Life, Love, and Liberty

I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of The Early Ayn Rand during a recent visit to Lady Aster of San Francisco. If she is reading this than a hearty public thanks to her for the tour of Berkeley that landed us in the Other Change of Hobbit bookstore where I was able to get my hands on it.

Anyway, I found a passage in the collection that I really wanted to share:

“What do you dream of?” Kay Gonda, the actress, asks one of the characters, in the play’s thematic statement.
“Nothing,” he answers. “Of what account are dreams?”
“Of what account is life?”
“None. But who made it so?”
“Those who cannot dream.”
“No. Those who can only dream”

-Pg. 242 from The Early Ayn Rand: Revised Edition with a 2005 copyright attributed to The Estate of Ayn Rand.

Reminds me of something Emma Goldman said…

“When we can’t dream any longer, we die”
-Emma Goldman

Follow your dreams!

British backtrack on Iraq death toll

By Jill Lawless

Published: 27 March 2007

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.

The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as “robust” and “close to best practice”. Another official said it was “a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones”.

Unbelievably horrific! Is forgiveness for Bush or Blair possible?

Not looking good!

The Russian military experts estimate that the planning of the American military attack against Iran passed the point of nonreturn on February 20, when the director of the IAEA, Mohammed El Baradei, recognized, in his report/ratio, the incapacity of the Agency “to confirm the peaceful character of the nuclear program of Iran”.According to the Russian weekly magazine Argoumenty nedeli, a military action will proceed during the first week of April, before Easter catholic and orthodoxe (this year they are celebrated the 8), when the “Western opinion” is on leave. It may be also that Iran is struck Friday 6, public holiday in the Moslem countries. According to the American diagram, it will be a striking of only one day which will last 12 hours, 4 hours of morning to 16 hours of afternoon. The code name of the operation is to date “English Cock” (Bite). A score of Iranian installations should be touched. With their number, centrifugal machines of uranium enrichment, centers of studies and laboratories. But the first block of the nuclear thermal power station of Bouchehr will not be touched. On the other hand, the Americans will neutralize the DCA, will run several Iranian buildings of war in the Gulf and will destroy the key positions of command of the armed forces.As many measurements which should remove in Teheran any capacity to counteract. Iran projected to run several tankers in the strait of Ormuz with an aim of cutting the provisioning of the international markets of oil and of striking with the Israel missile.The analysts affirm that strike them American will be launched from the island of Diego-Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, from where will take off of the bombers with long operating range B-52 with on their board cruise missiles; by the embarked aviation of the American aircraft carriers deployed in the Gulf and forming part of the 6th American Fleet in the Mediterranean; cruise missiles will be also drawn since the submarines concentrated in the Pacific and with broad from Arabia.
Result, the Iranian nuclear program will be rejected several years in back. In private talks, American Generals suppose that the times of deployment of American anti-missile defense in Europe can be postponed. Another event envisaged, the oil barrel could fly away to 75-80 dollars and this for one prolonged period.Meanwhile, the new resolution on Iran and whose project was adopted by the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany should be voted with CS as of this week. The text envisages sanctions against 10 Iranian public companies and to three companies concerned with the Body of the guards of the Islamic revolution, unit of elite to the orders of the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic, the ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Sanctions are also envisaged against 15 physical people: eight leaders placed high of companies of State and seven key characters with the Body of the guards of the Islamic revolution.

See Four Day War for details on the horrors that may unfold in the aftermath of an attack on Iran. The article posits a situation involving an Israeli strike but the potential consequences could flow from a U.S. attack too.

Here’s a petition for people to sign if they want to contact the reps on this issue

Links for your enjoyment ( :

Don’t Push Pakistan too Far

Eric Margolis warns against overly intervening in Pakistan.

Sex and Spirituality Contest

Yikes! I didn’t realize the deadline for the contest was April 1st but I am still sending it out for any fast writing folks who may be interested.

Innocence is So Overrated

Mark Morford asks if innocence is ever truly possible in the human experience. My thought is that it depends on what you mean by innocence.

The Wrath of Ron Paul

Ron Paul is far from my kind of guy on cultural issues but a thumbs up to him for being anti-state to the core on war and peace. If any Republican ends up winning in 2008 than I hope it’s him.

The Fetid Mind of Max Boot

Max Boot still really really frightens me.

Shssh! Don’t Tell Americans How we Treat “Enemy Combatants”

Hush hush on ill treatment by the state.

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism

The debate of the century! Who knew such a brilliant argument was possible?

Until next time!

My take on what we can learn about gender issues from the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast is on the verge of completion and an unrevised — which may include further additions — version has been posted at Lady Victoria’s Salon Liberty.

Also, I’d been wanting to blog on one of Michael Leeden’s more disgusting recommendations.

[H]ere is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

All the complexities of international relations thrown aside in favor of the philosophy of a schoolyard bully. This kind of sentiment is sickening beyond belief.

Hat tip to Arthur Silber who quotes Jonah Goldberg.

Another one of Leeden’s cringe inducing statements:

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please…

Looks like he got his wish.

“Or perhaps it’s my gay friend, who said, had he the choice to somehow medically “eliminate” his gayness in early childhood, he just might have, given the suffering and pain it caused him throughout his younger life.

Then again, he also realized he would’ve missed out on what came next: The years and years of tremendous love and adoring connection he’s shared with his life partner. He also might have turned out less gentle, less open-minded, less prone to easy laughter, less of a wondrous, gifted healing spirit than he is now.

In other words, he might have become, you know, ordinary. And who the hell wants that?”
-Mark Morford

Eugene Plawiuk has done me a great honor by inviting me to join the Carnival of Anarchy. I’ve happily accepted the offer and extend my heartfelt thanks to him. The site has quite the ideological diversity!

A carnival for Anarchists, anarchism, anarcha-feminists, anti-authoritarians, anarchists of colour, Christian-Jewish-Muslim Anarchists, pacifist anarchists, Antinominalist Anarchists, Libertines, libertarians, left libertarians, mutualists, libertarian-socialists, libertarian-communists, individualists, anti-statists, agorists, non-statist socialists, cooperative socialists, Free Market Anti-Capitalists, Green Anarchists, Black and Red Greens, Gnostics, pagans, Thelemites, and Bugs Bunny

I’d qualify for more than one of those labels but I sadly can’t say that Bugs Bunny is one of them At least not literally, but I do appreciate the spirit of the character

The next session of the carnival is scheduled to take place this weekend with a discussion on the relation between anarchism and science.

After a brief discussion in the comments section of the last posting here is the announcement. Our next Carnival will take place on this site around the weekend of March 23-25th, Friday night to Sunday. The subject for this roundtable will be science and the spirit of anarchism. This includes anything related to the bright light of inquiry, ie. software, electronics, climatology, biology, medicine, or what have you … viewed from a more or less libertarian standpoint. As usual it would be helpful if members would spread the word about this event on their own blogs and websites. See you then.

Hope to see you there!

I have to figure out how to do away with the copyright 2007 at the bottom because intellectual property isn’t my cup of tea but it’s almost finished.

Comments?

Brad Spangler and I are having a good time here in Utah at the Beyond Ballots or Bullets conference. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his company and the workshop presentations I’ve had the privilege of hearing so far. The discussions that have followed have also been incredibly full of life so I like the atmosphere.

My notebook is filled to the brim with notes I’ve taken so I’ll be putting that into some kind of form for sharing on the blog. I feel like I’ve definitely learned from this experience so far. I hope you can learn from my future post on it.

Via the SWOP-USA mailing list.

Less than a week after Largo City Manager Steve Stanton announced he was transgendered, the small Florida community’s city commission fired him*. This is workplace discrimination, plain and simple. I just signed the ‘Stand with Stanton’ petition, and I hope you will too: http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/Petition.cfm

When the Commission fired Stanton, they ignored his excellent record as an energetic and effective leader. Stanton has received consistently positive performance reviews from the City Council and the Mayor while managing over 1,200 employees and the city’s $130 million budget.

The promise of America is that if you are a good employee, you should be rewarded for it regardless of your race, creed, disability, gender or sexual orientation. Stanton’s firing was an un-American display of workplace discrimination and this injustice should be reversed. Sign our ‘Stand with Stanton’ petition that we’ll deliver to the City Commission in Largo, FL.

Just thought individuals may be interested in signing it.