The  Rocky  View  of
News, Current Events
& Comment
Whatever the evil (poison) is, it must be presented in a mix of something good, or good for you.
Rat poison is like this, 99.5% of the ingredients are tasty and nutritious for the rat
(otherwise, they wouldn't eat it, would they?).  Only .5% (1/2 percent) is deadly.
I am reminded of Dad's special brownies.  It is the same truth.

---

If you want to remain in your ignorance then take this blue pill -

[First we should review what happened circa 1990 and who did and said what to cause that "Gulf conflict".  It would not be surprising that many of you never heard what happened, and others may have heard it in passing, but did not include it when making up your mind on these matters.  There is no doubt there are people who will say it does not matter who said what, or did what, and that the US government is justified in whatever it has done, or will do, but history has begrudgingly revealed truths that belie what public opinion of the time supported.

The following articles and news reports help show some motivations for attacking Iraq and how it was staged and who stands to benefit (follow the money trail) and who can be trusted when they say one thing then do another.]

The invasion was the result of a long-standing territorial dispute. Iraq accused Kuwait of violating the Iraqi border to secure oil resources, (on July 17, 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of flooding the world oil market. In addition, he singled out Kuwait for the production of oil from a disputed supply, the Rumaila oil field), and demanded that its debt repayments should be waived. Direct negotiations were begun in July 1990, but they were destined soon to fail; along with reassurance from the United States making a claim that they would not get involved (the famous meeting of Saddam Hussein with April Glaspie, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, on the 25th of July, 1990). This was the go ahead that Hussein needed.

On July 25, 1990, eight days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a meeting took place between Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. The transcript of this meeting is as follows:

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie: "I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I have lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your other threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?"

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie:"What solutions would be acceptable?"

Saddam Hussein: "If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (which, in Saddam's view, includes Kuwait) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?"

(Pause, then Ambassador Glaspie speaks carefully)
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

For more from CBS, and other reports, click here to link elsewhere on this site.
 

[Remember Cheech and Chong?  Chong, with his wife will be in Little Rock.  Tommy has a bit to say about the state of affairs in the uSA today.  Those who have not had negative contact with any government agent/agencies would not understand the sentiments by Chong.  Sadly, someday you will, but then it may be too late to do anything about it.

It seems that it could cost 20.00 to see Chong, but it could be worth it.

What follows are a couple excerpts from an Ark DemGaz article on the pending show}

Chong comes back on the laugh track with wife Shelby
BY ERIC E. HARRISON
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Tommy Chong is back on the road again, with a new comedy partner.
   Well, not exactly new.
   Billed as Tommy Chong & Shelby, Chong and Shelby, his wife of more than 30 years, will be performing Monday and Tuesday nights at the Loony Bin in Little Rock.
   Shelby Chong opens the show, then brings up her husband, whom she rejoins for a musical finale.
   Tommy Chong and Richard "Cheech" Marin, as Cheech & Chong, were a big hit on stage and on screen in the ’70s and ’80s, but they went their separate ways about 1990.
   Cheech went on to success as a movie and TV actor. Chong went back to doing stand-up, recently adding a recurring role on TV’s That ’70s Show.
   Shelby Chong co-starred in several Cheech & Chong movies, playing French Fifi in Things Are Tough All Over, the princess in The Corsican Brothers and the blond bodybuilder in Nice Dreams.
   Chong got his wife up on the comedy stage in 1996 and admits it took some time to polish the on-stage partnership.
   "Comedy is not something you just do overnight," he says. "It’s like learning how to ski — it’s miles, you’ve got to put in the miles."
   They do stand-up somewhere in America twice a month, Chong says. "It’s good to be back on the road. I was off for more than 10 years, I spent the ’80s doing movies. Movies are fun, but I missed the road."
   Working with a partner again, and especially working with his wife, has been good for his own comedy, Chong says.
   "That is one of the reasons I gave her such encouragement," he says. "It gives me more options. It gives us more variety, which is better for the audience."
   The show, he says, is practically vaudeville, "perfect for this day and age when everybody has this attention deficit."
   Chong played the club about 10 years ago when he was still a solo act and the club was known as The Comedy House. Chong remembers it was warm.
   "Have they fixed the air conditioning yet?" he says. (Loony Bin owner Jeff Jones says yes, they have.)
   Chong, 64, a native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, started in show business as a guitarist and songwriter (his "Does Your Momma Know About Me?" was a No. 1 hit on the R&B charts in 1967).
   He and Cheech recorded six comedy albums and starred in seven films, most of which Chong co-wrote and directed, and most of which involved marijuana use.
   In February, Chong’s hippie reputation came back to bite him when the Drug Enforcement Administration raided his Los Angeles home and his sideline business, Chong Glass, which made glass pipes. Chong wasn’t arrested, but still faces possible charges.
   "Armed DEA agents came to my house, took my computers and all the cash they could find," he says. They also seized the company’s entire inventory.
   "I wasn’t selling drugs — I was selling glass water pipes, perfectly legally. The one mistake I made was sending one to a DEA agent in Pittsburgh through the mails." After the company rebuffed several purchase attempts, the agent apparently got the pipe through an intermediary.
   "I’m still at immediate risk of going to court," Chong says. "I’m hoping that they’ll realize the business is shut down and I never made any money at it. I made more money selling Tshirts."
   What bothers him, he says, is "giving up the freedoms. We’re under military rule — we have no rights. We just pray that our government has our best interests in mind."
   The raid has, however, provided Chong an unexpected bonus: new comedy material.
   "It’s given me an act," he says, thanking U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. "I think I got a good 20 minutes out of being busted."
   Meanwhile, Chong is working on a reunion movie with Cheech.
   "We’re still in the writing stage," Chong says. "Then we’ll pitch it together, sell it and go from there. If it’s in typical Cheech & Chong style, it’ll be out in a year."

COMEDY   Tommy Chong & Shelby  7 and 9:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Loony Bin, Breckenridge Village Shopping Center, Interstate 430 and Rodney Parham Road, Little Rock (501) 228-5555  Admission: $20
 

A thought for those people who have been irritated (or worse) by those people who have spoken in terms seemingly contrary to the reasons for going to war (the DIxie Chicks are an example). IF the reason for going to war is to secure our liberties, then is not one of those liberties "free speech".  This requires an understanding that the Bill of Rights were intended to express liberties as related to government.  For example, the liberty of "free speech" is limited to our liberty to espouse opinions and thoughts about government.  "Free speech" does not include what a person might say about their neighbor (unless he is an agent of the government).
 

In the same day you could have had a choice, either have the police shoot your dog or arrest you for barking.

These two stories have one thing in common, they both involve police.  The first story is of a dog that escaped from its yard and was hit by a car.  The police came on the scene and using all their training and experience determined the dog was better dead, so they shot the dog in the head.  Still using all their training and experience they determined the dog was now dead and of course better than before getting shot.  I guess their training of shoot first and never ask questions is paying off.  The dog was then taken to the "shelter" and placed in the morgue freezer.  A couple hours later the dog was discovered sitting upright, still in the body bag   The police chief defends the cop shooting the dog.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/904131.asp?0cl=c2
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6325267%255E13762,00.html
http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0421notdeaddog21-ON.html
http://www.globe.com/news/daily/22/odds_dog.htm

Then there is the man walking downtown and passed some police standing by their patrol cars with a police dog in one of the cars barking at people passing.  The man responded with a bark and the police arrested him (you should know that receiving a ticket is legally an arrest with you being released on your own recognizance).
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20030423_234.html

Where is the sane world?
 

and their email is   CASPIAN Newsletter <newsletter@nocards.org>

This is a little long, but worth reading.  You really need to visit their web site to get a good understanding of the issues, but suffice it to say they help reveal the problems with various stores and their policies, especially those “loyalty” cards.  Rocky]

Contents:

News:
+ Bush's 2004 budget contains funds to purchase grocery records
+ AP spreads CASPIAN message across U.S.; witness spin in action
+ Michael Moore takes scissors to audience "loyalty" cards
+ Want to sell your old grocery cards?
+ Britain's Tesco hands out birth control to underage Britons
+ Prince William a misguided Tesco cardholder

Commentary, letters:
+ Card stores floundering, but it's not the economy
+ A typical shopper leaves the "Big Three" for Wal-Mart, Target
+ Best Buy maintains purchase records on credit card holder's spouse

Humor:
+ New! Personal, sensitive member data revealed here each week!   [Attention Supermarket executives: please don't read this]

 =========================================================================
BUSH'S 2004 BUDGET CONTAINS FUNDS TO PURCHASE GROCERY RECORDS =========================================================================

Bush's 2004 budget contains $5.4 million dollars to buy "'real time' data, such as that collected by scanners at supermarket checkout counters" for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.  The data purchase is designed to "improve the accuracy of such figures as the gross domestic product."  It is unclear whether the records purchased will include personally identifying customer data.

The Commerce Department data grab may be just an appetizer for the federal government, which could find bulging supermarket databases a tempting target for exploitation. CASPIAN recommends that consumers pay cash for retail purchases and boycott stores that collect data on customers.

Source: "Bush budget contains funds for data collection" John M. Berry, Washington Post, February 1, 2003 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A8263-2003Jan31&notFound=true

AP article spotlights grocery cards, data collection

=========================================================================
AP ARTICLE CONVEYS CASPIAN'S MESSAGE; WITNESS SPIN IN ACTION =========================================================================

CASPIAN's consumer education message, "cards are data collection devices, not savings devices," was spotlighted around the country through an AP article that came out last weekend.  In a fascinating demonstration of media "spin," the headline of the story changed from paper to paper.  Though the story run in each paper was IDENTICAL, the modified headlines reveal the editorial position of each paper.

Where you see a "pro-card" view reflected in the headline, you can bet grocery advertising dollars played a role.

======================
The story was originally submitted as: "Loyalty cards mean profits for stores, privacy questions for consumers" ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, AP Business Writer, March 21, 2003
======================
It was reprinted under a variety of headlines as follows:

TITLE LEFT IN ORIGINAL FORM:

- "Loyalty cards mean profits for stores, privacy questions for consumers"
- South Bend Tribune, IN
- San Francisco Chronicle, CA
- Jefferson City News Tribune, MO

TITLE ONLY SLIGHTLY VARIED:

- Loyalty cards mean profits, privacy issues         Dayton Daily News, OH
- Loyalty cards ring up profit, privacy concerns         Baltimore Sun, MD
- Loyalty cards bring profits to stores, confidentiality questions ...         Topeka Capital Journal, KS
- Loyalty cards raise profits
-
- and privacy concerns         Florida Today, FL

TITLE SLANTED PRO-PRIVACY:

- Loyalty cards raise privacy questions         Macomb Daily, MI
- Drawbacks of dedication: Loyalty cards mean store profits, ...         Milford Daily News, MA
- Personal Finance: Loyalty cards raise questions for consumers         Daily Oklahoman, OK
- Consumer officials question loyalty cards         Bedford Times Mail, IN

TITLE SLANTED TO BUSINESS CONCERNS:

- Stores benefit from loyalty cards         Chicago Sun Times, IL
- Loyalty cards help retailers hone strategy             Boston Globe, MA
- Loyalty cards pay off for stores         San Jose Mercury News, CA

TITLE SLANTED TO MENTION CARD "SAVINGS" OR "BENEFITS"

- (Especially noteworthy because the original title emphasized store   profits and made no mention of "savings" or "service")

- Grocers Say Loyalty Cards Paying Off for Customers         Salt Lake Tribune, UT
- Getting carded brings better service for customers         Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, FL
- Stores' cards ring up savings, privacy issues         Louisville Courier Journal, KY
- Privacy Vs. Service         Lakeland Ledger, FL

A FEW OTHER VARIATIONS
- Loyalty cards divide consumers         Indianapolis Star, IN
- Retailers ’ loyalty cards gain ground         Canton Repository, OH

 The moral to this story?   Spin is everwhere. Take what you read with a grain of salt.

======================

A second, widely reprinted AP article provided consumers with CASPIAN tips to protect their privacy:

How to keep your privacy (when using "loyalty" cards) By Associated Press, March 21, 2003 http://boston.com/dailynews/080/economy/How_to_keep_your_privacy_:.shtml

=========================================================================
MICHAEL MOORE TAKES SCISSORS TO AUDIENCE GROCERY CARDS =========================================================================

The following is taken from the Guardian, UK:

"The estimable US satirist Michael Moore ended his recent London stage show in unforgettable style. Berating we Brits for a commercial ruse even the Americans have yet to countenance, he invited everyone in the audience to surrender their loyalty cards. 'Give them up,' he boomed, as ushers circulated with giant nets. 'And repeat after me: I am loyal to myself. I am loyal to my community. I am not loyal to corporations.' As this mass incantation reached a crescendo, Moore revealed a pair of scissors with blades like scimitars, and, in a flurry of steel, slashed a thousand loyalty cards in two. It was a cathartic experience."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,911619,00.html

=========================================================================
GOT ANY GROCERY CARDS YOU WANT TO SELL? =========================================================================

There is a collector for everything
- including grocery cards.   Below is a link to a website run by someone willing to pay good money for your old grocery store cards.

Check out the want list at:  http://www.73ford.com/supermarket.html (Note: The table on this page crashes Netscape)

=========================================================================
TESCO HANDS OUT FREE BIRTH CONTROL TO UNDERAGE BRITONS  =========================================================================

Tesco, one of Britain's largest supermarket chains, has gone beyond meddling in its shoppers' private lives through their purchase records.  Now the company wants to play a role in their reproductive lives as well. Tesco announced last week that it will distribute morning-after contraceptive pills free of charge to girls under 20 at two western England locations. The British National Health Service is collaborating with Tesco on the pilot project, which will also give teens advice on contraception and sexual health.

Source: "Making Birth Control More Accessible" LONDON, March 18, 2002 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/18/health/main503972.shtml

=========================================================================
PRINCE WILLIAM A MISGUIDED TESCO CARDHOLDER =========================================================================

Prince William, the 20-year-old future heir to the British throne
- whose personal fortune stands at around $22 million
- uses his Tesco Clubcard to "earn" 1p back for every pound he spends.   A royal insider said last night: 'He was chatting the other day and laughing about how he has more points than some of his friends.'"

Someone needs to set the lad straight.  If anybody in the world should understand the value of keeping details of one's private life out of the hands of unethical strangers, it should be Princess Diana's son.   We're sure Prince Charles would cut up the younger prince's cards for him if he knew the real story behind them.

Source: "Wills is a loyal royal at Tesco," March 16, 2003 http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12741032&method=full&siteid=106694 (Page won't load in Netscape; table errors)

=========================================================================
BEST BUY MAINTAINS PURCHASE RECORDS ON SPOUSE AS WELL AS CARDHOLDER =========================================================================

A member letter raises questions about data collection practices at Best Buy and reinforces the importance of making purchases in cash.

Dear CASPIAN:

I haven't explored your site in some time. I don't know whether you have info on Best Buy retail electronics. I know it isn't a Supermarket, and I know they don't use shopper cards, but on a recent inquiry to their customer service number, I learned they have a database on me by my checking visa account.

I had a Best Buy Credit card, and had paid it off, but they were able to tell me that between my purchases and those of my husbands (who was never named on the BB credit card), I have spent $17,000 on and off(on our checkcards) their credit card in the past 7 years. That's right. They cross referenced my purchases (and my husband's) on and off their credit card, including everything I spent except in cash.

When I had called, they kept asking for my phone number. I told them I no longer had the BB credit card. They finally asked for my visa checking number and revealed the database they maintained WITHOUT my consent or knowledge. I no longer shop there. Just wanted to share the info....

- A CASPIAN member

 =========================================================================
COMMENTARY: CARD STORES FLOUNDERING, BUT IT'S NOT THE ECONOMY =========================================================================

By Katherine Albrecht, March 28, 2003

Card-hating shoppers rejoice:  Cosmic justice is repaying the companies that have made food purchase tracking the norm in America.  The nation's three largest grocery chains, Albertsons, Kroger, and Safeway (all of which have imposed strict purchase-tracking card requirements on their customers), are taking a well-deserved financial beating.

Albertsons' most recent bad news includes a 29% drop in fourth-quarter net income, a 2.5% drop in sales, a dwindling customer base, and reduced gross margins -
- due, in part, to "aggressive promotion costs."   (Gee, I wonder what they're spending their money on?  Could it be those recent, high-priced card program rollouts?  Or maybe the GPS customer-tracking system they're developing?)

Albertsons' stock has plummeted a satisfying 40% since the company first reneged on its "no cards, no hassles" promise in November 2001.  Before imposing the much-hated "Preferred Customer Card" on Dallas-Fort Worth shoppers, Albertsons' stock had been trading at $32.  Now it's scraping bottom at around $18.    (For a graph of Albertsons' steady downward trend see: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=abs&d=1y)

Meanwhile, Kroger's stock is down 46% and Safeway's has lost a whopping 57% of its value over the same period.  It's clear these stores have become almost insufferable to many of their (former) customers, who are leaving in droves to lower-priced and card-free alternatives.

The big three have taken a heavy-handed response to the lost revenue, squeezing their remaining customers with steadily increasing prices and almost fanatical insistence on purchase-tracking-and-price-manipulation-cards which allow them to fleece the estimated 10% of shoppers who don't use the card.  (Whatever you do, gentle reader, never pay a non-card price at a card store.)

Though the grocery industry likes to blame the poor economy for its dismal performance, common sense says that food is a pretty recession-proof commodity.  (You either buy it or you starve, regardless of the economy.)   But let's accept for a moment Albertsons' premise that Americans are tightening their belts and scaling back non-essential grocery spending, providing one explanation for why shoppers are moving en masse to Wal-Mart: they're being forced by economic necessity to subsist on discounted gruel and beans.  By that logic, of course, the most expensive, high-end grocers should be nearly bankrupt by now.

And that's where Albertsons' economic explanation falls apart.  Whole Foods, a chain specializing in trendy, high-priced gourmet and organic foods, is attracting plenty of new customers and making money hand over fist -
- despite the same "poor economy" that is supposedly driving shoppers away from high priced items at the big three card stores.

The difference is that Whole Foods has a card-free, customer-friendly approach which leaves shoppers feeling catered to and respected as intelligent adults.  Shoppers trust Whole Foods to be ethical (perhaps because the product mix leans that way), and they don't mind paying a bit more to shop for products they believe in at a store they trust.

In contrast, Albertsons, Kroger, and Safeway's scheming and deceptive practices permeate their stores with bad vibes and leave their customers feeling fleeced, exploited, and manipulated.   I get a case of the creeps just thinking about these stores:  Kroger with its biometric fingerprint payment system, Safeway with its spies writing down license numbers from other store's parking lots, Albertsons installing GPS systems to track unsuspecting shoppers as they move around the store.  Yecch!  Who would choose to shop at stores like these?  And then pay higher prices to boot?  No wonder their customers are leaving in droves.

Are you listening, Big Three?  You could learn something from Whole Foods, whose stock has soared 30% in value over the same period that your stocks have tanked to unprecedented lows.  Is it the economy?  No, it's the cards, and everything ugly about the grocery industry that they -
- and now by extension, you -
- have come to represent.

 ==================
Links: Albertsons latest, hated card imposition:  http://www.coloradoan.com/news/stories/20030312/business/1159796.html

Albertsons' plans to track customers with GPS devices (scroll to end): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134586137_albertsons29.html

Albertsons' financial woes http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/030319/0954000908_2.html

Kroger's fingerprint payment scheme: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/3/30/172528.shtml

Safeway's parking lot data collection:

=========================================================================
ANOTHER SHOPPER LEAVES THE "BIG THREE"  =========================================================================

Every day shoppers write to tell us why they have left the card chains for Wal-Mart.  Of course, we are no fans of either Wal-Mart or Target (they are both up to their ears in RFID product tracking plans) but we can relate to the sentiment that drove this shopper away.

Dear CASPIAN:

My family and I moved from San Antonio to the Dallas Ft. Worth area 9 months ago. We have 3 grocery stores within a 5 mile radius; Albertson's, Kroger and Tom Thumb [owned by Safeway]. All three have the so called "discount card", "super saver card", or "preferred customer" card. None of these grocers can compare with the [card-free] HEB grocery store in the San Antonio area, as far as prices go. Even with the "savings card", most of their prices still aren't as low as HEB's. Another aggravation to me is having to bother with these "cards"; ie: keeping track of which one goes to which store, coming off of my keychain several times, and losing them. And for a side note: I've purchased meat several times at Kroger's only to return it, because it had a "funny smell". I soon resolved the problem however, now I only shop at Wal-Mart or Target.

-Debbie Gabel, Euless, Texas

=========================================================================
NEW! PERSONAL, SENSITIVE MEMBER DATA REVEALED HERE EACH WEEK! SUPERMARKET EXECUTIVES: PLEASE DON'T READ THIS (As if you'd listen)
=========================================================================

Albertsons, Kroger, and Safeway have thrown tens of thousands of customer complaint letters into the trash can unread (at least it seems that way, based on their lack of responsiveness) so we thought we'd try a different tack.

Knowing how those guys prefer to get their information on the sly -
- through deceptive cards, spy cameras, cloak and dagger parking lot stakeouts, DMV records, hidden radio transmitters, and (not least) lurking on our mailing list, we thought we'd get their attention by creating a secret, members only section of the newsletter where we post "secrets.".

In doing so, we're drawing on a cutting edge CRM or "customer relationship management" (i.e., data snooping) insight: the more sensitive the data and the less you want the hacks at your supermarket knowing it, they harder they'll work to get it!

So if you are a shopper who feels like the Big Three (or any card stores) have not listened to you in the past, use a little reverse psychology.  Drop us a line marked "Message for the supermarkets" with whatever message you'd most like the data snoops to read.  We'll post your PRIVATE comments here in the PERSONAL, SENSITIVE MEMBER DATA area and let nature do the rest.

CRM specialists will be attracted like flies to flypaper at the prospect of reading sensitive, personal data on CASPIAN members.  They are sure to carefully analyze, catalog, and scrutinize your every word, provided we can keep them believing you really DON'T want them to read your message. Got it?

Good. Now get writing!

(Fringe benefit: If you're lucky, the supermarkets may even record the data from your letter without your knowledge or permission, and sell it to telemarketers, your health insurance company, the UN, the FBI, the Commerce Department, John Poindexter, or your ex-spouse's attorney -
- then you can tell them all to take a hike!)

=========================================================================
VOLUNTEER PROJECT MANAGERS NEEDED
=========================================================================
CASPIAN needs experienced project managers to work with our staff and members on a variety of projects, ranging from web development and MySQL Database implementation to pro-privacy supermarket outreach and legal research.  Help us put our hundreds of enthusiastic and talented volunteers to work!

If you are interested in heading up a volunteer team, write to CASPIAN director Katherine Albrecht <kma@nocards.org>. Please include your city, daytime phone number and a description of your project management interest and experience.
=========================================================================
CASPIAN
- Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering A national consumer organization opposing supermarket "loyalty" cards and other retail surveillance schemes since 1999

http://www.nocards.org

We encourage you to duplicate and distribute this message to others.
==========================================================
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CASPIAN mailing list, click the following link or cut and paste it into your browser:

http://www.nocards.org/cgi/mojo/mojo.cgi

If you have difficulty with the web-based interface, you may also subscribe or unsubscribe via email by writing to:

admin@nocards.org
==========================================================
 

2  tbls   apple cider vinegar
2  tbls   flax oil
2  tbls   olive oil
2  tbls   pumpkin seed oil
2  tsp    herb spices (ie Mrs Dash or your choice)

Combine and mix ingredients well.  Pour on salad.

This is to be a healthy salad dressing, without those bad oils and not too much acid.
 

Do you recall the reason for attacking Afghanistan (Al Queda &/or Osama Bin Laden) then Iraq (Saddam Hussein)?  Let us recap.

Allegedly, some “foreign” terrorist attacked NYC and D.C..  We are encouraged to believe that these attacks happened without knowledge or help from elements of the government of the US.  Maybe that is all true, it really does not matter because the issue here is the reasons for taking aggressive actions on Afghanistan (Al Queda &/or Osama Bin Laden) then Iraq (Saddam Hussein).

Promptly after September 11, 2003, comrade Bush told us that he was going after Laden and would not stop till he got him.  Has Bush yet gotten Laden?  We have not yet seen any proof.

Before Bush diverted his attention from Afghanistan or officially completing the task for which he claimed to be attacking them, he was announcing plans to attack Iraq.

Let us see if we understand.  Attack Afghanistan because they allegedly attacked us.  Plan an attack on Iraq because they allegedly have weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which Saddam (Iraq) was positively planning to use against and on the people of the States of America.

So, Bush spends time from around Spring of 2002 till Spring 2003 making one claim after another about Saddam (Iraq) and setting deadlines for attacking him.  The message from Bush was clear, he was going to attack Saddam (Iraq) and was jockeying for position to begin the attack.  Finally, in March 2003 Bush invades and attacks Iraq.

Now, what did Bush say was the reason he would win this undeclared war against Saddam (Iraq)?  BUSH SAID HE WOULD WIN BECAUSE HE HAD THE BETTER MILITARY.  Did you catch that?  The reason he would win is because he had the better military.  Bush did not presume he would win because he was RIGHT or because GOD was on his side, but simply because he had the better military – that his might made right.

This claim by Bush may be more telling than anything else.

There is a natural principle that's often known as "might makes right" which essentially means that whoever is most powerful decides what's "right."  It's seen in many ways, physically, financially, politically and militarily - from a parent's authority over a child (backed up by the power to punish), to an employer's authority over an employee (backed up by the power to put them out of a job - punishment), to an oil-producing nation's authority over other nations (backed up by the power to cut off their oil supply and damage their economies - punishment), to a civil government's political authority over its citizens (backed up by the power to fine or imprison violators of legislation - punishment), to one nation's military superiority over another (backed up by the power to invade or otherwise devastate the militarily-weaker nation - punishment). The flaw in "might makes right" is that, when humans use it, "right" can sometimes be wrong - whether in something that turns out to be an unworkable failure (e.g. communist economic systems that were forced upon millions of people by their dictatorial governments), to honest mistakes (e.g. a parent punishing a child for breaking a vase when in fact the dog really did it).  http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/AOPof911p03.html

A subtle theme throughout the movie “First Knight “ is the contrast of "might makes right" to the justice of Camelot. Although most violent acts have been sterilized or purged to maintain a PG-13 rating, the movie still attempts to grasp the nature of right and wrong. Even the validity of Camelot's laws are called into question by Malagant when he states, "Other men live by other laws, Arthur. Or is the law of Camelot to rule the entire world?" It is this questioning of motives, and the accompanying contrast of methodologies, which allows the audience to question which side, if any, is "right."

Arthur: You know the law we live by, and where is it written, "Beyond Camelot live lesser people, people too weak to protect themselves, let them die?"
Malagant: Other people live by other laws, Arthur. Or is the law of Camlot to rule the entire world?
Arthur: There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. Either what we hold to be right and good and true is right and good and true, for all mankind, under God, or we're just another Robert Tripe!

Malagant: You see, this is what Arthur doesn't understand. Men don't want brotherhood, they want leadership.

You should agree that faith dictated morality is more objective than is rational ethics. Morality based upon faith is subjective in that it depends upon who is evaluating the behavior. People of one faith may tend to evaluate it differently than people of another, according to the dictates of their faith. If one is an adherent of a highly popular faith, then they may have more people who would agree with their pre-digested opinion of a certain behavior, but that alone would not make it more right. To say that it would is nothing more than a "might makes right" argument.

If you know the story of King Arthur, Uther practices “Might makes Right” and ultimately it destroyed him.

Do you see any parallels?  I know some of you will see them and set yourself in denial, but an honest review tells the truth.

Now, let us move forward a little time and see what has happened.  Bushes troops have basically march undeterred all the way into Baghdad, and along the way, their tanks were met by WMD’s in the form of Toyota sedans.  Along the way, Bushes troops discovered large supplies of munitions abandoned Saddam’s terrorists and left for Bush’s military to discover.

If there were WMD, then why were they not used on the invading Bush forces and/or on the land of the uSA as the uSA public were told would happen and was the reason for invading Iraq.

An article at World Net Daily http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32022  is an example of a NON-discovery of WMD.  Admittedly the article says there were “trace” amounts of chemicals found and such is only “consistent” as evidence but NOT proof.  If the claim is that chemical agents were in the warheads, then where are they now?

Check this photo to see how many people attended the toppling. [right click on photos to save and then view or print with your favorite image program]

What is the April 9, 2003 message marine, Cpl. Edward Chin, was sending when he draped the uSA flag over the statue of Saddam?  Cpl. Edward Chin, age 23, on April 10, 2003, told ABC-TV's Good Morning America "At the moment, I was just doing what I was told to do by my commanding officer".  A report of the event is available at  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030410/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_flag_soldier_3

Why is this important?  Cpl. Edward Chin is a marine and well trained in several things and one of those things is flag etiquette.  Cpl. Edward Chin knows very well how to raise a flag, lower a flag, fold a flag, hand a flag and more.  Cpl. Edward Chin hung the flag with the Union down.  4USC8(a) reads

We are told this man has spent 35 years using his military power to control millions and millions of people.  Then a mere 100K men come against him and he does just about NOTHING to resist them, let alone control/dominate them.

A man uses military power to control millions of people for 35 years, yet he has NOTHING to put against 100K men.  About the best defense he presents is Toyota sedans against tanks and leave weapons in storage for these 100K men to discover and take.

Was he a real threat?

With all the vaunted technology Bush had at his disposal, why does he not already know where to find the alleged WMD?  Why is Saddam more important than the deadly weapons?

The reason for attacking Afghanistan (Al Queda &/or Osama Bin Laden) then Iraq (Saddam Hussein) was because they were terrorists and planning to attack us or allegedly already attacked us.  Now that almost no WMD are found to justify the reason for undeclared war, many are touting that the people were oppressed and that justifies Bushes war.  This is nothing more than the ends justifying the means, which usually is a no-no.

Already, Bush and his people have said and are saying, that Iran and Korea are next.

First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I am not a Jew.
Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I am not a socialist.
Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I am not a Catholic.
Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.
--- Pastor Niemoller (1946)

Maybe in a short time, maybe long, everyone will agree with what has happened and is happening.  Then we might look back and smile at a job well done.
 

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L-R, T-B.  Invading Deer, nervous plane, truck in hurry to beach, boat with mitosis complex, compactor for trucks, swamp digger
[right click on photos to save and then view or print with your favorite image program]
 

The Monster of Baghdad is Now the Hero of Arabia
http://www.robert-fisk.com
contributed by D

This is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial power

By Robert Fisk in Baghdad - 01 April 2003
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=392756

So it's a "truly remarkable achievement'', is it? General Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going "according to plan'', according to the British. So it's an achievement that the British still have not "liberated" Basra. It is "according to plan" that the Iraqis should be able to launch a scud missile from the Faw peninsula – supposedly under "British control" for more than a week. It is an achievement, truly remarkable of course, that the Americans lose an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant, spend four days trying to cross the river bridges at Nasiriyah and are then confronted by their first suicide bomber at Najaf.

One half of the entire Anglo-American force – still called 'the coalition' by journalists who like to pretend it includes 35 armies rather than two and a bit (the "bit" being the Australian special forces) – is now guarding and running the supply line through the desert. And Baghdad is bombed but not besieged.

The military "plan" is so secret, according to General Franks, that very few people have seen it all or understand it. But his plan he says, is "highly flexible''; it would have to be, to sustain the chaos of the past 12 days, and, of course, we hold the moral high ground. The Americans bomb a passenger bus close to the Syrian border and don't even apologise. An Iraqi soldier kills himself attacking US marines and it is an act of "terrorism''. And now Secretary of State Colin Powell announces – to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the largest Israeli lobby group in the US who of course support this illegal war – that Syria and Iran are "supporting terror groups'' and will have to "face the consequences''.

So what's the plan? Are we going to forget Baghdad for a few months and wheel our young soldiers west to surround Damascus? Where, for heaven's sake, is all this going? We were going to "liberate" Iraq. But the war could be "long and difficult'', Bush now tells us – he didn't tell us that before, did he? – and, according to Tony Blair, this is "only the beginning.'' Really?

Strange, isn't it, how all that fuss about chemical and biological warfare has been forgotten. The "secret" weapons, the gas masks, the anti-anthrax injections, the pills and chemical suits have been erased from the story – because bullets and rocket-propelled grenades are now the real danger to British and American forces in Iraq. Even the "siege of Baghdad" – a city that is 30 miles wide and might need a quarter of a million men to surround it – is fading from the diary.

Sitting in Baghdad, listening to the God-awful propaganda rhetoric of the Iraqis but watching the often promiscuous American and British air attacks, I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing to do with plans. Indeed, I suspect there is no real overall plan. Because I rather think that this war's foundations were based not on military planning but on ideology.

Long ago, as we know, the right wing pro-Israeli lobbyists around Bush planned the overthrow of Saddam. This would destroy the most powerful Arab state in the Middle East – Israel's chief of staff, Shoal Mofaz, demanded that the war should start even earlier – and allow the map of the region to be changed forever. Powell stated just this a month ago. False intelligence information was mixed up with the desires of the corrupt and infiltrated Iraqi opposition.

Fantasies and illusions were given credibility by a kind of superpower moral overdrive. Any kind of mendacity could be used to fuel this ideological project – 11 September (oddly unmentioned now), links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden (unproven), weapons of mass destruction (hitherto unfound), human rights abuses (at which we originally connived when Saddam was our friend) and, finally, the most heroic project of all – the "liberation" of the people of Iraq.

Oil was not mentioned, although it is the dominating factor in this illegitimate conflict – no wonder General Franks admitted that his first concern, prior to the war, was the "protection'' of the southern Iraqi oil fields. So it was to be "liberation" and "democracy". How boldly we crossed the border. With what lordly aims we invaded Iraq.

Few Iraqis doubt – even the ministers in Baghdad speak about this – that the Americans could, ultimately, occupy the country. They have the force and they have the weapons to smash their way into every city and rule the land by martial law. But can they make Iraqis submit to that rule? Unless the masses rise up as Bush and Blair hope, this is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial power. Without Iraqi support, how can General Franks run a military dictatorship or find Iraqis willing to serve him or run the oilfields? The Americans can win the war. But if their project fails they will have lost.

Yet there is one achievement we should note. The ghastly Saddam, the most revolting dictator in the Arab world, who does indeed use heinous torture and has indeed used gas, is now leading a country that is fighting the world's only superpower and that has done so for almost two weeks without surrendering. Yes, General Tommy Franks has accomplished one "truly remarkable achievement''. He has turned the monster of Baghdad into the hero of the Arab world and allowed Iraqis to teach every opponent of America how to fight their enemy.
 

The Flat Earth Report

Did you know these True History Facts?
Are they taught in your Public Warehousing (school)?
contributed by D, and edited by Rocky

These sound like excerpts from David Barton research ( http://www.wallbuilders.com/ )

The U.S. Congress formed the American Bible Society.  Immediately after creating the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress voted to purchase and import 20,000 copies of Scripture for the people of this nation.

Patrick Henry, who is called the firebrand of the American Revolution, is still remembered for his words, "Give me liberty or give me death."  But in textbooks the context of these words is deleted. Here is what he said: "An appeal to arms and the God of hosts is all that is left us.  But we shall not fight our battle alone.  There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations.  The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone.  Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it almighty God.  I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death."  These sentences have been erased or omitted from our textbooks.

Was Patrick Henry a Christian?  The following year, 1776, he wrote this:  "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religious, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here."

Consider these words that Thomas Jefferson wrote on the front of his well worn Bible: "I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.  I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator and, I hope, to the pure doctrine of Jesus also."

Consider these words from George Washington, the Father of our Nation, in his farewell speech on September 19, 1796: "It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible.  Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, our religion and morality are the indispensable supporters.  Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.  Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that our national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."  You must also realize there is a difference between "governing" and "dictating" or "controlling".

Was George Washington a Christian?  Consider these words from his personal prayer book: "Oh, eternal and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and work.  Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit.  Daily, frame me more and more in the likeness of thy son, Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time obtain the resurrection of the justified unto eternal life.  Bless, O Lord, the whole race of mankind and let the world be filled with the knowledge of thee and thy son, Jesus Christ."

John Adams, our second president, also served as chairman of the American Bible Society.  In an address to military leaders he said, "We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion.  Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

How about our first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay?  He stated that when we select our national leaders, if we are to preserve our Nation, we must select Christians. "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian Nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, was the sixth U.S.  President.  He was also the chairman of the American Bible Society, which he considered his highest and most important role.  On July 4, 1821, President Adams said, "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President of the United States reaffirmed this truth when he wrote, "The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country."

In 1782, the United States Congress voted this resolution: "The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."

William Holmes McGuffey is the author of the McGuffey Reader, which was used for over 100 years in our public schools with over 125 million copies sold until it was stopped in 1963. President Lincoln called him the "Schoolmaster of the Nation." Listen to these words of Mr. McGuffey: "The Christian religion is the religion of our country.  From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe.  On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions.  From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred Scriptures.  From all these extracts from the Bible I make no apology."

Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636.  In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures: "Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, (John 17:3); and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.  And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2:3)." For over 100 years, more than 50% of all Harvard graduates were pastors!

It is clear from history that the Bible and the Christian faith were foundational to our educational and judicial system.  However, in 1947, there was a radical change of direction from the Supreme Court.  It required ignoring every precedent of Supreme Court ruling for the past 160 years.  The Supreme Court ruled in a limited way to affirm a wall of separation between church and State in the public classroom.  In the coming years, this led to removing prayer from public schools in 1962.  Here is the prayer that was banished: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee.  We beg Thy blessings upon us and our parents and our teachers and our country.  Amen."

 In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that Bible reading was outlawed as unconstitutional in the public school system.  The court offered this justification: "If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could and have been psychologically harmful to children." Bible reading was now unconstitutional, though the Bible was quoted 94 percent of the time by those who wrote our Constitution and shaped our Nation and its system of education and justice and government.

In 1965, the Courts denied as unconstitutional the right of a student in the public school cafeteria to bow his head and pray audibly for his food.  In 1980, Stone vs.  Graham outlawed the Ten Commandments in our public schools.  The Supreme Court said this: "If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments were to have any effect at all, it would be to induce school children to read them.  And if they read them, meditated upon them, and perhaps venerated and obeyed them, this is not a permissible  objective." Is it not a permissible objective to allow our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments?

James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution of the United States, said this: "We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it.  We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments." Today, we are asking God to bless America.  But, how can He bless a Nation that has departed so far from Him?  Prior to September 11, He was not welcome in America.

Most of what you read in this article has been erased or omitted from our textbooks.

Revisionists have rewritten history to remove the truth about our country's roots, and that is not limited to the religious information.
 

I N S I G H T

What to Keep and Fix
contributed by Dale

 I grew up in the fifties with practical parents -- a Mother, God love her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen, before they had a name for it...

 A Father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones. Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away. I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress, lawn  mower in one hand, dishtowel in the other.

 It was the time for fixing things -- a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress. Things we keep.

 It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that re-fixing, reheating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful.  Waste meant affluence. Throwing things away meant there'd always be more.

 But then my Mother died, and on that clear summer's night, in the warmth of the hospital room, I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't any 'more.' Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away, never to return.

 So...while we have it...it's best we love it.....and care for it.....and fix it when it's broken.....and heal it when it's sick.  This is true.....for marriage.....and old cars.....and children with bad report cards .....and dogs with bad hips.....and aging parents.....and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it.

 Some things we keep. Like a best friend that moved away -- or -- a classmate we grew up with. There are just some things that make life important, like people we know who are special.....and so, we keep them close!
 

"Beam Me Up, Scotty" by Edgar J. Steele of April 2, 2003, uses this premise of Hermann Goering to explain some of what is happening in current events.  You can read Steele's article at  http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/scotty.htm
 

I N S I G H T

The Truth is Sometimes so Obvious
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:

If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it."    --  Ronald Reagan (1986)

Von Mises was the great enemy of communism, nazism, centrally planned economies, merchantilism (today's "free trade") and central banking.

"Aggressors Cannot Wage Total War Without Introducing Totalitarian Socialism."
--Ludwig von Mises

If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.
 -- Ludwig von Mises

Mises On War

War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys. (Socialism, p. 59)

The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 817 ; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 821)

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 152)

The market economy means peaceful cooperation and peaceful exchange of goods and services. It cannot persist when wholesale killing is the order of the day. (Interventionism: An Economic Analysis, p. 67)

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 154)

There have been...in all other nations, eulogists of aggression, war, and conquest. (Omnipotent Government, p. 232)

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 154)

[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 158)

War is. a destroyer and annihilator, in short, as an evil that strikes all, victor as well as vanquished. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 86)

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of consistent application of these doctrines. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 683; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 687)

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 77)

Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. (Liberalism, p. 44)

[O]nly tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of centuries long past. (Liberalism, p. 56)

Modern war is not a war of royal armies. It is a war of the peoples, a total war. It is a war of states which do not leave to their subjects any private sphere; they consider the whole population a part of the armed forces. Whoever does not fight must work for the support and equipment of the army. Army and people are one and the same. The citizens passionately participate in the war. For it is their state, their God, who fights. (Omnipotent Government, p. 104)

Men are fighting one another because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 175; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 176)

The existence of the armaments industries is a consequence of the warlike spirit, not its cause. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 297; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 300)

What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 34)

[V]ictorious war is an evil even for the victor, that peace is always better than war. (Liberalism, p. 24)

Wars, foreign and domestic (revolutions, civil wars), are more likely to be avoided the closer the division of labor binds men. (Critique of Interventionism, p. 115)

War is the alternative to freedom of foreign investment as realized by the international capital market. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 498; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 502)

The statement that one man's boon is the other man's damage is valid with regard to robbery, war, and booty. The robber's plunder is the damage of the despoiled victim. But war and commerce are two different things. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 662; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 666)

It is certainly true that our age is full of conflicts which generate war. However, these conflicts do not spring from the operation of the unhampered market society. It may be permissible to call them economic conflicts because they concern that sphere of human life which is, in common speech, known as the sphere of economic activities. But it is a serious blunder to infer from this appellation that the source of these conflicts are conditions which develop within the frame of a market society. It is not capitalism that produces them, but precisely the anticapitalistic policies designed to check the functioning of capitalism. They are an outgrowth of the various governments' interference with business, of trade and migration barriers and discrimination against foreign labor, foreign products, and foreign capital. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 680; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 684)

What has transformed the limited war between royal armies into total war, the clash between peoples, is not technicalities of military art, but the substitution of the welfare state for the laissez-faire state. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 820; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 824 )

Under laissez faire peaceful coexistence of a multitude of sovereign nations is possible. Under government control of business it is impossible. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 820; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 824)

Of course, in the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 824; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 828)

What the incompatibility of war and capitalism really means is that war and high civilization are incompatible. If the efficiency of capitalism is directed by governments toward the output of instruments of destruction, the ingenuity of private business turns out weapons which are powerful enough to destroy everything. What makes war and capitalism incompatible with one another is precisely the unparalleled efficiency of the capitalist mode of production. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 824; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 828)

The emergence of the international division of labor requires the total abolition of war. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 827; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 831)

Modern war is merciless, it does not spare pregnant women or infants; it is indiscriminate killing and destroying. It does not respect the rights of neutrals. Millions are killed, enslaved, or expelled from the dwelling places in which their ancestors lived for centuries. Nobody can foretell what will happen in the next chapter of this endless struggle. This has little to do with the atomic bomb. The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest. It is probable that scientists will discover some methods of defense against the atomic bomb. But this will not alter things, it will merely prolong for a short time the process of the complete destruction of civilization. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 828; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 832)

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 828; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 832)

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace, (Socialism, p. 62)

Social development is always a collaboration for joint action; the social relationship always means peace, never war. Death-dealing actions and war are anti-social. All those theories which regard human progress as an outcome of conflicts between human groups have overlooked this truth. (Socialism, p. 279)

Within a world of free trade and democracy there are no incentives for war and conquest. (Omnipotent Government, p. 3)

But what is needed for a satisfactory solution of the burning problem of international relations is neither a new office with more committees, secretaries, commissioners, reports, and regulations, nor a new body of armed executioners, but the radical overthrow of mentalities and domestic policies which must result in conflict. (Omnipotent Government, p. 6)

If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace. (Omnipotent Government, p. 15)

For only in peace can the economic system achieve its ends, the fullest satisfaction of human needs and wants. (Omnipotent Government, p. 50)

It is not a shortcoming of the liberal program for international peace that it cannot be realized within an antiliberal world and that it must fail in an age of interventionism and socialism. (Omnipotent Government, p. 91)

Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations which are convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being. (Omnipotent Government, p. 104)

The old liberals were right in asserting that no citizen of a liberal and democratic nation profits from a victorious war. (Omnipotent Government, p. 104)

Social cooperation and war are in the long run incompatible. But within the social system of cooperation and division of labor war means disintegration. The progressive evolution of society requires the progressive elimination of war. Under present conditions of international division of labor there is no room left for wars. The great society of world-embracing mutual exchange of commodities and services demands a peaceful coexistence of states and nations. (Omnipotent Government, p. 122)

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed. (Omnipotent Government, p. 122)

If you want to abolish war, you must eliminate its causes. What is needed is to restrict government activities to the preservation of life, health, and private property, and thereby to safeguard the working of the market. Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner. (Omnipotent Government, p. 138)

The market economy involves peaceful cooperation and bursts asunder when people, instead of exchanging commodities and services, are fighting one another. (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p. 92)

Only one thing can conquer war--that liberal attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as injurious even to the victors. (Theory of Money and Credit, p. 433)

Where liberalism prevails, there will never be war. (The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 433)

If war is regarded as advantageous, then laws . . . will not be allowed to stand in the way of going to war. On the first day of any war, all the laws opposing obstacles to it will be swept aside. (The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 434)

The first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is, of course, the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism. (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p. 137)

He who wants to prepare a lasting peace must.be a free-trader and a democrat and work with decisiveness for the removal of all political rule over colonies by a mother country and fight for the full freedom of movements of persons and goods. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 86)

If one wants to make peace, then one must get rid of the possibility of conflicts between peoples. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 86)

If one holds the view that there are irreconcilable class antagonisms between the individual strata of society that cannot be resolved except by the forcible victory of one class over others, if one believes that no contacts between individual nations are possible except those whereby one wins what the other loses, then, of course, one must admit that revolutions at home and wars abroad cannot be avoided. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 87)

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 94)

The way to eternal peace does not lead through strengthening state and central power, as socialism strives for. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 96)

[W]ith the progress of the division of labor we see the number of wars and battles diminishing ever more and more. The spirit of industrialism, which is indefatigably active in the development of trade relations, undermines the warlike spirit. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 150)

Liberalism rejects aggressive war not on philanthropic grounds but from the standpoint of utility. It rejects aggressive war because it regards victory as harmful, and it wants no conquests because it sees them as an unsuitable means for reaching the ultimate goals for which it strives. Not through war and victory but only through work can a nation create the preconditions for the well-being of its members. Conquering nations finally perish, either because they are annihilated by strong ones or because the ruling class is culturally overwhelmed by the subjugated. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 87)

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets. (Omnipotent Government, p. 7)

Whoever on ethical grounds wants to maintain war permanently for its own sake as a feature of relations among peoples must clearly realize that this can happen only at the cost of the general welfare, since the economic development of the world would have to be turned back at least to the state of the year 1830 to realize this martial ideal even only to some extent. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 151)

The losses that the national economy suffers from war, apart from the disadvantages that exclusion from world trade entails, consist of the destruction of goods by military actions, of the consumption of war material of all kinds, and of the loss of productive labor that the persons drawn into military service would have rendered in their civilian activities. Further losses from loss of labor occur insofar as the number of workers is lastingly reduced by the number of the fallen and as the survivors become less fit in consequence of injuries suffered, hardships undergone, illnesses suffered, and worsened nutrition. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 151-52)

There are circumstances which make the consumption of capital unavoidable. A costly war cannot be financed without such a damaging measure..There may arise situations in which it may be unavoidable to burn down the house to keep from freezing, but those who do that should realize what it costs and what they will have to do without later on. (Interventionism: an Economic Analysis, p. 52)

It is not the war profits of the entrepreneurs that are objectionable. War itself is objectionable! (Interventionism: an Economic Analysis, p. 74)

>From the beginning the intention prevailed in all socialist groups of dropping none of the measures adopted during the war after the war but rather of advancing on the way toward the completion of socialism. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 176)

[A]ggressors cannot wage total war without introducing socialism. (Interventionism: an Economic Analysis, p. 70)

The great British economist Edwin Cannan (1861-1935) wrote that if anyone had the impertinence to ask him what he did in the Great War, he would answer, "I protested." (Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 172.)
 

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The Book
Don Stott
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_03/stott032903pv.html
contributed by Larry

A few years ago, in a Phoenix used book store, I spent $6.95 for a wonderful book. I regard it as one of the most prized, in a collection of well over 2,000 volumes. The book's title is simple, but it is all encompassing. "BARNES FEDERAL CODE," is its title. Published by Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1919, it contains 2831 pages, and the subtitle is, "Containing All Federal Statutes Of General And Public Nature Now In Force." Only 2512 of its pages are actual text, the rest being an index. The first few pages are devoted to the Constitution. This would be superfluous today, as the Constitution is long gone, as far as the federal government is concerned, because no one seems to obey it. The book begins with statute #1 and ends with statute # 10,374. That's it! The statutes cover every single thing the federal government did in 1919, including internal revenue, Indian reservations, government pay, departments, tariffs, shipping rules, naturalization and immigration, national parks, money, agriculture, and you name it. In 1919, there were exactly 10,374 federal laws. Today, there are tens of millions. See what has happened? In 1919, all federal laws could be encapsulated in a 5" X 7" book, which is 3" thick. Today, they couldn't be contained in a freight car, or perhaps many freight cars.

What does this have to do with economics, and the price of gold and silver? Plenty. The more laws passed, the bigger government gets, and the more it costs to run and enforce those laws. Taxes go up to pay for the larger government, and enforcing its statutes. Eventually, the cost of government is so high, that taxes cannot be raised quickly or high enough to pay the bills. What to do? Simple. Just tax things that no one ever thought were taxed, and tax them. Tax the phone bills, electric service, raise the taxes on fuel, capital gains, death, TV cable, TV dish, property transfers, and a whole host of other taxes, as I previously mentioned in a former column. (In case you didn't know it, my previous columns can be reached by clicking on other things I have written at the end of this column.)

After these taxes have reached their limit, what to do? Simple again! Do as all nations have done, and that is "print the money" to pay the bills. While that is an over-simplification, that is exactly what happens. As the currency supply is increased, to pay for the ever-enlarging government, the currency is worth less and less, and eventually, in every nation in recorded history, those two words, "worth" and "less," have been combined to describe the eventual worth of a fiat currency. Three times it has happened here already. First, during the Revolutionary War, when due to printing and printing and printing, the currency became worthless. During the War Between the States, both sides printed with gleeful abandon. Both currencies became worthless; literally. All items that can be bought with a currency, "went up," as the currency slid down that inevitable black hole. The beans, homes, and sofas didn't change actual value. They remained the same beans, homes, and sofas. The currency used to purchase these items "went down" in purchasing power, due to the huge government's expenses, which were paid in funny money. Three times already, and another well on the way, unless you think that a 98% decrease in value means nothing.

In my town, a delightful neighborhood known as English Gardens, has fine homes, that sold in the area of $14,000 when they were new, about 25 years ago. Today, they sell quickly in the area of $125,000. Why? They are the same home. Why should they cost more? Not because the neighborhood has improved, because it hasn't. It's that the huge government Goliath has caused the dollars to go down in purchasing power. This is known as "inflation," and is caused by the supply of currency increasing or "inflating." During Jimmy Carter's time, it was in vogue to 'fight inflation.' No one could explain how to do this, because other than by decreasing government size and profligacy, so the currency supply could cease to be inflated, no citizen could 'fight' it.

Imagine a State Department with but 7 employees. That's how many it had during the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson. In 1815, the federal government had but 515 employees. The dollar was not losing purchasing power, and was backed by gold and silver in the US Treasury. The coins were made of silver. Sofas would be the same price year after year, as would bread, and homes. It was wise to save. It is foolish now, unless you save in something other than dollar denominated instruments. Saving in decreasing value dollars, is similar to opening the window for fresh air, and turning on the furnace to keep warm. It is a study in absurdity.

The government has grown 500 times as fast as has the population. There are thirty times as many laws now, as there were in 1900. A salmon has its birthplace "imprinted" in its tiny brain when hatched, causing it return to its birthplace to spawn. Like the salmon, Americans are "imprinted" with the trust in government and dollars, and few ever change their devotion and allegiance.

I cannot understand why finance advisors and economics nabobs urge "cash positions." Daily, on Bloomberg, 'experts' tell the interviewer that the stock market is suspicious, or some other reason, and they are heavy in cash. I hate "cash." Cash is a rowboat with a teensy hole in it. Cash is a sure loser, and especially when its 1% interest is taxable. But getting back to the root of all these troubles, and that is the inflating of the currency supply.

Why don't politicians stop this wild orgy of spending? Because they will lose the next election, that's why. During the last budget formation, my Congressman, whose name is Scott McInnis, got the local police department $500,000 for "improved communications," or some such rubbish as this. I live in a town of 13,000. Crime here is so negligible, as to be laughable to a big city resident. Did the local gendarmes need that $500,000 worth of equipment? They were doing fine without it, but Scott McInnis may get re-elected, because he got the cops $500,000. The award will sway votes and make him a hero, even though it is utter foolishness. How many of the 435 Representatives did the same for their districts? How many other awards did Rep. Scott McInnis, Republican, get for others in his district, that we locals didn't hear about? Undoubtedly, hundreds of billions of dollars went down the sinkhole of inflation, because of this type of nonsense, which goes on continually.

How to stop it? It can't be stopped. Just hold on for the ride, and get out of dollars, because there's no future in them. "But gold has gone down of late, and if I had gotten gold, I would have lost, wouldn't I?" Maybe for a short time, but gold is for the long term, and it will be grand as the years pass. Suppose you had saved in Enron or Worldcom? Gold will go right back up, but these stocks will never go up. Most believe real estate is very soft now, and will go down in dollar prices, due to over-supply, job losses, and a sour economy. Will real estate go back up like gold will, and as quickly?

Doubtful, as the economy has yet to hit bottom. Since there is no way to stop the politicos from doing their "thing," which is destroying the value of our currency, what are we to do with surplus assets? To me, a quick look at the world situation gives the answer. Is the war going well? No. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it being paid for by enormous inflating of the money supply? Yes. Will that make the dollar lose some, or a lot of its purchasing power? Yes. (In all previous wars, the dollar has lost purchasing power, without exception.) Do what you will, but next time you look at a dollar bill, ask yourself what it bought when you were a child, regardless of your age. You'd be surprised. Protect yourself!

Don Stott March 29, 2003

Don Stott has been a precious metals broker since 1977, has written five books, hundreds of columns, and his web site is www.coloradogold.com
 

Follow this link to see recent pictures of how you are being proected
 

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What is the view of this periodical?

For those who have concerns regarding this editor’s position on war, and current events regarding U.S. aggression on Iraq and whoever will follow, let me try to clarify.  This editor is not anti-war, or protesting this war, or anti-government, or anti-"american", or a peace-nik (although I prefer peace over war).  For every thing, there is a season.  I merely am interested in presenting views of interest, would prefer due process and more than circumstantial evidence prior to government taking any action against anyone.

There is the story of the camel in the tent.  Once a camel gets its head in the tent, it is much easier for it to get more of its body in the tent, until eventually the camel has all of itself in the tent and rules the tent.  This is to mean that when we allow a government to bend the rules, or act contrary to ways most preferred, to ignore laws or codes of conduct, or act for expediency, then we cannot be heard to complain when that government comes for us.

I pray peace follows this aggression and the hegemony of the U.S. is soon forgotten and/or forgiven.
 

JPimm@aol.com

Just think back . . . Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be, here are some facts about the 1500's:

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Beds used to be made with the mattresses supported by ropes laced tightly beneath to hold the mattress firmly off the ground.  Hence the phrase "sleep tight".

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Beds were made with hay and straw like crops.  They attracted various bugs who enjoye making home in the straw or even eating it.  The begot the phrase "do not let the bed bugs bite".  But, the regular unpacking and repacking of the straw material is how you would "make your bed".

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Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

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Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, this was followed by all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children -- last of all the babies. By the end the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it -- so, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".

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Houses used to have thatched roofs -- thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. This was about the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, rats, and bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery, and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof ; hence the saying, "raining cats and dogs".

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Bugs are always getting into a house and falling on things.  This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

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Floor were of dirt and only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor".  The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh -- the straw left over after threshing grain -- on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more and more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. To prevent this, a piece of wood was placed in the entranceway, and you call it a "threshold".

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People use to cook in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start again the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while -- hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old".

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There was a time when pork was considered a rare or special food.  When people could obtain pork, they felt quite special. When visitors came over, the bacon was hung to show off. This was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon".  For the guests, they would cut off a little to share it, then all sit around and "chew the fat".

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Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

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Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale hays and bread which was so old and hard that they could use them for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth".

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Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the "upper crust".

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The combination of drinking ale or whiskey from a lead cup would sometimes knock out prople for a couple of days. They were often found unconscience on the side of the road and mistaken for dead, and were prepared for burial. While laid out on a table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up from being passed out.  This is one of the reasons for the custom of holding a "wake".

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England is old and small and they started out running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and take the bones to a "bone-house" and re-use the grave site. They discovered that about one out of 25 (4%) coffins had scratch marks on the inside.  They realized people were getting buried alive. They thought to tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground to a bell. Someone would sit in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") listening for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "deadringer."

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