Reality check - Destruction of Gaza's University

ACL dorm, 1/28/09

I'm feeling the stress of camping for my 3rd winter in a row. I've been fighting the urge to complain about it, which is somewhat easy because there's nobody here to complain to. :)

I've also always been a social person, even after I started my ACL studies. But as the subject deepened, so did my need for complete solitude and submersion. I know I made this lifestyle choice freely, nobody forced me to do this, and the daily, hard, physical labor required to maintain my unfunded "student" status is the price I was willing to pay. Little glitches, like my wood delivery never materializing and the leaking roof were all turning into major reasons to go back to the city, get a normal job, and have a "normal life." I was starting to hate my isolation and the extreme lonliness of my choice.

Joining facebook reminded me what my life used to be like, and I've been getting kind of jealous of my friends whose lives have not been obviously or adversely affected by the communitarian's plans. Although the ACL facebook group has 36 members now, the brutal fact is, most Americans I know still do not know what communitarianism is, nor do they want to know. I find it interesting that easily half of this blog's commentors come from the UK and Canada.

The hardest part of keeping up with my work is knowing that the people I think I do it for (besides Nordica and a few others I met online) could care less about what I'm doing. I was beginning to wish I could care less too.

Then, in the midst of all the horrible news about the chemicals dropped on Gaza and the rising death and wounded toll, this came in from Peter Myer's elist. This, more than anything I've read puts my American pitty pot negativity to shame. No matter how bad it gets for me out here in my "school," nobody is dropping American made bombs on my head, or on the elementary kids down the road at Kenny Lake Shool. How far we are all removed from that reality.

Israel bombs Gaza's University, 12/28/08
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7802515.stm

(3) Destruction of Gaza's University

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu>
Date: 31.01.2009 03:34 PM

On Saturday December 27th, 2008, the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) was ready to start the final exams of the fall semester for more than 20,000 students (60% of whom are women) enrolled into its 10 colleges -education, religion, art, commerce, law, science, engineering, information technology, medicine, and nursing. On that day, more than 60 American made Israeli F16 warplanes began to bomb the Palestinian population of Gaza at a time when the maximum number of children going to and coming from schools.

On Sunday December 28th, 2008, the Israeli F16 fighters bombed IUG during the recent horrific attack on the people of Gaza who have been under suffocating siege for about 2 years.

Two 5-story buildings were completely destroyed by Israeli warplanes: the Science Lab Building and the Engineering Lab Building . The two major buildings had more than 50 labs that contained invaluable scientific and medical equipment and devices, and many academic materials which were destroyed. The buildings targeted served as research and development centers for students, faculty and community.

The six-rocket bombardment of both buildings also caused wide damage to all university buildings, including the central library close to the labs buildings.

It is worth mentioning that since its establishment in 1987, IUG has faced many challenges and restrictions imposed by the Israeli military authorities. Yet, IUG managed to provide quality academic education and serve the local community. With the help and support of all good people in the world, the university campus was converted from simple tents and barracks of asbestos to a modern campus with recent facilities that match the best in the world.

The bombing and shelling come at a time IUG faces major financial difficulties as many students’ families cannot pay fees due to high rate of unemployment caused by the siege imposed by the Israeli army.

Communitarians wear many disguises

In 2002, Tom DeWeese wrote an article published at newswithviews about the Community Character Act. The Act was entirely based in communitarian principles. Tom said,

"In closing, we must become acquainted with yet another term called Communitarianism, which places the importance of society ahead of the sovereign, unfettered rights of the individual. The dictionary defines it as a member of the Communist community. Our neighborhoods or communities are becoming part of the global community which is based on the belief that true community is rooted in the equitable sharing of values like political power, social justice and economic well being." (boldface added) http://www.heat-mi.org/files/SustainableDevelopment.pdf.

In the 7 years since he wrote that, he's only mentioned it once (that I can find).

"It begins in secrecy and slowly builds incrementally. But step by step a structure is put into place run by communitarian law and regional governing councils of appointed, well connected, yet unknown and unreachable officials hiding behind public/private partnerships, not answerable or responsive to citizens." IS THE SPP THE BEGINNING OF A NORTH AMERICAN UNION?, By Tom DeWeese, January 26, 2007, NewsWithViews.com http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom75.htm

I think the American right is purposely leading their followers away from communitarianism. Accepting the authentic, verifiable legal and academic term for the changes means they have to admit their part in helping to bring on the emerging global communitarian synthesis.

Just as many on the left are completely fooled into believing Obama's change means benevolent, anti Wall Street, socialist populism, the right is even more fooled into believing Obama's change is just some barely veiled form of communism. How convenient for the communitarians that both sides are still so totally stuck in their dialectical roles. The only way Americans will ever defeat the communitarians is if they can identify exactly who they are, exactly what they're doing, and how they're doing it.

The environmental common-ism DeWeese mentions in his "report" is actually called COMMUNITARIAN LAW in the EU. The integration procedures for nations merging into "unions" under Free Trade Agreements includes the supremacy of communitarian law clause.

Recognising and challenging communitarian supremacy of law at every level of govt is THE KEY to DEFEATING UN Local Agenda 21, Community Economic Development and NAFTA, CAFTA (and all the new "trade" agreements). The Andean Parliment is not drafting a North American Union using commonism law. Commonism law isn't the supreme law ruling all member nations.

Here's how Tom is "acquainting" his readers with the term Communitarianism:

Imagine an America in which a specific “ruling principle” was created to decide proper societal conduct for every citizen. That principle would be used to consider everything you eat, what you wear, the kind of home you live in, the way you get to work, the way you dispose of waste, the number of children you may have, even your education and employment decisions.

And imagine that these decisions were called “voluntary” – but that the federal government would use its full power to enforce what it has decided is “correct behavior.”

A world of common security, common standards, common markets, common currencies, and common borders in a world defined as a global “commons.”

That, my friend, is COMMON-ISM.

Incredibly, most Americans – including many of your elected officials are virtually unaware of the dangers in the Common-ism agenda. That’s because it is moving forward very slowly, one law and one regulation at a time, disguised as popular environmental policy, or education reform or even as more efficient government. Dawn of the Era of Common-ism, http://www.freedom21.com/deweese_su.asp

Here's an article he wrote promoting his "new" term back in 2007 (written a couple months after my CAFTA-EU-Communitarian Law article appeared at newswithviews):

"Republicans too, have embraced the agenda, all the while proclaiming the Commonism brand of free trade as the vision of our founding fathers. Even after the Republicans gained control of the Congress, Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich agreed that the lame-duck 103rd Democrat-controlled Congress should reconvene to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)." DAWN OF THE ERA OF COMMON-ISM, By Tom DeWeese, May 23, 2007, NewsWithViews.com, http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom85.htm

Sorry Tom. The EU, the UN and the WTO don't have any case law on their court record books called Commonism law. What they DO have is fifty years of Communitarian case law at the court in Luxembourg. And, in case you're all wondering, no, Israeli senior WH advisor, guru of the US Communitarian movement, Dr. Amitai Etzioni, didn't start a Commonism Network either.

"We have met the enemy, and that enemy is us."
http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/wehavemetthe.html

For more about Tom DeWeese and his expertise and influence:
http://www.americanpolicy.org/about/president.htm

President Obama's Communitarian Promise

President Obama and Dr. Amitai Etzioni

Nine years ago I found the Communitarian Network and discovered the philosophy behind the new behavior laws passed in Seattle. I say "discovered" because until the night I found Etzioni, I had never heard the term once. Not once during my entire lifetime of education in American public schools, US Army schools for dependents overseas and American colleges had I ever heard the term communitarianism.

I scored in the top 1% nationally on the Political Science portion of the GED at Renton Vo Tech in 1982, and, I can assure you, the term was not anywhere on that exam. Nobody knew it. My dad had never heard of it, my friends and family had never heard of it. It can't be found in any PS encylopedias published before the 1990s. For this reason, most Americans I tried to explain it to thought I had made it up as part of some grand, insane delusion I was experiencing.

IF there was such a thing as communitarianism and IF it was such a powerful idea that would change the face of America forever, then SOMEBODY else would have been talking about it. It was impossible to even consider that I, a complete nobody with zero credentials, no PhD, no good job at CNN or even the local newspaper, could be the only one who knew about a major world philosophy being quietly introduced across the globe that would destroy individual freedom and eliminate the nations that protect it. It just was too ridiculous of an idea to bother indulging me, and few people I know have ever read any of my ACL writings, even to this day.

But, and here's the real kicker, many people I know have completely embraced communitarian values! I am hearing more communitarian double-speak every day, and it's beyond bizarre to listen to it. I am beginning to wonder seriously about my choice to remain in the US and to reject the new requirements for global citizenship here where I was born with the right and the responsibility to resist tyranny. Now I can plainly see it, my countrymen will turn on me next time for not wearing the new shackles we all have to volunteer to wear under my grandious, insane delusion that there is a whole new system of government called communitarianism.

The ACL and this blog are getting a lot of search hits for "Obama communitarian" lately. So I took a little stroll through the first 7-8 pages of google returns. Along the way I found this publication by students at Delaware County Community College: The Communitarian http://thecommunitarian.org/editorial.html. Isn't the National Association of Scholar's initiative on communitarianism (referenced on the ACL homepage) called No More Delawares?

As if we needed further proof that in some sectors of our society it is REAL, the following quotes prove that some people do know Obama's real politics and some people do discuss it frequently among themselves. The rest of us common folk can only describe it as change we can believe in.

Communitarian Network Letter #8
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/ACommunitarianLetter8.html

“That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper… we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our ‘intellectual and moral strength.’” Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention

Conservatism is Dead: Long Live Liberalism? (Part III)
by Amitai Etzioni, Posted July 16, 2008

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/conservatism-is-dead-long_b_113096.html
"Obama draws heavily on -- and contributes much to -- a little known social philosophy known as communitarianism. It is centered around the importance of community, the common good, and service."

Obama the Communitarian
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/20/obama-the-communitarian.aspx

"Alan Wolfe is a TNR contributing editor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His latest book, The Future of Liberalism (Knopf), will be published in early February.

"Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama's language mixed liberal themes of hope and purpose with a communitarian emphasis on duty and responsibility. In his inaugural address, the latter language was so loud that the former could barely be heard."

The Dangers of Obama’s Communitarian Service Program,
Phil Orenstein • December 8, 2008
http://democracy-project.com/?p=3334

"In the coming four years we will witness a growing mobocracy with more of these Wal-Mart moments, if these communitarian service programs and the creeping Marxism behind them aren’t nipped at the root, before they multiply."

Communitarianism v. Libertarianism
By Scott Winship - January 22, 2009, 1:03PM

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/01/22/communitarianism_v_libertarianism/

"This is the essence of the social contract, and President Obama's rhetoric to date indicates that he intuitively grasps the intricate connections between communitarian and libertarian values. It will be exciting to see whether he manages to translate this rhetoric into a workable set of policies that can command broad public support."

Citizens, Not Americans
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/20/citizens-not-americans-the-metaphysics-of-barack-obama-s-inaugural-address.aspx

"Linda Hirshman is a former professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at Brandeis University, and the author, most recently, of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.

"There are two kinds of participants in the American Republic: citizens and Americans. They parallel precisely Isaiah Berlin's powerful, defining essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." Citizens achieve positive liberty, freedom to. Americans enjoy negative liberty, freedom from. Almost nothing Barack Obama says is accidental. He chose "citizens," not "Americans."

"Now Barack Obama, no dummy, is offering not just political change, but metaphysical change."

And what's this from CBSnews last summer?

Can Democrats Claim The Alaskan Frontier?
by Charles Wohlforth, The New Republic: Chances Of Obama Breaking The Democrats’ Dry Spell Are Better Than Ever, July 23, 2008
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/23/opinion/main4286673.shtml

"Obama's communitarian values also seem too far out of sync with Alaska's independent, self-reliant voters (unless he starts offering free government money to everyone, which always seems to work here)."

Here's how they discuss it in American law schools:

The Hierarchical-Communitarian Worldview
October 8, 2008 | Posted by: Alan R. Madry
Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog
http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2008/10/08/the-hierarchical-communitarian-worldview/

"One thing that most fascinated me about Dan Kahan’s findings (as reported in his Boden Lecture here on Monday) was the lack of people appearing in the quadrant (on his “group-grid” framework) that would be characterized as hierarchical and communitarian (the flip of that, also apparently lacking, would be individualistic egalitarians–more on that later). The gap is striking since hierarchical communitarians are heavily represented in history among philosophers and theologians. Plato and Aristotle would both be hierarchical communitarians, as would Aquinas (pictured above) and other of the Church fathers. Further afield, in China we’d find Confucius and his dialectics and in India, Manu and the dharma shastra."

Is Obama going to introduce a full national turn to Keynes' economic ideology?

The New Republic
A Man for All Seasons by John B. Judis
The misunderstood John Maynard Keynes.
Post Date Wednesday, February 04, 2009
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b5f61f74-dde6-43ea-a433-9feb0f752c3b

"When the economy goes south, one name invariably surfaces on the lips of pundits and economists: John Maynard Keynes. That is because the twentieth century's greatest economist is generally associated with the idea that markets require government intervention in order to function properly. During boom times, when the market seems to be working, no one has any use for Keynes's skepticism toward unrestrained capitalism. But, during recessions--when the economy grinds to a halt and Washington suddenly looks like the only thing that can save it--Keynes invariably enjoys a revival. The current economic crisis, our country's worst since the Great Depression, is no exception. Everyone, it seems, has spent the past months rediscovering Keynes."

Everyone huh?

What does John Maynard Keynes have in common with Dr. Amitai Etzioni, the founder of Communitarianism and President Obama's behind-the-scenes guru? Fabian socialism.

"Keynes scorned these "catastrophists" in the Labour Party. He also despised Soviet communism. And he had a low opinion of Marx's economics. "My feelings about Das Kapital are the same as my feelings about the Koran," Keynes wrote Bernard Shaw in 1934. But he was sympathetic to the Fabian socialism of Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, which had influenced the Labour Party." {ibid}

Gertee gets a new tarp roof cover! The leaking stopped!!!!

Free entertainment in Kenny Lake
"Tim chases a muskrat"

A muskrat crossed the yard when Tim was helping with wood.
We watched it run and "hide" in an icy puddle.

It stayed in there long enough to get our cameras.

Suddenly Tim grabbed it by the tail and pulled it out.
It happened so fast I didn't click a pic until it fell.

Tim chased it to the Hostel where it ran underneath.
It was pretty funny when he crawled right in there to catch it.
Muskrats make a funny looking track.

Roadside view of gertee's new roof cover.
I'll trim it once it gets back above freezing.

Kept the side with the "window" underneath it clear.

When it warms up I'll have a screened opening here.

Frozen felt and soaked floorboards.
I'm melting it with hot boiling water, an inch at a time.

Pulled up 1/4 of the floor coverings, a mix of Radiant Guard, recycled wool fabric and actual carpet pieces. What a mess. The back side is frozen solid, has one big chunk of ice holding 3 layers of wool together. That area may have to wait 'til breakup. The up side of it warming up to 40 above in January and everything melting and then rain, was there was one nice day with no rain and no wind, just enough daylight to put the new silver 30x30 tarp over the roof. Rick, the local "walking man" just happened to be walking by and helped me out. Thanks Rick! No matter how long it takes me to thaw and clean up this flood, it won't happen again in the "real" spring.

Working on Camp Redington again. The Hostel officially opens May 15, 2009. The campground will re-open June 1. All varieties of campers and camping equipment are welcome. I think this summer it will actually be possible to host an ACL week long seminar/party in August. I'm giving it a lot of thought as I'm dragging wet carpet around. :) I'm also starting the gertee book finally, so I'm guessing my blog focus is about to shift, heh.

Can't stop thinking what it would have been like if we had responded to Seattle with GSY.

NOTO Patriotism and the GSY Revolution

I'm always extremely wary of any use of the word "revolution" because it usually leads to a Marxist based ideology promoting conflict between common people. The American revolution in 1775 was specifically focused against the British Empire and its imperial economic policies. The Americans won that war. But, almost immediately, the elitist supporters of imperialism began undermining the new American system. The history of the United States is the history of how we eventually lost that war.

What if Americans simply quit participating in the renewal of the empire? Reminds me of the old 70s saying, "what if they had a war and nobody came?" (I modified that for my fence in Seattle in 2000 into a sign that said "what if they had a war and nobody knew?") Now we've come full circle to Nancy Reagan's "just say no" campaign.

Bobby got this perfect non-dialectical solution via Linda Kimble:

OTO Patriotism and the GSY Revolution (the New American Revolution)
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Wednesday, 21 January 2009

http://patriotsandliberty.com/?p=3660

The young son of a friend of mine, conservative author and pr exec Craig Shirley, goes to an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia. The principal, Tish Howard, last Friday (1/16) had red ribbons passed out to all the students, together with a flyer saying they were “encouraged” to wear the ribbons “in support of our new president, Barack Obama.”

Craig has a research assistant who grew up in Communist Yugoslavia, where all the students were indoctrinated to show their love for their leader for life, Marshall Tito, by wearing red scarves. “Here it’s red ribbons,” he observes. “Needless to say, the school did nothing like this four or eight years ago.” His son refused to wear the scarlet badge.

Thus it starts, a new definition of patriotism, a freedom-destroying fascist patriotism like that imposed by America’s first fascist dictator, Woodrow Wilson.

Important Update from Gisela, Alaska NO NAIS

Did you ever wonder why the newspeak includes insulting and denigrating rural people? Well, I think it's because of American farmers who can think independently and articulate what they see as the core issues of this portion of UN LA Agenda 21 implementation. Premises ID is not limited to animals. Millions of mapping databases are being built in every community in the world. (Our new map out here in "copper river country" is to "help" the tourists find all our roads and services, uh huh.)

Everyone has to be assigned an ID number attaching them to one Premise. Controlling and monitoring where we live is a key component of controlling what we can do there. Thanks for the update Gisela. Key, key arena to be fighting in right now. This update is a fine example of Comunitarian Administrative Law. This letter makes me proud to be part of a rural community, even though I'm definitely not a farmer. I'll try to bring it up on George's radio show tonight.

To comment on policies regulating the NAIS, go to http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocketDetail&d=APHIS-2007-0096

Comments on Docket No. APHIS–2007–0096 Official Animal Identification Numbering Systems

January 24, 2009

This proposal is nothing more than a back door approach to implement a mandatory NAIS. What happened to the USDA’s often stated claim “NAIS is voluntary with a capital ‘V’”!

You cite:

“Executive Order 12866 and Regulatory Flexibility Act

This proposed rule has been reviewed under Executive Order 12866. The rule has been determined to be not significant for the purposes of Executive Order 12866 and, therefore, has not been reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget.”

How can this be? The first paragraph of Executive Order 12866 and Regulatory Flexibility Act states:

“The American people deserve a regulatory system that works for them, not against them: a regulatory system that protects and improves their health, safety, environment, and well-being and improves the performance of the economy without imposing unacceptable or unreasonable costs on society; regulatory policies that recognize that the private sector and private markets are the best engine for economic growth; regulatory approaches that respect the role of State, local, and tribal governments; and regulations that are effective, consistent, sensible, and understandable. We do not have such a regulatory system today.”

And

“Section 1. Statement of Regulatory Philosophy and Principles. (a) The Regulatory Philosophy. Federal agencies should promulgate only such regulations as are required by law, are necessary to interpret the law, or are made necessary by compelling public need, such as material failures of private markets to protect or improve the health and safety of the public, the environment, or the well-being of the American p eople. In deciding whether and how to regulate, agencies should assess all costs and benefits of available regulatory alternatives, including the alternative of not regulating. Costs and benefits shall be understood to include both quantifiable measures (to the fullest extent that these can be usefully estimated) and qualitative measures of costs and benefits that are difficult to quantify, but nevertheless essential to consider. Further, in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, agencies should select those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity), unless a statute requires another regulatory approach.”

I submit that you are violating this act by not first having this proposal reviewed by the OMB and by not making public the cost/benefit analysis completed by Kansas State University.

NAIS will directly affect my ability to raise and sell breeding stock to other people and 4-H children when they discover that they must register their ‘premises’ (property) in a federal database for a program whose true costs and requirements are yet unknown! I view NAIS as a direct threat to the continued survival of rare and endangered species of livestock.

NAIS will do nothing to stop disease from entering this country. It is an ‘after the fact’ reaction. It will also do nothing to stop disease from entering our food chain because it ends at the slaughterhouse door. The large recalls that have occurred in the past few years were all from contamination that occurred in either the slaughterhouse, the packing industry or at the retail level, NOT on the farm itself!

On page 1635, column 1, paragraph 3, the proposed rule states:

“It is not our intent at this time to set a date by which AIN eartags in adult animals must conform to the 840 standard.”

The wording of this sentence indicates that you DO intend to do just that in the future. Requiring livestock owners to retag animals at some point in the future will be a terrible economic burden.

On page 1635, column 2, paragraph 1, the proposed rule states:

“the fundamental purpose of a PIN is to identify locations in the United States where livestock and/or poultry are housed or kept.”

And

“When animal health officials know where at risk animals and locations are and have accurate, up-to-date contact information for their owners, they can respond quickly and strategically to prevent disease spread.”

There is no way this database can ever be 100% accurate! I have a very real fear that your agency will look at as just that, especially after listening to numerous USDA officials speak.

Your often cited reason for NAIS is ‘mad cow’ disease and the need to trace where said cow went. Not ONE of the cows who tested positive for BSE originated in this country! Each one of them was imported from Canada yet you consistently water down the import requirements!

On page 1635, column 2, paragraph 3, the proposed rule states:

“Because the use of a single numbering system to represent premises in all animal-health data systems would help to standardize information and to enhance existing disease-tracing and emergency-response capabilities, we are proposing to remove the PIN format that uses the State postal abbreviation and are proposing to create a single national format for the PIN by requiring that all PINs issued on or after the date on which this proposed rule becomes effective would have to use the seven character alphanumeric code format.”

If the FIN (flock identification number) “serves the sheep and goat population well”, and will be continued under this proposal, why the need to change from the current state postal code numbering system for other species of livestock?

In addition, storing all PIN’s in a single database at the USDA will be far less secure than the current system of storing locations at the state/territory/tribe level. It is well known that any computer system can be ‘hacked into”. The USDA’s own system has been a victim of this in the past with social security numbers for private individuals stolen. If an individual or group wants to contaminate our food supply, how much easier could it be if the location of every producer is stored in one massive database?!

On page 1637, column 2, paragraph 3, the proposed rule states:

“We do not currently have all the data necessary for a comprehensive analysis of the effects of this proposed rule on small entities. Therefore, we are inviting comments concerning potential effects. In particular, we are interested in determining the potential costs to eartag manufacturers and livestock producers.”

According to a recent FOIA request for copies of the completed ‘NAIS Cost-Benefit Analysis’, the USDA has a 438 page report from Kansas State University. This FOIA request was denied. What happened to ‘transparency in government’?

According to your grant proposal, you paid Kansas State $50,000 of taxpayer money for this study. Why has this report not been made public?

Why are you, once again, submitting a proposed rule for a program which you cannot or will not state the actual costs to the producers themselves?

On page 1637, column 3, paragraph 3, the proposed rule states:

“These potential costs may be passed on to livestock producers that purchase the new eartags. We do not have data to quantitatively estimate these potential costs at this time, and welcome public comment from affected entities with this information.”

In this economy, where small farmers are already struggling to make ends meet, why do you propose that these costs be passed on to the producer? Especially by technology companies who stand to gain windfall profits from the implementation of this system? This latter fact has been clearly reported in numerous technology journals and memos/reports to stockholders from the approved tag/RFID manufacturers.

It would be far more cost effective and safer for humans if the $130 million of taxpayer money that has been spent so far trying to implement this expensive, intrusive system had been spent on a software system that would be compatible with the current systems in use AND by increasing the number of inspectors at our portals of entry and at the slaughterhouse/processing level. Then, and only then, would our food be safer.

When NAIS drives all the small farmers out, where will people go to buy their locally grown and wholesome food?

When NAIS drives all the small farmers out, we will become increasingly dependent on importing food, just as we have become increasingly dependent on importing oil.

When NAIS causes parents to pull their children out of 4-H and Future Farmers of America, what will the cost be to society? Raising animals teaches children responsibility, improves their self-esteem, teaches them the value of ‘community’ and makes them less likely to engage in criminal activity.

When NAIS drives all of us who raise rare and endangered breeds out, where will the larger producers go when they need to improve the genetic strength of their commercial breeds?

Karen Nowak
Pond Ridge Farm
Brookfield, NY

Radio interview on Secret Truth, Saturday 9pm CST

I'll be on George's show again tomorrow at 6 pm Alaska time. He was a very nice and informed host and I'm sure this will be another good show.

http://www.thesecrettruth.com/mainpage.htm

I was able to finally list the coat on ebay! Now, won't it be interesting to see if anyone buys it after all the trouble I went through to get it to stay up. heh.

I joined facebook the other day. Didn't want to, argued against it, but now that I did I have to say it's pretty cool to reconnect with so many people I love. Plus there is an ACL group there started by a young man we didn't know. The group is growing and promises to be something I never thought I'd live to see. Please send me an invite if you're also on facebook and want to be my friend. See ya there!

Comic relief, by Chris Katko

"Handing over the reigns" by Chris Katko

"baaaaarak" by Chris Katko

"Change" by Chris Katko

See all Chris' political cartoons and more at
http://www.labkats.com/

'Tungsten bombs' leave Israel's victims with mystery wounds

It's been a difficult 3 weeks reading the death tolls and damage reports coming in about the Israeli attack on Gaza. It's beyond frustrating to know there's not a single thing I can do to stop the killing. There's not a single thing I can do about any of the communitarian's madness and wars, and now it looks like things are taking a slightly different twist from the one I kept seeing them trying out in public.

The Communitarian UN needs a way to bolster their global reputation and authority. The elected leader of an influential "democratic" nation has to be sacrificed for the global common good. Activist organizations working for the UN made it appear (to me anyway) that they wanted Bush Jr. to fulfill that role. My focus has been on the IC case against the US government (or the many cases I should say). But, yes, going after Israel makes a lot more sense. Why would the Btitish Zionists bring down the US government when they finally control it? After a century of infiltration of the US system, there is no longer any doubt who pulls the strings in the White House these days. (No matter what you hear about Obama, he was LED by the nose through the community activist ranks by committed Communitarians; check the public records and compare his speeches to the writings of Dr. Amitai Etzioni, his real guru.) So now Barry Chamish's insistance that the Jewish people who settled Israel are being set up to become victims for the globalist CFR is certainly worth reading again.

From Peter Myer's elist:

(1) 'Tungsten bombs' leave Israel's victims with mystery wounds

From: Kenneth Rasmusson <rasken@kulturservern.se> Date: 19.01.2009 05:52 AM

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/tungsten-bombs-leave-israels-victims-with-mystery-wounds-1418910.html

18 January 2009

'Tungsten bombs' leave Israel's victims with mystery wounds

As it declares a unilateral ceasefire, Jerusalem faces a UN call for a war crimes investigation

by Raymond Whitaker

Israel was facing demands for war crimes investigations as it declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza last night after a 22-day assault in which more than 1,200 Palestinians, a third of them children, were killed and 13 Israelis died.

Two children were killed yesterday when Israeli tanks shelled a UN school in which families were sheltering, leading a UN spokesman, Chris Gunness, to say: "There has to be an investigation to determine whether a war crime has been committed." The call was dismissed by an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Yigal Palmor, who said: "These claims of war crimes are not supported by the slightest piece of evidence." But among numerous allegations of disproportionate use of force, questions are also multiplying about the use of unconventional weapons by Israel, including a new type of bomb that causes injuries that doctors have not seen before, and which they find impossible to treat.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, claimed in a televised address last night that the military operation had "fully attained" its goals, "and beyond". Israel had declared the ceasefire in response to an appeal from the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, but troops would remain for now in Gaza, and Hamas would be "surprised again" if it attacked.

But even though Mr Olmert said Hamas had been "beaten badly", rockets landed in Israel a few minutes before he spoke. Despite the desperate state of Gaza's population, Hamas leaders said they would continue to fight for an end to Israel's closure of crossing points into the territory and a withdrawal of the Israeli forces.

Mr Mubarak invited the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh today. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said he might attend, and Gordon Brown is among other leaders due to take part.

Although Mr Olmert's announcement was only a first step towards halting the conflict in Gaza, the UN is not the only international body insisting that inquiries must be held as soon as possible into the tactics and weapons used by Israel. Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor who worked in Gaza's hospitals during the conflict, said that Israel was using so-called Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space. The bombs are packed with tungsten powder, which has the effect of shrapnel but often dissolves in human tissue, making it difficult to discover the cause of injuries.

Dr Fosse said he had seen a number of patients with extensive injuries to their lower bodies. "It was as if they had stepped on a mine, but there was no shrapnel in the wounds," he said. "Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before." However, the injuries matched photographs and descriptions in medical literature of the effects of Dime bombs.

"All the patients I saw had been hit by bombs fired from unmanned drones," said Dr Fosse, head of the Norwegian Aid Committee. "The bomb hit the ground near them and exploded." His colleague, Mads Gilbert, accused Israel of using the territory as a testing ground for a new, "extremely nasty" type of explosive. "This is a new generation of small explosive that detonates with extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres," he said.

According to military databases, Dime bombs are intended for use where conventional weapons might kill or injure bystanders – to kill combatants in a house, for example, without harming people next door. Instead of being made from metal, which sprays shrapnel across a wide area, the casing is carbon fibre. Part of the motive for developing the bombs was to replace the use of depleted uranium, but Dr Fosse said the cancer risk from tungsten powde was well known. "These patients should be followed up to see if there are any carcinogenic effects," he said.

While the loudest controversy has been over accusations that white phosphorus was illegally used, other foreign doctors working in Gaza have reported injuries they cannot explain. Professor Mohammed Sayed Khalifa, a cardiac consultant from Sudan, said that two of his patients had had uncontrollable bleeding. "One had a chest operation, and continued bleeding even after having been given large quantities of plasma," he said. "The other had what seemed to be a minor leg injury, but collapsed with profuse bleeding. Something was interfering with the clotting process. I have never seen such a thing before."

Dr Ahmed Almi, an Egyptian cardio-thoracic consultant at al-Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said he had seen a number of patients with inexplicable injuries. A boy of 14 had a small puncture wound in his head, but extensive damage to his brain, making it impossible to save his life. "I don't know the nature or type of these weapons that make a very small [entry wound] and go on and make massive destruction in the tissues," he said.

Israeli military representatives have refused to confirm or deny using specific weapons, but insist that all Israel's weapons comply with international law. Neither white phosphorus nor Dime bombs are illegal, but campaigners say the way they have been used, especially in Gaza's densely packed urban areas, could constitute a war crime.

Vintage REAL Fouke fur seal coat for sale on craigslist

Ada Wilson's art added to Fouke fur seal coat on Jan 19, 2009

The new cuffs, designed to meet ebay policy,
ended up being an exceptionally lovely addition .

Ada made this piece in the 1970s and saved it all these years.

After ebay's "safety team" rejected my auction the second time, even after it was modified to meet their AK Native made policy requirements, I put my fur seal coat up for sale on Alaska craiglist:
http://anchorage.craigslist.org/clo/1000309559.html

In Obama Remarks, Theme Of 'Responsibility' Emerges

Chris Bieber just sent this link out and I had to post it before I log off today.

For some reason now I feel like writing a letter to Dear Dr. Etzioni, and asking, "Please Sir. When are Americans going to be told what Obama means by "responsibilty?" Does it mean this: http://www.gwu.edu/~icps/rights.html

Who can/will/wants to explain explain to our citizens HOW is it possible that Obama's meaning is the same one "that belonged to outgoing President Bush, who in his 2000 campaign talked about ushering in a "responsibility era."?"

Are Americans asking what these boys mean by "more responsibility?" No? Bummer.

From this morning's Washington Post:

Obama will talk about restoring a sense of responsibility in the country, Gibbs said, conveying his belief that "we need more responsibility and accountability, certainly, in the way our government acts."

"We have to have it, certainly, within many of our financial institutions that sort of have gotten us to where we are in this economic crisis today," Gibbs said on "Fox News Sunday." "Obviously, the American people are going to have to give some."

Rahm Emanuel, the incoming chief of staff, said the "culture of responsibility" would be sought for American leaders as well as the population at large. "We need that culture of responsibility, not just to be asked of the American people, but its leaders must also lead by example," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." In Obama Remarks, Theme Of 'Responsibility' Emerges Advisers Say Inaugural Address Will Also Stress Accountability, By Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, January 19, 2009; Page A04

Whatever happened to the "Culture of Protected Individual Enterprise"? Did it ever exist? How obvious to you is it that we "have to give more?" More of what, exactly?

From the Harvard Educational Review of The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda, By Amitai Etzioni, New York: Crown, 1993. 323 pp. $22.00. http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/249

"Etzioni demonstrates the value of reframing policy discussions and moral discourse around the connection between rights and responsibilities."

"Although Etzioni's communitarian message is apparent, the normative choices embedded in his plan are not. Specifically, issues of social and cultural diversity, the need to protect the voices of a society's marginal thinkers, and the importance of reflective and critical dialogues are noted by Etzioni in The Spirit of Community, but the challenges they imply for his agenda are never fully explored. When one assesses his broad vision and his educational plan as outlined in chapter three, "The Communitarian School," his inattention to democratic goals becomes clear."

So where does Bush, Obama's and Emanuel's idea of a culture the requires national volunteer service come from? Near the close of the above review, Kahn explains:

"It frequently seems as though individuals believe it is their right to decide whether or not to be responsible, and Etzioni helps us understand the costs of this orientation. He proposes, for example, that all youth perform a year of national service after high school as an "antidote to the ego-centered mentality," as a means of providing meaningful social service, and as "a grand sociological mixer . . . for developing shared values and bonds among people from different racial, class, and regional backgrounds" (pp. 113–114)."

This is the same requirement of youths living in Etzioni's home, the state of Israel. Of course in Israel, mandatory public service has nothing to do with developing bonds with the Palestinian residents who "share" their homeland with the European Zionists.

And Constance Cumbey just sent this, wow, it appears a lot of us are paying attention to the developments in DC.. not to the celebrations but what they're really celebrating.

"A day away from becoming the nation's 44th president, Obama visited 14 injured vets from Iraq and Afghanistan at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Then he visited Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for homeless teens in the District of Columbia, chatting with volunteers who were helping to repaint rooms and then pitching in himself.

"We can't allow any idle hands. Everybody's got to be involved," Obama said. "I think the American people are ready to do that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_go_pr_wh/inauguration_rdp

Smoke, Mirrors and the Fog of Endless War, by Syd Walker

I'm not familiar with Syd Walker's writing, but I found this to be a relevant contribution to the process I go through when I'm deciding what to repost as "a fact." Since my first years of ACL research focused mainly on government agency documents obtained under the FOIA and WA ST PDA, I didn't have any "sources" to substantiate my stories other than my local government officials (many of whom I interviewed in person and over the phone). As I expanded my research to internet websites, I primarily used government sites to get all my additional information about the Seattle programs, like COPS and COMPASS and Agenda 21. I was estatic to find Thomas Guide and congressional records. I loved it that the Dept of Justice, like the Strategic Planning Office in Seattle, has such thorough web developers.

In 1999, when the 38 neighborhood plans were passed into law, LA21 programs were just beginning to become available online at the seattle.gov website. Today almost every inch of America has a plan, and most of them are online. However, while sometimes they post their meeting notes, their inter office emails and memos are not online; they have a lot more detail about their actions, aren't normally posted, and must be requested under public disclosure laws. Many of the sub-comittees who planned 4th Amendment tests in Seattle still don't show up anywhere on the gov sites.

It was later, maybe late 2000, when I went looking for more history. I began writing a historical timeline to explain communitarian balancing to the Dawson lawyers in 2001. After that huge project started (the chart ended up being 4x12 feet!), my internet searches took me to a far wider variety of sources, and I must say that it's been an incredible journey just scouring the internet for information about things I know nothing about. But, and this hasn't changed, I always felt like I was being sucked into a hole whenever I had to read up on some religion, secret organization or philosophy that Etzioni uses as a foundation for changing the U.S.

The biggest challenge of my portion of ACL work has been to remember our focus is on current communitarian policy and law. It's very easy to get sidetracked by all the other interesting possibilities and theories. There are several complex, real religions and philosophies that make up the communitarian foundation, many of which have become very important to me as a researcher. These pieces must be understood in order to fully grasp the communitarian agenda. And I also want to know a lot more about the American economic system that existed outside the empire for a very short moment in time. I want to TRY national political economy just once in my lifetime, with all my friends and neighbors inspired to be in the real game with me. I don't think it will be that hard for our people to give up 20 pairs of cheap China made shoes for one good American made pair, especially when foreign goods come under a high import tariff that makes them more expensive than homemade American brands. I do want to see America thrive. But that's not the only reason why I do this. I've studied the way Obama's going to change America, and it is with communitarian policy and law. From UN National Premises ID to federal environmental test requirements on all new and used children's items, our country is walking into the global gulag without a clue what the new rules are. What does that do to our odds for survival?

I still get a lot of emails linking to all kinds of allegations, with quotes coming from places like Sasha, the Russian reporter, and Mathew, the channelled entity. Those are not sources I chose to use at the ACL, but I'm certain other sources I thought were "good" have the possibility of being not so reliable after all.

From Peter Myers' elist:

(1) 'Gotcha' - Sharon quotation / misleading video story

From: Syd Walker Date: 18.01.2009 10:19 PM

Here's a follow-up on the Sharon quotation / misleading video story

http://sydwalker.info/blog/2009/01/18/smoke-mirrors-and-the-fog-of-endless-war/

Smoke, Mirrors and the Fog of Endless War

By Syd Walker on Sunday, January 18th 2009

A couple of days ago I wrote an article called Humiliating the USA an Israeli Hobby. As the title suggests, it was about the bizarre, inverted power relations between the mighty USA and the tiny State of Israel.

The article hinged on a recent boast by Prime Minister Olmert that he ordered the US President to abstain on Resolution 1860 in the UN Security Council.

I presume that report was accurate. The source was AFP. Major news agencies such as AFP are typically considered 'reliable' sources. Even so, we can never assume that any source is 100% reliable. Journalists can make mistakes. Their sources can be mistaken, or lie deliberately.

In the article, I made a brief reference to an older instance of the same type of bragging by an Israeli PM. Back in late 2001, Ariel Sharon was quoted as saying: "don't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America" in a conversation with then cabinet member Shimon Peres.

I reported this outrageous Sharon quotation story for two reasons: (1) I believed it was true, and (2) it was relevant to the story as a whole.

But is it really true? Two days ago, I thought so. Now I'm not so sure.

The main reason I'd believed the quotation to be accurate is because it was repeated on a number of websites that in other instances I've found to be useful and credible sources of information. In my article, I gave a link to Media Monitors. I could have chosen Mid-East Realities or the Washington Reports on Middle East Affairs. The latter, in particular, has a lot of invaluable material, especially of a historical nature.

I recall reading years ago that the veracity of this quotation is contested - and probably checked out CAMERA's rebuttal at that time. But I hadn't found the denial particularly persuasive. CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) is, after all, 100% biased towards Israel. Its own reputation for integrity is very poor.

But now, pushed to look deeper into the origins of this story (prompted by the editor of the Beyond the Fringe website who has a refreshing appetite for accuracy), I've learnt more about the original report on which the other reports were based. The story seems to have come from only one source: the Islamic Association For Palestine (IAP). It's a source that's clearly biased to the Palestinian cause. That's not to say it was lying about the story - or in error. But I can't be sure.

CAMERA claims the Hebrew language radio channel Kol Yisrael - which IAP claimed ran the report of Sharon's remarks on air – denies that it ever happened. IAP itself is no longer operating; at least, it's website is down. Not surprising really. In 2006, the pro-Zionist website FrontPageMag.com gloated:

Terrorism expert Steven Emerson characterized IAP as Hamas' "primary voice in the United States." The former chief of the FBI's counter-terrorism department, Oliver Revell, called IAP "a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants."

In December 2004, a federal judge in Chicago ruled that IAP (along with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, or HLF), was liable for a $156 million lawsuit for having aided and abetted Hamas in the West Bank killing of a 17-year-old American citizen named David Boim. IAP thereafter had its assets frozen by the U.S. government and was shut down on grounds that it was funding terrorism.

Hmmm. That's one way to knock out ideological enemies, I guess. Of course, if Palestinian minors were ever valued on a similar basis, the US national debt would double overnight.

All in all, I now feel it's not possible to use the Sharon quotation with confidence that's it's accurate. There are too many unknowns. At least, that's my current view. I reserve the right to change it again if new information becomes available.

This is not an unusual case. It's quite typical of the difficulties of working through conflicting narratives of the conflict over Palestine, trying to make sense out of apparent confusion.

I find the following distinctions are useful:

1. Information (accurate and truthful)

2. Misinformation (inaccurate, although promulgated with truthful intent)

3. Disinformation (inaccurate and promulgated with dishonest intent)

It's common to encounter all three of these in discussions about Palestine and Zionism. Working out which is which is too time consuming for most people, even if they had sufficient interest.

Of course, 'most people' believe (or hope) that they don't need to do their own analysis. They trust the mass media to do it for them. That's a big problem. The western mass media's longstanding Zionist bias is shocking.

Another recent case of pro-Palestinian misinformation – or possibly disinformation – was a video that flashed around the web in early January. I saw it first on another website and reposted in A Surgical Strike: The Palestinian View on January 2nd.

Almost immediately, a local Zionist posted a comment complaining that I was using fake material. This is what he wrote:

"What no acknowledgment Syd that this video has now been removed from all other credible sites on the web , including pro-palestinian, because it is a fraud which shows the explosion of Hamas rockets at an Hamas rally in 2005?Update: THIS VIDEO IS MISLEADINGI was deceived by the video I grabbed and uploaded from here.The video was not taken on January 1st 2009. It was not taken in a civilian market, and it was not the result of an IDF air strike.

This video is from September 23rd 2005, and was taken in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. A Hamas pick-up truck carrying Qassam rockets detonated by mistake during a Hamas rally, leaving at least 15 killed and dozens more injured.

In recent days there has been some debate about the video in question by wiser heads than mine. The consensus seems to be that the footage was indeed not from the current conflict in Gaza. Score One to the Zionists.

However, I was only concerned in my post to present an indication of the utter horror on the ground from a Palestinian perspective – to contrast it with an Israeli-style high-tech, sanitized and unemotional perspective on killing fellow human beings. It was fairly easy to find another, valid current video from the conflict as a replacement. That's what I did. I didn't post the annoying Zionist comment at the time. This is my blog and I am not here to do favours to Zionist apologists. They don't get a bad run for their anti-human views in the mass media. I intend to help to redress the imbalance.

Nevertheless, honesty matters. It matters a lot. In the end, honesty is crucial to those who want a healed world based on truth and reconciliation. Hence this article.

It's worth noting that, at the time this video was first posted, Israel was blocking all mass media's access to Gaza. Reports of the horror inside the crowded strip of land were necessarily scant and below professional standards. That's what un-embedded journalism from a real war zone is like.

As for Ariel Sharon and his notorious brag, who knows whether he said it or not? Even if it's possible to get an accurate transcript of the initial radio report (I doubt that), the story itself could have been based on a false or exaggerated report.

The comments allegedly made by Ariel Sharon were allegedly directed at Shimon Peres. Perhaps they're the only ones who know for sure what was said?

Sharon is not talking these days. President 'Sir' Peres can talk (and some!), but has a track record of lying on crucial issues that's at least half a century long. The 'facts' of that particular matter may never be clear.

There's something else to bear in mind. Even if Sharon's 'We control America' quotation is disinformation (that is, a deliberate lie), we can't necessarily conclude Palestinians are authors of the deceit. It's a possibility of course, but it's also possible that Zionists seed these false quotations, rather liker the Martin Luther King fake quotation that I reported on previously.

Why would they do that? Why might some of the Zionist strategists think it's a good idea to have quotations circulating widely on the web that make Sharon sound even more obnoxious than he actually was?

I can think of a few reasons. First, they will assume that most people will never see the quotes, which would be generally avoided by the mass media (even if accurate). Those who do see the quotations fall into a few camps. There'll be those who think it's fine that Israel does control America. Others will be shocked– but scared to say anything about it. In their case, the quotation may help freeze them up with just a little more fear.

Then there are folk like me, who are very pissed off indeed with the Zionists and what they've been up to. We're so angry, in fact, that we blog about these subjects regularly. Quotes like Sharon's 'We control America' are tempting to use if they seem credible.

IF these quotations turn out to be false, it gives the Zionists a 'gotcha' moment.

On a bulletin board or forum, a discussion about the horrors of Israeli strikes on Gaza can easily degenerate into a squabble over the accuracy of a single quotation. The very concern that many people have (and rightly so!) for accuracy and truth, can be used to distract us from the really significant facts of the moment.

A Truth & Reconciliation Commission was established in post-Apartheid South Africa to help its people face up to a sordid past and establish a truthful basis for peaceful co-existence.

The equivalent in post-Apartheid Palestine will face a challenge of considerably greater complexity.

Selling vintage fur seal coat prohibited by ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=110339325477

I decided to sell the fur seal instead of cutting it up and making mittens or hats, but ebay pulled the listing after 2 hours because I violated their marine animals policy. I can only sell it if it's cut up and resown by a certified Alaskan Native who remakes it into an authentic Alaskan Native craft. ebay's message to me explained that there are many international laws and regulations that control the sale of marine animal products, they didn't cite an exact law, they just cited something called CITES.

So I did a search at CITES for fur seal resale and waded through this long list of species and gave up looking for the exact parameters for resale of sewn fur seal. CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES OF WILD FAUNA AND FLORA
International Environment House • Chemin des Anémones • CH-1219 Châtelaine, Geneva • Switzerland, Tel: +41 (22) 917 81 39/40 • Fax: +41 (22) 797 34 17 • Email: info@cites.org • Web: http://www.cites.org, Appendices I, II and III valid from 1 July 2008:
http://209.85.173.132/u/cites?q=cache:TjmlO45SFbkJ:www.cites.org/eng/app/E-Jul01.pdf+%5C+fur+seal+resale&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

ebay's questions page suggested I visit Prince Phillip's benevolant World Wildlife Fund (which has a box on Big Mother's Game Plan: Checkmate) for further information on protected species.

"Marine Mammal Products: Marine mammal products, including but not limited to, sea otter, whales (baleen and ivory), porpoise, dolphins, and seals, generally may not be listed for sale unless the animal part has been first transformed into an authentic Alaskan Native article of handicraft or clothing. The export/import of marine mammals typically requires CITES as well as other state and/or federal permits. Users should contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and/or National Marine Fisheries Service before importing or exporting marine mammal products."

An amazing fact that came out of my little research hunt into this regulated fur seal coat is that what Tim told me about seal hunting is true; he said whenever the government banned the managed hunting, the seal populations grew too large and a bunch of them died of starvation. Of course the official account of this says the reason for their dying off since the 1970s is mysteriously unknown. (CITE appears to have more scholarly articles on this topic.)

So I went looking and found the Federal Fur Seal Act of 1966, which looks like it was more about taking over the people's lives on the Pribalof Islands than protecting the seals. When the federal government regulators say "subsistance" do they actually mean subsistance on government grants? Or do they just not know how many Alaskan Natives they helped to become dependent on their government programs? I wonder what life is like now in the Pribalofs compared to the 1950s. Probably be a lot like comparing the logging and fishing town of Ketchikan, a bustling center of commerce and trade in the 70s to what it looked like when I went back in 2004. It was a "living ghost town", like Chitina, like what's become of so many old towns and city commerce centers across America today. Our people see it, I know they do.
http://www.animallaw.info/statutes/stusfd16usc1151_1187.htm

Gee, I must be a stupid American, but I just don't understand how my fur seal coat, authenticated as a Fouke Fur which was the U.S. Government's Fur Company until the 1960s does not have a white people grandfather clause or something. So what happened to all the fur seal coats in the world? Do people hide them in their closets? That could be why this one looks like it's never been worn. How can a fur hide that was tanned by an American fur company and then made into a coat by a tailor in Pittsburgh be authentic Native Alaskan? Maybe Ada Wilson will sew a couple beads on it for me.

Ah well, back to the drawing board. I've been putting on my marketing/fundraising hat and thought selling the coat was a pretty good idea. No wonder I'm always broke. I suck at marketing. I bet if I had been raised in Soviet Russia I'd know how to get around this kind of challenge. Is there a black market ebay? (just kidding!)

Wonder how many mothers will be just as stunned to learn they cannot even GIVE away their children's clothes and toys, let alone sell them on ebay or at garage sales. I hope this doesn't put me on ebay's "no buy" list. I hope all young mothers are buying up everything they can, may even be worth it to rent storage space to keep it "safe."

Gertee survives first severe windstorm of 2009!

Winds knocked out the stapled RadiantGuard,
I did it loosely since I plan to take it all down in April.

I stapled the bottoms back up after the first night of high winds blew it down. The second night of winds blew them off again. As long as they don't blow any more powerful than they've been, (gusts of maybe 50 mph) my pool cover/parachute roof can weather the storms. It's holding on!

The Anti Communitarian Manifesto in print!

My first copies arrived yesterday.
Nordica did a fine job and we have
Primitivs on the cover! Ho!

Please be sure to let us know if your order hasn't arrived.

Sun Yat-sen's economic philosophy similar to Friedrich List's, not Marx's

Nordica found and printed Friedrich List's National System of Political Economy (1846) in the winter of 2003. We were living in Wyoming then, having moved there after I was "dismissed" from the Dawson legal team. I tended bar three nights a week at the Little Chicago down in Worland, and Nordica was Shalee's babysitter half-way up the Big Horn Mountains in Ten Sleep. Most of the ACL website was produced during that winter, and finding List was like finding the missing link. Nordica called me every night for a week after she got the boys to bed and read List out loud to me over the phone.

It was as if I'd never been taught anything about the American system. We were both sick to death of reading Hegel and Marx and had almost threw out our entire ACL thesis on several occasions. At that point we still had not found anyone who could verify what we saw to be true. All available writing seemed to point in the same Marxist direction. To find out that our America, for a very short time, had a whole political and economic system based on something way outside the "Smith capitalist free trader" versus "Marx communist free trader" ideology was amazing.

List never felt the need to hide reality, history, or his practical, scientific observations behind bogus social and political evolution theories. We have still found no verifiable scientific data that proves "the inevitability of class struggle."

We eventually added Friedrich List's global economic studies into our ACL thesis with this:

A: The [your nation goes here] System of Political Economy (List 1841)
+ B: State-controlled world communism
= C: State-controlled global communitarianism

The following excerpt helped me better understand why Marx and Engels dismissed List and the American system so easily from their theory of inevitable social evolution.

From Peter Myer's elist:

(2) Sun Yat-sen's economic philosophy similar to Friedrich List's, not Marx's

{this material was sent by Arno Mong Daastoel . He could supply missing bits if you wish}

Marxism, China and Development: Reflections on Theory and Reality

A. James Gregor

Transaction Publishers

New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

Copyright © 1995 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903

Preface

This work is conceived as a small contribution to the enduring effort toward understanding the collapse of Marxism-Leninism as a political and economic system. Part of the academic community has undertaken a retrospective in order to identify and catalogue the factors that led to the disintegration of an arrangement, welcomed with so much enthusi-asm, that had its origins in the Bolshevik Revolution at the end of the First World War. That is an effort that has only just commenced.

Another part of that community has occupied itself with the task of rehabilitating the Marxism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Its spokesmen argue that Marxism-Leninism was always an uncertain heir to the Marxist legacy. Neither Marx nor Engels anticipated the enor-mities of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Marxism, they argue, of-fered something better than that. It was misinterpreted by its Bolshevik and Maoist practitioners. Stalinism and Maoism were to be attributed to human failings rather than to any shortcomings intrinsic to the work of Marx and Engels.

Still another identifiable segment of the intellectual community con-tinues to entertain the conviction that Maoism (if not Stalinism) embod-ies a laudable ideal. More than that, they imagine it to be the Marxism for our time. They lament the erosion of Maoism that followed fast on the heels of the "Chairman's" passing. The reforms of Deng Xiaoping are indicted as betrayals of the Marxist vision. ...

My wife, Professor Maria Hsia Chang, was helpful without measure. ...

6

Alternatives

One of the stranger things that happened to classical Marxism in the century and a half of its intellectual life was its transformation into an ideology of industrial development and economic modernization. Origi-nally scripted as a postindustrial revolutionary doctrine, after the Bol-shevik Revolution it was pressed into service as a strategy for rapidly increasing industrial yield and modernizing retrograde economies. What-ever was done was justified in the name of the inherited doctrine - irre-spective of any evident lack of coherence. There was little serious effort to provide a convincing rationale for the transformation. The "creative developments" of Marxism were almost always ad hoc, frequently shar-ing little affinity with the original doctrine, and sometimes entirely de-void of plausibility.

For Marx and Engels, the existence of a market testified to the ex-istence of private property, and private property required profit for its survival. ... However much the sub-stance of Marxism was altered to conform to the realities that faced Stalinists and Maoists, rejection of the open market and of market-gov-erned exchange remained constant. ... Throughout the years between the two world wars, for example, Stalinism was rarely considered anything other than an agent of international revolution. Only after the Second World War was it identified as a "developmental success" and a potential model for developing countries. It began to be dealt with in those terms as more and more nations emerged out of colonialism as independent and aspir-ing states. The industrialized nations proceeded to put together strate-gies for economic growth and development. By the 1950s, those recommended by the non-Marxist democracies began to display evi-dent similarities. ...

In his more mature works, Karl Marx devoted his energies to the provi-sion of an account of why modern machine production must necessarily be "exploitative." and why, as a consequence, the "vast mass" of "proletarians" must inevitably rise up to abolish the system of "bourgeois pro-duction and exchange" - to establish a society "in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."17

At a time when the vast majority of the world's communities lan-guished in economic underdevelopment, Marx and Engels were preoc-cupied with postindustrial revolution. In fact, Marx and Engels, in the mid-nineteenth century, spoke of "modern industry" as having already drawn "all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization... [compelling them] on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production."18

By the time Marx and Engels entered into the discussion, the advo-cates of an interventionist, protectionist state had clearly articulated a program that not only distinguished them from the advocates of tradi-tional laissez-faire and free trade, but identified them as developmentalists, the advocates of rapid industrialization and economic modernization for less-developed nations. Though often neglected, they were to exercise influence in less-developed and developing nations throughout the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Friedrich List was to become one of the most prominent among them. He was a contemporary of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Born in 1789, by 1844 List had produced works that were to exercise a powerful influence on the economic development and industrializa-tion of Imperial Germany.26 He proposed a policy that focused specifi-cally on the national economic concerns of his native Germany as opposed to those "universal free trade" policies presumably implied in the semi-nal work of the father of all free market economists and free traders, Adam Smith. ...

Central to List's arguments was the notion that nations constituted the critical vehicles of economic development. List maintained that he had perceived "that the popular theory [of laissezfaire and free trade] took no account of nations, but simply of the entire human race on the one hand, or of single individuals on the other."29 For List, nationality was understood to serve as the intermediary between the individual and humanity in its entirety. As such, the nation is the community in which the individual finds fulfillment and matures into a citizen of the greater world community. Between the time when a less-developed community first encounters more advanced economies and when that community attains industrial and economic maturity, government is obliged to con-sciously promote "the growth of manufactures, fisheries, navigation and foreign trade" through specific state policies.30

List maintained that the prevailing "cosmopolitan theory" of laissez-faire and free trade failed to take into account the separate and real inter-ests of economically less-developed nations. The uneven development of industry throughout the world afforded some communities undeni-able military and political advantage in the adversarial environment of international relations. Differential economic and industrial development meant a differential distribution of power ...

List clearly distinguished this developmental program from the eco-nomic notions of the "cosmopolitans," those opposed to state interven-tion in the economy and any constraint on the free flow of trade. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, those like Hamilton and List were generally spoken of as "protectionists" - given their advocacy of the protection of domestic infant industries - and were so identified by the young Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.37

The treatment accorded the protectionists by the first Marxists was unresponsive - at best. Neither Marx nor Engels considered the issues addressed by List worthy of serious consideration. Marx and Engels were totally unconcerned with national economic development.

For Marx and Engels, the preoccupation with national industrial de-velopment was either the consequence of invincible stupidity or con-scious hypocrisy. In the first place, it was clear to Engels that "the proletarians in all countries have one and the same interest, one and the same enemy." That enemy was not underdevelopment, or a foreign na-tionality, but an international class: the bourgeoisie. "The great mass of proletarians are," according to Engels, "by their very nature, free, from national prejudices and their whole disposition and movement is essentially... anti-nationalist."38

For Marx and Engels the primary reality of the modern world was the constant, irremediable, and irreducible conflict between classes. The "nationality of the worker is neither French, nor English, nor German, it is labor....His government is neither French, nor English, nor Ger-man, it is capital. His native air is neither French, nor German, nor En-glish, it is factory air."39 His enemy was not underdevelopment, or a foreign nation, it was an indigenous and exploitative class. ...

As a consequence, Marx saw little to choose between developmental strategies. He recommended free trade and laissez-faire to less-devel-oped economies only because under their auspices the contradictions of modern industrial society would mature most rapidly - accelerating the circumstances that would "eventuate in the emancipation of the prole-tarians"56 through abolition of the market.

Marx and Engels conceived economic development, industrializa-tion, and modernization, in general, as part of an inevitable process of historical maturation that must necessarily involve all peoples and all parts of the globe. Because of its inevitability, they were indifferent about how economic growth and development might be achieved. They were even prepared to grant that the policies recommended by protectionists like Hamilton and List might be recommended in some circumstances. In various places Marx and Engels spoke of the United States, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and China, together with some of the colonized terri-tories, as making recourse to all the strategies recommended by List in order to transform traditional economies into those that were industri-ally advanced.57

Marx understood List's system as an effort to establish "manufacture upon a large scale in any given country." While prepared to grant as much, he went on to argue that whatever the intention, the "national system" of development, by fostering industry, would ultimately drive the developing community into the world market - to engage the same reality of social revolution faced by nations that had achieved industri-alization without the benefits of protectionism.58 Engels had made es-sentially the same argument as early as 1845.59 ...

Like List, Sun Yat-sen conceived the critical challenge of the modern world to be the industrialization and modernization of retrograde econo-mies. Like List, he understood the most appropriate vehicle for industrialization and modernization to be the nation - and the most efficacious tool for the implementation of a developmental program the revolution-ary, interventionist state. More important than that, perhaps, was the fact that Sun Yat-sen, like Friedrich List, conceived the medium in which all this might transpire to be a market-based productive system. What-ever "socialism" there was to be in an industrializing and modernizing national economy, it was to be predicated on the prevailing domestic and international market system.

After a century and a half of disappointed expectation, false starts, lost opportunities, tragic costs, failed enterprise, and shattered illusions, the "Marxists" of contemporary China are searching for a developmen-tal alternative to the flawed Maoism they have abandoned. It cannot be found in the recommendations of dependency theorists who urge the abandonment of market modalities and "delinking" from international capitalism. The core of present developmental policy in China is its de-pendency on the recreation of an effective market and the traffic of goods, technology, skills, and investment with the advanced capitalist economies.

A new developmental policy cannot be found in the wistful vision of a nonmarket cooperative "proletarian internationalism." China's current program of development is rooted in the firm soil of Chinese national-ism. It cannot be socialist in any traditional Marxist sense because the essentials of both a competitive market and private property have made their reappearance in the course of present reforms. More and more, contemporary China is beginning to look like the China anticipated by Sun Yat-sen.

It was H. W. Arndt who recently reminded us that it was Sun Yat-sen's program for the economic development of China that "more than anything else written before 1939, anticipated post-1945 thinking," and that it was Sun who "was almost certainly the first to advocate eco-nomic development in something like the modern sense and use of the term,"61 More than any Marxist old or new, Sun spoke to issues critical to an economically backward but emergent China. That has become in-creasingly apparent to everyone - including China's last Marxists. ...

{Endnote 121 to chapter 6: H. W. Arndt, Economic Development: The History of an Idea (Chicago, 111.: University of Chicago, 1987), 16.}

7

Sun Yat-sen

In October 1992, an editorial in the Far Eastern Economic Review opined that:

By now the "Taiwanese miracle" in economics has almost graduated into a cliche: the world's 14th largest trader, with foreign reserves topping U.S.$86 billion and a per capita income that at U.S.$8,813 is more than 25 times that of the mainland. Less well known, and completely unpredicted by most of the world's China "experts," has been a political revolution of historical proportions: the transformation of Taiwan into the world's first real Chinese democracy.... Unfortunately, Taiwan's splendid achievements have thus far gone largely unnoted and unrewarded.

The account concluded with the affirmation that Taiwan - the Re-public of China - has become an "indispensable beacon" for a "new China."1 As the Marxist People's Republic of China on the mainland thrashes about for a new developmental strategy and a new sustaining ideology, the Republic of China on Taiwan concludes its trajectory of growth and development - informed by the ideas of Sun Yat-sen.

There is no longer much resistance to the suggestion that the "miracle" on Taiwan received its inspiration and much of its substance from the thought of Sun.2 While Maoism, as a developmental strategy, was being dismantled on the mainland of China, on Taiwan Shih Chien-sheng maintained that it was Sun Yat-sen's "principle of the people's liveli-hood {minsheng zhuyi]" that served as "the cornerstone" for the rapid industrialization and economic modernization of the Republic of China.3 ...

Having escaped to Hawaii while still a child, Sun was overwhelmed by the accomplishments of the Western "barbarians." He recognized the evident material abundance of industrial capitalism, the attendant mer-its of law and public order, the advantages of meeting social wants through impersonal institutions, and stood in awe of the power embodied in machine production. He came to deplore the backwardness and corrup-tion of China - a sentiment that found expression in his intense opposi-tion to the oppressive Manchu dynasty that ruled his homeland. The overthrow of the Manchu and the introduction of Western law and in-dustry became the motives that drove his revolutionary activity.8

Wittfogel argued that Sun's program appealed to the rising domestic bourgeoisie. For Sun, the rule of law offered the protection of property without which enterprise would prove fruitless. Despotic rule and law-lessness not only exacted its toll from the peasantry and the defenseless, it hobbled initiative and economic growth. Thus, while the secret societ-ies - composed of elements of the lower classes - lent their support to Sun, the involvement of the "better classes" provided the funding that made revolutionary activity possible. The emerging bourgeoisie found a spokesman in Sun.9

Wittfogel made a case typical of those advanced by Marxists. He reminded his readers that the intellectuals who gathered around Sun were almost invariably the sons of merchants, bankers, officials, and wealthy landlords, as though intellectuals might originate elsewhere. The overseas Chinese who advanced funds were almost all merchants and petty businessmen, as though alternative sources were easily avail-able - or that Marxists would never accept funds from such donors. In effect, and according to Wittfogel, Sun's movement and its sustaining ideology were bourgeois in inspiration, membership, and intention. According to Wittfogel, its bourgeois character was underscored by Sun's rejection of one of the most critical elements of Marxism: the inevitability of class struggle. ...

Are there any American scholars who are embarking on this same course? Who's finding out how and WHY the United States quit using the American National System? What caused our government to turn away from the political and economic system that made our nation so prosperous in the first fifty years of its existence?

When did the U.S. federal government assume power over trade between the citizens of each individual free state? The feds were only allowed to regulate commerce between the individual free states and to make treaties for trade with foreign merchants. The original American system was designed to protect local traders. It promoted a balance between industry and agriculture and real ways to provide real loans to start-up real businesses that supplied essential local needs. List shows us what happens when a nation shuts down imperialist free trade and cheaply produced (slave labor) imports. Citizens step up and immediately begin filling the gaps. They start making and producing necessary things. They rebuild their local economy from within.

Somehow the American idea of freedom got twisted into promoting a "balance" between individual, local traders and the global free market corporate community. Is Lyndon LaRouche the only American who bases his FDR New Deal political platform on List?

Should Taiwan's success story be an inspiration to Americans living with the loss of our manufacturing and agricultural balance? There's a reason why the communitarian government wants to train everyone to get a "job." God forbid anyone here should want to open a business and provide a local product or service! How utterly absurd!