 thieves. Ali, like Binny, lived in a cave but --alas --did not have cell phones. But neither did Bin Laden.

The immediate acceptance of the Bush official conspiracy theory proves the diminishing IQs of those who insist upon believing it. The consolation is this: the CIA has no future in Hollywood!

A bad b-movie!

According to the official version of the lie (charitably: the 'myth') goes something like this: the CIA and the Saudis are said to have funded and armed Bin Laden throughout the 80s. His mission impossible: wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. In fact, Bin Laden was working for the CIA.

Simply --Al-Qaeda means 'the base'; in this case --the computer data base of thousands of mujahideen trained and recruited by the CIA. The mission: defeat the Russians. This is cold war James Bond stuff and, in some cases, a just a bad rewrite. Life imitates spy movies.

The problem has become apparent over time: Washington did not know what to do with this 'database', this network that had become obsolete with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It obviously never occurred to DC spooks and/or analysts that with the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, Ala Baba, uh, Bin Laden would focus upon U.S. imperialism throughout the Middle East! But did he? More likely --he was just the convenient scapegoat for an inside job that would become the pre-text, the boogie-man to be cited as justifying a war for the oil resources of Iraq, the poppy (opium) resources of Afghanistan.

The source for how 'al Qaeda' got its name is Sir Robin Cook, the former British Foreign Secretary. In order to protest the British connection to this sorry story, Cook resigned his job.

Benazir Bhutto: Bin Laden was Murdered

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Bush's Tragic Legacy at Home and Around the World

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

One hopes that thinking about Iraq has gotten clearer since Bush violated U.S. laws and international commitments in order to: 1) seize the oil fields of Iraq; 2) exploit the 'threat of terror' to consolidate his 'base' at home, 3) subvert Constitutional guarantees that give Americans the right to denounce incompetent and/or traitorous 'leaders'.

An evil legacy of this idiocy is the recent decree that would allow the government to 'sanction' i.e, kill its vocal opposition.

Civil liberties advocates and legal authorities struck back Friday at what they describe as the “deliberate targeted killing of U.S. citizens far away from any active hostilities, as long as the executive branch determines unilaterally that they meet a secret definition of who the enemy is.”

In an admission that took the intelligence community and its critics by surprise, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a congressional hearing ... that the U.S. may, with executive approval, deliberately target and kill U.S. citizens who are suspected of being involved in terrorism.

--William Fisher, Legal Experts Slam Assassinations of US Citizens, February 06, 2010

This reminds one of the infamous assertion by the newly appointed Gen. Michael Hayden that the legal standard to begin an investigation or, possibly more Draconian measures, was 'reasonable suspicion' --not 'probable cause' as it is, in fact! The General was wrong! He betrayed the fact that he had never bothered to read the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That the possible murder of U.S. citizens by our own government even saw the light of day is not just worrisome, it is cause for alarm! We should be yelling --crowded theater or no! The very concept is repugnant and those politicians entertaining it should be fired, impeached, removed, tried upon the probable cause they have violated U. S. laws against sedition.

Next time --unless these ideas are exposed, eviscerated and laid bare --a future would-be tyrant may find it easy to carry out a program of rampant murder upon a mere 'suspicion' about which he might even be inclined to lie. Such a tyrant might order the round-up and incarceration of anyone daring to express a disagreement! There is precedent! In the Germany of Adolph Hitler one need not 'do' anything to be arrested, detained, imprisoned and, eventually, murdered. One had only 'be'! A Jew ! A Gypsy! A non-Aryan! Thus not even the pure Aryan was free to act! He could only 'be' but not as a free individual but as a cog in the enslaved collective! This is what happens when the rule of law is flouted and or ridiculed as it was during Bush's eight years each of which were Annus horribilis!

The President revealed this ... as he fairly spat through his teeth, words of unrestrained fury directed at the man who was once the very symbol of his administration, who was once an ambassador from this administration to its critics, as he had once been an ambassador from the military to its critics.

The former Secretary of State, Mr. Powell, had written, simply and candidly and without anger, that "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

This President's response included not merely what is apparently the Presidential equivalent of threatening to hold one's breath, but within it contained one particularly chilling phrase.

"Mr. President, former Secretary of State Colin Powell says the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," he was asked by a reporter. "If a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former secretary of state feels this way, don't you think that Americans and the rest of the world are beginning to wonder whether you're following a flawed strategy?"

“If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic,” Bush said. “It's just -- I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.

Of course it's acceptable to think that there's "any kind of comparison."

And in this particular debate, it is not only acceptable, it is obviously necessary, even if Mr. Powell never made the comparison in his letter.

Some will think that our actions at Abu Ghraib, or in Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, are all too comparable to the actions of the extremists.

--Keith Olberman, Bush owes us an apology

While he occupied the White House, his opposition was often called traitorous by that term and others as well. That this chill upon 'free speech' could happen in America where it was often said It Can't Happen Here begs an explanation! The question is not whether it might happen but why it happened in the first place and when it will happen again!

A state is not, like the ground which it occupies, a piece of property (patrimonium). It is a society of men whom no one else has any right to command or to dispose except the state itself. It is a trunk with its own roots. But to incorporate it into another state, like a graft, is to destroy its existence as a moral person, reducing it to a thing; such incorporation thus contradicts the idea of the original contract without which no right over a people can be conceived.

--Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace

Thus, it was in 1795 that Kant made quick work of the very concept of aggressive war. I find it ironic that as soon as this nation under incompetent and criminal leadership abandons those principles we find ourselves in a state of Perpetual War from which only an increasingly tiny ruling elite will benefit! This elite is Moloch by any definition!

Totalitarian regimes and other "fear based" societies are considered by Natan Sharansky to be "tyrannies". Though an apologist for Bush, Natan Sharansky is at least correct about that much! However, the "basis" for the specific principles of International Law to which the U.S. is "obliged", indeed, even insisted upon are as follows:

• Nuremberg Principles
• Geneva Convention
• U.S. Codes; Section 2441

An excerpt:

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

I also recommend ‘Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq. An excerpt from the introduction and executive summary:

However if change is to be effected, it must be carried out in way(s) that promotes international peace and security through multilateral action and the rule of law. This may be time consuming and frustrating, but the alternative danger is a weakening or even abandonment of the rule of law and undermining the prohibition on the use of force which has been the product of not only the international consensus to avoid war following two world wars but decades of consensus.

--‘Preventive War’ and International Law After Iraq, Duncan E. J. Currie LL.B. (Hons.) LL.M., 22 May, 2003

To conclude that because one has power its exercise is always right is, simply, wrong! It's a non sequitur! On trial for his Nazi crimes at Nuremberg, Goering called it "victor's justice"!

The victor declares what is right and moral and through some charade transforms these propositions into "legal" form and engaging in some meaningless ritual, punishes the losers.

--Hermann Goering

Goering's position is the Nazi position and that of anyone else, most recently, Republicans who subscribe to it! The law of the jungle, it will describe the ultimate descent of civilization unless it is eschewed. It must be pointed out that even Goering --a Nazi --did not consider for a moment that it was 'right'. It was and remains, as he said, the exercise of power by those who have it against those who don't! There is nothing 'right' about it and no victory can make it so.

Eventually Iraq will form an Islamic socialist/theocracy and --if it wishes to survive --an alliance with Iran. American soldiers will have been sacrificed for nothing! Is this how conservatives and/or GOPPERS define 'victory'?

Iraqis opposing a U.S. war of aggression are hardly "subversive"; many Iraqis will call those who oppose the U.S. by the word: "patriots". I refer you to William Pitt, Earl of Chatham who admonished the British parliament with what was very nearly his dying breath:

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,—never! never! never!

--William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708–1778)

And what term is used to describe the Americans who fought with the Lincoln Bridge and others against Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Are they terrorists?

Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes

It used to be that one need not be "left" to denounce wars of naked aggression! I denounce the idea of "pre-emptive" strike; it is a return to the law of the jungle in which "...life is nasty, brutish, and short"! Every tin horn dictator from N.K. to Iran need only cite the Bush doctrine to justify their armaments.It's hard to imagine how one can win a moral argument by so willingly, so eagerly giving up the moral high ground --as Bush has clearly done!

My remarks are not merely theoretical. Just as FBI statistics prove conclusively that terrorism against the United States was worse as Ronald Reagan waged his similarly failed "war" against 'terrorism', so, too, Bush has failed! In fact 'terrorism' against U.S. 'interests' is always worse under GOP regimes. Coincidence? No! It is the understandable reaction of people to U.S. imperialism as it was the reaction of Zulus and eventually the people of India against the British!

Terrorism under Bush increased with his declaration of no quarter for those nations harboring or nurturing terrorists! Though he would not admit it, Bush had in mind administering his new acquisition--Iraq --by way of puppet governments. The ex post facto rationalization --bringing Democracy to Iraq --was not conceived until it was clear that no WMD would be found and, secondly, that the mis-named insurgency would not go away! At various stages, Bush and Bushy thought things would get better.

They never did!

But we are expected --I suppose --to surrender our freedoms willingly because a moron fucked up! I don't think so!

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Support Wikileaks; I am Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The U.S. will try to prosecute Julian Assange under laws that violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, laws that were absurd when the U.S. entered World War I and more so now. These are laws that prohibit you from telling the truth about the U.S. government; these are laws that make it a crime to exercise your conscience. Thus, these laws are, by definition, tyrannical.

Let's put aside the myth that we are guaranteed 'Freedom of Speech' in the U.S. Certainly, the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution makes such a guarantee but, in practice, we are often denied that right, most notably when it is the government that is sure to be embarrassed or exposed by the mere exercise of free speech. That is the case today! The U.S. Government has threatened to prosecute Julian Assange for violating the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, the law that progressive labor champion Eugene Debs was accused of violating when he dared to oppose U.S. entry into World War I. The world's biggest idiot --Sarah Palin --has irresponsibly called for the assassination of Assange.

The legislation enacted in 1918 is commonly called the Sedition Act, actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act.

The Espionage Act made it a crime to interfere with the war effort or with military recruitment or to aid a nation at war with the U.S. The Sedition Act extended its provisions to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds. One historian of American civil liberties has called it "the nation's most extreme antispeech legislation."^[6] Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for 10 to 20 years.^[7]

--Sedition Act of 1918

The law prohibited MANY forms of speech.

...any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the... form of government of the United States...or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy.

This law is absurd on its face, a clear violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is so overly broad, merely criticizing it, as I have done, probably violates it. It is not the function of government to make criminals of its best citizens. It is the job, the duty in fact, of government to protect the rights that, of late, it seeks to suppress. It is the function of government to guarantee that future Julian Assanges will not be prosecuted arbitrarily for purely political reasons or to avoid prosecutions themselves! As Eugene Debs was unfairly convicted of violating a bad law, an 'unconstitutional law', Julian Assange will, likewise, be falsely accused of 'yelling fire in a crowded theater'!

I am of the opinion that at present, when the U.S. empire is illegally embroiled and mired, when the military of the United States has proven its corruption to the entire world, when the armed forces of the U.S. have been videotaped in acts of atrocity and otherwise exposed to have committed numerous war crimes to include tortures resulting in death, mass murders of civilians (captured on video tape), when the criminal nature of numerous U.S. occupations, aggressions, incursions most of which violate every international treaty to which the U.S. is signatory it is unconscionable not to yell 'fire in a crowded theater!!

The law is overly broad, meaningless, clearly intended to silence the very opposition that the First Amendment was intended to protect; it places arbitrary limits on political speech based upon the prejudices of those in office. The government has proven time and again that it is not concerned with the letter of the law, breaking the law overtly when it is to its advantage and prosecuting the laws if it is you that is accused!

The government is concerned only because the information that has been leaked to Julian Assange can prove that the U.S. has become --in fact --a rogue nation whose leaders habitually flout international law to which the U.S. is signatory. The U.S. does this with impunity and threatens opposing nations with war, opposing individuals with prosecution.

The U.S. has not merely countenanced atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere but has ordered and sanctioned them! What we need is not another witch hunt by bureaucrats in an illegitimate and increasingly arrogant, imperial government; we need, instead, a responsible government which understands that the first responsibility of the law is the protection of the sovereign, i.e the people. Elected officials and bureaucrats are not the government; they are not the 'sovereign'. They are, in fact, mere hired hands and had best understand that fact! It is the Constitution itself which establishes as a matter of law, fact and practice that it is the people who are sovereign! Anyone doubting that should consult any competent, brief history of the Magna Carta!

Justice Holmes was wrong about yelling 'fire in a crowded theater'. It was and remains a false analogy! If the theater really is on fire, it is unconscionable not to yell fire. To deny one the right to oppose war --as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes denied Eugene Debs --is a recipe for military dictatorship. Eugene Debs' 'crime' was that he dared to speak 'truth to power' by 'unlawfully' opposing U.S. entry into WWI. The real reason Debs was targeted was that he had not been fooled by those who benefit from war and for whom the lives of ordinary citizens are sacrificed! For the same reason, the U.S. GOVT is dead wrong to try to prosecute Julian Assange whose only crime may be the unforgivable one of exposing U.S. criminality, imperialism, arrogance, and, in some cases, incompetence.

To Julian Assange have been entrusted numerous 'files' which will most certainly prove to the world the clear and present danger that is posed by the architects of U.S. imperialism. The record speaks for itself but the files may speak louder, clearer. The files will prove that there really is a fire in the theater. There really is a clear and present danger to peace throughout the world, a danger that is posed to it by U.S. arrogance and imperialism benefiting an increasingly tiny elite, in the U.S, just one percent of the nation's total population.

The files leaked to Julian Assange will literally scream FIRE because there really is a fire; there really is a threat! To be silent is to be irresponsible! To do nothing is unconscionable! I support Julian Assange! I support a full revelation of every truth; damn the consequences! I am yelling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

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How GOP Fascism Screwed Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When a state or nation fails to live up to its basic obligations to the people, it is in breach of contract. It is the right of the people to rise up and replace --by any means --the illegitimate regime. If that sounds radical, I refer you to the words of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire! You might also consider the Magna Carta!

What the GOP has in mind for the rest of the nation, it has very nearly accomplished in Texas. Under the criminal and incompetent management of George W. Bush and, later, Rick 'Good Hair' Perry, Texas is reduced to third-world status --an outcome resulting from Bush/Perry neglect and overt contempt for public education.

Our schools are in crises: We [Texas] rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma. We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.'

--Barbara Bush, The Critical Mind

But you can rest assured that the private schools in Texas are doing fine. But it is in the public schools that those not born to wealth have any hope of acquiring an education. But the elites would deny you even that!

A detention camp in Taylor Texas that currently holds hundreds of rebuffed asylum seekers who legally entered the country, half of which are children swept up in midnight raids, is a potential prime location for the enforced transfer of American citizens during a time of national emergency.

The privatized Hutto jail, which is also administered by Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), currently interns political asylum seekers who came to the U.S. on legal visas. Most of them are families including pregnant women and children who have never been accused of any wrongdoing but are forced to endure squalid conditions inside literal concentration camps.

In 2004 the facility was on the verge of being shutdown due to lack of occupancy but new immigration policies, allied to the burgeoning growth of the prison industry and future plans to detain American citizens en masse, have revived the potential scope of the camp, and a new contract to intern 600 individuals was finalized with immigration authorities in December 2005.

The facility is euphemistically called a "Residential Center," yet charges of overcrowding and poor conditions are rife, with an estimated 645 people filling a facility that has only 512 beds.

--Paul Joselph Watson & Alex Jones, Texas Prison Camp Future American Gulag?

This is a fascist outcome and as a result, the corporate prison population has exploded. If trends continue, one day, there will most surely be more folk in prison than out. This is a GOP payoff, a 'laundered' pay0ff, to the corporations for their support of the Texas GOP.

The newly instituted leveling system on death row in Texas under which prisoners are classified in one of three categories—supposedly based on their disciplinary record—is nothing but heightened repression.

It masquerades as a means to provide uniform rules and regulations in managing male prisoners sentenced to death. But in truth it is a reactionary response to prisoners’ efforts over the years to organize themselves against cruel and inhuman treatment.

The Endeavor Project, the Lamp of Hope Project, and now Panthers United for Revolutionary Education are just three examples of prisoners’ efforts to protect themselves and resist.

Any time prisoners, and even people on the outside—unions, women, people of color, gays—begin to organize themselves across color lines, the system devises counter-schemes to bring it to a fast and abrupt halt.

The Texas death row leveling system is another of these, out of a huge bag of trickery designed to dominate, subjugate and divide prisoners. It’s no different from when businesses divide workers, colleges divide students, and the ruling class divides the poor masses by establishing lines of antagonism.

Before the leveling system, all death-row prisoners in Texas—except for those classified as work-capable—were already confined to "administrative segregation" status. In other words: lock-down.

--Commentary from death row: Texas leveling system shows rise in repression, Harvey Earvin

As high school graduations per capita declined, crime in Texas, most notably murder, increased. Not surprisingly, the prison population swelled to overflowing. The GOP in Texas has, thus, enriched, the corporate, fascist owners and operators of prisons.

'Are there no prisons?' --Scrooge

These outcomes are not coincidence, not the result of incompetence, not the result of mere GOP idiocy, though many, like the Bush crime family, are idiotic to be sure! No --this is, rather, fascist policy; it is a laundered pay-off to the GOP's corporate 'base'. The corporate-GOP axis makes out like Nazi brass or the likes of I. G. Farben, the makers of Zyklon B. The made a killing. It is only the citizenry which suffers, a citizenry that is increasingly deprived of educational or vocational opportunity so GOP fat cats can continue to feed off the misery of its victims.

The Oil Boom is Over

Texas must learn to make an honest living. Texas must face up to its responsibilities now and to future generations or it will perish. Under the disastrous back-to-back Bush/Perry regimes, Texas is well on its way to economic oblivion.

The results are disastrous:

• Texas/Bush style provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates
  
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of having the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar distastrous fate.

As education standards and performance declined with the ascension of George W. Bush to Governor and his equally incompetent successor --Rick Perry --crime rates, primarily murder and armed robbery have increased. Naturally, there is a round up of the usual suspects, i.e, the poor and those caught in the act of being black or brown.

The increase in crime in Texas is the result of GOP policies and the GOP's criminal neglect of education. The crime resulting will prove to be yet another 'growth industry' for the likes of Halliburton/KBR as was the Bushco war against the people of Iraq!

How infuriating has it been, the last five years, watching Halliburton and KBR get away with murder? Murder, poisoning, electrocution, rape, human trafficking, fraud, bribery — their crimes go on and on. But could their decade-long spree may be coming to an end? This year, settlements for old offenses, new exposés and new lawsuits for more recent evil-doings, have resulted in plummeting stock prices, canceled contracts, and a soon-to-be imprisoned former CEO.

The latest blow came last Thursday, in a Texas court, where executives for Halliburton and KBR were described in legal papers as conducting a “reign of terror” and functioning “as criminal enterprises.” Paying bribes, taking kickbacks, concealing gang rapes, and engaging in human trafficking were among the crimes listed on the May 14th complaint brought not by government or human rights lawyers, as you might expect, but by attorneys filing a class action suit for the pension fund of Detroit’s Policemen and Firemen. According to the press release issued by the funds’ attorneys, Grant & Eisenhofer, Halliburton and KBR’s directors enabled “a pervasive environment of misdeed and corruption,” resulting in suits, investigations, fines, penalties, and settlements of over $650 million, which have ravaged the corporations’ reputations, prospects, finances, and in turn the pension fund’s investment.
...

The Texas suit covers the period both before and after KBR became an independent company, and names the majority of the two companies’ recent and current boards, including such corporate heavyweights as past president and chairman of American Airlines, Robert Crandall. The May 14th press release by attorneys originally listed former Halliburton CEO, Dick Cheney as a defendant (not surprising, since most of the Nigerian bribes occurred under Cheney’s tenure; Cheney also appointed and directly supervised Stanley), but a hastily issued correction stated that Cheney had been listed in error. The complaint identified some of Halliburton’s and KBR’s known “misdeeds” in Iraq, including providing troops with untreated, untested water from the Euphrates and delivering ice to troops in a truck that showed signs of its former use as storage for corpses. The complaint concluded, “The myriad crimes and wrongdoings discussed above simply could not have happened if Defendants were doing their jobs. As officers and directors of the Companies, the Defendants were required to ensure that the Companies’ internal controls were in place, functioning properly, and sufficiently strong to prevent it from committing wrongful or illegal acts.”

The Detroit pension fund suit is one of many recent suits against Halliburton and KBR. In November 2008, Joshua Eller, a civilian employee at Balad Air Force base northeast of Baghdad, cited rotten food, contaminated water and ice, and toxic fumes from open burn pits, as contributors to his ongoing depression, nightmares, and gastrointestinal and dermatological conditions. In March 2009, parents of Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth sued KBR for wrongful death from electrocution in the shower at his Green Zone base. In April 2009, troops, private employees, and families filed nine lawsuits against KBR for compensation for illness and deaths from exposure to toxic fumes from Iraq and Afghanistan burn pits. The suits, which lawyers will be pursuing as a class-action, seek damages “in an amount sufficient to strip defendants of all of the revenue and profits” involved in managing waste for military bases.”

But the pension fund suit is the first initiated by shareholders, and the stakes are high. Grant and Eisenhofer is a formidable opponent, ranking first among plaintiff firms in funds recovered for shareholder clients. The firm is currently involved in class action suits against Barclays Bank, Countrywide Financial, UBS, Pfizer,and Merck as well as Tremont Holdings Group Inc, a fund charged with feeding $3 billion of client investments to Bernard Madoff Securities.

--Nora Eisenberg, Is KBR’s Decade-Long Crime Spree Finally Coming to an End?, AlterNet

A Day of Reckoning

With any luck, the whistle may have been blown.

New York - On Monday, Dec. 6, a district court in Texas will be asked – for the first time in that U.S. state's history – to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based on the "disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions" in Texas.

John Edward Green, Jr., the defendant in Texas v. Green, is charged in the fatal shooting of a 34-year-old Houston woman during a 2008 robbery. He has not yet been convicted, but prosecutors say they would seek the death penalty.

Green's attorneys have filed a pretrial motion in Harris County District Court. Judge Kevin Fine will hear arguments that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it creates an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people

Green's attorneys contend that a number of factors in Texas's legal system increase the risk of innocent people being executed.

According to the defence, these include a lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, faulty forensic evidence, incompetent lawyers at the appellate level, failures to guard against false confessions, and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.

Paul Cates, director of communications for the Innocence Project, told IPS, "The Innocence Project will be participating in the hearing specifically to put on evidence about the cases of Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham. Both Jones and Willingham were executed in Texas."

He said, "In the case of Claude Jones, DNA evidence has proven that critical physical evidence (a hair sample) used to place him at the scene of the crime did not belong to Jones. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed even though a prominent arson scientist notified the Governor and the appeals court prior to his execution that the critical testimony of the arson investigator was based on outdated arson science."

--US Execution Capital Reconsiders the Death Penalty

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment (especially if you happen to be innocent) but, in Texas, its application is clearly discriminatory.

Mississippi and Arkansas have the highest poverty rates in the nation (at 21.9% and 18.8%, respectively), and Florida saw the largest increase in poverty (2.8 percentage points) over the course of the recession, new Census data shows. Poverty was lowest in New Hampshire (8.5%) and Alaska (9.0%), but even in those states at least one in 12 residents lived in poverty.

While the new data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) are similar to the nationwide data on poverty released earlier this month, the ACS provides a more detailed look at poverty in every state. The result is more evidence of the widespread pain resulting from the Great Recession. In the nation overall, there were 42.9 million people in poverty in 2009. For the average family of four, this means that their combined income for the year was less than $21,954 (the exact threshold varies by family size and number of children). From 2007 to 2009, 47 states and the District of Columbia experienced increases in their poverty rates. The first Map shows poverty rates by state and how they changed throughout the Great Recession, which began in late 2007.

--Kai Filion, Economic Policy Institute, Child poverty rises dramatically in most states,

One day, some believe, a ruling elite of just 1 percent of the total U.S. population may decide that a declining profit margin no longer justifies the 'business' of warehousing, torturing or murdering people because just 12 people decided that they did not deserve to live free or live at all!

The 'elites' may be tempted to pull out, to take the money and run, to 'cauterize' the prisons, dump the problem upon an unsuspecting but 'not rich' population. Thus --they will leave behind a dismantled and/or crumbling infrastructure incapable of handling a prison population of some 2.5 million across America. The corporate robber barons will decide that it is no longer worth the bother with either the infrastructure or the accounting of some $190 billion a year --more than the combined costs of wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.

At this point, the corporate psychopaths, having made a living 'killing' and 'warehousing', may decide as did Hitler before them that a 'final solution' is required.

Like in the late 1930’s, the “final solution” will be the mass extermination of prisoners across the U.S.A. And Texas – always at the vanguard of fascism – has already begun. At first by “medical means” with the complicity of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, now charged with all medical care (or lack thereof) across various TDCJ’s. That is how TDCJ/UTMB murdered courageous “jailhouse lawyer” David R. Ruiz: whose Ruiz v. Estelle lawsuit brought TCCJ under the heel of the Ruiz Court for nearly two decades. UTMB denied Ruiz timely lifesaving cancer treatment, much requested, until it was “too late to treat.” But there are many others: among the growing elderly population and the sick.

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Why 80 Percent of Americans Don't Believe the Official Theory of 911

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

These days, Bush's only defenders with respect to 911 are 1) paid liars and hard cases left over from his utterly criminal and illegitimate administration; and 2) idiots whose only source of "news" is Fox. Fox news, however, is an oxymoron, appropriate I suppose for a network of morons in service to morons.

Bush, it is said, could not have pulled off 911 alone. Of course not! A total tool, it could not have been his idea. He was the 'titular' head of a loosely organized gang of power brokers and the motley crew of wing nuts who support them. God knows why!

Bush was and probably still is a puppet but not a good one. When the real history is known, we may find ourselves eternally grateful to Bush whose utter incompetence, his palpable stupidity, his painful, hardly bearable inarticulateness revealed however inadvertently the truth about how our nation was usurped by an ever smaller ruling elite.

Last time I checked this elite amounted to just 1 percent of the total population, diminishing in size as its members grow richer. One day, they will have put themselves out of business. In theory, at least! [The L-Curve; also see:Temporal evolution of the “thermal” and “superthermal” income classes in the USA during 1983–200 income classes in the USA during 1983–2001]

Nevertheless, it was under Bush that several wars --some phony, some real --were fought on their behalf. The most obvious war was the one with the phony name: 'War on Terrorism', a classic misnomer. It is more accurately described as the "War of Oil and Resource Theft". I suppose that we were expected to believe that God himself intervened with 911 and gave Bushco the pretext required to attack and invade those nations having precisely the resources most coveted by the Dick, otherwise called "Cheney".

Those having knowledge and/or participating with Dick Cheney in any way most probably have guilty knowledge of the method by which a pretext to attack and invade the Middle East was obtained.

Some of those having this guilty knowledge include Marvin Bush in charge of WTC security. In a position to help plan it Had there been a real investigation of the crime of 911, he would have been a prime suspect. He was. As head of WTC security, Marvin would have been in a position to know about, perhaps direct, the placement of explosives. It would have made possible a series of obvious controlled demolitions that provided the pre-text Bushco required to seize resources for sponsors like Halliburton et al.

The weakest link is Larry Silverstein who let the cat out of the bag. WTC 7 was "pulled" he said on video tape. It was Luck Larry that gave the order! Within 15 minutes, his order was carried out. A controlled demolition! Two facts put Lucky in a bad light: 1) it takes considerably more than 15 minutes to prep a 47 story building for demolition; 2) Lucky was financially upside down with the acquisition of the WTC white elephants. An insurance pay-off conveniently bailed him out. Lucky, indeed!

The Dancing Israelis

I believe that the 'Dancing Israelis' were Mossad Agents. On broadcast TV, they boasted that they had gone to New York for the purpose of documenting the event now called 911. That's guilty foreknowledge, probable cause to investigate 911 and everyone connected with it it starting with the prescient Israelis. It is clear that the "Dancing Israelis" knew that the towers would come down and positioned themselves to see it when it happened.

Dick Cheney's 'Energy Task Force', in fact, met prior to 911 for the purpose of carving up the oil fields of Iraq. They would need a pre-text! Were they 'prescient'? If not, that event speaks to 'motive'. Dick Cheney's Halliburton got almost all the contracts from the Bush admin just as did I.G. Farben, Thyssen et al from Hitler prior to his invasion of Poland. It's the fascist/Nazi way.
Essential 911 boils down to this:

• The Bush Official Conspiracy Theory of 911 is utterly impossible by science and circumstance. It did not happen!
• Even members of the 911 Commission, prominently John Farmer now DISOWN the 911 Commission Report and that of the NIST. Both are works of pure fiction, ignore established peer-reviewed physics and ignore the glaring holes in the official cover. [See: Rutger's Media Relation: New Book by John Farmer]

When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however implausible, must be the truth!

At last --who benefits? Apologies to Sherlock Holmes! The truth is this: 911 was an inside job, a Mossad-CIA operation on behalf of a crooked coalition to include big oil, Halliburton, of course. All of them benefited!

If the MSM had been doing its job, good folk like my friends Dr. David Griffin and Kevin Barrett would have an easier time of it. Initially, the Bush administration utilized its leverage throughout the corporate media to shut up the opposition. The most egregious tactic impugned the patriotism of anyone daring to point out facts that prove the "official theory" is impossible. That's true for many reasons not the least of which is that it defies the basic laws of physics.

Physics, of course, is no longer taught in schools,. As the GOP has risen in power and influence, educational standards declined. That is the verifiable record of GOP failure in Texas which --as a result of the back to back Bush/Perry debacles now trails the nation in high school graduations.

It is hard to make the case that the official theory defies the laws of physics to millions who have never darkened the door of a high school, let alone a university physics lab. The GOP is 'anti-intellectual' for a reason. Mass ignorance as a result of their domination of the media and their overt subversion of education are the most effective covers for their many crimes. The GOP has a stake in keeping the U.S. population uninformed and/or stupid!

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