Last Entry for oh-five. Which seems to call for a mix of themes to encompass all the twists and turns of 2005. And so, a handful of short quotes, the news, a texttoon and the *nyaitj will soon gain the occasional F. Yet, is only a singular item for today.

First off a cautionary tail...tale. Therein you may find a curious parallel to the various political animals of our nations. Second is a more complete quote from Mr. Hume. Some of which appeared previously in this journal, back in '04. Lastly, a quote by someone who has played no small part in this years news (out of the USA, at least). But enough intro! To the quotes!

Quote(1):
Rats breed very quickly. This I have often proved by visiting a given haunt for many years together. I remember an instance in point one June, when out with dog and ferrets. The dog made a set under the root of a tree. I put the ferret in and it bolted eight young Rats, nearly half grown, still suckling the bitch Rat. When the old Rat bolted my dog killed it, and whilst the dog was shaking it I found she was very heavy in young again. This, therefore, will prove how quickly Rats breed.

Another result of my observation may be of interest to my readers. After removing a lot of old rubbish when ratting I came upon a nest of just- born Rats, and, in curiosity, I cut the tails off the lot, and then put the young Rodents back, leaving the nest undisturbed. When I returned next day, I found the old Rat had carried all her young away, and, later, I found the same tailless lot in another part of the building, and, after disturbing them again, I found the following day that the bitch Rat had killed every one by eating off their heads. This destruction of the offspring I have witnessed on more than one occasion. The old bitch Rat has always killed them in the same way by eating off their heads.

I must not forget to tell you of the young Rat's dread of the ferrets. I have often seen when the ferrets have been put in the hole the young Rats (not many days old and their eyes yet unopened) creep out of the hole. This is a proof that the smell of the ferrets has a tendency to bolt Rats, either young or old.

Old Rats are very bold whilst suckling their young. I have seen them very venturesome to get to water, and more eager for water than for food. I have often traced their runs a long way for water, and noticed that when crossing a field to get to a pit or river they never walk, but are always on the run; and in the summer, when they reach the pit, they not only drink, but often swim about. I have frequently watched them swimming on a moonlight night, but they generally go back to the buildings in the early morning, especially in the winter months.

Another habit I have often noticed. Take a farm, or any place where there are many Rats, and it will be always found that when a Rat gets very old it becomes very greyish in colour and rather scabbed, and its hair comes off, mostly on the back. The healthy Rats will then drive the old Rat away, and these scabby old Rats may be caught by themselves in other parts of the buildings; and, further, I often notice that if the ferrets are bitten with these old Rats, they "take bad ways." I never put such Rats with the others nor allow my dog to kill them. I would advise any gentleman having a dog he values never to let it touch one of these old scabby Rats, as it may prove injurious to the health of the dog. --I. Matthews

Quote(2):
The first circumstance which introduces evil, is that contrivance or economy of the animal creation, by which pains, as well as pleasures, are employed to excite all creatures to action, and make them vigilant in the great work of self-preservation. Now pleasure alone, in its various degrees, seems to human understanding sufficient for this purpose. All animals might be constantly in a state of enjoyment: but when urged by any of the necessities of nature, such as thirst, hunger, weariness; instead of pain, they might feel a diminution of pleasure, by which they might be prompted to seek that object which is necessary to their subsistence. Men pursue pleasure as eagerly as they avoid pain; at least they might have been so constituted. It seems, therefore, plainly possible to carry on the business of life without any pain. Why then is any animal ever rendered susceptible of such a sensation? If animals can be free from it an hour, they might enjoy a perpetual exemption from it; and it required as particular a contrivance of their organs to produce that feeling, as to endow them with sight, hearing, or any of the senses. Shall we conjecture, that such a contrivance was necessary, without any appearance of reason? and shall we build on that conjecture as on the most certain truth?

But a capacity of pain would not alone produce pain, were it not for the second circumstance, viz. the conducting of the world by general laws; and this seems nowise necessary to a very perfect Being. It is true, if everything were conducted by particular volitions, the course of nature would be perpetually broken, and no man could employ his reason in the conduct of life. But might not other particular volitions remedy this inconvenience? In short, might not the Deity exterminate all ill, wherever it were to be found; and produce all good, without any preparation, or long progress of causes and effects?

Besides, we must consider, that, according to the present economy of the world, the course of nature, though supposed exactly regular, yet to us appears not so, and many events are uncertain, and many disappoint our expectations. Health and sickness, calm and tempest, with an infinite number of other accidents, whose causes are unknown and variable, have a great influence both on the fortunes of particular persons and on the prosperity of public societies; and indeed all human life, in a manner, depends on such accidents. A being, therefore, who knows the secret springs of the universe, might easily, by particular volitions, turn all these accidents to the good of mankind, and render the whole world happy, without discovering himself in any operation.

A fleet, whose purposes were salutary to society, might always meet with a fair wind. Good princes enjoy sound health and long life. Persons born to power and authority, be framed with good tempers and virtuous dispositions. A few such events as these, regularly and wisely conducted, would change the face of the world; and yet would no more seem to disturb the course of nature, or confound human conduct, than the present economy of things, where the causes are secret, and variable, and compounded. Some small touches given to CALIGULA's brain in his infancy, might have converted him into a TRAJAN. One wave, a little higher than the rest, by burying CAESAR and his fortune in the bottom of the ocean, might have restored liberty to a considerable part of mankind. There may, for aught we know, be good reasons why Providence interposes not in this manner; but they are unknown to us; and though the mere supposition, that such reasons exist, may be sufficient to save the conclusion concerning the Divine attributes, yet surely it can never be sufficient to establish that conclusion.

If every thing in the universe be conducted by general laws, and if animals be rendered susceptible of pain, it scarcely seems possible but some ill must arise in the various shocks of matter, and the various concurrence and opposition of general laws; but this ill would be very rare, were it not for the third circumstance, which I proposed to mention, viz. the great frugality with which all powers and faculties are distributed to every particular being. So well adjusted are the organs and capacities of all animals, and so well fitted to their preservation, that, as far as history or tradition reaches, there appears not to be any single species which has yet been extinguished in the universe.

Every animal has the requisite endowments; but these endowments are bestowed with so scrupulous an economy, that any considerable diminution must entirely destroy the creature. Wherever one power is increased, there is a proportional abatement in the others. Animals which excel in swiftness are commonly defective in force. Those which possess both are either imperfect in some of their senses, or are oppressed with the most craving wants. The human species, whose chief excellency is reason and sagacity, is of all others the most necessitous, and the most deficient in bodily advantages; without clothes, without arms, without food, without lodging, without any convenience of life, except what they owe to their own skill and industry. In short, nature seems to have formed an exact calculation of the necessities of her creatures; and, like a rigid master, has afforded them little more powers or endowments than what are strictly sufficient to supply those necessities.

An indulgent parent would have bestowed a large stock, in order to guard against accidents, and secure the happiness and welfare of the creature in the most unfortunate concurrence of circumstances. Every course of life would not have been so surrounded with precipices, that the least departure from the true path, by mistake or necessity, must involve us in misery and ruin. Some reserve, some fund, would have been provided to ensure happiness; nor would the powers and the necessities have been adjusted with so rigid an economy. The Author of Nature is inconceivably powerful: his force is supposed great, if not altogether inexhaustible: nor is there any reason, as far as we can judge, to make him observe this strict frugality in his dealings with his creatures. It would have been better, were his power extremely limited, to have created fewer animals, and to have endowed these with more faculties for their happiness and preservation. A builder is never esteemed prudent, who undertakes a plan beyond what his stock will enable him to finish.

In order to cure most of the ills of human life, I require not that man should have the wings of the eagle, the swiftness of the stag, the force of the ox, the arms of the lion, the scales of the crocodile or rhinoceros; much less do I demand the sagacity of an angel or cherubim. I am contented to take an increase in one single power or faculty of his soul.

Let him be endowed with a greater propensity to industry and labour; a more vigorous spring and activity of mind; a more constant bent to business and application. Let the whole species possess naturally an equal diligence with that which many individuals are able to attain by habit and reflection; and the most beneficial consequences, without any allay of ill, is the immediate and necessary result of this endowment.

Almost all the moral, as well as natural evils of human life, arise from idleness; and were our species, by the original constitution of their frame, exempt from this vice or infirmity, the perfect cultivation of land, the improvement of arts and manufactures, the exact execution of every office and duty, immediately follow; and men at once may fully reach that state of society, which is so imperfectly attained by the best regulated government. But as industry is a power, and the most valuable of any, Nature seems determined, suitably to her usual maxims, to bestow it on men with a very sparing hand; and rather to punish him severely for his deficiency in it, than to reward him for his attainments. She has so contrived his frame, that nothing but the most violent necessity can oblige him to labour; and she employs all his other wants to overcome, at least in part, the want of diligence, and to endow him with some share of a faculty of which she has thought fit naturally to bereave him.

Here our demands may be allowed very humble, and therefore the more reasonable. If we required the endowments of superior penetration and judgement, of a more delicate taste of beauty, of a nicer sensibility to benevolence and friendship; we might be told, that we impiously pretend to break the order of Nature; that we want to exalt ourselves into a higher rank of being; that the presents which we require, not being suitable to our state and condition, would only be pernicious to us. But it is hard; I dare to repeat it, it is hard, that being placed in a world so full of wants and necessities, where almost every being and element is either our foe or refuses its assistance ... we should also have our own temper to struggle with, and should be deprived of that faculty which can alone fence against these multiplied evils.

The fourth circumstance, whence arises the misery and ill of the universe, is the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature. It must be acknowledged, that there are few parts of the universe, which seem not to serve some purpose, and whose removal would not produce a visible defect and disorder in the whole. The parts hang all together; nor can one be touched without affecting the rest, in a greater or less degree. But at the same time, it must be observed, that none of these parts or principles, however useful, are so accurately adjusted, as to keep precisely within those bounds in which their utility consists; but they are, all of them, apt, on every occasion, to run into the one extreme or the other.

One would imagine, that this grand production had not received the last hand of the maker; so little finished is every part, and so coarse are the strokes with which it is executed. Thus, the winds are requisite to convey the vapours along the surface of the globe, and to assist men in navigation: but how oft, rising up to tempests and hurricanes, do they become pernicious? Rains are necessary to nourish all the plants and animals of the earth: but how often are they defective? how often excessive?

Heat is requisite to all life and vegetation; but is not always found in the due proportion. On the mixture and secretion of the humours and juices of the body depend the health and prosperity of the animal: but the parts perform not regularly their proper function. What more useful than all the passions of the mind, ambition, vanity, love, anger? But how oft do they break their bounds, and cause the greatest convulsions in society? There is nothing so advantageous in the universe, but what frequently becomes pernicious, by its excess or defect; nor has Nature guarded, with the requisite accuracy, against all disorder or confusion. The irregularity is never perhaps so great as to destroy any species; but is often sufficient to involve the individuals in ruin and misery.

On the concurrence, then, of these four circumstances, does all or the greatest part of natural evil depend. Were all living creatures incapable of pain, or were the world administered by particular volitions, evil never could have found access into the universe: and were animals endowed with a large stock of powers and faculties, beyond what strict necessity requires; or were the several springs and principles of the universe so accurately framed as to preserve always the just temperament and medium; there must have been very little ill in comparison of what we feel at present. What then shall we pronounce on this occasion? Shall we say that these circumstances are not necessary, and that they might easily have been altered in the contrivance of the universe?

This decision seems too presumptuous for creatures so blind and ignorant. Let us be more modest in our conclusions. Let us allow, that, if the goodness of the Deity (I mean a goodness like the human) could be established on any tolerable reasons a priori, these phenomena, however untoward, would not be sufficient to subvert that principle; but might easily, in some unknown manner, be reconcilable to it. But let us still assert, that as this goodness is not antecedently established, but must be inferred from the phenomena, there can be no grounds for such an inference, while there are so many ills in the universe, and while these ills might so easily have been remedied, as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject.

I am Sceptic enough to allow, that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such attributes as you suppose; but surely they can never prove these attributes. Such a conclusion cannot result from Scepticism, but must arise from the phenomena, and from our confidence in the reasonings which we deduce from these phenomena.

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other!

How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator!

The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children! --D. Hume

Quote(3):
The next morning I ascended Green Hill, 2840 feet high, and thence walked across the island to the windward point. A good cart-road leads from the coast-settlement to the houses, gardens, and fields, placed near the summit of the central mountain. On the roadside there are milestones, and likewise cisterns, where each thirsty passer-by can drink some good water.

Similar care is displayed in each part of the establishment, and especially in the management of the springs, so that a single drop of water may not be lost: indeed the whole island may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order. I could not help, when admiring the active industry which had created such effects out of such means, at the same time regretting that it had been wasted on so poor and trifling an end. M. Lesson has remarked with justice that the English nation would have thought of making the island of Ascension a productive spot, any other people would have held it as a mere fortress in the ocean.

Near this coast nothing grows; farther inland an occasional green castor-oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true friends of the desert, may be met with. Some grass is scattered over the surface of the central elevated region, and the whole much resembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains. But, scanty as the pasture appears, about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows and horses, all thrive well on it. Of native animals, land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers.

Whether the rat is really indigenous may well be doubted; there are two varieties as described by Mr. Waterhouse; one is of a black colour, with fine glossy fur, and lives on the grassy summit, the other is brown-coloured and less glossy, with longer hairs, and lives near the settlement on the coast. Both these varieties are one-third smaller than the common black rat (M. rattus); and they differ from it both in the colour and character of their fur, but in no other essential respect. I can hardly doubt that these rats (like the common mouse, which has also run wild) have been imported, and, as at the Galapagos, have varied from the effect of the new conditions to which they have been exposed: hence the variety on the summit of the island differs from that on the coast. Of native birds there are none; but the guinea-fowl, imported from the Cape de Verd Islands, is abundant, and the common fowl has likewise run wild.

Some cats which were originally turned out to destroy the rats and mice, have increased, so as to become a great plague. The island is entirely without trees, in which, and in every other respect, it is very far inferior to St. Helena.

One of my excursions took me towards the south-west extremity of the island. The day was clear and hot, and I saw the island, not smiling with beauty, but staring with naked hideousness. The lava streams are covered with hummocks, and are rugged to a degree which, geologically speaking, is not of easy explanation. The intervening spaces are concealed with layers of pumice, ashes and volcanic tuff. Whilst passing this end of the island at sea, I could not imagine what the white patches were with which the whole plain was mottled; I now found that they were sea-fowl, sleeping in such full confidence, that even in mid-day a man could walk up and seize hold of them. These birds were the only living creatures I saw during the whole day. On the beach a great surf, although the breeze was light, came tumbling over the broken lava rocks.

The geology of this island is in many respects interesting. In several places I noticed volcanic bombs, that is, masses of lava which have been shot through the air whilst fluid, and have consequently assumed a spherical or pear-shape. Not only their external form, but, in several cases, their internal structure shows in a very curious manner that they have revolved in their aerial course. The internal structure of one of these bombs, when broken, is represented very accurately in Plate 103. The central part is coarsely cellular, the cells decreasing in size towards the exterior; where there is a shell-like case about the third of an inch in thickness, of compact stone, which again is overlaid by the outside crust of finely cellular lava. I think there can be little doubt, first, that the external crust cooled rapidly in the state in which we now see it; secondly, that the still fluid lava within was packed by the centrifugal force generated by the revolving of the bomb, against the external cooled crust, and so produced the solid shell of stone; and lastly, that the centrifugal force, by relieving the pressure in the more central parts of the bomb, allowed the heated vapours to expand their cells, thus forming the coarse cellular mass of the centre.

A hill formed of the older series of volcanic rocks, and which has been incorrectly considered as the crater of a volcano, is remarkable from its broad, slightly hollowed, and circular summit having been filled up with many successive layers of ashes and fine scoriae. These saucer-shaped layers crop out on the margin, forming perfect rings of many different colours, giving to the summit a most fantastic appearance; one of these rings is white and broad, and resembles a course round which horses have been exercised; hence the hill has been called the Devil's Riding School. I brought away specimens of one of the tufaceous layers of a pinkish colour and it is a most extraordinary fact that Professor Ehrenberg finds it almost wholly composed of matter which has been organised; he detects in it some siliceous-shielded, fresh-water infusoria, and no less than twenty-five different kinds of the siliceous tissue of plants, chiefly of grasses.

From the absence of all carbonaceous matter, Professor Ehrenberg believes that these organic bodies have passed through the volcanic fire, and have been erupted in the state in which we now see them. The appearance of the layers induced me to believe that they had been deposited under water, though from the extreme dryness of the climate I was forced to imagine that torrents of rain had probably fallen during some great eruption, and that thus a temporary lake had been formed into which the ashes fell. But it may now be suspected that the lake was not a temporary one. Anyhow we may feel sure that at some former epoch the climate and productions of Ascension were very different from what they now are. Where on the face of the earth can we find a spot on which close investigation will not discover signs of that endless cycle of change, to which this earth has been, is, and will be subjected?

On leaving Ascension, we sailed for Bahia, on the coast of Brazil, in order to complete the chronometrical measurement of the world. We arrived there on August 1st, and stayed four days, during which I took several long walks. I was glad to find my enjoyment in tropical scenery had not decreased from the want of novelty, even in the slightest degree. The elements of the scenery are so simple that they are worth mentioning, as a proof on what trifling circumstances exquisite natural beauty depends.

The country may be described as a level plain of about three hundred feet in elevation, which in all parts has been worn into flat-bottomed valleys. This structure is remarkable in a granitic land, but is nearly universal in all those softer formations of which plains are usually composed. The whole surface is covered by various kinds of stately trees, interspersed with patches of cultivated ground, out of which houses, convents, and chapels arise. It must be remembered that within the tropics the wild luxuriance of nature is not lost even in the vicinity of large cities: for the natural vegetation of the hedges and hill-sides overpowers in picturesque effect the artificial labour of man.

Hence, there are only a few spots where the bright red soil affords a strong contrast with the universal clothing of green. From the edges of the plain there are distant views either of the ocean, or of the great Bay with its low-wooded shores, and on which numerous boats and canoes show their white sails. Excepting from these points, the scene is extremely limited; following the level pathways, on each hand, only glimpses into the wooded valleys below can be obtained. The houses I may add, and especially the sacred edifices, are built in a peculiar and rather fantastic style of architecture. They are all whitewashed; so that when illumined by the brilliant sun of mid-day, and as seen against the pale blue sky of the horizon, they stand out more like shadows than real buildings.

Such are the elements of the scenery, but it is a hopeless attempt to paint the general effect. Learned naturalists describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude of objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a learned traveller this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when growing in its native soil? Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse can magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd others into an entangled jungle? Who when examining in the cabinet of the entomologist the gay exotic butterflies, and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless objects the ceaseless harsh music of the latter and the lazy flight of the former,--the sure accompaniments of the still, glowing noonday of the tropics?

It is when the sun has attained its greatest height that such scenes should be viewed: then the dense splendid foliage of the mango hides the ground with its darkest shade, whilst the upper branches are rendered from the profusion of light of the most brilliant green. In the temperate zones the case is different--the vegetation there is not so dark or so rich, and hence the rays of the declining sun, tinged of a red, purple, or bright yellow colour, add most to the beauties of those climes.

When quietly walking along the shady pathways, and admiring each successive view, I wished to find language to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too weak to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical regions the sensation of delight which the mind experiences.

I have said that the plants in a hothouse fail to communicate a just idea of the vegetation, yet I must recur to it. The land is one great wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by Nature for herself, but taken possession of by man, who has studded it with gay houses and formal gardens. How great would be the desire in every admirer of nature to behold, if such were possible, the scenery of another planet!

Yet to every person in Europe, it may be truly said, that at the distance of only a few degrees from his native soil the glories of another world are opened to him.

In my last walk I stopped again and again to gaze on these beauties, and endeavoured to fix in my mind for ever an impression which at the time I knew sooner or later must fail. -- C. Darwin

News, intangible and fleeting:
Seven and two make 05's news by a hair.

All hail Rice! ... make that--'Awww hell, Rice!'

Flipping the Byrd at Bush. Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our Country's law-abiding citizens... Well that last is a moot point now that you have the PATRIOT act. Now a'days no one is "law-abiding". Cuz' you are not allowed to know what the laws say. And frankly you and your Demo-ilk have done jack shit about that. Hell many of you voted for it. Too late, too little and too useless to be of any importance by this point in time.

Eta judgement. Spain's high court has sentenced an Eta member to 100 years and three months in prison for the murder of a socialist leader almost six years ago. Fernando Buesa and bodyguard Jorge Diez died in a car bomb attack in the Basque capital, Vitoria, in February 2000. The court said the case against Eta's Diego Ugarte Lopez de Arkaute had been proven beyond doubt, Efe reports. Eta, which wants an independent Basque nation, has been blamed for more than 800 killings in the past four decades. It has not carried out any fatal attacks for two years but has claimed responsibility for a series of small bombs set off in recent weeks.

[...]both clean and warm and most are well above the norm... Following the publication of his first collection of poetry, he has performed his poems at festivals in Holland and Belgium and become a fellow on the British Council Crossing Borders Project. With such a tight schedule, when does he manage to put pen to paper? "Mostly when I should be working in my pharmacy - I find it easier to work when I ought I be doing something else, it flows better," he says. He's also found time to write a blog for the BBC's Africa 05 website. He admits to being an e-mail junkie and claims the internet is the key to his publishing successes so far.

I don't care if you're full/ Just eat it/ Eat it/ Eat it/ Eat it/ Open up your mouth and feed it/ Have some more yogurt/ Have some more spam/ It doesn't matter if it's fresh or canned/ Just eat it/ Eat it/ Eat it/ Eat it!

Simon says; Now and again you suffer one of those moments after which you have to breathe deeply for quite some time. It happened to us when we were driving away for Christmas, and a car merrily ignored the red light at our local roundabout, missing us by a couple of inches. And it happened the other day. I was waiting to do a short turn on breakfast TV. It was 7.30, and the refreshment table contained the usual wan BBC fare: warm orange juice, stale rolls, and those little tubes of instant coffee which the late Frank Muir said resembled the remains of a cremated vole, the whole offered with plastic knives, in case international terrorists broke into the studio and tried to slit the floor manager's throat.

Free and not dead press. I'll repeat that. Free and not dead press. The vast majority of requests under the FoI Act have been for key information about issues, especially local issues, which have a real impact on people's lives. Inevitably, a small minority have not been so responsible. Asking about the number of windows at the Department for Education and Skills, or the amount of money departments spend on toilet paper, diverts energy from answering worthwhile requests. Unless you've been cooking the books on the bog rolls for your lobbyist friends. Go falcon' yourself!

OYAITJ:
94366 : A command performance. ces requested a tidal wave of bile. ...They played by the sea--then came there a wave and swept their playthings into the deep: and now do they cry..., news included; Ms. Anthrax, Tigers, Tubby -Crazy as a bedlamite and made worse by his leper queen- Black, Colin and Jeb, SD-DPB etc, etc.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Katherine Harris standing in front of a supporter. She sort of grimaces and smiles while he looks to the right, off frame saying in a speech bubble; "Wait your turn, I ain't done yet!"

Quote:
The restoration of the Jewish temple was secretly connected with the ruin of the Christian church. Julian still continued to maintain the freedom of religious worship, without distinguishing whether this universal toleration proceeded from his justice or his clemency.

He affected to pity the unhappy Christians, who were mistaken in the most important object of their lives; but his pity was degraded by contempt, his contempt was embittered by hatred; and the sentiments of Julian were expressed in a style of sarcastic wit, which inflicts a deep and deadly wound, whenever it issues from the mouth of a sovereign.

As he was sensible that the Christians gloried in the name of their Redeemer, he countenanced, and perhaps enjoined, the use of the less honorable appellation of Galilaeans. He declared, that by the folly of the Galilaeans, whom he describes as a sect of fanatics, contemptible to men, and odious to the gods, the empire had been reduced to the brink of destruction; and he insinuates in a public edict, that a frantic patient might sometimes be cured by salutary violence. An ungenerous distinction was admitted into the mind and counsels of Julian, that, according to the difference of their religious sentiments, one part of his subjects deserved his favor and friendship, while the other was entitled only to the common benefits that his justice could not refuse to an obedient people. According to a principle, pregnant with mischief and oppression, the emperor transferred to the pontiffs of his own religion the management of the liberal allowances for the public revenue, which had been granted to the church by the piety of Constantine and his sons.

The proud system of clerical honors and immunities, which had been constructed with so much art and labor, was levelled to the ground; the hopes of testamentary donations were intercepted by the rigor of the laws; and the priests of the Christian sect were confounded with the last and most ignominious class of the people. Such of these regulations as appeared necessary to check the ambition and avarice of the ecclesiastics, were soon afterwards imitated by the wisdom of an orthodox prince. The peculiar distinctions which policy has bestowed, or superstition has lavished, on the sacerdotal order, must be confined to those priests who profess the religion of the state. But the will of the legislator was not exempt from prejudice and passion; and it was the object of the insidious policy of Julian, to deprive the Christians of all the temporal honors and advantages which rendered them respectable in the eyes of the world

A just and severe censure has been inflicted on the law which prohibited the Christians from teaching the arts of grammar and rhetoric. The motives alleged by the emperor to justify this partial and oppressive measure, might command, during his lifetime, the silence of slaves and the applause of Gatterers. Julian abuses the ambiguous meaning of a word which might be indifferently applied to the language and the religion of the Greeks: he contemptuously observes, that the men who exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the advantages of science; and he vainly contends, that if they refuse to adore the gods of Homer and Demosthenes, they ought to content themselves with expounding Luke and Matthew in the church of the Galilaeans.

In all the cities of the Roman world, the education of the youth was intrusted to masters of grammar and rhetoric; who were elected by the magistrates, maintained at the public expense, and distinguished by many lucrative and honorable privileges. The edict of Julian appears to have included the physicians, and professors of all the liberal arts; and the emperor, who reserved to himself the approbation of the candidates, was authorized by the laws to corrupt, or to punish, the religious constancy of the most learned of the Christians.

As soon as the resignation of the more obstinate teachers had established the unrivalled dominion of the Pagan sophists, Julian invited the rising generation to resort with freedom to the public schools, in a just confidence, that their tender minds would receive the impressions of literature and idolatry. If the greatest part of the Christian youth should be deterred by their own scruples, or by those of their parents, from accepting this dangerous mode of instruction, they must, at the same time, relinquish the benefits of a liberal education. Julian had reason to expect that, in the space of a few years, the church would relapse into its primaeval simplicity, and that the theologians, who possessed an adequate share of the learning and eloquence of the age, would be succeeded by a generation of blind and ignorant fanatics, incapable of defending the truth of their own principles, or of exposing the various follies of Polytheism.

It was undoubtedly the wish and design of Julian to deprive the Christians of the advantages of wealth, of knowledge, and of power; but the injustice of excluding them from all offices of trust and profit seems to have been the result of his general policy, rather than the immediate consequence of any positive law. Superior merit might deserve and obtain, some extraordinary exceptions; but the greater part of the Christian officers were gradually removed from their employments in the state, the army, and the provinces. The hopes of future candidates were extinguished by the declared partiality of a prince, who maliciously reminded them, that it was unlawful for a Christian to use the sword, either of justice, or of war; and who studiously guarded the camp and the tribunals with the ensigns of idolatry. The powers of government were intrusted to the pagans, who professed an ardent zeal for the religion of their ancestors; and as the choice of the emperor was often directed by the rules of divination, the favorites whom he preferred as the most agreeable to the gods, did not always obtain the approbation of mankind.

Under the administration of their enemies, the Christians had much to suffer, and more to apprehend. The temper of Julian was averse to cruelty; and the care of his reputation, which was exposed to the eyes of the universe, restrained the philosophic monarch from violating the laws of justice and toleration, which he himself had so recently established. But the provincial ministers of his authority were placed in a less conspicuous station. In the exercise of arbitrary power, they consulted the wishes, rather than the commands, of their sovereign; and ventured to exercise a secret and vexatious tyranny against the sectaries, on whom they were not permitted to confer the honors of martyrdom. The emperor, who dissembled as long as possible his knowledge of the injustice that was exercised in his name, expressed his real sense of the conduct of his officers, by gentle reproofs and substantial rewards.

The most effectual instrument of oppression, with which they were armed, was the law that obliged the Christians to make full and ample satisfaction for the temples which they had destroyed under the preceding reign. The zeal of the triumphant church had not always expected the sanction of the public authority; and the bishops, who were secure of impunity, had often marched at the head of their congregation, to attack and demolish the fortresses of the prince of darkness. The consecrated lands, which had increased the patrimony of the sovereign or of the clergy, were clearly defined, and easily restored. But on these lands, and on the ruins of Pagan superstition, the Christians had frequently erected their own religious edifices: and as it was necessary to remove the church before the temple could be rebuilt, the justice and piety of the emperor were applauded by one party, while the other deplored and execrated his sacrilegious violence.

After the ground was cleared, the restitution of those stately structures which had been levelled with the dust, and of the precious ornaments which had been converted to Christian uses, swelled into a very large account of damages and debt. The authors of the injury had neither the ability nor the inclination to discharge this accumulated demand: and the impartial wisdom of a legislator would have been displayed in balancing the adverse claims and complaints, by an equitable and temperate arbitration.

But the whole empire, and particularly the East, was thrown into confusion by the rash edicts of Julian; and the Pagan magistrates, inflamed by zeal and revenge, abused the rigorous privilege of the Roman law, which substitutes, in the place of his inadequate property, the person of the insolvent debtor. Under the preceding reign, Mark, bishop of Arethusa, had labored in the conversion of his people with arms more effectual than those of persuasion. The magistrates required the full value of a temple which had been destroyed by his intolerant zeal: but as they were satisfied of his poverty, they desired only to bend his inflexible spirit to the promise of the slightest compensation.

They apprehended the aged prelate, they inhumanly scourged him, they tore his beard; and his naked body, annointed with honey, was suspended, in a net, between heaven and earth, and exposed to the stings of insects and the rays of a Syrian sun. From this lofty station, Mark still persisted to glory in his crime, and to insult the impotent rage of his persecutors. He was at length rescued from their hands, and dismissed to enjoy the honor of his divine triumph. The Arians celebrated the virtue of their pious confessor; the Catholics ambitiously claimed his alliance; and the Pagans, who might be susceptible of shame or remorse, were deterred from the repetition of such unavailing cruelty. Julian spared his life: but if the bishop of Arethusa had saved the infancy of Julian, posterity will condemn the ingratitude, instead of praising the clemency, of the emperor.

At the distance of five miles from Antioch, the Macedonian kings of Syria had consecrated to Apollo one of the most elegant places of devotion in the Pagan world. A magnificent temple rose in honor of the god of light; and his colossal figure almost filled the capacious sanctuary, which was enriched with gold and gems, and adorned by the skill of the Grecian artists. The deity was represented in a bending attitude, with a golden cup in his hand, pouring out a libation on the earth; as if he supplicated the venerable mother to give to his arms the cold and beauteous Daphne: for the spot was ennobled by fiction; and the fancy of the Syrian poets had transported the amorous tale from the banks of the Peneus to those of the Orontes.

The ancient rites of Greece were imitated by the royal colony of Antioch. A stream of prophecy, which rivalled the truth and reputation of the Delphic oracle, flowed from the Castalian fountain of Daphne. In the adjacent fields a stadium was built by a special privilege, which had been purchased from Elis; the Olympic games were celebrated at the expense of the city; and a revenue of thirty thousand pounds sterling was annually applied to the public pleasures. The perpetual resort of pilgrims and spectators insensibly formed, in the neighborhood of the temple, the stately and populous village of Daphne, which emulated the splendor, without acquiring the title, of a provincial city. The temple and the village were deeply bosomed in a thick grove of laurels and cypresses, which reached as far as a circumference of ten miles, and formed in the most sultry summers a cool and impenetrable shade. A thousand streams of the purest water, issuing from every hill, preserved the verdure of the earth, and the temperature of the air; the senses were gratified with harmonious sounds and aromatic odors; and the peaceful grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love.

The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness. The soldier and the philosopher wisely avoided the temptation of this sensual paradise: where pleasure, assuming the character of religion, imperceptibly dissolved the firmness of manly virtue. But the groves of Daphne continued for many ages to enjoy the veneration of natives and strangers; the privileges of the holy ground were enlarged by the munificence of succeeding emperors; and every generation added new ornaments to the splendor of the temple.

When Julian, on the day of the annual festival, hastened to adore the Apollo of Daphne, his devotion was raised to the highest pitch of eagerness and impatience. His lively imagination anticipated the grateful pomp of victims, of libations and of incense; a long procession of youths and virgins, clothed in white robes, the symbol of their innocence; and the tumultuous concourse of an innumerable people.

But the zeal of Antioch was diverted, since the reign of Christianity, into a different channel. Instead of hecatombs of fat oxen sacrificed by the tribes of a wealthy city to their tutelar deity the emperor complains that he found only a single goose, provided at the expense of a priest, the pale and solitary in habitant of this decayed temple. The altar was deserted, the oracle had been reduced to silence, and the holy ground was profaned by the introduction of Christian and funereal rites. After Babylas (a bishop of Antioch, who died in prison in the persecution of Decius) had rested near a century in his grave, his body, by the order of Caesar Gallus, was transported into the midst of the grove of Daphne.

A magnificent church was erected over his remains; a portion of the sacred lands was usurped for the maintenance of the clergy, and for the burial of the Christians at Antioch, who were ambitious of lying at the feet of their bishop; and the priests of Apollo retired, with their affrighted and indignant votaries. As soon as another revolution seemed to restore the fortune of Paganism, the church of St. Babylas was demolished, and new buildings were added to the mouldering edifice which had been raised by the piety of Syrian kings. But the first and most serious care of Julian was to deliver his oppressed deity from the odious presence of the dead and living Christians, who had so effectually suppressed the voice of fraud or enthusiasm. The scene of infection was purified, according to the forms of ancient rituals; the bodies were decently removed; and the ministers of the church were permitted to convey the remains of St. Babylas to their former habitation within the walls of Antioch. The modest behavior which might have assuaged the jealousy of a hostile government was neglected, on this occasion, by the zeal of the Christians.

The lofty car, that transported the relics of Babylas, was followed, and accompanied, and received, by an innumerable multitude; who chanted, with thundering acclamations, the Psalms of David the most expressive of their contempt for idols and idolaters. The return of the saint was a triumph; and the triumph was an insult on the religion of the emperor, who exerted his pride to dissemble his resentment. During the night which terminated this indiscreet procession, the temple of Daphne was in flames; the statue of Apollo was consumed; and the walls of the edifice were left a naked and awful monument of ruin. The Christians of Antioch asserted, with religious confidence, that the powerful intercession of St. Babylas had pointed the lightnings of heaven against the devoted roof: but as Julian was reduced to the alternative of believing either a crime or a miracle, he chose, without hesitation, without evidence, but with some color of probability, to impute the fire of Daphne to the revenge of the Galilaeans.

Their offence, had it been sufficiently proved, might have justified the retaliation, which was immediately executed by the order of Julian, of shutting the doors, and confiscating the wealth, of the cathedral of Antioch. To discover the criminals who were guilty of the tumult, of the fire, or of secreting the riches of the church, several of the ecclesiastics were tortured; and a Presbyter, of the name of Theodoret, was beheaded by the sentence of the Count of the East.

But this hasty act was blamed by the emperor; who lamented, with real or affected concern, that the imprudent zeal of his ministers would tarnish his reign with the disgrace of persecution.--Edward Gibbon

News in a plain brown wrapper:
Sir Bob joins Bono at the Tory trough. Where they are serving Conservative Policy Rolls: A bun that is much larger for those with enormous neck rolls-- while being almost invisible for those with out.

Racebaiting Toons. Arab foreign ministers have condemned the Danish government for failing to act against a newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. At the Arab League conference in Cairo, they said they were "surprised and discontented at the response". Islam forbids any depiction of Muhammad or of Allah. The Jyllands-Posten newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons showing Muhammad, in one of which he appeared to have a bomb in his turban.

Urban nomads??? What's that? A graffiti advertising campaign for Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) has triggered a controversy in the US. Wordless displays showing cartoon characters interacting with the handheld game console have popped up in cities from New York to San Francisco. But a Philadelphia watchdog says the stealth marketing violates a regulation process in the city, while others have criticised its visual appeal. A Sony spokeswoman said its portable product was aimed at "urban nomads". And the Root Kits are/were aimed at "suburban hunter gatherers".

30+40 !=120 Iraq will see the bulk of its $120bn (£69bn) debt written off by the end of 2006, its finance minister Ali Allawi has told the BBC. Mr Allawi said debt levels would then fall to a "supportable" level of $30bn. Creditors from the Paris Club of rich nations have agreed to cancel most of the $40bn owed to them after Iraq made strides to ensure economic stability. Not that much of that is even real. The western powers have, and had, control of the books. Not to mention the UN accounts(12billion) and many of the out-of-state funds held by them.

We're in the Rummy...ahem.. the money. Swiss firm Roche has licensed an Indian company to make a generic version of its anti-flu treatment Tamiflu for India and other developing countries. The drug is widely seen as the most promising treatment for combating any future pandemic of bird flu in humans. The previously little-known Indian pharmaceutical firm Hetero Drugs has been granted the licence. The decision could make it easier and cheaper for poorer nations to acquire stocks of the drug.

Thicky Mugabe theme park's concession stands are now priced out of reach. The cost of buying groceries in Zimbabwe increased almost 10-fold in 2005, according to the country's independent Consumer Council. Its report found that the price of a loaf of bread rose by 1,157% throughout the year to 44,000 Zimbabwean dollars (55 US cents; 32p). Milk rose 1,718%.

Free and not dead press. The authorities in China have dismissed the top editor of the Beijing News, one of the country's most popular and daring newspapers. Editor-in-chief Yang Bin was removed along with two other senior editors. No official reason was given, but a lawyer who often represents journalists said Communist officials had accused the paper of multiple errors. The Beijing News has a reputation for forthright reporting and commentary, despite strict control over the press. It exposed a bloody crackdown ordered by officials against protesting farmers in the northern province of Dingzhou in June, in which six farmers were killed.

SD-DPB 22'nd Dec Softball games with Sean McCormack on deck.
QUESTION: Yesterday, I think it was, Saddam Hussein accused the U.S. of beating him and torturing him while he was in jail.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: I know you spoke briefly to it yesterday. I'm wondering whether the U.S. or Iraqi authorities have investigated those charges and whether you have any information on it, or whether you intend to.

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, the people from our Embassy spoke very clearly to this, I think the Iraqi investigative judge spoke to this, that these allegations are bogus. And frankly, I think it is -- you know, I've seen this -- I've seen this issue play a lot on the cable TVs. I've seen it in the headlines. I've seen a lot of stories about it. And frankly, this sort of grandstanding detracts from what the real story is. The real story is, and the voices that need to be heard, are the victims of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was one of the most violent mass murderers of this century or any other century, and what you have now is an opportunity for the victims of Saddam Hussein to detail the tyranny, the oppression, the brutality, the violence of this regime. That's what's on trial here, not the U.S. Government, not the new Iraqi Government. It's Saddam Hussein. And that's where the focus should be, frankly.

And I understand you need to ask these questions, but I think that it does a disservice to the world when the equal ink and airtime, if not more, is not given to the stories of these people, horrific stories of, you know, women being raped, being brutalized, people who have had molten plastic applied to their skin so it could be ripped off, people's relatives -- families -- being wiped out. That's the real story here. And you know, frankly, I would encourage you to ask more questions about that as part of this trial and your coverage of it.
Disservice?!?!? Oh, give it a rest you twat. Strike one.

QUESTION: Yeah. He may well have a credibility problem but the United States also has a credibility problem among --

MR. MCCORMACK: Are you equating the credibility of Saddam Hussein with the United States?

QUESTION: No, I'm not. I'm saying he has a credibility problem. You also have a credibility problem. I'm asking if you have done anything to help, you know, show that you haven't actually done this. You know, he's claiming that you've done it. People are listening to it. It's getting a lot of play. Other than just saying, no, it's totally wrong, are you doing anything to show it's wrong?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, first of all, I take issue with the premise of your question that there's -- somehow equating the credibility of Saddam Hussein with the credibility of the United States Government. I just reject that in total.

In terms of what the United States has done, we have spoken out in public on this. We have -- I've spoken about it from here. Our officials in Baghdad have spoken to it. And the Iraqis have spoken to it as well. And they've all said the same thing: It's bogus.
"Are you equating the credibility of Saddam Hussein with the United States?" Well I am! After all he was your boy. Strike two and an error for the limp wristed followup. Two and one.

QUESTION: Sean, can you talk just a bit about the demise of Hi magazine? What are the figures and why it's being suspended?

MR. MCCORMACK: That's a correct characterization that it's been suspended.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't know if -- I think it's a little early to talk about the demise of Hi magazine.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. MCCORMACK: What has happened -- just a little bit of background for everybody -- the magazine was conceived in 2002, launched in July of 2004 as a publication to engage Arab youth in the Middle East and North Africa -- (cell phone rings).

We can wait a minute for that. It's very tuneful.

QUESTION: 2003?

MR. MCCORMACK: In 2003. Yeah, it was launched in 2003.

QUESTION: Right. Okay.

MR. MCCORMACK: So it's just been in publication for about two and a half years. It was intended to reach a youth audience in North Africa and throughout the Middle East, intended to reach an Arab youth market.

And so what Karen Hughes has decided to do, she wanted to step back, take a look and see if we were actually effective in reaching our intended audience with this particular vehicle, Hi magazine. And this is part of an emphasis that she has placed in her role as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy in measuring what it is that we do and, based on those measurements, seeing if what we're doing is effective. So this is part of that effort to see if this is actually effective and getting our message across to the intended audience.

The website is going to remain up. We think that this is, at this point, a cost-effective endeavor. It doesn't cost a lot to keep the website updated. We have a number of -- I think the number of visitors to the website is substantially higher than the circulation of the magazine. The circulation of the magazine is about 55,000 copies per month, I believe.

So she's going to take a look at it and she'll make a decision of what to do with Hi magazine based on our assessment of it.

QUESTION: Is it -- right now or is it suspended indefinitely or is there a projected restart date?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't think there's a -- there's not a projected restart date at this point.

QUESTION: Was there feedback from the embassies in the field as to whether they thought it was effective or not?

MR. MCCORMACK: I'll check to see if there's any feedback -- feedback from the field on that.

QUESTION: Do you have any figure of the sales?

MR. MCCORMACK: There was -- it was both distributed gratis copies, free copies, as well as sold. I think the total monthly distribution, and that includes both sales and free distribution, was about 55,000. That's the average monthly distribution.

QUESTION: Okay. So --

MR. MCCORMACK: Of the copies of the magazine. But the website has gotten a far larger number of hits.

QUESTION: And do you have figures of revenues?

MR. MCCORMACK: How much -- it costs $4.5 million dollars annually to --

QUESTION: No. Revenue -- how much.

MR. MCCORMACK: It's not -- it was never intended as a for-profit endeavor. But it costs about $4.5 million dollar per year to publish.

QUESTION: Is there any -- just to follow up on Sylvie's question, is there any, like, progression in distribution? I think 55 was just about what they started with.

MR. MCCORMACK: That was the average monthly. I don't know -- I don't have sort of month-by-month sales figures. They gave me an average, the monthly average in --

QUESTION: And why was it necessary to suspend it while you're doing the study, as opposed to doing the study and keep it going? I mean, you know.

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, you know, like I said, it costs -- you do the math. It cost $4.5 million dollars annually. I don't know what that averages out to per month, but you save money while you're actually not publishing it. And she's going to take a look at what the right thing to do with it is. Is it the right thing to retool it, to refocus it or make some other decision? But at that point -- I think at this point, you know, she's taking a look at it. She's not looking at it prejudiced one way or the other with what next steps to take.

QUESTION: Are you aware of the criticisms that it sort of was mostly puff pieces and didn't address at all political concerns of Arab youth and -- or do you have any response to that?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, part of what she wants to do is see if we are actually being effective in getting our message across to the intended audience. So part of this assessment is to take a look at different feedback, feedback from the embassies, feedback from others -- take into account these kinds of critiques of the magazine and see what the next steps are.

QUESTION: Do you have any measurements of the other U.S.-sponsored media, Al Hurra and Radio Sawa?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't have anything here for you, Saul.

QUESTION: Okay. But are we to assume that whatever measurements that are available have suggested that it's worth carrying on broadcasting those?

MR. MCCORMACK: They're currently under broadcast, both of them. If she decides that she wants to take a look at those, I'm sure she's going to. I think she's right now starting with Hi magazine as the first project she's going to take a hard look at and see whether or not it's effective in its intended purpose.

QUESTION: Are they standing down staff if they're still going to be doing the website?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, the actual magazine is -- it's funded by the State Department but it is -- the magazine content and design are created by The Magazine Group, so it has editorial oversight and funding from the State Department. So I'm not sure what, if any, personnel impact for State Department employees there is at this point.

QUESTION: Just one last thing from me. Do you have any figures on the website traffic at all?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, the -- what I've been told is that there are 3 million hits. Now --

QUESTION: Per day or --

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah, it's per day*.

QUESTION: Three million hits per day?

MR. MCCORMACK: Per day. Adam?

MR. ERELI: Yep.

MR. MCCORMACK: Yep, 3 million per day*. Now, here's one thing -- we will endeavor to find out the answer to this question for you, I don't have it yet -- are those unique viewers or are those page views. So at this point, I don't know the answer to that and we're going to find out the answer for you.

QUESTION: You said that's been significantly rising? Is that --

MR. MCCORMACK: No, I don't know what the trend line for it has been.

QUESTION: That's this year's?

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah, I know. Well, if we can get more information for you in terms of trend lines, we will.

QUESTION: Sean, could you also -- if it's possible -- a breakdown between how many were bought and how many were given away? If you just have a figure that includes both, it doesn't really show --

MR. MCCORMACK: Sure. We'll get that to you afterwards. I think we can get that together for you.

QUESTION: Okay.

QUESTION: Also, what's the name of the group again that actually produces --

MR. MCCORMACK: Magazine -- The Magazine Group.

QUESTION: What is that?

MR. MCCORMACK: It's people who produce Hi magazine. (Laughter.) It's a -- and what I have here, a proper noun. It's capital T, capital M, capital G, so The Magazine Group.

QUESTION: But that's like a -- that's a private entity of some sort that --

MR. ERELI: It's a contractor.

MR. MCCORMACK: Contractor.

QUESTION: Does it circulate throughout the Arab world, from Morocco to the Gulf?

MR. MCCORMACK: We'll try to get you the reach. Oh, I have this here. Hi magazine has been on sale in the following countries in the Arab world: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Jordon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Israel, Qatar, Sudan and Yemen. It's also available in Europe and Africa as well, some parts of Africa.

QUESTION: (Inaudible)

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't have that listed here.

QUESTION: Sudan, yes.

MR. MCCORMACK: Sudan, yes. And in Africa: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal -- and Sudan's listed. And Sudan I already listed.
Correction for that "* Correction: Projected 3 million hits in December 2005"... works out to 3 million strikes. Also note the "contractor" is sometimes just a contractor. Be sure to check out the rest of that for other laughs including the Bolivian Missile Dance and more.

OYAITJ:
94203 : DHS was, as I expected, morphed into a new beast, Saudi car bombs, Ramsey Clark installed, mad Kunukistani cows, Darwin wins again, Adam Ereli spun extra hard for his Hun'ny and plenty of other items.

TYAITJ:
Next is/will-be Jan'3rd 2003

TYAITJ:
20061 : North Korea takes a hard line. The UN's nuclear watchdog has declared North Korea to be in "complete defiance" of its international obligations, after Pyongyang ordered the expulsion of nuclear observers.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Michael Brown speaking to the press. Close cropped with the background replaced by a 18th century painting of hell. Overlayed speech bubble has him saying; "He said 'heck' damn it!"

It is rather interesting, and fitting, that Flavor-aid's mascot is a straw man. Kool-aid is so often used incorrectly, as is its icon(a pitcher man). It was, after all, flavor-aid that filled those galvanized steel buckets (and recycled plastic jugs).

Those of you who have read a few of my journals over the years will be unsurprised that I would reference Jones Town on this day. It makes a perfect intro. And what better day to do so?

In my youth I was fond of twisting the redundant and trite greetings of christmas with; "Merry feast of the pig!" or "Rejoice in the birth of the god of death!" The former ripped from the Remo Williams:Destroyer books (a mangled-Korean xmas, part of a character's usual oneupmanship).

The other was a sarcastic reference to what I figured at the time would put the wind up any of the faux-pious, wing'ers(left and right), old ladies, etc. For it is death that so often figures in the christian "story"(s). Right from the lions onwards. More to the point, there are all to few births marked in the bible, and the saints(etc) are usually marked by the time of death--not birth. Over the years I've found that nothing gets a pious kool-aid'er going faster than to point any of that/this out. Much less slurring either at the top of your voice at 3am intermixed with me singing; Tom Lear, Flanders and Swan, (etc, see JE title) --instead of carols. [/;-)

[And]I'm sure those of you fellow "critics of reality", and I know you're there reading this, would/will point out that even this birthday has been jockeyed around to suit various political and social agendas. Oh what fun, [hehe] which obviously IMuHO makes it all the more fun as a target for satire. I know I'm not alone in choosing to express my fun of the season in this way.

As usual a quote, three actually, to add some thoughts to this theme of christmas, strawmen, kool-aid drinkers and more.

A small selection of news, the *nyaitj-s, and a texttoon with link to its jpg. Read on... oh and Merry, Happy, Holy, Null, Meh, or what-ever days to the lot of you. Mmmmm Pig!

Quote(1):
[A trench, it's raining]
George: Care for a smoke, sir?
Edmund: No, thank you, I'm... [he lights his own pipe]
George: Private?
Baldrick: [taking cigarette from George] Oh, thank you, sir.
[starts to eat the cigarette]
George: Oh, dash and blast all this hanging about, sir! I'm as bored as a pacifist pistol. When are we going to see some action?
Edmund: Well, George, I strongly suspect that your long wait for certain death is nearly at an end. Surely you must have noticed something in the air...
George: Well, yes, of course, but I thought that was Private Baldrick.
Edmund: Unless I'm very much mistaken, soon we will at last be making the final Big Push -- that one we've been so looking forward to all these years.
George: Well, hurrah with highly polished brass knobs on! About time!
[phone rings, Edmund answers it]
Edmund: Hello; the Somme Public Baths -- no running, shouting, or piddling in the shallow end. Ah, Captain Darling. Tomorrow at dawn. Oh, excellent. See you later, then. Bye. [hangs up] Gentlemen, our long wait is nearly at an end. Tomorrow morning, General Insanity Melchett invites you to a mass slaughter. We're going over the top.
George: Well, huzzah and hurrah! God Save the King, Rule Britannia, and Boo Sucks the Hairy Hun!
Edmund: Or, to put it more precisely: you're going over the top; I'm getting out of here. [enters dugout]
George: [follows] Oh, now, come on, Cap! It may be a bit risky [tries to speak in a rousing Cockney dialect, but fails miserably], but it sure is bloomin'ell worth it, gov'nor!
Edmund: How could it possibly be worth it? We've been sitting here since Christmas 1914, during which millions of men have died, and we've advanced no further than an asthsmatic ant with some heavy shopping.
George: Well, but this time I'm absolutely pos we'll break through! It's ice cream in Berlin in 15 days.
Edmund: Or ice cold in No Man's Land in 15 seconds. No, the time has come to get out of this madness once and for all.
George: What madness is that?
Edmund: For God's sake, George, how long have you been in the army?
George: Oh me? I joined up straight away, sir. August the 4th, 1914. Gah, what a day that was: myself and the rest of the fellows leapfrogging down to the Cambridge recruiting office and then playing tiddlywinks in the queue. We had hammered Oxford's tiddlywinkers only the week before, and there we were, off to hammer the Boche! Crashingly superb bunch of blokes. Fine, clean-limbed -- even their acne had a strange nobility about it.
Edmund: Yes, and how are all the boys now?
George: Well, er, Jacko and the Badger bought it at the first Ypres front, unfortunately -- quite a shock, that. I remember Bumfluff's house-master wrote and told me that Sticky had been out for a duck, and the Gubber had snitched a parcel sausage-end and gone goose-over-stump frogside.
Edmund: Meaning...?
George: I don't know, sir, but I read in the Times that they'd both been killed.
Edmund: And Bumfluff himself...?
George: Copped a packet at Galipoli with the Aussies -- so had Drippy and Strangely Brown. I remember we heard on the first morning of the Somme when Titch and Mr Floppy got gassed back to Blighty.
Edmund: Which leaves...?
George: Gosh, yes, I, I suppose I'm the only one of the Trinity Tiddlers still alive. Blimy, there's a thought -- and not a jolly one.
Edmund: My point exactly, George.
George: A chap might get a bit miffed, if it wasn't the thought of going over the top tomorrow! Right, sir; Permission to get weaving...
Edmund: Permission granted.
George: Thank you, sir.
Edmund: Baldrick!
Baldrick: [enters] Captain B!
Edmund: This is a crisis. A large crisis. In fact, if you've got a moment, it's a twelve-storey crisis with a magnificent entrance hall, carpetting throughout, 24-hour portrage, and an enormous sign on the roof, saying `This Is a Large Crisis'. A large crisis requires a large plan. Get me two pencils and a pair of underpants.
-- Black Adder goes Forth.

Quote(2):
The vast majority, all but the whole population of England, have been always free; and free, as they are not where caste exists to change their occupations.

They could intermarry, if they were able men, into the ranks above them; as they could sink, if they were unable men, into the ranks below them. Any man acquainted with the origin of our English surnames may verify this fact for himself, by looking at the names of a single parish or a single street of shops. There, jumbled together, he will find names marking the noblest Saxon or Angle blood--Kenward or Kenric, Osgood or Osborne, side by side with Cordery or Banister--now names of farmers in my own parish--or other Norman-French names which may be, like those two last, in Battle Abbey roll--and side by side the almost ubiquitous Brown, whose ancestor was probably some Danish or Norwegian house-carle, proud of his name Biorn the Bear, and the ubiquitous Smith or Smythe, the Smiter, whose forefather, whether he be now peasant or peer, assuredly handled the tongs and hammer at his own forge. This holds true equally in New England and in Old.

When I search through (as I delight to do) your New England surnames, I find the same jumble of names--West Saxon, Angle, Danish, Norman, and French-Norman likewise, many of primaeval and heathen antiquity, many of high nobility, all worked together, as at home, to form the Free Commoners of England.

If any should wish to know more on this curious and important subject, let me recommend them to study Ferguson's "Teutonic Name System," a book from which you will discover that some of our quaintest, and seemingly most plebeian surnames--many surnames, too, which are extinct in England, but remain in America--are really corruptions of good old Teutonic names, which our ancestors may have carried in the German Forest, before an Englishman set foot on British soil; from which he will rise with the comfortable feeling that we English-speaking men, from the highest to the lowest, are literally kinsmen. Nay, so utterly made up now is the old blood-feud between Norseman and Englishman, between the descendants of those who conquered and those who were conquered, that in the children of our Prince of Wales, after 800 years, the blood of William of Normandy is mingled with the blood of the very Harold who fell at Hastings. And so, by the bitter woes which followed the Norman conquest was the whole population, Dane, Angle, and Saxon, earl and churl, freeman and slave, crushed and welded together into one homogeneous mass, made just and merciful towards each other by the most wholesome of all teachings, a community of suffering; and if they had been, as I fear they were, a lazy and a sensual people, were taught

That life is not as idle ore, But heated hot with burning fears, And bathed in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the strokes of doom To shape and use.

But how did these wild Vikings become Christian men? It is a long story. So stanch a race was sure to be converted only very slowly. Noble missionaries as Ansgar, Rembert, and Poppo, had worked for 150 years and more among the heathens of Denmark. But the patriotism of the Norseman always recoiled, even though in secret, from the fact that they were German monks, backed by the authority of the German emperor; and many a man, like Svend Fork-beard, father of the great Canute, though he had the Kaiser himself for godfather, turned heathen once more the moment he was free, because his baptism was the badge of foreign conquest, and neither pope nor kaiser should lord it over him, body or soul. St. Olaf, indeed, forced Christianity on the Norse at the sword's point, often by horrid cruelties, and perished in the attempt. But who forced it on the Norsemen of Scotland, England, Ireland, Neustria, Russia, and all the Eastern Baltic?

It was absorbed and in most cases, I believe, gradually and willingly, as a gospel and good news to hearts worn out with the storm of their own passions. And whence came their Christianity? Much of it, as in the case of the Danes, and still more of the French Normans, came direct from Rome, the city which, let them defy its influence as they would, was still the fount of all theology, as well as of all civilisation. But I must believe that much of it came from that mysterious ancient Western Church, the Church of St. Patric, St. Bridget, St. Columba, which had covered with rude cells and chapels the rocky islets of the North Atlantic, even to Iceland itself. Even to Iceland; for when that island was first discovered, about A.D. 840, the Norsemen found in an isle, on the east and west and elsewhere, Irish books and bells and wooden crosses, and named that island Papey, the isle of the popes--some little colony of monks, who lived by fishing, and who are said to have left the land when the Norsemen settled in it.

Let us believe, for it is consonant with reason and experience, that the sight of those poor monks, plundered and massacred again and again by the "mailed swarms of Lochlin," yet never exterminated, but springing up again in the same place, ready for fresh massacre, a sacred plant which God had planted, and which no rage of man could trample out--let us believe, I say, that that sight taught at last to the buccaneers of the old world that there was a purer manliness, a loftier heroism, than the ferocious self-assertion of the Berserker, even the heroism of humility, gentleness, self-restraint, self-sacrifice; that there was a strength which was made perfect in weakness; a glory, not of the sword but of the cross. We will believe that that was the lesson which the Norsemen learnt, after many a wild and blood-stained voyage, from the monks of Iona or of Derry, which caused the building of such churches as that which Sightrys, king of Dublin, raised about the year 1030, not in the Norse but in the Irish quarter of Dublin: a sacred token of amity between the new settlers and the natives on the ground of a common faith.

Let us believe, too, that the influence of woman was not wanting in the good work--that the story of St. Margaret and Malcolm Canmore was repeated, though inversely, in the case of many a heathen Scandinavian jarl, who, marrying the princely daughter of some Scottish chieftain, found in her creed at last something more precious than herself; while his brother or his cousin became, at Dublin or Wexford or Waterford, the husband of some saffron-robed Irish princess, "fair as an elf," as the old saying was; some "maiden of the three transcendent hues," of whom the old book of Linane says:

Red as the blood which flowed from stricken deer, White as the snow on which that blood ran down, Black as the raven who drank up that blood;

--and possibly, as in the case of Brian Boru's mother, had given his fair- haired sister in marriage to some Irish prince, and could not resist the spell of their new creed, and the spell too, it may be, of some sister of theirs who had long given up all thought of earthly marriage to tend the undying fire of St. Bridget among the consecrated virgins of Kildare.

I am not drawing from mere imagination. That such things must have happened, and happened again and again, is certain to anyone who knows, even superficially, the documents of that time. And I doubt not that, in manners as well as in religion, the Norse were humanised and civilised by their contact with the Celts, both in Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valour, intellect, imagination: but the Celt had that which the burly angular Norse character, however deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature, tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of character which have produced, in Ireland and in Scotland, two schools of lyric poetry second to none in the world.

And so they were converted to what was then a dark and awful creed; a creed of ascetic self-torture and purgatorial fires for those who escape the still more dreadful, because endless, doom of the rest of the human race. But, because it was a sad creed, it suited better, men who had, when conscience re-awakened in them, but too good reason to be sad; and the minsters and cloisters which sprang up over the whole of Northern Europe, and even beyond it, along the dreary western shores of Greenland itself, are the symbols of a splendid repentance for their own sins and for the sins of their forefathers. --C. Kingsley

Quote(3):
A people can in a sense be likened to a crowd. It possesses certain characteristics, but the oscillations of these characteristics are limited by the soul or mind of the race. The mind of the race has a fixity unknown to the transitory mind of the crowd.

When a people possesses an ancestral soul established by a long past the soul of the crowd is always dominated thereby.

A people differs from a crowd also in that it is composed of a collection of groups, each having different interests and passions. In a crowd properly so-called--a popular assembly, for example--there are unities which may belong to very different social categories.

A people sometimes seems as mobile as a crowd, but we must not forget that behind its mobility, its enthusiasms, its violence and destructiveness, the extremely tenacious and conservative instincts of the racial mind persist. The history of the Revolution and the century which has followed shows how the conservative spirit finally overcomes the spirit of destruction. More than one system of government which the people has shattered has been restored by the people.

It is not as easy to work upon the mind of the people--that is, the mind of the race--as on the mind of a crowd. The means of action are indirect and slower (journals, conferences, speeches, books, &c.). The elements of persuasion always come under the headings already given: affirmation, repetition, prestige, and contagion.

Mental contagion may affect a whole people instantaneously, but more often it operates slowly, creeping from group to group. Thus was the Reformation propagated in France.

A people is far less excitable than a crowd; but certain events-- national insults, threats of invasion, &c.--may arouse it instantly. Such a phenomenon was observed on several occasions during the Revolution, notably at the time of the insolent manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick. The Duke knew little indeed of the psychology of the French race when he proffered his threats. Not only did he considerably prejudice the cause of Louis XVI.; but he also damaged his own, since his intervention raised from the soil an army eager to fight him.

This sudden explosion of feeling throughout a whole race has been observed in all nations. Napoleon did not understand the power of such explosions when he invaded Spain and Russia. One may easily disaggregate the facile mind of a crowd, but one can do nothing before the permanent soul of a race. Certainly the Russian peasant is a very indifferent being, gross and narrow by nature, yet at the first news of invasion he was transformed. One may judge of this fact on reading a letter written by Elizabeth, wife of the Emperor Alexander I.

"From the moment when Napoleon had crossed our frontiers it was as though an electric spark had spread through all Russia; and if the immensity of its area had made it possible for the news to penetrate simultaneously to every corner of the Empire a cry of indignation would have arisen so terrible that I believe it would have resounded to the ends of the earth. As Napoleon advances this feeling is growing yet stronger. Old men who have lost all or nearly all their goods are saying: 'We shall find a way of living. Anything is preferable to a shameful peace.' Women all of whose kin are in the army regard the dangers they are running as secondary, and fear nothing but peace. Happily this peace, which would be the death-warrant of Russia, will not be negotiated; the Emperor does not conceive of such an idea, and even if he would he could not. This is the heroic side of our position."

The Empress describes to her mother the two following traits, which give some idea of the degree of resistance of which the soul of the Russian is capable:--

"The Frenchmen had caught some unhappy peasants in Moscow, whom they thought to force to serve in their ranks, and in order that they should not be able to escape they branded their hands as one brands horses in the stud. One of them asked what this mark meant; he was told it signified that he was a French soldier. 'What! I am a soldier of the Emperor of the French!' he said. And immediately he took his hatchet, cut off his hand, and threw it at the feet of those present, saying, 'Take it--there's your mark!'

"At Moscow, too, the French had taken a score of peasants of whom they wished to make an example in order to frighten the villagers, who were picking off the French foraging parties and were making war as well as the detachments of regular troops. They ranged them against a wall and read their sentence in Russian. They waited for them to beg for mercy: instead of that they took farewell of one another and made their sign of the cross. The French fired on the first of them; they waited for the rest to beg for pardon in their terror, and to promise to change their conduct. They fired on the second, and on the third, and so on all the twenty, without a single one having attempted to implore the clemency of the enemy. Napoleon has not once had the pleasure of profaning this word in Russia."

Among the characteristics of the popular mind we must mention that in all peoples and all ages it has been saturated with mysticism. The people will always be convinced that superior beings--divinities, Governments, or great men--have the power to change things at will. This mystic side produces an intense need of adoration. The people must have a fetich, either a man or a doctrine. This is why, when threatened with anarchy, it calls for a Messiah to save it.

Like the crowd, but more slowly, the people readily passes from adoration to hatred. A man may be the hero of the people at one period, and finally earn its curses. These variations of popular opinion concerning political personalities may be observed in all times. -- G. l.Bon

News without so much pram in it:
Boltin regifts his sock's contents to the UN.

Also in UN news The forgottenland is patted on the head by the UN-SC. In another forgotten place; Concern that Kashmir's Victims Are Forgotten.

Juan states the obvious. "Speculation is idle." That's just cuz' the markets are closed for the hol's, duh!.

The War-Egg starting to hatch.

The upbeat'n egg is still runny[Rummy'ed surly?!?] and has gotten rather old. As has the agitprop from Iraq.

Castro thinks they dine on a different substance. Though it might be said to be just as pungent by this point. The things people will eat!

The Strawdog seems reluctant to fetch. What a shock. Lawyers acting for seven British residents detained in Guantánamo Bay have launched a court challenge to help secure their release. They say Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Charles Clarke, the home secretary, are under a legal obligation to demand that the US frees the men. They should be treated in the same way as the nine British citizens who have already been released from the US detention camp in Cuba, their lawyers argue. The seven concerned are Bisher al Rawi, Jamil el Banna, Omar Deghayes, Wahab al Rawi, Jahida Sayyadi, Sabah Sunnoqrot and Abubaker Deghayes. All were resident in Britain, some as refugees, before they were captured by the US. Bisher al Rawi and Mr El Banna, two businessmen, were seized in Gambia in 2002 by CIA agents after being held by British intelligence officers in the UK before being released. Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister for Africa, says they were seized by the Americans after a tip-off by the British authorities.

A 2005 Quiz in which none of the answers are "Sing little birdie". But one of the questions is; Who accidentally sent an email to the BBC that read: "Now fuck off and cover something important you twats"? Which I hope my readers never have had, or will have, reason to say about these Journal entries.

OYAITJ:
93918 : Of physicians and carpenters, cheap toys, obvious ploys, rummy cake and all the trimmings.

TYAITJ:
55951 : Carpet, rolls, Juan of christmas past, Tom the dancing bug is squashed, and more.

Texttoon:
Fumetti/jpg : Stock photo of Donald Rumsfeld seated, hands in mid-jive, beside a man speaking into a microphone. Overlayed speech bubble has the man saying; "Greetings from the Lord Humungus! The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla'."

You never know who is listening. It is, however, much more interesting to read. Yeah, right, I know that no one does that anymore. And Taco and Co. have reduced the amount alloted for JEs so this is cut down for size. Yet I'll still post on in the face of such absurdities. Onwards!

Quote:
The most serious form of the evil caused by a want of mental improvement, is that which is exposed to us in its consequences with respect to the most important concern of all, Religion.

[...]first, a slight estimate may be attempted of the actual state of religious notions among our uneducated population. Some notion of such a concern, something different in their consciousness from the absolute negation of the idea, something that faintly responds to the terms which would be used by a person conversing with them, in the way of questioning them on the subject, may be presumed to exist in the minds of all who are advanced a considerable way into youth, or come to mature age, in a country where all are familiar with several of the principal terms of theology, and have the monitory spectacle of edifices for religious use, on spots appointed also for the interment of the dead. If this sort of measured caution in the assumption seem bordering on the ridiculous, we would recommend those who would smile at it to make some little experiments.

Let them insinuate themselves into the company of some of the innumerable rustics who have grown up destitute of everything worth calling education; or of the equally ill-fated beings in the alleys, precincts, and lower employments of towns. With due management to avoid the abruptness and judicial formality, which, would preclude a communicative disposition, they might take occasion to introduce remarks tending, without the express form of questions in the first instance, to draw out the thoughts of some of these persons respecting God, Jesus Christ, the human soul, the invisible world. And the answers would often put them to a stand to conceive, under what suspension of the laws of rational existence the utterers could have been passing so many years in the world. These answers might dispel, as by a sudden shock, the easy and contented assurance, if so unknowing a notion had been entertained, that almost all the people must, in one way or another, have become decently apprized of a few first principles of religion; that this could not have failed to be the case in what was expressly constituted a great Christian community, with an obligation upon it, that none of its members should be left destitute of the most essential requisite to their well-being. This agreeable assurance would vanish, like a dream interrupted, at the spectacle thus presented, of persons only not quite as devoid of those first principles, after living eighteen, thirty, forty, or twice forty years, under the superintendence of that community, as if they had been the aboriginal rovers of the American forests, or natives of unvisited coral-built spots in the ocean.

If these examiners were to prosecute the investigation widely, and with an effect on their sentiments correspondent to the enlarging disclosure of facts, they could find themselves fallen into a very altered estimate of this our Christian tract of the earth. A fancied sunshine, spread over it before, would have faded away. From appearing to them, according to an accustomed notion, peculiarly auspicious, as if almost by some virtue of its climate, to the growth of religious intelligence in the minds of the people, it might come to be regarded as favorable to the development of all things rather than that. Plants and trees, the diversity of animal forms and powers, the human frame, the features enlarging or enlarged to manhood in the younger persons looked at by the supposed examiner while answering his questions, with their passions also, and prevailing dispositions,--see how all things can unfold themselves in our territory, and grow and enlarge to their completeness,--except the ideas of the human soul relating to the Almighty, and to the grand purpose of its own existence!

The supposed answers would in many instances betray, that any thought of God at all was of very rare occurrence, the idea having never become strongly associated with anything beheld in the whole creation. We should think it probable, as we have said before, that with many, while in health, weeks or months often pass away without this idea being once so presented as to fix the mind in attention to it for one moment of time. If they could be set to any such task as that of retracing, at the end of the days or the weeks, the course of their thoughts, to recollect what particulars in the series had struck the most forcibly and stayed the longest, it may be suspected that this idea, thus impressively apprehended, would be as rare a recollection as that of having seen a splendid meteor. Yet during that space of time, their thoughts, such as they were, shall have run through thousands of changes; and even the name of God may have been pronounced by them a multitude of times, in jocularity or imprecation. Thus there is a broad easy way to atheism through thoughtless ignorance, as well as a narrow and difficult one through subtle speculation.

[...]

The divine attribute which is apprehended by them with most of an impression of reality, is a certain vastness of power. But, through the grossness of their intellectual atmosphere, this appears to them in the character of something prodigiously huge, rather than sublimely glorious.--As considered in his quality of moral judicial Governor, God is regarded by some of them as more disposed, than there is any reasonable cause, to be displeased with what is done in this world. But the far greater number have no prevailing sentiment that he takes any very vigilant account or concern.

The notions that should answer to the doctrine of a Providence, are a confusion of some crude idea of a divine superintendence, with stronger fancies and impressions of luck and chance; a confusion of them not unaptly exemplified in a grave and well-meaning sentiment heard from a man in a temporal condition to be envied by many of his neighbors, "Providence must take its chance." And these are still further, and most uncouthly, confounded by the admixture of the ancient heathen notion of fate, reduced from its philosophy to its dregs. In many instances, however, this last obtains such a predominance, as to lessen the confusion, and withal to preclude, in a great measure, the sense of accountableness. In neither of these rude states of the understanding, (that which confounds Providence and chance, and that which sinks in dull acquiescence to something obscurely imagined like fate,) is there any serious admission, at least during the enjoyment of health, of the duty or advantage of prayer.

The supposed examiner may endeavor to possess himself of the notions concerning the Redeemer of the world. They would be found, in numerous instances, amounting literally to no more than, that Jesus Christ was a worthy kind of person, (the word has actually been "gentleman," in more than one instance that we have heard from unquestionable testimony,) who once, somewhere, (these national Christians had never in their lives, thought of inquiring when or where,) did a great deal of good, and was very ill used by bad people. The people now, they think, bad as they may be, would not do so in the like case. Some of these persons may occasionally have been at church; and are just aware that his name often recurs in its services; they never considered why; but they have a vague impression of its repetition having some kind of virtue, perhaps rather in the nature of a spell.--The names of the four evangelists are by some held literally and technically available for such a use.

A few steps withdrawn from this thickest of the mental fog, there are many who are not entirely uninformed of something having been usually affirmed, by religious formularies and teachers, of Jesus Christ's being more than a man, and of his having done some thing of great importance toward preventing our being punished for our sins. This combination of a majestic superiority to the human nature, with a subsistence yet confessedly human, just passes their minds like a shape formed of a shadow, as one of the unaccountable things that may be as it is said, for what they know, but which they need not trouble themselves to think about. As to the great things said to be done by him, to save men from being punished, they see indeed no necessity for such an expedient, but if it is so, very right, and so much the better; for between that circumstance in our favor, and God's being too good, after all that is said of his holiness and wrath, to be severe on such poor creatures, we must have a good chance of coming off safely at last. But multitudes of the miserably poor, however wicked, have a settled assurance of this coming off well at last, independently of anything effected for men by the Mediator: they shall be exempted, they believe, from any future suffering in consideration of their having suffered so much here. There is nothing, in the scanty creed of great numbers, more firmly held than this.

It is true, they believe that the most atrociously wicked must go to a state of punishment after death. They consider murderers, especially, as under this doom. But the offences so adjudged, according to any settled estimate they have of the demerit of bad actions, are comprised in a very short catalogue. At least it is short if we could take it exclusively of the additions made to it by the resentments of individuals. For each one is apt to make his own particular addition to it, of some offence which he would never have accounted so heinous, but that it has happened to be committed against him. We can recollect the exultation of sincere faith, seen mingling with the anger, of an offended man, while predicting, as well as imprecating, this retribution of some injury he had suffered; a real injury, indeed, yet of a kind which he would have held in small account had he only seen it done to another person.--As to the nature of that future punishment, the ideas of these neglected minds go scarcely at all beyond the images of corporal anguish, conveyed by the well-known metaphors. They have no impressive idea of the pain of remorse, and scarcely the faintest conception of an infelicity inflicted by the conscious loss of the Divine favor.

It is most striking to observe how almost wholly negative are their conceptions of that future happiness which must be something--but what?--as the necessary alternative of the evil they so easily assure themselves of escaping. The abstracted, contemplative, and elevated ideas of the celestial happiness are far above their apprehension; and indeed, though they were not, would be little attractive. And the more ordinary modes of representing it in religious discourse, (if they should ever have heard enough of such discourse to be acquainted with them,) are too uncongenial with their notions of pleasure to have a welcome, or abiding place, in their imagination or affections. Thus the soul, as to this great subject, is vacant and cold. And here the reflection again returns, what an inexpressible poverty of the mind there is, when the people have no longer a mythology, and yet have not obtained in its place any knowledge of the true religion. The martial vagrants of Scandinavia glowed with the vivid anticipations of Valhalla; the savages of the western continent had their animating visions of the "land of souls;" the modern Christian barbarians of England, who also expect to live after death, do not know what they mean by the! phrase of "going to heaven."

Most of this class of persons think very little in any way whatever of the invisible spiritual economy. And some of them would be pleased with a still more complete exemption from such thought. For there are among them those who are liable to be occasionally affected with certain ghostly recognitions of something out of the common world. But it is remarkable how little these may contribute to enforce the salutary impressions of religion. For instance, a man subject to the terror of apparitions shall not therefore be in the smallest degree the less profane, except just at the time that this terror is upon him. A number of persons, not one of whom durst walk, alone, at midnight, round a lonely church, encompassed with graves, to which has perhaps lately been added that of a notoriously wicked man, will nevertheless, on a fine Sunday morning, form a row of rude idlers, standing in the road to this very church, to vent their jokes on the persons going thither to attend the offices of religion, and on the performers of those offices.

[...]

There is the view of religion in its operative character, or the doctrine of the application of its truths and precepts by a divine agency to transform the mind and rectify the life. And this solemn array of all the sublimest reality, and most important intelligence, is extending infinitely away beyond the sensible horizon of our present state to an invisible world, to which the spirits of men proceed at death for judgment and retribution, and with the prospect of living forever.

Look at this scene of faith, so distinct, and stretching to such remoteness, from the field of ordinary things; of a subsistence which it is for intellect alone to apprehend; presenting objects with which intellect alone can hold converse. Look at this scene; and then consider, what manner of beings you are calling upon to enter into it by contemplation. Beings who have never learned to think at all. Beings who have hardly ever once, in their whole lives, made a real effort to direct and concentrate the action of their faculties on anything abstracted from the objects palpable to the senses; whose entire attention has been engrossed, from their infancy, with the common business, the low amusements and gratifications, the idle talk, the local occurrences, which formed the whole compass of the occupation, and practically acknowledged interests, of their progenitors.

Beings who have never been made in the least familiar with even the matters of fact, those especially of the scripture history, by which religious truths have been expressed and illustrated in the substantial form of events, and personal characters. Beings who, in natural consequence of this unexercised and unfurnished condition of their understandings, will combine the utmost aversion to any effort of purely intellectual labor, with the especial dislike which it is in the human disposition to feel toward this class of subjects. What kind of ideas should you imagine to be raised in their minds, by all the words you might employ, to place within their intellectual vision some portion of this spiritual order of things,--even should you be able, which you often would not, to engage any effort of attention to the subject?

And yet we have heard this disqualification for receiving religious knowledge, in consequence of the want of early mental culture, made very light of by men whose pretensions to judgment had no less a foundation than an academical course and a consecrated profession. They would maintain, with every appearance of thinking so, that a very little, that the barest trifle, of regulated exercise of the mind in youth, would be enough for the common people as a preparation for gaining as much knowledge of religion as they could ever want; that any such thing as a practice of reading, (a practice of hazardous tendency.) would be needless for the purpose, since they might gain a competence of that knowledge by attendance on the public ministration in the church. And there must have been a very recent acquiescence in a new fashion of opinion, if numbers of the same class of men would not, in honestly avowing their thoughts, say something not far different at this hour.

But the pretended facility of gaining a competence of religious knowledge by such persons on such terms, can only mean, that the smallest conceivable portion of it may suffice. For we may appeal to those pious and benevolent persons who have made the most numerous trials, for testimony to the inaptitude of uneducated people to receive that kind of instruction. You have visited, perhaps, some numerous family, or Sunday assemblage of several related families; to which you had access without awkward intrusion, in consequence of the acquaintance arising from near neighborhood, or of little services you had rendered, or of the circumstance of any of their younger children coming to your charity schools. It was to you soon made sensible what a sterile, blighted spot of rational nature you were in, by indications unequivocal to your perception, though, it may be, not easily reducible to exact description. And those indications were perhaps almost equally apparent in the young persons, in those advanced to the middle of life, and in those who were evidently destined not long to remain in it, the patriarch, perhaps, and the eldest matron, of the kindred company.

You attempted by degrees, with all managements of art, as if you had been seeking to gain a favor for yourselves, to train into the talk some topic bearing toward religion; and which could be followed up into a more explicit reference to that great subject, without the abruptness which causes instant silence and recoil. We will suppose that the gloom of such a moral scene was not augmented to you, by the mortification of observing impatience of this suspension of their usual and favorite tenor of discourse, betrayed in marks of suppressed irritation, or rather by the withdrawing of one, and another, from the company. But it was quite enough to render the moments and feelings some of the most disconsolate you had ever experienced, to have thus immediately before you a number of rational beings as in a dark prison-house, and to feel the impotence of your friendly efforts to bring them out. Their darkness of ignorance infused into your spirit the darkness of melancholy, when you perceived that the fittest words you could think of, in every change and combination in which you could dispose them, failed to impart to their understanding, in the meaning you wanted to convey, the most elementary and essential ideas of the most momentous subject.

You thought again, perhaps, and again, Surely this mode of expression, or this, as it is in words not out of common usage, will define the thing to their apprehension. But you were forced to perceive that the common phraseology of the language, those words which make the substance of ordinary discourse on ordinary subjects, had not, for the understandings of these persons, a general applicableness. It seemed as if the mere elemental vehicle, (if we may so name it,) available indifferently for conveying all sorts of sense, except science, had become in its meaning special and exclusive for their own sort of topics. Their narrow associations had rendered it incapable of conveying sense to them on matters foreign to their habits. When used on a subject to which they were quite unaccustomed, it became like a stream which, though one and the same current, flows clear on the one side, and muddy (as we sometimes see for a space) on the other; and to them it was clear only at their own edge. And if thus even the plain popular language turned dark on their understandings when employed in explanation of religion, it is easy to imagine what had been the success of a more peculiarly theological phraseology, though it were limited to such terms as are of frequent use in the Bible.

You continued, however, the effort for a while. As desirous to show you due civility, some of the persons, perhaps the oldest, would give assent to what you said, with some sign of acknowledgment of the importance of the concern. The assent would perhaps be expressed in a form meant and believed to be equivalent to what you had said. And when it gave an intelligible idea, it might probably betray the grossest possible misconception of the first principles of Christianity.

It might be a crude formation from the very same substance of which some of the worst errors of popery are constituted; and might strongly suggest to you, in a glance of thought, how easily popery might have become the religion of ignorance; how naturally ignorance and corrupt feeling mixing with a slight vague notion of Christianity, would turn it into just such a thing as popery. You tried, perhaps, with repeated modifications of your expression, and attempts at illustration, to loosen the false notion, and to place the true one contrasted with it in such a near obviousness to the apprehension, that at least the difference should be seen, and (perhaps you hoped) a little movement excited to think on the subject, and make a serious question of it. But all in vain.

The hoary subject of your too late instruction, (a spectacle reminding you painfully of the words which denominate the sign of old age "crown of glory,") either would still take it that it came all to the same thing, or, if compelled to perceive that you really were trying to make him unthink his poor old notions, and learn something new and contrary, would probably retreat, in a little while, into a half sullen, half despondent silence, after observing, that he was too old, "the worse was the luck," to be able to learn about such things, which he never had, like you, the "scholarship" and the time for.

In several of the party you perceived the signs of almost a total blank. They seemed but to be waiting for any trifling incident to take their attention, and keep their minds alive. Some one with a little more of listening curiosity, but without caring about the subject, might have to observe, that it seemed to him the same kind of thing that the methodist parson, (the term most likely to be used if any very serious and earnest Christian instructor had appeared in the neighborhood,) was lately saying in such a one's funeral-sermon. It is too possible that one or two of the visages of the company, of the younger people especially, might wear, during a good part of the time, somewhat of a derisive smile, meaning, "What odd kind of stuff all this is;" as if they could not help thinking it ludicrously strange that any one should be talking of God, of the Saviour of mankind, the facts of the Bible, the welfare of the soul, the shortness and value of life, and a future account, when he might be talking of the neighboring fair, past or expected, or the local quarrels, or the last laughable incident or adventure of the hamlet.

It is particularly observable, that grossly ignorant persons are very apt to take a ludicrous impression from high and solemn subjects; at least when introduced in any other time or way than in the ceremonial of public religious service; when brought forward as a personal concern, demanding consideration everywhere, and which may be urged by individual on individual. You have commonly enough seen this provoke the grin of stupidity and folly. And if you asked yourselves, (for it were in vain to ask them,) why it produced this so perverse effect, you had only to consider that, to minds abandoned through ignorance to be totally engrossed by the immediate objects of sense, the grave assumption, and emphatic enforcement, of the transcendent importance of a wholly unseen and spiritual economy, has much the appearance and effect of a great lie attempted to be passed on them.

You might indeed recollect also, that the most which some of them are likely to have learnt about religion, is the circumstance, that the persons professing to make it an earnest concern are actually regarded as fit objects of derision by multitudes, not of the vulgar order only, but including many of the wealthy, the genteel, the magisterial, and the dignified in point of rank.

Individuals of the most ignorant class may stroll into a place of worship, bearing their character so conspicuously in their appearance and manner as to draw the particular notice of the preacher, while addressing the congregation. It may be, that having taken their stare round the place, they go out, just, it may happen, when he is in the midst of a marked, prominent, and even picturesque illustration, perhaps from some of the striking facts or characters of the Scripture history, which had not made the slightest ingress on their thoughts or imagination. Or they are pleased to stay through the service; during which his eye is frequently led to where several of them may be seated together. Without an appearance of addressing them personally, he shall be excited to direct a special effort toward what he surmises to be the state of their minds. He may in this effort acquire an additional force, emphasis, and pointedness of delivery; but especially his utmost mental force shall be brought into action to strike upon their faculties with vivid, rousing ideas, plainly and briefly expressed. And he fancies, perhaps, that he has at least arrested their attention; that what is going from his mind is in some manner or other taking a place in theirs; when some inexpressibly trivial occurring circumstance shows him, that the hold he has on them is not of the strength of a spider's web.

Those thoughts, those intellects, those souls, are instantly and wholly gone--from a representation of one of the awful visitations of divine judgment in the ancient world--a description of sublime angelic agency, as in some recorded fact in the Bible--an illustration of the discourse, miracles, or expiatory sorrows of the Redeemer of the world--a strong appeal to conscience on past sin--a statement, perhaps in the form of example, of an important duty in given circumstances--a cogent enforcement of some specific point as of most essential moment in respect to eternal safety;--from the attempted grasp, or supposed seizure, of any such subject, these rational spirits started away, with infinite facility, to the movements occasioned by the falling of a hat from a peg.

By the time that any semblance of attention returns, the preacher's address may have taken the form of pointed interrogation, with very defined supposed facts, or even real ones, to give the question and its principle as it were a tangible substance. Well; just at the moment when his questions converge to a point, which was to have been a dart of conviction striking the understanding, and compelling the common sense and conscience of the auditors to answer for themselves,--at that moment, he perceives two or three of the persons he had particularly in view begin an active whispering, prolonged with the accompaniment of the appropriate vulgar smiles. They may possibly relapse at length, through sheer dulness, into tolerable decorum; and the instructor, not quite losing sight of them, tries yet again, to impel some serious ideas through the obtuseness of their mental being. But he can clearly perceive, after the animal spirits have thus been a little quieted by the necessity of sitting still awhile, the signs of a stupid vacancy, which is hardly sensible that anything is actually saying, and probably makes, in the case of some of the individuals, what is mentally but a slight transition to yawning and sleep.

Utter ignorance is a most effectual fortification to a bad state of the mind. Prejudice may perhaps, be removed; unbelief may be reasoned with; even demoniacs have been compelled to bear witness to the truth; but the stupidity of confirmed ignorance not only defeats the ultimate efficacy of the means for making men wiser and better, but stands in preliminary defiance to the very act of their application.

[...]

The most melancholy of the exemplifications of the effect of ignorance, as constituting an incapacity for receiving religious instruction, have been presented to those who have visited persons thus devoid of knowledge in sickness and the approach to death. Supposing them to manifest alarm and solicitude, it is deplorable to see how powerless their understandings are, for any distinct conception of what, or why, it is that they fear, or regret, or desire. The objects of their apprehension come round them as vague forms of darkness, instead of distinctly exhibited dangers and foes, which they might steadily contemplate, and think how to escape or encounter. And how little does the benevolent instructor find it possible for him to do, when he applies his mind to the painful task of reducing this gloomy confused vision to the plain defined truth of their unhappy situation, set in order before their eyes.

He deems it necessary to speak of the most elementary principles--the perfect holiness and justice of God--the corresponding holiness and the all-comprehending extent of his law, appointed to his creatures--the absolute duty of conformity to it in every act, word, and thought- the necessary condemnation consequent on failure- the dreadful evil, therefore, of sin, both in its principle and consequences. God-perfect holiness- justice- law- universal conformity- sin- condemnation!

Alas! the hapless auditor has no such sense of the force of terms, and no such analogical ideas, as to furnish the medium for conveying these representations to his understanding. He never had, at any time; and now there may be in his mind all the additional confusion, and incapacity of fixed attention, arising from pain, debility, and sleeplessness. All this therefore passes before him with a tenebrious glimmer; like lightning faintly penetrating to a man behind a thick black curtain.

[...]

As for a duty absolute in the nature of things, or as owing to themselves, in respect to their own nature, or as imposed by the Almighty--that their minds should be in a certain prescribed state--there does really require a perfectly new manner of the action of intellect to enable them to apprehend its existence. And this habitual insensibility to any jurisdiction over their internal state, now meets, in its consequences, the supposed instructor. In consideration of the vast importance of this part of a rational creature's accountableness, and partly, too, from a desire to avoid the invidiousness of appearing as a judicial censor of the sick man's practical conduct, he insists in an especial manner on this subject of the state within, endeavoring to expose that dark world by the light of religion to the sick man's conscience. But to give in an hour the understanding which it requires the discipline of many years to render competent! How vain the attempt!

The man's sense of guilt fixes almost exclusively on something that has been improper in his practical courses. He professes to acknowledge the evil of this; and perhaps with a certain stress of expression; intended, by an apparent respondence to the serious emphasis which the monitor is laying on another part of the accountableness and guilt, to take him off from thus endeavoring, as it appears to the ignorant sufferer, to make him more of a sinner than there is any reason, so little can he conceive that it should much signify what his thoughts, tempers, affections, motives, and so forth, may have been. By continuing to press the subject, the instructor may find himself in danger of being regarded as having taken upon him the unkind office of inquisitor and accuser in his own name, and of his own will and authority.

When inculcating the necessity of repentance, he will perceive the indistinctness of apprehension of the difference between the horror of sin merely from dread of impending consequences, and an antipathy to its essential nature. And even if this distinction, which admits of easy forms of exemplification, should thus be rendered in a degree intelligible, the man cannot make the application. The instructor observes, as one of the most striking results of a want of disciplined mental exercise, an utter inability for self-inspection. There is before his eyes, looking at him, but a stranger to himself, a man on whose mind no other mind, except One, can shed a light of self-manifestation, to save him from the most fatal mistakes.

If the monitor would turn, (rather from an impulse to relieve the gloom of the scene, than from anything he sees of a hopeful approach toward a right apprehension of the austerer truths of religion,) if he would turn his efforts, to the effect of directing on this dark spirit the benign rays of the Christian redemption, what is he to do for terms,--yes, for very terms? Mediator, sacrifice, atonement, satisfaction, faith; even the expression, believing in Christ; merit of the death of Christ, acquittal, acceptance, justification;--he knows, or soon will find, that he is talking the language of an occult science. And he is forced down to such expedients of grovelling paraphrase, and humiliating analogy, that he becomes conscious that his method of endeavoring to make a divine subject comprehensible, is to divest it of its dignity, and reduce it, in order that it may not confound, to the rank of things which have not majesty enough to impress with awe. And after this has been done, to the utmost of his ability, and to the unavoidable weariness of his suffering auditor, he is distressed to think of the proportion between the insignificance of any ideas which this man's mind now possesses of the economy of redemption, and the magnitude of the interest in which he stands dependent on it.

A symptom or assurance which should impart to the sick man a confidence of his recovery, would appear to him a far greater good than all he can comprehend as offered to him from the Physician of the soul. Some crude sentiment, as that he "hopes Jesus Christ will stand his friend;" that it was very good of the Saviour to think of us; that he wishes he knew what to do to get his help; that Jesus Christ has done him good in other things, and he hopes he will now again at the last; such expressions will afford little to alleviate the gloomy feelings, with which the serious visitor descends from the chamber in which, perhaps, he may hear, a few days after, that the man he conversed with lies a dead body.

But such benevolent visitors have to tell of still more melancholy exemplifications of the effects of ignorance in the close of life. They have seen the neglect of early cultivation, and the subsequent estrangement from all knowledge and thinking, except about business and folly, result in such a stupefaction of mind, that irreligious and immoral persons, expecting no more than a few days of life, and not in a state of physical lethargy, were absolutely incapable of being alarmed at the near approach of death. They might not deny, nor in the infidel sense disbelieve, what was said to them of the awfulness of that event and its consequences; but they had actually never thought enough of death to have any solemn associations with the idea. And their faculties were become so rigidly shrunk up, that they could not now admit them; no, not while the portentous spectre was unveiling his visage to them, in near and still nearer approach; not when the element of another world was beginning to penetrate through the rents of their mortal tabernacle. It appeared that literally their thoughts could not go out from what they had been through life immersed in, to contemplate, with any realizing feeling, a grand change of being, expected so soon to come on them. They could not go to the fearful brink to look off. It was a stupor of the soul not to be awaked but by the actual plunge into the realities of eternity.

In such a case the instinctive repugnance to death might be visible and acknowledged. But the feeling was, If it must be so, there is no help for it; and as to what may come after, we must take our chance. In this temper and manner, we recollect a sick man, of this untaught class, answering the inquiry how he felt himself, "Getting worse; I suppose I shall make a die of it." And some pious neighbors, earnestly exhorting him to solemn concern and preparation, could not make him understand, we repeat with emphasis, understand why there was occasion for any extraordinary disturbance of mind. Yet this man was not inferior to those around him in sense for the common business of life.

After a tedious length of suffering, and when death is plainly inevitable, it is not very uncommon for persons under this infatuation to express a wish for its arrival, simply as a deliverance from what they are enduring, without disturbing themselves with a thought of what may follow. "I know it will please God soon to release me," was the expression to his religious medical attendant, of such an ignorant and insensible mortal, within an hour of his death, which was evidently and directly brought on by his vices. And he uttered it without a word, or the smallest indicated emotion, of penitence or solicitude; though he had passed his life in a neighborhood abounding with the public means of religious instruction and warning.

When earnest, persisting, and seriously menacing admonitions, of pious visitors or friends, almost literally compel such unhappy persons to some precise recognition of the subject, their answers will often be faithfully representative, and a consistent completion, of their course through mental darkness, from childhood to the mortal hour. We recollect the instance of a wicked old man, who, within that very hour, replied to the urgent admonitions by which a religious neighbor felt it a painful duty to make a last effort to alarm him, "What! do you believe that God can think of damning me because I may have been as bad as other folk? I am sure he will do no such thing: he is far too good for that."

We cannot close this detailed illustration of so gloomy a subject, without again adverting to a phenomenon as admirable as, unhappily, it is rare; and for which the observers who cannot endure mystery in religion, or religion itself, may go, if they choose, round the whole circle of their philosophy, and begin again, to find any adequate cause, other than the most immediate agency of the Almighty Spirit. Here and there an instance occurs, to the delight of the Christian philanthropist, of a person brought up in utter ignorance and barbarian rudeness, and so continuing till late in life; and then at last, after such a length of time and habit has completed its petrifying effect, suddenly seized upon by a mysterious power, and taken, with an alarming and irresistible force, out of the dark hold in which the spirit has lain imprisoned and torpid, into the sphere of thought and feeling.

[...]

It is not in the very extreme strength of their import that we employ such terms of description; the malice of irreligion may easily parody them into poetical excess; but we have known instances in which the change, the intellectual change, has been so conspicuous, within a brief space of time, that even an infidel observer must have forfeited all claim to be esteemed a man of sense, if he would not acknowledge,--This that you call divine grace, whatever it may really be, is the strangest awakener of faculties after all. And to a devout man, it is a spectacle of most enchanting beauty, thus to see the immortal plant, which has been under a malignant blast while sixty or seventy years have passed over it, coming out at length in the bloom of life.

We cannot hesitate to draw the inference, that if religion is so auspicious to the intellectual faculties, the cultivation and exercise of those faculties must be of great advantage to religion.

These observations on ignorance, considered as an incapacitation for receiving religious instruction, are pointed chiefly at that portion of the people, unhappily the largest, who are little disposed to attend to that kind of instruction. But we should notice its prejudicial effect on those of them to whom religion has become a matter of serious and inquisitive concern. The preceding assertions of the efficacy of a strong religious interest to excite and enlarge the intellectual faculty will not be contradicted by observing, nevertheless, that in a dark and crude state of that facility those well-disposed persons, especially if of a warm temperament withal, are unfortunately liable to receive delusive impressions and absurd notions, blended with religious doctrine and sentiment. It would be no less than plain miracle or inspiration, a more entire and specific superseding of ordinary laws than that which we have just been denominating "an immediate agency of the Almighty Spirit," if a mind left uncultivated all up through the earlier age, and perhaps far on in life, should not come to its new employment on a most important subject with a sadly defective capacity for judgment and discrimination. [...]

Even in such an extremely rare instance as that above described, an example of the superlative degree of the animating and invigorating influence of religion on the uncultivated faculties, there would be visible some of the unfortunate consequences of the inveterate rudeness; a tendency, perhaps, to magnify some one thing beyond its proportionate importance to adopt hasty conclusions; to entertain some questionable or erroneous principle because it appears to solve a difficulty, or perhaps falls in with an old prepossession; to make too much account of variable and transitory feelings; or to carry zeal beyond the limits of discretion. In examples of a lower order of the correction or reversal of the effects of ignorance by the influence of religion, the remains will be still more palpable. So that, while it is an unquestionable and gratifying fact, that among the uneducated subjects of genuine religion many are remarkably improved in the power and exercise of their reason; and while we may assume that some share of this improvement reaches to all who are really under this most beneficent influence in the creation, it still is to be acknowledged of too many, who are in a measure, we may candidly believe, under the genuine efficacy of religion, that they have attained, through its influence, but so inferior a proportion of the improvement of intellect, that they can be well pleased with the great deal of absurdity of religious notions and language.

But while we confess and regret that it is so, we should not overlook the causes and excuses that may be found for it, in unfortunate super-addition to their lack of education; partly in the natural turn of the mind, partly in extraneous circumstances. Many whose attention is in honest earnestness drawn to religion, are endowed by nature with so scanty an allotment of the thinking power, strictly so denominated, that it would have required high cultivation to raise them to the level of moderate understanding. There are some who appear to have constitutionally an invincible tendency to an uncouth, fantastic mode of forming their notions. It is in the nature of others, that whatever cultivation they might have received, it would still have been by their passions, rather than, in any due proportion, by their reason, that an important concern would have taken and retained hold of them. It may have happened to not a few, that circumstances unfavorable to the understanding were connected with the causes or occasions of their first effectual religious impressions.

[...]

This may have tended to give an obliquity to the disciple's understanding, or to arrest and dwarf its growth; to fix it in prejudices instead of training it to judgments; or to dispense with its exercise by merging it in a kind of quietism; so that the proper tendency of religion to excite intellectual activity was partly overruled and frustrated. It is most unfortunate that thus there may be, from things casually or constitutionally associated with a man's piety, an influence operating to disable his understanding; as if there had been mixed with the incense of a devout service in the temple, a soporific ingredient which had the effect of closing the worshipper's eyes in slumber.

Now suppose all these worthy persons, with so many things of a special kind against them, to be also under the one great calamity of a neglected education, and is it any wonder that they can admit religious truths in shapes very strange and faintly enlightened; that they have an uncertain and capricious test of what is genuine, and not much vigilance to challenge plausible semblances; that they should be caught by some fanciful exhibition of a truth which would be of too intellectual a substance as presented in its pure simplicity; and should be ready to receive with approbation not a little of what is a heavy disgrace to the name of religious doctrine and ministration?

Where is the wonder that crudeness, incoherence, and inconsistency of notions, should not disappoint and offend minds that have not, ten times since they came into the world, been compelled to form two ideas with precision, and then compare them discriminately or combine them strictly, on any subject beyond the narrow scope of their ordinary pursuits? Where is the wonder, if many such persons take noise and fustian for a glowing zeal and a lofty elevation; if they mistake a wheedling cant for affectionate solicitude; if they defer to pompous egotism and dogmatical assertion, when it is so convenient a foundation for all their other faith to believe their teacher is an oracle?

No marvel if they are delighted with whimsical conceits as strokes of discovery and surprise, and yet at the same time are pleased with common-place, and endless repetition, as an exemption from mental effort; and if they are gratified by vulgarity of diction and illustration, as bringing religion to the level where they are at home? Nay, if an artful pretender, or half-lunatic visionary, or some poor set of dupes of their own inflated self-importance, should give out that they are come into the world for the manifestation, at last, of true Christianity, which the divine revelation has failed, till their advent, to explain to any of the numberless devout and sagacious examiners of it,--what is there in the minds of the most ignorant class of persons desirous to secure the benefits of religion, that can be securely relied on to certify them, that they shall not forego the greatest blessing ever offered to them by setting at naught these pretensions?

It is grievous to think there should be an active extensive currency of a language conveying crudities, extravagances, arrogant dictates of ignorance, pompous nothings, vulgarities, catches of idle fantasy, and impertinences of the speaker's vanity, as religious instruction to assemblages of ignorant people. But then for the means of depreciating that currency, so as to drive it at last out of circulation? The thing to be wished is, that it were possible to put some strong coercion on the minds (we deprecate all other restraint) of the teachers; a compulsion to feel the necessity of information, sound sense, disciplined thinking, the correct use of words, and an honest, careful purpose to make the people wiser. There are signs of amendment, certainly; but while the passion of human beings for notoriety lasts, (which will be yet some time,) there will not fail to be men, in any number required, ready to exhibit in religion, in any manner in which the people are willing to be pleased with them. Let us, then, try the inverted order, and endeavor to secure that those who assemble to be taught, shall already have learnt so much, by other means, that no professed teacher shall feel at liberty to treat them as an unknowing herd. But by what other means, except the discipline of the best education possible to be given to them, and the subsequent voluntary self-improvement to which it may be hoped that such an education would often lead?

We cannot dismiss this topic, of the unhappy effect of extreme ignorance on persons religiously disposed, in rendering them both liable and inclined to receive their ideas of the highest subject in a disorderly, perverted, and debased form, mixed largely with other men's folly and their own, without noticing with pleasure an additional testimony to the connection between genuine religion and intelligence.

It arises from the fact, apparent to any discriminating observer, that as a general rule the most truly pious of the illiterate disciples of religion, those who have the most of its devotional feeling and its humility, do certainly manifest more of the operation of judgment in their religion than is evinced by those of less solemn and devout sentiment. The former will unquestionably be found, when on the same level as to the measure of natural faculty and the want of previous cultivation, to show more discernment, to be less captivated by noise and extravagance, and more intent on obtaining a clear comprehension of that faith, which they feel it is but a reasonable obligation that they should endeavor to understand, if they are to repose on it their most important hopes.-- J. Foster

I do so enjoy presenting John-boys rants. His style is a bit olde and over the top, but it's instructive none the less. I might also suggest the second quote from my JE for May-1st-2004 for a short[haha] cataloging of the type of mania he describes.

News is it?:
John Cole fails it. Legions of websites are dedicated to the idea that Microsoft is evil and must be stopped. Microsoft is still a pretty good stock to hold. PJ will succeed or fail on its own, and Dennis and others will play no part in that. And finally, I told you, I am on vacation. I have plenty of time to go snorkeling through the fever swamps. At any rate, here I am, trying to talk to you and offering you my experiences, and all you fierce critics can offer are second rate catcalls He says that like it's a bad thing. Moreover, the attempt to liken their pathetic venture to that of Microsoft is quite a stretch.

He thinks it's not kosher/ Fundamentally he can't take it/ You know he really hates it

Mozambique's parliament has rejected an opposition attempt to get the image of a gun removed from the national flag. Ruling Frelimo Party MPs said the time was not right to dump the machine-gun - a symbol of the war of independence. "The national flag and emblem of the republic are historic references that we don't want to abdicate," Frelimo MP Hama Thay told Reuters news agency.

While in the Forgottenland new MPs attempt to play politics. The guns will, no doubt, be busy again all too soon.

Others, however, have chosen a different path. Rebels in the Indonesian province of Aceh have handed in all the weapons they agreed to under a peace deal. A foreign monitor said rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) had given up the final 35 weapons on Monday, meaning 840 arms had now been surrendered. In return, the last of the Indonesian troops and police reinforcements in the province are set to be withdrawn. The moves are part of a peace deal between rebels and the government to end 26 years of bitter conflict.

Wall in the USA! But the question remains--"to hold them in or keep them out"? One for the Kunukistani border is also being tossed about. President George W Bush has said that "border security must adapt to the nation's changing needs".

Not afraid to be called a moon-bat, George Monbiot takes of his gloves and slaps a few faces. Well last week the Department for Transport published the results of the study it had commissioned into the efficacy of its speed cameras. [...] But this is not, or not really, an article about speed, or cameras, or even cars. It is about the rise of the antisocial bastards who believe they should be allowed to do what they want, whenever they want, regardless of the consequences. I believe that while there are many reasons for the growth of individualism in the UK, the extreme libertarianism now beginning to take hold here begins on the road. When you drive, society becomes an obstacle. Pedestrians, bicycles, traffic calming, speed limits, the law: all become a nuisance to be wished away. The more you drive, the more bloody-minded and individualistic you become. The car is slowly turning us, like the Americans and the Australians, into a nation that recognises only the freedom to act, and not the freedom from the consequences of other people's actions. We drive on the left in Britain, but we are being driven to the right.

SD-DPB Softball games continue with prize spinner Sean McCormack leading off a pair of innings.
15th
QUESTION: Later today, the House is expected to pass a resolution saying that the Palestinian Authority risks losing U.S. support if Hezbollah -- Hamas is -- takes part in the elections and joins the cabinet. Projections are that Hamas is probably going to get more than 30 seats, maybe more now that there's a split in Fatah. How would the U.S. deal with Hamas in a Palestinian Authority government?

MCCORMACK: Well, let's, you know, first of all, let's let the elections take place. They're scheduled to take place at the end of January. This is a question that has come up frequently in this room concerning Hamas and the Palestinian political process. And our answer is the same. There is a fundamental contradiction when you have a terrorist group that wants to keep an option open on terror and the use of violence, killing innocent civilians, and at the same time, wants to participate in the political process. That's a fundamental contradiction that the Palestinian people need to resolve. It's a contradiction that needs to be resolved in any democratic society.

President Abbas has talked about the fact that in Palestinian society, there has to be one gun, one authority, one law. And that it is the Palestinian Authority that needs -- that has to be in charge of providing a safe, secure environment for the Palestinian people. Tragically, we saw the results of that not happening when a couple of months ago, you had some Hamas members who mishandled some explosives and as a result, killed innocent Palestinians.

So these are questions that are soon going to be before the Palestinian people. They, themselves, need to resolve this fundamental contradiction. How the Palestinian political class, how the Palestinian political environment evolves are questions for the Palestinian people to answer. But they do need to resolve that fundamental contradiction.

QUESTION: But the U.S. still deals with Lebanon even though Hezbollah is in the cabinet.

MCCORMACK: We have no contact with the cabinet ministry from the Hezbollah Party.

QUESTION: But the government --

QUESTION: No, but you have contact with the government.

MCCORMACK: We do work with the government.

QUESTION: So is the answer that you would work with the Palestinian Authority if it has Hamas members?

MCCORMACK: There's an "if" in that sentence and the elections haven't yet taken place. Let's see what happens with the Palestinian elections and what the Palestinian people do to resolve that fundamental conflict.
An 'if'? More of a 'whiff' in to the catcher's mit. One and oh work that thang!

QUESTION: About Colombia. Do you have today any statement, relate to the proposal that (inaudible) has gone to the FARC about withdrawing the troops in order to get the humanitarian agreement?

MCCORMACK: These are questions for the Colombian Government to answer. I believe that we also posted an answer on this last night for you.

QUESTION: Yeah, but it's for TV.

MCCORMACK: Well, I think we posted an answer for you on this last night. The fundamental part of that answer is that this is an issue for the Colombian people to resolve.
Foul! One and one. The colour commentator points out the pre-game-fixing revealed in that seemingly simple reply. Play Ball

QUESTION: Do you have any comment in the run-up to the elections in Bolivia at the end of this week? Any expectations or concerns?

MCCORMACK: Well, we hope that the elections take place in an atmosphere free from violence in which Bolivian people can express their will through the ballot box. They, the Bolivian people, will decide who is best equipped to lead them. They have gone through some difficult, difficult times as of late. So as to who is the best person to lead them past this turbulent period in Bolivian political history, it's going to be up to the Bolivian people to decide that.

QUESTION: Do you have any concerns about reports by this Department, as well, about Chavez involvement in backing one of the candidates?

MCCORMACK: Well, we have -- we have talked previously about our concerns regarding President Chavez, under his direction, the Venezuelan Government's activities in the hemisphere. We believe that it is important to provide transparent positive support to emerging democracies, struggling democracies. You saw that evident when OAS Secretary General Insulza made a trip to Nicaragua that was followed up by a trip by Deputy Secretary of State Zoellick. We think that that has helped the political situation in Nicaragua. So that's the type of intervention that the Secretary talked about way back at the OAS summit in Florida. So that's the kind of positive involvement in helping democracies in the hemisphere that we and others in the hemisphere are looking for.

We have raised questions, frankly, about President Chavez's motives and activities in the hemisphere and we would call upon him and the Venezuelan Government to join in a positive agenda for the hemisphere in reinforcing democracy, reinforcing good governance, reinforcing the opening of markets so to expand trade, so that those who have been left behind in some of these economies are able to benefit from free trade. And we've talked about the nexus between the promotion of free trade and good governance. So those are all important elements of our positive agenda for the hemisphere and we would call upon others to join in that positive agenda.
Why would it be violent? Did you guys have something in mind--planned? Strike two, Two and one.

QUESTION: Will there be any American observers that you know of?

MCCORMACK: Let me check. I'll check. I don't know.
And that's an out! And he's Out!

Here he is again on the 16th
QUESTION: [...] Do you have anything on this story of the NSA apparently has been given some -- was given some special powers after 9/11 to track people's phone calls and generally spy on people, I suppose would be the way of expressing it? Do you have any comment on that all because it's a fairly unpopular move in Europe and in other places and it's raised some questions on people's rights, privacy rights in particular.

MCCORMACK: Right. Scott McClellan over at the White House talked about this a little bit and Secretary Rice did this morning on some of the morning shows. I don't have anything more to offer really than they did on this matter. The story involves intelligence operations or alleged intelligence operations. That is, as you know, is not something that I can comment on from this podium. We wouldn't want to, inasmuch as intelligence operations are sensitive operations and by speaking about them in public you might undermine their effectiveness. We can't do that in public.

The Secretary, in her remarks on this subject, underlined the fact that the President took an Oath of Office to uphold, defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. That's what he does. We, in our actions, abide by the Constitution, our laws, and people who work for the U.S. Government aren't asked to break the laws. The President also has responsibility to defend the American people and that has been one of his primary focuses since 9/11, since the threat came home to American shores of terrorists plotting overseas to kill innocent American civilians.

QUESTION: Has the State Department made any requests to use these special powers abroad?

MCCORMACK: Again, I don't have any further comment on the story.
Ohh what a disappointing start. The 911 ball fed right away by the plucky BlackSox pitcher. And he strikes on it too. One and One.

QUESTION: Sean, yesterday as well as today, you're talking about Iran going in the wrong direction. And at the same time that you're speaking, a day ago, the head of Hamas has been officially welcomed in Tehran. Do you find that troubling? And you keep mentioning the fact that there are the Palestinian elections coming up January 25th. Do you think that is meddling by both Hamas and the Iranians in that respect?

MCCORMACK: While we have previously expressed our dismay and concern that Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism, we don't think anybody should find it surprising that the providers of assistance to Hezbollah would also seek to welcome a terrorist group like Hamas to their capital. The world has spoken out against support for terrorism and this is something that the Iranian regime needs to change, stop its support for terror.
Two and two with a Warning to the BlackSox player.

QUESTION: According to reports, Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew Bryza, last Friday during his visit to Brussels, said to the European Commission's enlargement community one day after the financial support was postponed upon the Cyprus government objection, "Do not make Cyprus an issue." I am wondering, what does he mean since the Republic of Cyprus is an issue of Turkish invasion and occupation; correct?

MCCORMACK: I haven't talked to Matt about any remarks he might have made, but we'll check on that for you.

QUESTION: And one follow-up. And also, Mr. Bryza said that EU must produce or come up with solution to the Cyprus problem "smart and attractive" for Turkey to open the ports. One of the reasonable formulas, he explained, is the opening of the ports simultaneously by both parties, serving however the Turkish invasion and occupation force in the island. May we have his formula in writing in order to evaluate it or at least a copy of his very interesting remarks in Europe?

MCCORMACK: Sure, we'll check into it for you.
Be sure to check OUT! the rest of both of those for more funnies.

OYAITJ:
93462 : Rice, rice, roll, Ohio, Rummy brand copy-machine plus assorted items.

TYAITJ:
55827 : Riverbend, Kashmir, Murdoch, and more.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Dick Cheney speaking to the troops in Iraq. Overlayed speech bubble has him singing; "Go to the clinical/ Examine your physical/ Frightening and enlightening at the same time/ Get the goods and price them/ And doin' the heist again/ You thinkin we would be nice again?/ We on a mission/ We don't need none of your advice again/ Hold me down baby/ Pitter-patter/ You chitter-chatter too much/ I'm a splitter-splatter/ Your blidder-bladder/ Make you spill out your guts"

Three quotes, news, texttoon and links to some past JEs. Click Now!

Quote(1):
The greater part of human impulses may be divided into two classes, those which are possessive and those which are constructive or creative.

Social institutions are the garments or embodiments of impulses, and may be classified roughly according to the impulses which they embody. Property is the direct expression of possessiveness; science and art are among the most direct expressions of creativeness. Possessiveness is either defensive or aggressive; it seeks either to retain against a robber, or to acquire from a present holder. In either case an attitude of hostility toward others is of its essence. It would be a mistake to suppose that defensive possessiveness is always justifiable, while the aggressive kind is always blameworthy; where there is great injustice in the status quo, the exact opposite may be the case, and ordinarily neither is justifiable.

State interference with the actions of individuals is necessitated by possessiveness. Some goods can be acquired or retained by force, while others cannot. A wife can be acquired by force, as the Romans acquired the Sabine women; but a wife's affection cannot be acquired in this way. There is no record that the Romans desired the affection of the Sabine women; and those in whom possessive impulses are strong tend to care chiefly for the goods that force can secure. All material goods belong to this class. Liberty in regard to such goods, if it were unrestricted, would make the strong rich and the weak poor. In a capitalistic society, owing to the partial restraints imposed by law, it makes cunning men rich and honest men poor, because the force of the state is put at men's disposal, not according to any just or rational principle, but according to a set of traditional maxims of which the explanation is purely historical.

In all that concerns possession and the use of force, unrestrained liberty involves anarchy and injustice. Freedom to kill, freedom to rob, freedom to defraud, no longer belong to individuals, though they still belong to great states, and are exercised by them in the name of patriotism. Neither individuals nor states ought to be free to exert force on their own initiative, except in such sudden emergencies as will subsequently be admitted in justification by a court of law. The reason for this is that the exertion of force by one individual against another is always an evil on both sides, and can only be tolerated when it is compensated by some overwhelming resultant good. In order to minimize the amount of force actually exerted in the world, it is necessary that there should be a public authority, a repository of practically irresistible force, whose function should be primarily to repress the private use of force. A use of force is private when it is exerted by one of the interested parties, or by his friends or accomplices, not by a public neutral authority according to some rule which is intended to be in the public interest.

The régime of private property under which we live does much too little to restrain the private use of force. When a man owns a piece of land, for example, he may use force against trespassers, though they must not use force against him. It is clear that some restriction of the liberty of trespass is necessary for the cultivation of the land. But if such powers are to be given to an individual, the state ought to satisfy itself that he occupies no more land than he is warranted in occupying in the public interest, and that the share of the produce of the land that comes to him is no more than a just reward for his labors. Probably the only way in which such ends can be achieved is by state ownership of land. The possessors of land and capital are able at present, by economic pressure, to use force against those who have no possessions. This force is sanctioned by law, while force exercised by the poor against the rich is illegal. Such a state of things is unjust, and does not diminish the use of private force as much as it might be diminished.

The whole realm of the possessive impulses, and of the use of force to which they give rise, stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.

But the motive underlying the public control of men's possessive impulses should always be the increase of liberty, both by the prevention of private tyranny and by the liberation of creative impulses. If public control is not to do more harm than good, it must be so exercised as to leave the utmost freedom of private initiative in all those ways that do not involve the private use of force. In this respect all governments have always failed egregiously, and there is no evidence that they are improving.

The creative impulses, unlike those that are possessive, are directed to ends in which one man's gain is not another man's loss. The man who makes a scientific discovery or writes a poem is enriching others at the same time as himself. Any increase in knowledge or good-will is a gain to all who are affected by it, not only to the actual possessor. Those who feel the joy of life are a happiness to others as well as to themselves. Force cannot create such things, though it can destroy them; no principle of distributive justice applies to them, since the gain of each is the gain of all. For these reasons, the creative part of a man's activity ought to be as free as possible from all public control, in order that it may remain spontaneous and full of vigor. The only function of the state in regard to this part of the individual life should be to do everything possible toward providing outlets and opportunities.

In every life a part is governed by the community, and a part by private initiative. The part governed by private initiative is greatest in the most important individuals, such as men of genius and creative thinkers. This part ought only to be restricted when it is predatory; otherwise, everything ought to be done to make it as great and as vigorous as possible. The object of education ought not to be to make all men think alike, but to make each think in the way which is the fullest expression of his own personality. In the choice of a means of livelihood all young men and young women ought, as far as possible, to be able to choose what is attractive to them; if no money-making occupation is attractive, they ought to be free to do little work for little pay, and spend their leisure as they choose. Any kind of censure on freedom of thought or on the dissemination of knowledge is, of course, to be condemned utterly.

Huge organizations, both political and economic, are one of the distinguishing characteristics of the modern world. These organizations have immense power, and often use their power to discourage originality in thought and action. They ought, on the contrary, to give the freest scope that is possible without producing anarchy or violent conflict. They ought not to take cognizance of any part of a man's life except what is concerned with the legitimate objects of public control, namely, possessions and the use of force. And they ought, by devolution, to leave as large a share of control as possible in the hands of individuals and small groups. If this is not done, the men at the head of these vast organizations will infallibly become tyrannous through the habit of excessive power, and will in time interfere in ways that crush out individual initiative.

The problem which faces the modern world is the combination of individual initiative with the increase in the scope and size of organizations. Unless it is solved, individuals will grow less and less full of life and vigor, and more and more passively submissive to conditions imposed upon them. A society composed of such individuals cannot be progressive or add much to the world's stock of mental and spiritual possessions. Only personal liberty and the encouragement of initiative can secure these things. Those who resist authority when it encroaches upon the legitimate sphere of the individual are performing a service to society, however little society may value it. In regard to the past, this is universally acknowledged; but it is no less true in regard to the present and the future. --Bertrand Russell

Quote(2):
Did I miss something somewhere? Lucien Bouchard lost the referendum. Look up "loser" ans there's Lucien. And even though he lost, he says there is no way Quebec will ever negotiate with Canada. Instead, he's gonna keep having referendum after referendum until he finally gets his own way.

He's like a ten-year-old having a temper tantrum in the middle of Toys R' Us. And instead of hauling him out and putting him in the car, Chretien is starting to fill up the cart. Distinct culture, constitutional veto, Hot Wheels, Tonka, Nerf Gun, Dinky Toys, whatever it takes.

But, nope, nothing is good enough for Lucien. It's every toy in the shop or nothing. Hey, Jean, if you don't watch it, you're gonna spoil that youngster, and we're gonna have to live with it.

Lucien, you lost, you're a loser, and losers negotiate. Everyone wants Quebec to stay in Canada and sooner or later you're gonna have to take yes for an answer.

But if this bawling doesn't stop soon, next thing you know, instead of unity rallies, the rest of Canada is gonna be saying, "that's it, I'm taking off the belt," and then you'll really have something to cry about. The car gets pulled over and you'll be walking home with an arse the colour of the Maple Leaf. --R. Mercer c. 1995

Quote(3):
There may be something artificial in making a special category for the comic in words, since most of the varieties of the comic that we have examined so far were produced through the medium of language. We must make a distinction, however, between the comic EXPRESSED and the comic CREATED by language.

The former could, if necessary, be translated from one language into another, though at the cost of losing the greater portion of its significance when introduced into a fresh society different in manners, in literature, and above all in association of ideas. But it is generally impossible to translate the latter. It owes its entire being to the structure of the sentence or to the choice of the words. It does not set forth, by means of language, special cases of absentmindedness in man or in events. It lays stress on lapses of attention in language itself. In this case, it is language itself that becomes comic.

Comic sayings, however, are not a matter of spontaneous generation; if we laugh at them, we are equally entitled to laugh at their author. This latter condition, however, is not indispensable, since the saying or expression has a comic virtue of its own. This is proved by the fact that we find it very difficult, in the majority of these cases, to say whom we are laughing at, although at times we have a dim, vague feeling that there is some one in the background.

Moreover, the person implicated is not always the speaker. Here it seems as though we should draw an important distinction between the WITTY (SPIRITUEL) and the COMIC. A word is said to be comic when it makes us laugh at the person who utters it, and witty when it makes us laugh either at a third party or at ourselves. But in most cases we can hardly make up our minds whether the word is comic or witty. All that we can say is that it is laughable.

Before proceeding, it might be well to examine more closely what is meant by ESPRIT. A witty saying makes us at least smile; consequently, no investigation into laughter would be complete did it not get to the bottom of the nature of wit and throw light on the underlying idea. It is to be feared, however, that this extremely subtle essence is one that evaporates when exposed to the light.

Let us first make a distinction between the two meanings of the word wit ESPRIT, the broader one and the more restricted. In the broader meaning of the word, it would seem that what is called wit is a certain DRAMATIC way of thinking. Instead of treating his ideas as mere symbols, the wit sees them, he hears them and, above all, makes them converse with one another like persons. He puts them on the stage, and himself, to some extent, into the bargain. A witty nation is, of necessity, a nation enamoured of the theatre. In every wit there is something of a poet--just as in every good reader there is the making of an actor.

This comparison is made purposely, because a proportion might easily be established between the four terms. In order to read well we need only the intellectual side of the actor's art; but in order to act well one must be an actor in all one's soul and body. In just the same way, poetic creation calls for some degree of self-forgetfulness, whilst the wit does not usually err in this respect. We always get a glimpse of the latter behind what he says and does. He is not wholly engrossed in the business, because he only brings his intelligence into play. So any poet may reveal himself as a wit when he pleases. To do this there will be no need for him to acquire anything; it seems rather as though he would have to give up something. He would simply have to let his ideas hold converse with one another "for nothing, for the mere joy of the thing!" He would only have to unfasten the double bond which keeps his ideas in touch with his feelings and his soul in touch with life. In short, he would turn into a wit by simply resolving to be no longer a poet in feeling, but only in intelligence.

But if wit consists, for the most part, in seeing things SUB SPECIE THEATRI, it is evidently capable of being specially directed to one variety of dramatic art, namely, comedy. Here we have a more restricted meaning of the term, and, moreover, the only one that interests us from the point of view of the theory of laughter. What is here called WIT is a gift for dashing off comic scenes in a few strokes--dashing them off, however, so subtly, delicately and rapidly, that all is over as soon as we begin to notice them.

Who are the actors in these scenes? With whom has the wit to deal? First of all, with his interlocutors themselves, when his witticism is a direct retort to one of them. Often with an absent person whom he supposes to have spoken and to whom he is replying. Still oftener, with the whole world,--in the ordinary meaning of the term,--which he takes to task, twisting a current idea into a paradox, or making use of a hackneyed phrase, or parodying some quotation or proverb. If we compare these scenes in miniature with one another, we find they are almost always variations of a comic theme with which we are well acquainted, that of the "robber robbed." You take up a metaphor, a phrase, an argument, and turn it against the man who is, or might be, its author, so that he is made to say what he did not mean to say and lets himself be caught, to some extent, in the toils of language. But the theme of the "robber robbed" is not the only possible one. We have gone over many varieties of the comic, and there is not one of them that is incapable of being volatilised into a witticism.

Every witty remark, then, lends itself to an analysis, whose chemical formula, so to say, we are now in a position to state. It runs as follows: Take the remark, first enlarge it into a regular scene, then find out the category of the comic to which the scene evidently belongs: by this means you reduce the witty remark to its simplest elements and obtain a full explanation of it.

Let us apply this method to a classic example. "Your chest hurts me" (J'AI MAL A VOTRE POITRINE) wrote Mme. de Sevigne to her ailing daughter--clearly a witty saying. If our theory is correct, we need only lay stress upon the saying, enlarge and magnify it, and we shall see it expand into a comic scene. Now, we find this very scene, ready made, in the AMOUR MEDECIN of Moliere. The sham doctor, Clitandre, who has been summoned to attend Sganarelle's daughter, contents himself with feeling Sganarelle's own pulse, whereupon, relying on the sympathy there must be between father and daughter, he unhesitatingly concludes: "Your daughter is very ill!" Here we have the transition from the witty to the comical. To complete our analysis, then, all we have to do is to discover what there is comical in the idea of giving a diagnosis of the child after sounding the father or the mother. Well, we know that one essential form of comic fancy lies in picturing to ourselves a living person as a kind of jointed dancing-doll, and that frequently, with the object of inducing us to form this mental picture, we are shown two or more persons speaking and acting as though attached to one another by invisible strings. Is not this the idea here suggested when we are led to materialise, so to speak, the sympathy we postulate as existing between father and daughter?

We now see how it is that writers on wit have perforce confined themselves to commenting on the extraordinary complexity of the things denoted by the term without ever succeeding in defining it. There are many ways of being witty, almost as many as there are of being the reverse. How can we detect what they have in common with one another, unless we first determine the general relationship between the witty and the comic? Once, however, this relationship is cleared up, everything is plain sailing. We then find the same connection between the comic and the witty as exists between a regular scene and the fugitive suggestion of a possible one. Hence, however numerous the forms assumed by the comic, wit will possess an equal number of corresponding varieties. So that the comic, in all its forms, is what should be defined first, by discovering (a task which is already quite difficult enough) the clue that leads from one form to the other. By that very operation wit will have been analysed, and will then appear as nothing more than the comic in a highly volatile state. To follow the opposite plan, however, and attempt directly to evolve a formula for wit, would be courting certain failure. What should we think of a chemist who, having ever so many jars of a certain substance in his laboratory, would prefer getting that substance from the atmosphere, in which merely infinitesimal traces of its vapour are to be found?

But this comparison between the witty and the comic is also indicative of the line we must take in studying the comic in words. On the one hand, indeed, we find there is no essential difference between a word that is comic and one that is witty; on the other hand, the latter, although connected with a figure of speech, invariably calls up the image, dim or distinct, of a comic scene. This amounts to saying that the comic in speech should correspond, point by point, with the comic in actions and in situations, and is nothing more, if one may so express oneself, than their projection on to the plane of words. So let us return to the comic in actions and in situations, consider the chief methods by which it is obtained, and apply them to the choice of words and the building up of sentences. We shall thus have every possible form of the comic in words as well as every variety of wit.

1. Inadvertently to say or do what we have no intention of saying or doing, as a result of inelasticity or momentum, is, as we are aware, one of the main sources of the comic. Thus, absentmindedness is essentially laughable, and so we laugh at anything rigid, ready- made, mechanical in gesture, attitude and even facial expression. Do we find this kind of rigidity in language also? No doubt we do, since language contains ready-made formulas and stereotyped phrases. The man who always expressed himself in such terms would invariably be comic. But if an isolated phrase is to be comic in itself, when once separated from the person who utters it, it must be something more than ready-made, it must bear within itself some sign which tells us, beyond the possibility of doubt, that it was uttered automatically. This can only happen when the phrase embodies some evident absurdity, either a palpable error or a contradiction in terms. Hence the following general rule: A COMIC MEANING IS INVARIABLY OBTAINED WHEN AN ABSURD IDEA IS FITTED INTO A WELL- ESTABLISHED PHRASE-FORM.

"Ce sabre est le plus beau jour de ma vie," said M. Prudhomme. Translate the phrase into English or German and it becomes purely absurd, though it is comic enough in French. The reason is that "le plus beau jour de ma vie" is one of those ready-made phrase-endings to which a Frenchman's ear is accustomed. To make it comic, then, we need only clearly indicate the automatism of the person who utters it. This is what we get when we introduce an absurdity into the phrase. Here the absurdity is by no means the source of the comic, it is only a very simple and effective means of making it obvious.

We have quoted only one saying of M. Prudhomme, but the majority of those attributed to him belong to the same class. M. Prudhomme is a man of ready-made phrases. And as there are ready-made phrases in all languages, M. Prudhomme is always capable of being transposed, though seldom of being translated. At times the commonplace phrase, under cover of which the absurdity slips in, is not so readily noticeable. "I don't like working between meals," said a lazy lout. There would be nothing amusing in the saying did there not exist that salutary precept in the realm of hygiene: "One should not eat between meals."

Sometimes, too, the effect is a complicated one. Instead of one commonplace phrase-form, there are two or three which are dovetailed into each other. Take, for instance, the remark of one of the characters in a play by Labiche, "Only God has the right to kill His fellow-creature." It would seem that advantage is here taken of two separate familiar sayings; "It is God who disposes of the lives of men," and, "It is criminal for a man to kill his fellow-creature." But the two sayings are combined so as to deceive the ear and leave the impression of being one of those hackneyed sentences that are accepted as a matter of course. Hence our attention nods, until we are suddenly aroused by the absurdity of the meaning. These examples suffice to show how one of the most important types of the comic can be projected--in a simplified form--on the plane of speech. We will now proceed to a form which is not so general.

2. "We laugh if our attention is diverted to the physical in a person when it is the moral that is in question," is a law we laid down in the first part of this work. Let us apply it to language. Most words might be said to have a PHYSICAL and a MORAL meaning, according as they are interpreted literally or figuratively. Every word, indeed, begins by denoting a concrete object or a material action; but by degrees the meaning of the word is refined into an abstract relation or a pure idea. If, then, the above law holds good here, it should be stated as follows: "A comic effect is obtained whenever we pretend to take literally an expression which was used figuratively"; or, "Once our attention is fixed on the material aspect of a metaphor, the idea expressed becomes comic."

In the phrase, "Tous les arts sont freres" (all the arts are brothers), the word "frere" (brother) is used metaphorically to indicate a more or less striking resemblance. The word is so often used in this way, that when we hear it we do not think of the concrete, the material connection implied in every relationship. We should notice it more if we were told that "Tous les arts sont cousins," for the word "cousin" is not so often employed in a figurative sense; that is why the word here already assumes a slight tinge of the comic. But let us go further still, and suppose that our attention is attracted to the material side of the metaphor by the choice of a relationship which is incompatible with the gender of the two words composing the metaphorical expression: we get a laughable result. Such is the well-known saying, also attributed to M. Prudhomme, "Tous les arts (masculine) sont soeurs (feminine)." "He is always running after a joke," was said in Boufflers' presence regarding a very conceited fellow. Had Boufflers replied, "He won't catch it," that would have been the beginning of a witty saying, though nothing more than the beginning, for the word "catch" is interpreted figuratively almost as often as the word "run"; nor does it compel us more strongly than the latter to materialise the image of two runners, the one at the heels of the other. In order that the rejoinder may appear to be a thoroughly witty one, we must borrow from the language of sport an expression so vivid and concrete that we cannot refrain from witnessing the race in good earnest. This is what Boufflers does when he retorts, "I'll back the joke!"

We said that wit often consists in extending the idea of one's interlocutor to the point of making him express the opposite of what he thinks and getting him, so to say, entrapt by his own words. We must now add that this trap is almost always some metaphor or comparison the concrete aspect of which is turned against him. You may remember the dialogue between a mother and her son in the Faux Bonshommes: "My dear boy, gambling on 'Change is very risky. You win one day and lose the next."--"Well, then, I will gamble only every other day." In the same play too we find the following edifying conversation between two company-promoters: "Is this a very honourable thing we are doing? These unfortunate shareholders, you see, we are taking the money out of their very pockets...."--"Well, out of what do you expect us to take it?"

An amusing result is likewise obtainable whenever a symbol or an emblem is expanded on its concrete side, and a pretence is made of retaining the same symbolical value for this expansion as for the emblem itself. In a very lively comedy we are introduced to a Monte Carlo official, whose uniform is covered with medals, although he has only received a single decoration. "You see, I staked my medal on a number at roulette," he said, "and as the number turned up, I was entitled to thirty-six times my stake." This reasoning is very similar to that offered by Giboyer in the Effrontes. Criticism is made of a bride of forty summers who is wearing orange-blossoms with her wedding costume: "Why, she was entitled to oranges, let alone orange-blossoms!" remarked Giboyer.

But we should never cease were we to take one by one all the laws we have stated, and try to prove them on what we have called the plane of language. We had better confine ourselves to the three general propositions of the preceding section. We have shown that "series of events" may become comic either by repetition, by inversion, or by reciprocal interference. Now we shall see that this is also the case with series of words.

To take series of events and repeat them in another key or another environment, or to invert them whilst still leaving them a certain meaning, or mix them up so that their respective meanings jostle one another, is invariably comic, as we have already said, for it is getting life to submit to be treated as a machine. But thought, too, is a living thing. And language, the translation of thought, should be just as living.

We may thus surmise that a phrase is likely to become comic if, though reversed, it still makes sense, or if it expresses equally well two quite independent sets of ideas, or, finally, if it has been obtained by transposing an idea into some key other than its own. --H. Bergson

News of an enemy that lurks:
Philip K Dickhead has been busy collecting some good links and items.

RaceBaiting this year has been a neck and neck race between France and Australia. Oz teams are likely to re-take the Chips-Lady-Cup after losing to France's stunning performance last year. A major review of Australia's National security has been released today outlining current threats and challenges facing Australia and the measures the Howard Government is taking to keep Australia secure. Prime Minister John Howard today joined Defence Minister Robert Hill and Chief of the Defence Force Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston to launch the report, Australia's National Security: Defence Update 2005, at Victoria Barracks in Sydney. Defence Minister Robert Hill said Defence is better prepared than ever before to respond to any threats, both in Australia and overseas. "This update outlines how the Government has shaped the ADF to increase Australia's capacity to meet the heavy demands of recent years, and the measures being taken to ensure the ADF is a force capable of meeting future military challenges," Senator Hill said. "Defeating the threat of terrorism, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and supporting regional states in difficulty remain the Government's highest priorities. Local threats may be of more importance.

Now we checked out this duck/ Quack/ Who laid a big egg oh so black/ It shone just like gold... Eva Braunoius :"In Frum the Clod"-A Lord Tubby Adventure. (Fwd, R. Perle) $0.02(can) PB.

Bolivian Election scares the Bush WhiteHouse. [cue clip from ST-TOS:APotA] On the subject of coca leaf production, Morales has insisted that once in office he would not backtrack on his promises of wholesale coca legalization. While that message may resonate on the campaign trail, it is fraught with problems. Washington will bitterly oppose any such veering from a course which it set decades ago, and could use efforts to legalize coca production as a justification for the termination of aid. Such an action on Washington's part could replicate the ill-fated experiences of Colombian President Ernesto Samper, whose connection to drug activity in his country was enough to have Colombia decertified for that year, funneling all U.S. aid to the Colombian military and police, with no discretionary funds being placed in the hands of the president.

The USA's cannon-fodder gets Dick for Christmas. As for the Iraqi fodder... Thousands of Iraqi Shias have staged demonstrations in several cities in protest against the Arabic satellite television channel al-Jazeera. The protestors demanded an apology from the channel for allegedly airing an insulting remark about Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading Shia cleric. A guest on a talk show is reported to have said that Ayatollah Sistani should stay out of politics. The ayatollah wants Iraqis to vote according to their religious beliefs. "It is a protest against the traitor al-Jazeera," a woman at a protest in Baghdad said.

AK-47s to plow shares in Thickyland.

Harmful elements in the air/ Symbols clashing everywhere/ Reaps the fields of rice and reeds/ While the population feeds

Orhan Pamuk flap continues. The prime minister of Turkey has accused the EU of putting pressure on the Turkish judiciary over the trial of best-selling novelist Orhan Pamuk. Mr Pamuk has been charged over comments about the fate of the Ottoman Armenians and more recently the Kurds. His trial was opened and immediately suspended on Friday when the judge ruled he needed permission from the justice ministry to proceed.

Free and not dead Press.

OYAITJ:
93321 : Water-Kerry'er David Wade spouts, Haiti, Hicks,
three quotes, and this from last years WOC? [War On Christmas... WWC?? War With Christmas... TCMC??? The Cuban Mistletoe Crisis] QUESTION: Cuba. If I could ask your reaction to the Cuban Government's erection of billboards near the U.S. Mission, which bear swastikas. And also, if the U.S. is considering any -- any more responses of its own?

MR. BOUCHER: I think, first of all, any government that puts up swastikas ought to answer its own questions about why it does that. But I guess this is how the Cuban Government responds to Christmas lights. As far as the Christmas lights go, we think they're entirely appropriate for the season. We think the remembrance of the 75 people in jail is entirely appropriate to the season, and we intend to leave the lights up.

QUESTION: Any further steps you plan to take?

MR. BOUCHER: We intend to leave the lights up.

QUESTION: Well, I mean, Richard, obviously that was a -- what the Cubans did was a provocative action and --

MR. BOUCHER: I'll let them answer for their own actions. I'm not going to try to explain it.

QUESTION: Well, no, but they're saying it in response to what they see as a provocative action.

MR. BOUCHER: This is how they respond to Christmas tree lights. I'll let other people judge.

QUESTION: Richard, it's more than Christmas lights. I mean, it's sending a political message and they're sending a political message in return -- I mean --

MR. BOUCHER: No, number 75 of actual political prisoners in Cuban jails, who are being remembered at this time is not the same as swastikas, sorry. Let's let them explain.

QUESTION: Is the swastikas in particular that you have a problem with, or is it the photos of Abu Ghraib?

MR. BOUCHER: I'm not going to try to explain the Cuban Government's actions in this matter.

QUESTION: No, but what is it in -- do you have --

MR. BOUCHER: What is it that we think?

QUESTION: No, but are you singling out, in particular --

MR. BOUCHER: We think it's an appropriate time to put up Christmas tree lights and remember the people in jail.

QUESTION: Are you singling out in particular the swastikas, or is it the whole Iraqi photos and the word "fascist" that you --

MR. BOUCHER: We think it's appropriate for this season to put up Christmas lights and to remember the people in jail. If the Cuban Government thinks that there is a different way to commemorate this season, let them try to explain it. But we've done what we think is appropriate for this season.

TYAITJ:
55631 : Thicky, Antenna farms-- Around 3,000 Chinese farmers are expected to head west next year to start working the land in neighbouring Kazakhstan, according to Chinese newspaper reports. An official in China's Xinjiang province, which borders Kazakhstan, said that a deal had been signed under which the Chinese would rent 70 square kilometres of farm land for 10 years. The Chinese farmers are likely to arrive in Kazakhstan's Alakol county in the Spring to grow soya beans and wheat, and to breed animals. , and more [Mordecai surely!?!]

TYAITJ:
19523 : Farewell to the free [...] This growth ...Online Publishers Association (OPA), a trade group, show that Internet content revenues are doubling each year...' should build on itself. As people find less free stuff available, they will become more comfortable with the notion of buying online content. It is already hard to find such former staples as a good free e-mail service or free online-data storage, as firms like Yahoo! nudge customers towards new "premium" offerings by making the free service less useful. Theendoffree.com, a website that tracks the shift towards paid-for content and services, posts daily evidence. The latest news? Visitors to filathlos.gr should no longer expect their Greek sports news free. The OPA counts 1,700 websites that charge for some form of digital content, from greeting cards to games to genealogy services. Weightwatchers.com, a privately owned online dieting firm that introduced a subscription service in June 2001, says it pulls in about $5m a month in fees, suggesting a paying customer base that has already grown to around 300,000 cyberdieters. (Weightwatchers International, a $5 billion public firm that licenses its brand to its online cousin, has 1m dieters a week at offline meetings.) Match.com, an online dating-site where people post personal ads, has more than doubled its paying subscribers this year, to 650,000. Still, the successful are few: just 50 sites collect 85% of revenues, according to the OPA. Some chargers are desperate. This month, AOL Time Warner said that its online advertising sales would halve next year, and that it was redoubling efforts to sell content. AOL's latest plans have met with derision: repackaged news and entertainment remains a hard sell. But Americans will pay $14.99 for second-hand car histories from Carfax.com, $12.95 for personal credit-rating data from Equifax.com and $189.95 a year to search for their forebears at Ancestry.com, which claims over 900,000 paying subscribers. Some of the most valuable (and cheapest) content may come from customers. One site charging for "user-generated" content is Voyeurweb.com, whose audience of voyeurs and exhibitionists log on to look at do-it-yourself porn, a hobby that has boomed with the spread of digital cameras.
18767 : ShrubCo Newkular Inc.
19341 : OMDS- OpenMissileDefenceSystem

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of George W. Bush talking to the press at his usual tote-a-podium. Overlayed speech bubble has him singing; "The rhyme involved is easy to spot/ Check the weight of the victim and the type of knot/ Tie up your whole crew with the talon of a hawk/ Drink in my hand-probably gin on the rocks/ I'm the center of the universe-kill a verse if I'm hot/ Yo-to tell you the truth-I'm the duke of the dark/ Double sided mirrors-frosty breath/ My reputation for rocking sets is darker than death/ Arm around my left arm-arm around my chest/ Are you feeling me?/ I'm on a killing spree"

Mozart was a music pirate! And a damned effective one too. [and] Despite the fact that the owners of the IP in question were just blood thirsty as they seem to be in our own time.

But that's not the subject of this JE. I'd rather add another faggot to a different fire. News, Texttoon and links to past JE's. Read on!

Quote(1):
Paul Flemming alighted at one of the principal hotels. The landlord came out to meet him. He had great eyes and a green coat; and reminded Flemming of the innkeeper mentioned in the Golden Ass, who had been changed by magic into a frog, and croaked to his customers from the lees of a wine-cask. His house, he said, was full; and so was every house in Interlachen; but, if the gentleman would walk into the parlour, he would procure a chamber for him, in the neighbourhood.

On the sofa sat a gentleman, reading; a stout gentleman of perhaps forty-five, round, ruddy, and with a head, which, being a little bald on the top, looked not unlike a crow's nest, with one egg in it. A good-humored face turned from the book as Flemming entered; and a good-humored voice exclaimed;

"Ha! ha! Mr. Flemming! Is it you, or your apparition! I told you we should meet again! though you were for taking an eternal farewell of your fellow-traveller."

Saying these words, the stout gentleman rose and shook Flemming heartily by the hand. And Flemming returned the shake as heartily, recognising in this ruddy personage, a former travelling companion, Mr. Berkley, whom he had left, a week or two previous, toiling up the Righi. Mr. Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humored, humane old bachelor; remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity. That is to say, the basis of his character was good, sound common sense, trodden down and smoothed by education; but this level groundwork his strange and whimsical fancy used as a dancing-floor, whereon to exhibit her eccentric tricks. His ruling passion was cold-bathing; and he usually ate his breakfast sitting in a tub of cold water, and reading a newspaper. He kissed every child he met; and to every old man, said in passing, "God bless you!" with such an expression of voice and countenance, that no one could doubt his sincerity. He reminded one of Roger Bontemps, or the Little Man in Gray; though with a difference.

"The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Berkley," said Flemming, "was at Goldau, just as you were going up the Righi. I hope you were gratified with a fine sunrise on the mountain top."

"No, Sir, I was not!" replied Mr. Berkley. "It is all a humbug! a confounded humbug! They made such a noise about their sunrise, that I determined I would not see it. So I lay snug in bed; and only peeped through the window curtain. That was enough. Just above the house, on the top of the hill, stood some fifty half-dressed, romantic individuals, shivering in the wet grass; and, a short distance from them, a miserable wretch, blowing a long, wooden horn. That's your sunrise on the Righi, is it? said I; and went to sleep again. The best thing I saw at the Culm, was the advertisement on the bed-room doors, saying, that, if the ladies would wear the quilts and blankets for shawls, when they went out to see the sunrise, they must pay for the washing. Take my word for it, the Righi is a great humbug!"

"Where have you been since?"

"At Zurich and Schaffhausen. If you go to Zurich, beware how you stop at the Raven. They will cheat you. They cheated me; but I had my revenge, for, when we reached Schaffhausen, I wrote in the Traveller's Book;

Beware of the Raven of Zurich!

'T is a bird of omen ill;

With a noisy and an unclean nest,

And a very, very long bill.

If you go to the Golden Falken you will find it there. I am the author of those lines!"

"Bitter as Juvenal!" exclaimed Flemming.

"Not in the least bitter," said Mr. Berkley. "It is all true. Go to the Raven and see. But this Interlachen! this Interlachen! It is the loveliest spot on the face of the earth," he continued, stretching out both arms, as if to embrace the objectof his affection. "There,--only look out there!"

Here he pointed to the window. Flemming looked, and beheld a scene of transcendent beauty. The plain was covered already by the brown shade of the summer twilight. From the cottage roofs in Unterseen rose here and there a thin column of smoke over the tops of the trees and mingled with the evening shadows. The Valley of Lauterbrunnen was filled with a blue haze. Far above, in the clear, cloudless heaven, the white forehead of the Jungfrau blushed at the last kiss of the departing sun. It was a glorious Transfiguration of Nature! And when the village bells began to ring, and a single voice at a great distance was heard yodling forth a ballad, it rather broke than increased the enchantment of a scene, where silence was more musical than sound.

For a long time they gazed at the gloaming landscape, and spake not. At length people came into the parlour, and laid aside their shawls and hats, and exchanged a word or two with Berkley to Flemming they were all unknown. To him it was all Mr. Brown and Mrs. Johnson, and nothing more. The conversation turned upon the various excursions of the day. Some had been at the Staubbach, others at the Grindelwald; others at the Lake of Thun; and nobody before had ever experienced half the rapture, which they had experienced that day. And thus they sat in the twilight, as people love to do, at the close of a summer day. As yet the lamps had not been lighted; and one could not distinguish faces; but voices only, and forms, like shadows.

Presently a female figure, clothed in black, entered the room and sat down by the window. She rather listened to the conversation, than joined in it; but the few words she said were spoken in a voice so musical and full of soul, that it moved the soul of Flemming, like a whisper from heaven.

O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written uponhis countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only; as God revealed himself to the prophet of old in the still, small voice; and in a voice from the burning bush. The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!

Flemming would fain have sat and listened for hours to the sound of that unknown voice. He felt sure, in his secret heart, that the being from whom it came was beautiful. His imagination filled up the faint outline, which the eye beheld in the fading twilight, and the figure stood already in his mind, like Raphael's beautiful Madonna in the Dresden gallery. He was never more mistaken in his life. The voice belonged to a beautiful being, it is true; but her beauty was different from that of any Madonna which Raphael ever painted; as he would have seen, had he waited till the lamps were lighted. But in the midst of his reverie and saint-painting, the landlord came in, andtold him he had found a chamber, which he begged him to go and look at.

Flemming took his leave and departed. Berkley went with him, to see, he said, what kind of a nest his young friend was to sleep in.

"The chamber is not what I could wish," said the landlord, as he led them across the street. "It is in the old cloister. But to-morrow or next day, you can no doubt have a room at the house."

The name of the cloister struck Flemming's imagination pleasantly. He was owl enough to like ruins and old chambers, where nuns or friars had slept. And he said to Berkley;

"So, you perceive, my nest is to be in a cloister. It already makes me think of a bird's-nest I once saw on an old tower of Heidelberg castle, built in the jaws of a lion, which formerly served as a spout. But pray tell me, who was that young lady, with the soft voice?"

"What young lady with the soft voice?"

"The young lady in black, who sat by the window."

"O, she is the daughter of an English officer, who died not long ago at Naples. She is passing the summer here with her mother, for her health."

"What is her name?"

"Ashburton."

"Is she beautiful?"

"Not in the least; but very intellectual. A woman of genius, I should say."

And now they had reached the walls of the cloister, and passed under an arched gateway, and close beneath the round towers, which Flemming had already seen, rising with their cone-shaped roofs above the trees, like tall tapers, with extinguishers upon them.

"It is not so bad, as it looks," said the landlord, knocking at a small door, in the main building. "The Bailiff lives in one part of it."

A servant girl, with a candle in her hand, opened the door, and conducted Flemming and Berkley to the chamber which had been engaged. It was a large room on the lower floor, wainscoted with pine, and unpainted. Three lofty and narrowwindows, with leaden lattices and small panes, looked southward towards the valley of Lauterbrunnen and the mountains. In one corner was a large square bed, with a tester and checked curtains. In another, a huge stove of painted tiles, reaching almost to the ceiling. An old sofa, a few high-backed antique chairs, and a table, completed the furniture of the room.

Thus Flemming took possession of his monkish cell and dormitory. He ordered tea, and began to feel at home. Berkley passed the evening with him. On going away he said;

"Good night! I leave you to the care of the Virgin and all the Saints. If the ghost of any old monk comes back after his prayer-book, my compliments to him. If I were a younger man, you certainly should see a ghost. Good night!"

When he had departed, Flemming opened the lattice of one of the windows. The moon had risen, and silvered the dark outline of the nearest hills; while, afar off, the snowy summits of the Jungfrau and the Silver-Horn shone like a white cloud in the sky. Close beneath the windows was a flower-garden; and the breath of the summer night came to him with dewy fragrance. There was a grateful seclusion about the place. He blessed the happy accident, which gave him such a lodging, and fell asleep that night thinking of the nuns, who once had slept in the same quiet cells; but neither wimpled nun nor cowled monk appeared to him in his dreams; not even the face of Mary Ashburton; nor did he hear her voice. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I'll end up quoting all of Longfellow's tome at this rate. It is, however, a fitting piece to place ahead of this next quote. And here it is now.

Quote(2):
The regularity of nature is the first postulate of Science; but it requires the very slightest observation to show us that, along with this regularity, there exists a vast irregularity which Science can only deal with by exclusion from its province.

The world as we see it is full of changes; and these changes when patiently and perseveringly examined are found to be subject to invariable or almost invariable laws. But the things themselves which thus change are as multifarious as the changes which they undergo. They vary infinitely in quantity, in qualities, in arrangement throughout space, possibly in arrangement throughout time. Take a single substance such, say, as gold. How much gold there is in the whole universe, and where it is situated, we not only have no knowledge, but can hardly be said to be on the way to have knowledge. Why its qualities are what they are, and why it alone possesses all these qualities; how long it has existed, and how long it will continue to exist, these questions we are unable to answer. The existence of the many forms of matter, the properties of each form, the distribution of each: all this Science must in the last resort assume.

But I say in the last resort. For it is possible, and Science soon makes it evident that it is true, that some forms of matter grow out of other forms. There are endless combinations. And the growth of new out of old forms is of necessity a sequence, and falls under the law of invariability of sequences, and becomes the subject-matter of Science. As in each separate case Science asserts each event of to-day to have followed by a law of invariable sequence on the events of yesterday; the earth has reached the precise point in its orbit now which was determined by the law of gravitation as applied to its motion at the point which it reached a moment ago; the weather of the present hour has come by meteorological laws out of the weather of the last hour; the crops and the flocks now found on the surface of the habitable earth are the necessary outcome of preceding harvests and preceding flocks and of all that has been done to maintain and increase them; so, too, if we look at the universe as a whole, the present condition of that whole is, if the scientific postulate of invariable sequence be admitted, and in as far as it is admitted, the necessary outcome of its former condition; and all the various forms of matter, whether living or inanimate, must for the same reason and with the same limitation be the necessary outcome of preceding forms of matter. This is the foundation of the doctrine of Evolution.

Now stated in this abstract form this doctrine will be, and indeed if Science be admitted at all must be, accepted by everybody. Even the Roman Church, which holds that God is perpetually interfering with the course of nature, either in the interests of religious truth or out of loving kindness to His creatures, yet will acknowledge that the number of such interferences almost disappears in comparison of the countless millions of instances in which there is no reason to believe in any interference at all. And if we look at the universe as a whole, the general proposition as stated above is quite unaffected by the infinitesimal exception which is to be made by a believer in frequent miracles.

But when this proposition is applied in detail it at once introduces the possibility of an entirely new history of the material universe. For this universe as we see it is almost entirely made up of composite and not of simple substances. We have been able to analyse all the substances that we know into a comparatively small number of simple elements--some usually solid, some liquid, some gaseous. But these simple elements are rarely found uncombined with others; most of those which we meet with in a pure state have been taken out of combination and reduced to simplicity by human agency. The various metals that we ordinarily use are mostly found in a state of ore, and we do not generally obtain them pure except by smelting. The air we breathe, though not a compound, is a mixture. The water which is essential to our life is a compound. And, if we pass from inorganic to organic substances, all vegetables and animals are compound, sustained by various articles of food which go to make up their frames. Now, how have these compounds been formed? It is quite possible that some of them, or all of them to some extent, may have been formed from the first.

If Science could go back to the beginning of all things, which it obviously cannot, it might find the composition already accomplished, and be compelled to start with it as a given fact--a fact as incapable of scientific explanation as the existence of matter at all. But, on the other hand, composition and decomposition is a matter of every-day experience. Our very food could not nourish us except by passing through these processes in our bodies; and by the same processes we prepare much of our food before consuming it. May not Science go back to the time when these processes had not yet begun? May not the starting-point of the history of the universe be a condition in which the simple elements were still uncombined? If Science could go back to the beginning of all things, might we not find all the elements of material things ready indeed for the action of the inherent forces which would presently unite them in an infinite variety of combinations, but as yet still separate from each other? Scattered through enormous regions of space, but drawn together by the force of gravitation; their original heat, whatever it may have been, increased by their mutual collision; made to act chemically on one another by such increase or by subsequent decrease of temperature; perpetually approaching nearer to the forms into which, by the incessant action of the same forces, the present universe has grown; these elements, and the working of the several laws of their own proper nature, may be enough to account scientifically for all the phenomena that we observe. We do not even then get back to regularity. Why these elements, and no others; why in these precise quantities; why so distributed in space; why endowed with these properties: still are questions which Science cannot answer, and there seems no reason to expect that any scientific answer will ever be possible.

Nay, I know not whether it may not be asserted that the impossibility of answering one at least among these questions is capable of demonstration. For the whole system of things, as far as we know it, depends on the perpetual rotation of the heavenly bodies; and without original irregularity in the distribution of matter no motion of rotation could ever have spontaneously arisen. And if this irregularity be thus original, Science can give no account of it. Science, therefore, will have to begin with assuming certain facts for which it can never hope to account. But it _may_ begin by assuming that, speaking roughly, the universe was always very much what we see it now, and that composition and decomposition have always nearly balanced each other, and that there have been from the beginning the same sun and moon and planets and stars in the sky, the same animals on the earth and in the seas, the same vegetation, the same minerals; and that though there have been incessant changes, and possibly all these changes in one general direction, yet these changes have never amounted to what would furnish a scientific explanation of the forms which matter has assumed. Or, on the other hand, Science may assert the possibility of going back to a far earlier condition of our material system; may assert that all the forms of matter have grown up under the action of laws and forces still at work; may take as the initial state of our universe one or many enormous clouds of gaseous matter, and endeavour to trace with more or less exactness how these gradually formed themselves into what we see.

Science has lately leaned to the latter alternative. To a believer the alternative may be stated thus: We all distinguish between the original creation of the material world and the history of it ever since. And we have, nay all men have, been accustomed to assign to the original creation a great deal that Science is now disposed to assign to the history. But the distinction between the original creation and the subsequent history would still remain, and for ever remain, although the portion assigned to the one may be less, and that assigned to the other larger, than was formerly supposed. However far back Science may be able to push its beginning, there still must lie behind that beginning the original act of creation--creation not of matter only, but of the various kinds of matter, and of the laws governing all and each of those kinds, and of the distribution of this matter in space.

This application of the abstract doctrine of Evolution gives it an enormous and startling expansion: so enormous and so startling that the doctrine itself seems absolutely new. To say that the present grows by regular law out of the past is one thing; to say that it has grown out of a distant past in which as yet the present forms of life upon the earth, the present vegetation, the seas and islands and continents, the very planet itself, the sun and moon, were not yet made--and all this also by regular law--that is quite another thing. And the bearings of this new application of Science deserve study.

Now it seems quite plain that this doctrine of Evolution is in no sense whatever antagonistic to the teachings of Religion, though it may be, and that we shall have to consider afterwards, to the teachings of revelation. Why then should religious men independently of its relation to revelation shrink from it, as very many unquestionably do? The reason is that, whilst this doctrine leaves the truth of the existence and supremacy of God exactly where it was, it cuts away, or appears to cut away, some of the main arguments for that truth.

Now, in regard to the arguments whereby we have been accustomed to prove or to corroborate the existence of a Supreme Being, it is plain that, to take these arguments away or to make it impossible to use them, is not to disprove or take away the truth itself. We find every day instances of men resting their faith in a truth on some grounds which we know to be untenable, and we see what a terrible trial it sometimes is when they find out that this is so, and know not as yet on what other ground they are to take their stand. And some men succumb in the trial and lose their faith together with the argument which has hitherto supported it. But the truth still stands in spite of the failure of some to keep their belief in it, and in spite of the impossibility of supporting it by the old arguments.

And when men have become accustomed to rest their belief on new grounds the loss of the old arguments is never found to be a very serious matter. Belief in revelation has been shaken again and again by this very increase of knowledge. It was unquestionably a dreadful blow to many in the days of Galileo to find that the language of the Bible in regard to the movement of the earth and sun was not scientifically correct. It was a dreadful blow to many in the days of the Reformation to find that they had been misled by what they believed to be an infallible Church.

Such shocks to faith try the mettle of men's moral and spiritual conviction, and they often refuse altogether to hold what they can no longer establish by the arguments which have hitherto been to them the decisive, perhaps the sole decisive, proofs.

And yet in spite of these shocks belief in revelation is strong still in men's souls, and is clearly not yet going to quit the world.

But let us go on to consider how far it is true that the arguments which have hitherto been regarded as proving the existence of a Supreme Creator are really affected very gravely by this doctrine of Evolution.

The main argument, which at first appears to be thus set aside, is that which is founded on the marks of design, and which is worked out in his own way with marvellous skill by Paley in his Natural Theology. Paley's argument rests as is well known on the evidence of design in created things, and these evidences he chiefly finds in the frame-work of organised living creatures. He traces with much most interesting detail the many marvellous contrivances by which animals of various kinds are adapted to the circumstances in which they are to live, the mechanism which enables them to obtain their food, to preserve their species, to escape their enemies, to remove discomforts. All nature thus examined, and particularly all animated nature, seems full of means towards ends, and those ends invariably such as a beneficent Creator might well be supposed to have in view. And whilst there is undeniably one great objection to his whole argument, namely that the Creator is represented as an Artificer rather than a Creator, as overcoming difficulties which stood in His way rather than as an Almighty Being fashioning things according to His Will, yet the argument thus drawn from evidence of design remains exceedingly powerful, and it has always been considered a strong corroboration of the voice within which bids us believe in a God. Now it certainly seems at first as if this argument were altogether destroyed.

If animals were not made as we see them, but evolved by natural law, still more if it appear that their wonderful adaptation to their surroundings is due to the influence of those surroundings, it might seem as if we could no longer speak of design as exhibited in their various organs; the organs we might say grow of themselves, some suitable, and some unsuitable to the life of the creatures to which they belonged, and the unsuitable have perished and the suitable have survived.

But Paley has supplied the clue to the answer. In his well-known illustration of the watch picked up on the heath by the passing traveller, he points out that the evidence of design is certainly not lessened if it be found that the watch was so constructed that, in course of time, it produced another watch like itself. He was thinking not of Evolution, but of the ordinary production of each generation of animals from the preceding. But his answer can be pushed a step further, and we may with equal justice remark that we should certainly not believe it a proof that the watch had come into existence without design if we found that it produced in course of time not merely another watch but a better. It would become more marvellous than ever if we found provision thus made not merely for the continuance of the species but for the perpetual improvement of the species.

It is essential to animal life that the animal should be adapted to its circumstances; if besides provision for such adaptation in each generation we find provision for still better adaptation in future generations, how can it be said that the evidences of design are diminished? Or take any separate organ, such as the eye. It is impossible not to believe until it be disproved that the eye was intended to see with. We cannot say that light was made for the eye, because light subserves many other purposes besides that of enabling eyes to see. But that the eye was intended for light there is so strong a presumption that it cannot easily be rebutted.

If indeed it could be shown that eyes fulfilled several other functions, or that species of animals which always lived in the dark still had fully-formed eyes, then we might say that the connexion between the eye of an animal and the light of heaven was accidental. But the contrary is notoriously the case; so much the case that some philosophers have maintained that the eye was formed by the need for seeing, a statement which I need take no trouble to refute, just as those who make it take no trouble to establish, I will not say its truth, but even its possibility. But the fact, if it be a fact, that the eye was not originally as well adapted to see with as it is now, and that the power of perceiving light and of things in the light grew by degrees, does not show, nor even tend to show, that the eye was not intended for seeing with.

The fact is that the doctrine of Evolution does not affect the substance of Paley's argument at all. The marks of design which he has pointed out remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine of Evolution to the full. What is touched by this doctrine is not the evidence of design but the mode in which the design was executed. Paley, no doubt, wrote on the supposition (and at that time it was hardly possible to admit any other supposition) that we must take animals to have come into existence very nearly such as we now know them: and his language, on the whole, was adapted to that supposition. But the language would rather need supplementing than changing to make it applicable to the supposition that animals were formed by Evolution. In the one case the execution follows the design by the effect of a direct act of creation; in the other case the design is worked out by a slow process. In the one case the Creator made the animals at once such as they now are; in the other case He impressed on certain particles of matter which, either at the beginning or at some point in the history of His creation He endowed with life, such inherent powers that in the ordinary course of time living creatures such as the present were developed. The creative power remains the same in either case; the design with which that creative power was exercised remains the same. He did not make the things, we may say; no, but He made them make themselves. And surely this rather adds than withdraws force from the great argument. It seems in itself something more majestic, something more befitting Him to Whom a thousand years are as one day and one day as a thousand years, thus to impress His Will once for all on His creation, and provide for all its countless variety by this one original impress, than by special acts of creation to be perpetually modifying what He had previously made.

It has often been objected to Paley's argument, as I remarked before, that it represents the Almighty rather as an artificer than a creator, a workman dealing with somewhat intractable materials and showing marvellous skill in overcoming difficulties rather than a beneficent Being making all things in accordance with the purposes of His love. But this objection disappears when we put the argument into the shape which the doctrine of Evolution demands and look on the Almighty as creating the original elements of matter, determining their number and their properties, creating the law of gravitation whereby as seems probable the worlds have been formed, creating the various laws of chemical and physical action, by which inorganic substances have been combined, creating above all the law of life, the mysterious law which plainly contains such wonderful possibilities within itself, and thus providing for the ultimate development of all the many wonders of nature.

What conception of foresight and purpose can rise above that which imagines all history gathered as it were into one original creative act from which the infinite variety of the Universe has come and more is coming even yet?

And yet again, it is a common objection to Paley's and similar arguments that, in spite of all the tokens of intelligence and beneficence in the creation, there is so much of the contrary character. How much there is of apparently needless pain and waste! And John Stuart Mill has urged that either we must suppose the Creator wanting in omnipotence or wanting in kindness to have left His creation so imperfect. The answer usually given is that our knowledge is partial, and, could we see the whole, the objection would probably disappear. But what force and clearness is given to this answer by the doctrine of Evolution which tells us that we are looking at a work which is not yet finished, and that the imperfections are a necessary part of a large design the general outlines of which we may already trace, but the ultimate issue of which, with all its details, is still beyond our perception! The imperfections are like the imperfections of a half-completed picture not yet ready to be seen; they are like the bud which will presently be a beautiful flower, or the larva of a beautiful and gorgeous insect; they are like the imperfections in the moral character of a saint who nevertheless is changing from glory to glory.

To the many partial designs which Paley's Natural Theology points out, and which still remain what they were, the doctrine of Evolution adds the design of a perpetual progress. Things are so arranged that animals are perpetually better adapted to the life they have to live. The very phrase which we commonly use to sum up Darwin's teaching, the survival of the fittest, implies a perpetual diminution of pain and increase of enjoyment for all creatures that can feel. If they are fitter for their surroundings, most certainly they will find life easier to live. And, as if to mark still more plainly the beneficence of the whole work, the less developed creatures, as we have every reason to believe, are less sensible of pain and pleasure; so that enjoyment appears to grow with the capacity for enjoyment, and suffering diminishes as sensitivity to suffering increases. And there can be no doubt that this is in many ways the tendency of nature. Beasts of prey are diminishing; life is easier for man and easier for all animals that are under his care: many species of animals perish as man fills and subjugates the globe, but those that remain have far greater happiness in their lives. In fact, all the purposes which Paley traces in the formation of living creatures are not only fulfilled by what the Creator has done, but are better fulfilled from age to age. And though the progress may be exceedingly slow, the nature of the progress cannot be mistaken.

If the Natural Theology were now to be written, the stress of the argument would be put on a different place. Instead of insisting wholly or mainly on the wonderful adaptation of means to ends in the structure of living animals and plants, we should look rather to the original properties impressed on matter from the beginning, and on the beneficent consequences that have flowed from those properties. We should dwell on the peculiar properties that must be inherent in the molecules of the original elements to cause such results to follow from their action and reaction on one another. We should dwell on the part played in the Universe by the properties of oxygen, the great purifier, and one of the great heat-givers; of carbon, the chief light-giver and heat-giver; of water, the great solvent and the storehouse of heat; of the atmosphere and the vapours in it, the protector of the earth which it surrounds. We should trace the beneficent effects of pain and pleasure in their subservience to the purification of life. The marks of a purpose impressed from the first on all creation would be even more visible than ever before.

And we could not overlook the beauty of Nature and of all created things as part of that purpose coming in many cases out of that very survival of the fittest of which Darwin has spoken, and yet a distinct object in itself. For this beauty there is no need in the economy of nature whatever. The beauty of the starry heavens, which so impressed the mind of Kant that he put it by the side of the Moral Law as proving the existence of a Creator, is not wanted either for the evolution of the world or for the preservation of living creatures. Our enjoyment of it is a super-added gift certainly not necessary for the existence or the continuance of our species. The beauty of flowers, according to the teaching of the doctrine of Evolution, has generally grown out of the need which makes it good for plants to attract insects. The insects carry the pollen from flower to flower, and thus as it were mix the breed; and this produces the stronger plants which outlive the competition of the rest. The plants, therefore, which are most conspicuous gain an advantage by attracting insects most. That successive generations of flowers should thus show brighter and brighter colours is intelligible.

  But the beauty of flowers is far more than mere conspicuousness of colours even though that be the main ingredient. Why should the wonderful grace, and delicacy, and harmony of tint be added? Is all this mere chance? Is all this superfluity pervading the whole world and perpetually supplying to the highest of living creatures, and that too in a real proportion to his superiority, the most refined and elevating of pleasures, an accident without any purpose at all? If Evolution has produced the world such as we see and all its endless beauty, it has bestowed on our own dwelling-place in lavish abundance and in marvellous perfection that on which men spend their substance without stint, that which they value above all but downright necessities, that which they admire beyond all except the Law of Duty itself. We cannot think that this is not designed, nor that the Artist who produced it was blind to what was coming out of His work.

Once more, the doctrine of Evolution restores to the science of Nature the unity which we should expect in the creation of God. Paley's argument proved design, but included the possibility of many designers. Not one design, but many separate designs, all no doubt of the same character, but all worked out independently of one another, is the picture that he puts before us. But the doctrine of Evolution binds all existing things on earth into one. Every mineral, every plant, every animal has such properties that it benefits other things beside itself and derives benefit in turn. The insect developes the plant, and the plant the insect; the brute aids in the evolution of the man, and the man in that of the brute. All things are embraced in one great design beginning with the very creation. He who uses the doctrine of Evolution to prove that no intelligence planned the world, is undertaking the self-contradictory task of showing that a great machine has no purpose by tracing in detail the marvellous complexity of its parts, and the still more marvellous precision with which all work together to produce a common result.

To conclude, the doctrine of Evolution leaves the argument for an intelligent Creator and Governor of the world stronger than it was before. There is still as much as ever the proof of an intelligent purpose pervading all creation. The difference is that the execution of that purpose belongs more to the original act of creation, less to acts of government since. There is more divine foresight, there is less divine interposition; and whatever has been taken from the latter has been added to the former.

Some scientific students of Nature may fancy they can deduce in the working out of the theory results inconsistent with religious belief; and in a future Lecture these will have to be examined; and it is possible that the theory may be so presented as to be inconsistent with the teaching of Revelation. But whatever may be the relation of the doctrine of Evolution to Revelation, it cannot be said that this doctrine is antagonistic to Religion in its essence. The progress of Science in this direction will assuredly end in helping men to believe with more assurance than ever that the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth, by understanding hath He established the heavens. --Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

Only two points I might add, one is that he's is/was wrong about the limits to our understanding of the universe by about one universe, ie infinitely wrong. The other is the number of straw men he creates in his synopsis of what science is (and is not). Admittedly he brought in a couple from a previous immolation and redresses them in the same old clothes.

News roughed up at dawn:
Haiti does what many wished for in the USA after GWB announced he'd run for prez' the first time. And more after he was elected. Five Supreme Court justices have been fired in Haiti, a day after the court ruled that a Haitian-born US millionaire could run for president. No reason was given for the sudden sacking of around half of the Supreme Court bench. They were fired on the direct orders of the interim Prime Minister, Gerard Latortue, and his justice minister. The government criticised the decision to allow Dumarsais Simeus to run in January's presidential elections. Despite not yet being on the official ballot, Mr Simeus, who lives in Texas, was shown by the first independent opinion poll conducted to be one of the favourite contenders.

Look out! She's commin' right for us!!!

Never land? Or just a post-CYA-FridayNewsDump from never-neverland? An RAF Hercules plane which crashed in Iraq killing 10 British servicemen in January was hit by ground-to-air fire. An RAF Board of Inquiry found that was the most likely cause of the biggest single loss of British forces in Iraq. The plane was more vulnerable as it was flying low, something now being avoided "whenever possible", Defence Secretary John Reid said.

Same again? US President George W Bush has said "tangible progress" has been made in rebuilding Iraq's economy, but this had "not always gone as well as we hoped". In a speech aimed at winning US public support ahead of the Iraqi general election next week, Mr Bush focused on the rehabilitation of public services. The cities of Najaf and Mosul had seen improvement, he said, but poor security had hampered reconstruction efforts. Naww, just the same (old shit), again! Only, this time in a hamper.

Spain adds another 7. Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso there was no reason to believe they had plans for an imminent attack in Spain. He said the detainees were suspected of raising money and providing logistical support for the Salafist Group for Call and Combat - an Algerian-based extremist group. He said the group was "perfectly structured", had a hierarchy and was dedicated to committing petty crime and forging documents and credit cards. Mr Alonso added that money was sent to Algeria either in person or through a complex system of bank transfers that made it difficult to trace. Police say the investigation continues open and they do not rule out further arrests. Their new government seems just as busy as the last. And just as fast to say "links with al-Qaeda". Or was that added by the BBC?

Chad, why are you shooting at the school kids? They fire back even less than the refugees, sir!

The Yasukuni Shrine visits stall Asian talks once again.

Speaking of stalled visits. Simon recounts the horror. I encountered David Cameron's terrifying energy in May, when he came to help my fellow columnist, Stanley Johnson, father of Boris, who was running for the Tories in Teignbridge, Devon. He arrived by helicopter, then after a snatched lunch more or less dragged Stanley up the main street of Bovey Tracey, forcing shopkeepers to meet the candidate, even though most of them had encountered him several times already. On we pushed, like a mid-western tornado, up the street, into pubs, hairdressers, never stopping for more than a few seconds. All the while an aide was plucking at the Cameron sleeve, telling him it was time to leave for Exeter. Finally, he did climb into the car, shouting "Stanley, that was HUGE!" as he raced away, leaving the candidate grateful, relieved but perplexed. It was hugh![sic]

Free and not dead press. The Zimbabwean government has seized the passport of a prominent critic, newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube. The action was apparently under a new law which allows the government of Robert Mugabe to block the travel of its critics. Mr Ncube owns Zimbabwe's largest private newspaper group. He told Reuters his passport was seized by a man claiming to be from Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation when he landed at Bulawayo airport.

Free and not dead press! The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed deep concern over the kidnapping on Pakistani journalist Hayatullah Khan, whose status and location remain unknown. "This is censorship in its extreme," said IFJ president Christopher Warren. "The Pakistan Government and local authorities must act immediately to ensure the security of journalists, particularly Khan who must be located whilst there is still a chance for his safe return," said Warren. On Monday December 6, 2005, Khan a reporter for the Urdu language daily Ausuf and photographer for the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) was kidnapped by masked assailants near North Wazirston, just 24 hours after the murder of journalist Nasir Afridi, who was working in the same tribal area bordering Afghanistan. "Hayatullah Khan's kidnapping, following the brutal murder of Pakistani journalist Nasir Afridi further highlights the safety crisis in Pakistan and throughout the region," said Warren. Khan was on his way to Khajoori in Nord Waziristan (250 km southwest of Islamabad) to cover a student demonstration when five people armed with AK-47 assault rifles reportedly stoped his vehicle and took him away in another vehicle. Since Khan's abduction there has been no information made available regarding his location or his safety status. His family are waiting for news.

When rice attacks! New on Faux-Em-All at 9:11 and repeated every second for 4+ years. QUESTION: (Inaudible) Financial Times. Madame Secretary, a lot of your colleagues have come out with quite supportive statements about your discussion yesterday, but do you feel that you've managed to convince European public opinion about U.S. policy on detention and on rendition? And is this something, a process that you've now closed out or do you actually see this as quite an arduous task to turn around European public opinion in the months ahead?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, I appreciate the supportive comments that a number of colleagues have made. I appreciate the fact that when we've discussed this, we've discussed it as friends. I appreciate the fact that people have recognized the dilemmas that we face as democracies dealing with this particular enemy.

I also understand that there has been a lot -- and we talked yesterday about a lot of -- that has been in the papers and that has been reported -- and that what this gave us an opportunity to do was to address this in a transparent way from the point of view of what American policy really is, what it intends to do, how we intend to live up to our international obligations and U.S. law.

I think that it's only natural that sometimes we have these discussions. Questions or concerns arise. We should discuss them. We should discuss them in a serious way among friends. Now, whether or not it will continue to be a matter of discussion, I can't say. I am perfectly happy to continue to have the discussion because I actually think that the great democracies have, obviously, an obligation to remain a standard for the rule of law. Around the world we are talking to people about the importance of the rule of law, and so we have to also live under the rule of law.

We have an obligation also in these difficult times to protect our citizens. And I have said that intelligence and the gathering of intelligence and the use of intelligence is something that I'm quite certain is very often misunderstood because intelligence, by its very nature, is done in a closed environment. By its very nature, it has to be that way. But if we can get our citizens to understand that in this new kind of war, intelligence is the key to preventing attacks, then I think we will have accomplished something very important here. We have to do everything that we can to protect our citizens in a lawful manner. But we have to use every tool at our disposal in a lawful manner to do precisely that.

And I just want to emphasize, this is not like normal criminal activity where you wait until something has happened and then you arrest the suspects and then you try them and then you punish them. Once the crime is committed in this case, 3,000 people are dead in New York and Washington or people are dead on July 7th in the scores in Great Britain or a Palestinian wedding party has been attacked in Jordan. Intelligence is the only way that you prevent an attack and we learned after September 11th and in what I think was a very important inquiry in the United States into what happened on September 11th, that none of know if we could have prevented September 11th, but an awful lot of that focused on the need for better intelligence. And if we can have that discussion, if that has been an outcome of these questions, I think that will have been an important one.

The SDP-DPB Softball season for 05 is almost over, but the spinning continues right upto the end. Little Adam Ereli marches up to the plate... and he's off.
QUESTION: Do you have any comment on the Iranian President's suggestions or comments that the Holocaust did not occur, according to him, and also suggesting that Israel be moved to Europe -- attached to Europe?

MR. ERELI: These remarks are yet another data point in assessing the attitudes and policies of the Iranian regime. They come in the wake of previous remarks calling for the destruction of Israel, hostile and aggressive speeches to the United Nations. These latest remarks, which we've seen reports of, are clearly both appalling and reprehensible. They certainly don't inspire hope among any of us in the international community that the Government of Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community. And they are, again, you know, part of a -- what appears to be a consistent pattern of rhetoric that is both hostile and out of touch with values that the rest of us in the international community live by.

QUESTION: Can I follow-up? You've been talking a lot about -- not you, but you and Sean and these data points. It seems to be a new phrase in the last few months. Is there --

MR. ERELI: It's an Adam/Sean phrase or Sean/Adam phrase.

QUESTION: Okay. Is there a point in time, no pun intended, where you intend -- connecting these data points to paint a certain picture or something?

MR. ERELI: In diplomacy, you are constantly assessing the situation based on developments. Those -- call them what you want. Call them developments. Call them events. Call them data points. The issue here is actions, statements, policies by the Iranian Government that at any given point in time add up to a assessment of what they believe and where they're going. And we make our response and make our assessments and act in concert with our friends and partners in the international community accordingly.

But it's a -- as you can understand, following international affairs, it is a dynamic process and it's one that is evolving, changing, and we base our actions accordingly.

QUESTION: But I guess what I'm trying to get at is -- and I haven't heard you use this term with other issues or countries or anything like that. Are you collecting these data points in an effort to connect them in order to paint some kind of picture of the international community for action against Iran? I mean, are you trying to -- are you trying to collect enough data to do something with it?

MR. ERELI: Well, you could use the phrase with any -- in any situation, if you like, as we respond to questions throughout the briefing, I'll use the phrase. But with respect to Iran, as with other situations, we make our assessments based on actions, statements by the government and policies by the government. Those are all data points. Those all inform our own deliberations and our own decisions.

This statement, which is egregious and offensive, is a statement by the president of a country, a country that belongs to international organizations, has pledged to uphold international norms and needs to be judged by and held to those standards.
Of course acting counter to those "international organizations, [that] has pledged to uphold international norms", rather than stating something in conflict to them, is another matter. Strike one.

QUESTION: Next week, it's the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, which the U.S. has been excluded from. Are you disappointed at being excluded from this summit and what would you like the outcome to be at the summit?

MR. ERELI: The United States, as we discussed earlier this week, has strong and deep ties to the countries of the region, both bilaterally and multilaterally through regional organizations, APEC and ASEAN and others. And as demonstrated by the President and Secretary's recent visits to APEC, by the deputy's participation in the ASEAN ministerial, by the deputy's other trips to the region, I think, that commitment, that partnership is strong, is vibrant and is serving the interests of the United States and the countries of the region well.

If there are other fora, that they -- that the countries of the region feel are useful to them, that's great. We don't see that as coming at the expense of our engagement. And as far as the outcome or the proceedings of this gathering, I'd refer you to the parties participating.

QUESTION: So you don't feel excluded or left out?

MR. ERELI: I -- you know, it's up to the countries of the region to decide how they want to cooperate and engage with each other. The United States feels very much a part of the region. We -- in security terms, in economic terms, in political terms, are intimately linked to affairs in the region and I think that we all recognize a shared interest in meeting common goals. And there are just innumerable examples, innumerable examples, and I don't think this East Asia summit does anything to attenuate that partnership and cooperation.
Ball, Error and a Strike. Shared interest and all, play ball!! Any time you see any answers using words like "fora" and "attenuate" you can be sure they worked out the questions&answers before the game. Two and Two.

QUESTION: A different issue. On Venezuela. Could you speak to the Administration's opinion of President Chavez's decision to sell discounted oil to -- for distribution to low-income Americans?

MR. ERELI: I would note that CITGO is providing discounted oil to low-income communities in the United States. CITGO is an American company. They're helping Americans in need. That is a good thing. That is as it should be. I would also note that in addition to corporate America taking an interest in needy citizens, the government is doing its part and it's important to point that out. In this quarter alone, the Department of Health and Human Services has already disbursed $1.3 billion to the states for home heating assistance to low-income Americans. And the President has asked for an additional $700 million for this purpose during this fiscal year.

So we're all doing what we can to help Americans hit by the high price of heating oil. First and foremost, the American Government but also American companies.

QUESTION: To pursue that a little bit more. Can you talk about whether or not the Administration objects to various politicians at local and state levels making their own deals for such discounted oil?

MR. ERELI: Local politicians do what local politicians do -- help their constituents.

QUESTION: And one last question if I might on President Chavez who you haven't mentioned directly -- CITGO is connected to the Venezuelan Government, to put it mildly. Do you see this -- how much of a political issue do you see it between the Bush Administration and --

MR. ERELI: We don't see this as a political issue. We don't see this as an issue that concerns the U.S. and Venezuela. We see this as an issue of an American company helping American people, which is -- which is good and right and proper. And we as a government are doing our part as well.
And we know what part that is, don't we? Strike three dollars. You're out! More spin in there (as usual) with Darfur, Egypt and several other items.

OYAITJ:
92684 : King Silvio, Dioxins, Lien Chan, Burma, Gary Webb and a set of three quotes.

TYAITJ:
54748 : Cyber-coolies, The retired supreme court judge, Henry Barron, who has spent three years compiling his report, is expected today to draw conclusions on how British intelligence worked alongside the Ulster Volunteer Force to plan the blasts. At least three of the bombing team, all now dead, have been identified as paid informers., Something Awful, Films, The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without it. While reliable figures are difficult to come by and governmental accounting and monitoring of the contracts are notoriously shoddy, the US army estimates that of the $87bn (£50.2bn) earmarked this year for the broader Iraqi campaign, including central Asia and Afghanistan, one third of that, nearly $30bn, will be spent on contracts to private companies. The myriad military and security companies thriving on this largesse are at the sharp end of a revolution in military affairs that is taking us into unknown territory - the partial privatisation of war. "This is a trend that is growing and Iraq is the high point of the trend," said Peter Singer, a security analyst at Washington's Brookings Institution. "This is a sea change in the way we prosecute warfare. There are historical parallels, but we haven't seen them for 250 years." When America launched its invasion in March, the battleships in the Gulf were manned by US navy personnel. But alongside them sat civilians from four companies operating some of the world's most sophisticated weapons systems. When the unmanned Predator drones, the Global Hawks, and the B-2 stealth bombers went into action, their weapons systems, too, were operated and maintained by non-military personnel working for private companies. , King Silvio sticks it in only a little bit, plus a bunch of other items.

TYAITJ:
18348 : Pictures of Dick are verboten.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Tom DeLay speaking to the press. Microphones and assorted tape recorders at the bottom of the frame. Overlayed speech bubble with music notes as quotemarks has him singing; "Here is the angel of the world's desire/ Placed on trial/ To hide in shrouded alley silhouettes/ With cigarette coiled/ To strike at passing voices/ Dark and suspect/ Here is the howling ire"
Caption at the bottom in small font: Alternative lyric could have just as well been from "Waiting Man"

Quote:
After the "Nut" before the war (complete in Opera hat and monocle) and "now" in khaki, I could think of nothing more, and boldly, but with some trepidation, asked if any gentleman in the audience would care to be drawn.

You can imagine the scene. A tent packed with Tommies, every available place taken up, and those who could not find seats sitting on the floor right up to the edge of the stage. Yells of delight greeted the invitation, and several made as if to come forward; finally, one unfortunate was heaved up from the struggling mass on to the stage. I always noticed after this that whenever I offered to draw anyone it was always a man with absolutely no particularly "salient" feature (I think that is the term) who presented himself. This individual could best be described as "sandy" in appearance, there was simply nothing about him to caricature, I thought in despair!

The remarks from the audience, which had been amusing before, now fairly bristled with wit, mostly of a personal nature. My subject became hotter and hotter as I seized the charcoal pencil and set off. "Wot would Liza say?" called out one in a horrified voice. "Don't smile, mate, yer might 'urt yer fice," called another. "Take 'is temperature, Miss," they called, as the perspiration began to roll off him in positive rivulets, and "Don't forget 'is auburn 'air," they implored. As the poor unfortunate had just been shorn like a lamb, preparatory to going into the trenches, this was particularly cutting. The remark, however, gave me an inspiration and the audience yelled delightedly while I put a few black dots, very wide apart, to indicate the shortage. When finished we shook hands to show there was no ill feeling, and quite cheerfully, with the expression of a hero, he bore his portrait off amid cheers from the men.

The show ended with a song, Sergeant Michael Cassidy, which was extremely popular at that time. For those who have not heard this classic, it might be as well to give one or two verses. We each had our own particular one, and then all sang the chorus.

"You've heard of Michael Cassidy, a strapping Irish boy. Who up and joined the Irish guards as Kitchener's pride and joy; When on the march you'll hear them shout, 'Who's going to win the war?'

And this is what the khaki lads all answered with a roar:

Chorus "Cassidy, Sergeant Michael Cassidy, He's of Irish nationality. He's a lad of wonderful audacity, Sergeant Michael Cassidy (bang), V.C."
Last Verse "Who was it met a dainty little Belgian refugee And right behind the firing line, would take her on his knee? Who was it, when she doubted him, got on his knees and swore He'd love her for three years or the duration of the War?"
Chorus, etc.

This was encored loudly, and someone called out for Who's your lady friend? As there were not any within miles excepting ourselves, and certainly none in the audience, it was rather amusing.

We plunged through the mud again after it was all over and were taken to have coffee and sandwiches in the Mess. We were just in time to see some of the men and wish them Good Luck, as they were being lined up preparatory to going into the trenches. Poor souls, I felt glad we had been able to do something to cheer them a little; and the guns, which we had heard distinctly throughout the concert, now boomed away louder than ever.

We had a fairly long walk back from the Mess to where the Mors car had been left owing to the mud, and at last we set off along the dark and rutty road.

One facetious French sentry insisted on talking English and flashing his lantern into the back of the ambulance, saying, "But I will see the face of each Mees for fear of an espion." He did so, murmuring "jolie--pas mal--chic," etc.! He finally left us, saying: "I am an officer. Well, ladies, good-bye all!" We were convulsed, and off we slid once more into the darkness and rain, without any lights, reaching home about 12, after a very amusing evening.

Soon after this, we started our "Pleasant Sunday Evenings," as we called them, in the top room of the hospital, and there from 8 to 9.30 every Sunday gave coffee and held impromptu concerts. They were a tremendous success, and chiefly attended by the English. They were so popular we were often at a loss for seats. Of real furniture there was very little. It consisted mostly of packing cases covered with army blankets and enormous tumpties in the middle of the floor--these latter contained the reserve store of blankets for the hospital, and excellent "pouffs" they made.

Our reputation of being able to turn our hands to anything resulted in Mr. Sitters--rushing in during 10 o'clock tea one morning with the news that two English divisions were going south from Ypres in a few days' time, and the Y.M.C.A. had been asked by the Army to erect a temporary canteen at a certain railhead during the six days they would take to pass through.

There were no lady helpers in those days, and he was at his wits' end to know where to find the staff. Could any of us be spared? None of us could, as we were understaffed already, but Lieutenant Franklin put it to us and said if we were willing to undertake the canteen, as well as our hospital work, which would mean an average of only five hours sleep in the twenty-four--she had no objection. There was no time to get fresh Y.M.C.A. workers from England with the delay of passports, etc., and of course we decided to take it on, only too pleased to have the chance to do something for our own men. A shed was soon erected, the front part being left open facing the railway lines, and counters were put up. The work, which went on night and day, was planned out in shifts, and we were driven up to the siding in Y.M.C.A. Fords or any of our own which could be spared.

Trains came through every hour averaging about 900 men on board. There was just time in between the trains to wash the cups up and put out fresh buns and chocolates. When one was in, there was naturally no time to wash the cups up at all, and they were just used again as soon as they were empty. Canteen work with a vengeance! The whole of the Highland division passed through together with the 37th. They sat in cattle trucks mostly, the few carriages there were being reserved for the officers. It was amusing to notice that at first the men thought we were French, so unaccustomed were they then to seeing any English girls out there with the exception of army Sisters and V.A.D.s.

"Do chocolat, si voos play," they would ask, and were speechless with surprise when we replied sweetly: "Certainly, which kind will you have?"

I asked one Scotchman during a pause, when the train was in for a longer interval than usual, how he managed to make himself understood up the line. "Och fine," he said, "it's not verra deefficult to parley voo. I gang into one o' them Estaminays to ask for twa drinks, I say 'twa' and, would you believe it, they always hand out three--good natured I call that, but I hae to pay up all the same," he added! --P. Beauchamp

News on rails:
Long rails!!! The Trans-Asian Railway (TAR), a potential network of over 80,000 kilometres of routes linking 27 Member States of the United Nations regional body for Asia and the Pacific, gained new momentum today under a draft agreement that could boost transport ranging from trade to tourism as far as northern Europe. The agreement, finalized at a three-day inter-governmental meeting in Bangkok organized by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), could play a catalytic role in constructing and upgrading railway lines in Asia and complements an Asian Highway Network accord that came into force in July. "Through the two agreements, UNESCAP wants to provide a solid base for a regional approach to transport development, ushering in a new era of cooperation and creating a partnership for regional integration," ESCAP Executive Secretary Kim Hak-Su said. Enough with the buzzword hell! Just get it done.

Even longer rails. Government leaders meeting in the EU-Ukraine Summit have decided to extend the Ukraine-EU partnership to cover Europe's satellite radionavigation programme GALILEO. The agreement was signed today in Kiev by Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov for Ukraine, by Prime Minister Tony Blair for the EU Presidency and by President José Manuel Barroso for the European Commission. Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of transport, noted: "Ukraine is one of the few countries that has developed a wide expertise in global satellite positioning technologies and its participation is an important step for the development of GALILEO as an international programme".

Jammed! Raspberry!!!

Under the Shrub (Sung to the tune [and words] of --Under the God:D. Bowie)

Skin dance back-a-the condo/ Skin heads getting to school
Beating on blacks with a baseball bat/ Racism back in rule
White trash picking up nazi flags/ While you was gone, there was war
This is the west, get used to it/ They put a swastika over the door

Under the god/Under the god/ One step over the red line
Under the god/Under the god/ Ten steps into the crazy-crazy

Washington heads in the toilet bowl/ Don't see supremacist hate
Rightwing dicks in their boiler suits/ Picking out who to annihilate
Toxic jungle of Uzi trails/ Tribesmen just wouldn't live here
Fascist flare is fashion cool/ Well, you're dead--you just ain't buried ...yet

Under the god/ Under the god/ Oh-yeah
Under the god/ Under the god

As the walls came tumbling down/ So, the secrets that we shared
I believed you by the palace gates/ Now the savage days are here

Under the god/ Yeah/ Yeah
Mmmmm/ Oh-oh-oh/Oh-oh-oh

Under the god/ Under the god/ One step over the red line
Under the god/ Under the god/ One step into the crazy-crazy

Crazy eyed man with a shot gun/ Hot headed creep with a knife
Love and peace and harmony/ Love you could cult with a life

Under the god/ Under the god/ Raging down-raging down
Under the god/ Under the god

Lyrics of Hoggart Guardian readers will have empathised with Chris Martin of Coldplay, who was interviewed on the Today programme yesterday about how unfair trade hurts the poor. But, he said, it is difficult to sing about the topic, "because there are no rhymes for 'tariff' and 'subsidies'."

Also in Hog-'Arts' news-- Escape to Pig-A-Tory: an Archer adventure story. Mega-Fecal Press $0.99 (remainder)

EU privacy laws take a dark tone. Police would have access to information about calls, text messages and internet data, but not exact call content, under a deal hammered out between justice ministers in Brussels. However, each member state will be able to decide whether to keep the date for six months - the minimum - or two years, a watering down of the UK position. Britain had called for a minimum period of a year. Tonight a Home Office spokesman denied today's result was a climbdown. "We are extremely pleased to have achieved this common position," he said. "This is a real achievement. A lot of time and effort has been invested personally by the home secretary in trying to secure a deal." The agreement must still be approved by the European parliament in Strasbourg. Mr Clarke had made securing a deal on telecoms data a top priority during his chairmanship of the EU's justice and home affairs council, part of Britain's EU presidency - not least in the wake of the London bombings in July. The home secretary called phone and internet data "the golden thread" of anti-terror investigations. If adopted, the deal will require telecommunications firms to store which numbers were dialled, the time and duration of calls, the location of the caller throughout and at the end of the call, and the location of the mobile phone being dialled. Details of calls that connect but are unanswered would be also archived, because these can be signals to accomplices or used to detonate bombs.

Burma!!! Mr Bolton wrote to the Security Council on Tuesday to request a briefing on Burma, or Myanmar, citing "the deteriorating situation" there. He pointed to Burma as a source of regional instability because of its poor record on drug trafficking, widespread human rights abuses and stalled transition to democracy. An attempt in June to get the Council to discuss the situation failed after it was blocked by Russia, backed by China and Algeria, on the grounds it fell outside its mandate of ensuring international peace and security. Speaking to the BBC's Newshour programme on Friday, Mr Bolton welcomed the Security Council's change of tack. "We think it [Burma] does amount to a threat to international peace and security," he said.

African Anglican bishops have blocked the appointment of a "pro-gay" bishop in Malawi. Liberal British vicar, Rev Nicholas Henderson, was rejected for his support for gay rights, the Anglican Church of Central Africa said in a statement. He was bishop-elect of the Lake Malawi diocese, but his association with the theologically liberal Modern Church People's Union made him "unsuitable". The Anglican Church in Africa takes a conservative view of homosexuality. GNAM branch of the GNAA calls for boycott ...no I read that wrong, Boys in Cots, so did the clerics.

Free and not dead press!!! A prosecutor in Istanbul has filed charges against five prominent Turkish newspaper columnists who are accused of insulting the judiciary. It is the latest in a series of cases brought against some of the best-known writers under a controversial Article 301 of the new penal code. More than 60 of them are on trial under Article 301 that makes it a crime to insult Turkishness or state organs. EU officials say Article 301 is the cause for serious concern.

US labour market 'more buoyant' No shit? Hell, in NOLA they we're even floating.

Juan says: The blame in Plame stays mostly the same.

SD-DPB League Softball continues... Sean McCormack doing a couple of practice spins before heading to the plate...He looks a little nervous... and there's the pitch.
QUESTION: You can't talk about intelligence but you can talk about the principles of the United States, so are you able to enunciate for the Europeans what your principles are regarding, for example, you know, renditions? Do you think they're wrong or do you think there is a place for them?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I wouldn't be in a position to talk about any type of intelligence operations, Saul. It's just a constraint that you know that I have in talking from this podium. But just as a theoretical legal matter, I understand the practice of renditions is one that is recognized at the -- by the international system. Beyond that, I couldn't get into any of the details for you about that, Saul. You'd have to talk to some of our international law experts.
And a early strike one. One and oh rly.

QUESTION: So if you are prepared to go as far as saying that as a theoretical legal matter that's recognized, how about the issue of secret prisons? I don't know if those complaining in Europe have actually made the argument that these things are illegal. They may not like them, but are -- in principle, having secret prisons, would that be illegal?

MR. MCCORMACK: Again, what you're getting back to is the question that we spent quite a bit of time on yesterday, the substance, the core of your question. And we have all seen the news reports about the allegations of secret detainee sites. It's not a -- these are reports that I cannot confirm or deny the substance of for you. So the sort of core of your question is just not one that I can get into from any particular angle. I appreciate the fact we're trying to come at it from a different angle. I can't do that.

One thing I can do for you is I know it's of interest to all of you -- we talked about it yesterday -- is we have received a letter from the EU presidency, from Foreign Secretary Straw. The UK is currently -- currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU. And although I'm not in a position to release the letter for you, just as a matter of practice, I think that that would be something that would be up to the UK to decide whether or not they, in fact, release the letter, I can describe the gist of it for you.

I would say that what it does is it asks for information from the United States regarding press reports about the alleged detention or transportation of terrorist suspects in or through EU member states. And the letter does talk about the fact that these press reports have been -- have attracted considerable attention among European publics as well as parliaments.

So our reaction -- we have just received the letter recently. I think it was either last night or today. I didn't get the exact time. We will, as I said yesterday, endeavor to respond to this letter to the best of our ability in a timely and forthright manner. We haven't had a chance to compose that response so I'm not going to presuppose what will be contained in the response. But as I said yesterday, we will try to -- when we do provide that response to the EU -- I'll try to provide as much information as I possibly can to you about that response.

Yes.

QUESTION: Does the letter characterize detention or overflights as illegal under EU law?

MR. MCCORMACK: No, no. It talks about alleged U.S. detention or transportation. It talks in terms of the news reports and these allegations.

QUESTION: Does it do anything other than ask for information?

MR. MCCORMACK: No.

QUESTION: Have you -- you just said you don't have a specific timeline for answering that, but have you made any further progress on answering the queries that were already outstanding?

MR. MCCORMACK: I have no updates for you on that.

QUESTION: When you say it's been -- it's going to be a timely answer, is it that the Secretary will deliver the response when she's in Europe?

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah. I'm sure that this will be a question that she has discussions with her counterparts in Europe. I'm sure it will come up.

QUESTION: But you don't --

MR. MCCORMACK: As for the response to the letter, as I said, I can't give you a specific timeline at the moment, but we will do our best to respond in as timely a manner as possible.

Yes.

QUESTION: Wouldn't it be awkward, though, for her to be in Europe without having given a response on this? I mean, do you expect to be able to do it before she leaves?

MR. MCCORMACK: We'll see what the timeline is. At this point I can't speak to exactly when we will provide a response to Foreign Secretary's Straw's letter. I can say that the Secretary will look forward to having whatever discussions concerning this matter do arise in her meetings in Europe.

I would note one thing -- yesterday -- from yesterday's discussion. I would underline it again for you today. All of these questions concerning these allegations of overflights and secret detainee sites for those who may have engaged or intended to engage in terrorist activities all take place within the context of fighting a war against terrorism. As I said yesterday, this is a different kind of war. This is a war in which countries -- European, American and others around the world -- employ all their aspects of national power in order to fight a shadowy enemy, an enemy that doesn't recognize any rules, doesn't recognize any laws, doesn't recognize any regulations. Their sole intent is to try to kill innocent civilians in an attempt to undermine our way of life.

So that is not to say the United States acts in contravention to its laws, the Constitution or its international obligations. But it is to say that this is a different kind of war in which we use our military assets, that we use our assets to dry up terrorist financing, that we use our law enforcement assets, that we use our intelligence assets. And inasmuch as our intelligence community and intelligence agencies are engaged in fighting this war on terrorism, I'm not in a position to talk about some potential actions that our intelligence community may or may not be engaged in. I don't think -- I think the American publics as well as foreign publics certainly understand that because to discuss -- to potentially discuss such actions undermines -- would undermine our ability to fight the war on terrorism.

So I note this just to bring to your attention, to bring to the attention of the American public as well as foreign publics, that this is a different kind of war that we're fighting. And make no mistake, we are in a war. These individuals, these groups, are intent and they continue to plot and plan to try to kill Americans, Europeans and others around the world.
And he's Riced the ball. Two and one. There are no "different" wars. Play ball.

QUESTION: You said yesterday and today a few minutes ago that those flights should be viewed in the large context on the battle against global terrorism. I'm wondering since Human Rights Watch named also Greece and Cyprus, did you ask permission from those two countries in the EU to land the planes? Because EU, Mr. McCormack, is raising now the flag for serious consequences, including losing even voting rights for those members states hosting such U.S. flights.

MR. MCCORMACK: As I said yesterday, we have received a number of different inquiries concerning these allegations and these news reports. We will endeavor to respond to those requests for information in as forthright and as timely a manner as we are possibly able. I can talk about this letter that we have received from the EU presidency. The Secretary has pledged to the German Foreign Minister that we will respond to the best of our ability to this letter from Foreign Secretary Straw.

And as for the other inquiries, I will keep you up to date as best I can in terms of our response.

QUESTION: Will you allow similar flights from EU countries to various locations in the United States of America in the name of international terrorism?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't have anything else for you.

QUESTION: Well, actually, that's what I wanted to ask you about, returning to the letter for a moment. Your phrase that she pledged to the Foreign Minister that she would respond to the best of --

MR. MCCORMACK: Those aren't her exact words, but I'm paraphrasing.

QUESTION: -- the United States would respond to the best of its ability, or words to that effect. I mean, unless I'm missing something, you don't have that many choices: You can either answer their questions release the information and then the question is answered once and for all, do these things exist and do the flights exist; you could stiff the Europeans and say, no, we're not going to answer the question; or answer the question secretly, you know, without telling us what the answer is, whereupon it would probably leak in Europe anyway. But does this letter, in your view, get us to answering the question?

MR. MCCORMACK: Let's -- we just received the letter, so I'm not going to prejudge what will be in our response. As I, you know, pledged to you yesterday, I will do -- to the best of my ability, I will try to keep you informed as to what our response is to this letter. So at this point I don't have any indication what the particular response is going to be this letter.

QUESTION: You can't elucidate the "best of our ability" thing? I mean the --

MR. MCCORMACK: At this point I can't, no.

QUESTION: To follow up on that, Sean. If, you know, if all this stuff is a matter of intelligence and classified, to what extent can the U.S. respond in a manner that, you know, the EU public will, I don't know, accept or, you know, understand?

MR. MCCORMACK: Mm-hmm. I'll have to refer you back to my answer to Anne's question, let's see what response we generate for the EU regarding this issue, and I'll try to keep you up to date on that response as best I can.

QUESTION: But you acknowledge that it's difficult because of matters of intelligence?

MR. MCCORMACK: You know, inasmuch as these news reports and these allegations refer to potential intelligence activities, I certainly, in a public forum, could not get into those things. I can't confirm or deny these allegations or these reports. But again, inasmuch as the allegations involve the intelligence community, it's not something that I could get into.

QUESTION: When you're asked these questions, you often, if not always, stress the broader context of the war on terrorism.

MR. MCCORMACK: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: And today you said, in part, you're noting that for the European publics. Now, in Europe, the debate's generally focused on other things and you haven't heard that voice very much. Are you hoping that you can reframe the debate a little bit and add that so that the European publics are aware of it?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, we think it's important that people, again, focus on the larger context in which these allegations have arisen. And I think because in the United States and some places in Europe, because there hasn't been a terrorist attack recently or some -- or in some places in Europe there hasn't been a terrorist attack, there is a tendency to think that it might not be coming. But again, make no mistake, they are plotting, they are planning and there are people in London, in Madrid and other places in Europe who have experienced terrorism who can tell you that these killers are out to target innocent civilians and also to undermine, you know, our way of life to attack the very freedoms that we are fighting to defend in -- on battlefields around the world.
I'll call an Error on the "Publics" and a strike on the battlefield. Making it three and one. More idiot spinning in there like:
QUESTION: Just out of interest, have any countries come forward and said in this, you know, global war on terror, you're very welcome to use our countries as the site for such questioning? I'll say, not -- I'm not using the word "prison sites." I'm just saying questioning.

MR. MCCORMACK: Nice try. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: No, have any countries come forward and said --

MR. MCCORMACK: I mean, that's not --

QUESTION: -- you know, all this brouhaha, we --

MR. MCCORMACK: I understand we're going to come at this from a variety of different angles. I respect that, but I don't have anything to add to my previous answers on the topic.

OYAITJ:
91833 : Today, attorneys representing the Kerry-Edwards campaign filed papers in Delaware County, Ohio to intervene in legal proceedings in defense of Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian Michael Badnarik and their legal counsel, the National Voting Rights Institute, who are seeking a recount of all votes cast for president in the Ohio 2004 general election. On November 23, at the request of the Delaware County Board of Elections, a Delaware County judge issued a temporary restraining order against Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights Institute, seeking to prevent them from initiating a recount of the presidential vote in that county. The judge issued the order without first consulting the candidates or their attorneys. Last score for Kerry Lawyers was 16997 missing, A vehicle carrying Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, was repeatedly rammed by a car while travelling through Belgrade, his office said yesterday. Mr Tadic escaped unhurt, but the incident immediately raised fears for his security., Shell dances, QUESTION: Did the Deputy Secretary tell the Prime Minister that his victory was a fraud?

MR. BOUCHER: I don't know the exact language that he used.

QUESTION: You used "fraudulent," I think.

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah, yeah. Ooooh! Yeah/Yeah/.... and a bunch of other interesting items.

TYAITJ:
53890 : King Silvio, Hutton whitewash, Thicky's plots, plus more.

TYAITJ:
17947 : Storage size is only one part of the system. Always ask how big the reader, or the media container, is first. Qu-bits anyone?

Texttoon:
Fumetti : A stock photo of Judy Miller's head composited onto a 50's pop-starlette singing on a stage. Overlayed speech bubble has her singing; "/I'm so sorry for anything I might have done /And I'm sorry/ I never meant to hurt the only one /And I'm sorry/ The best laid plans sometimes fall through /For anything that I might've done/ I apologize to you /For anything that I might've done/ I apologize to you"

The parts below don't mean a thing, it's the parts above, in the head, that holds any kind of value here. I had selected this quote several days ago, to post later on, yet I'll present it now, as it seems to be a very fitting time for it. A small amount of news, *yaitj and the texttoon too. Flame guards up? Good, I'll begin.

Quote:
Various philosophers of early historic times as well as many of the early fathers in the Christian church believed that God was a corporeal substance which in some way is manifested through fire.

In Egypt, during the early ages of Christianity, "a great dispute took place among the monks on the question, whether God is corporeal." Tertullian declared that "God is fire"; Origen, that "he is a subtle fire"; and various others that "he is body."

There is little doubt that in early historic ages the Persians, who had undertaken to purify their religion, were the strongest and purest sect of this cult; they were in fact the genuine worshippers of the pure creative principles which they believed resided in fire.

We have observed that force or spirit was originally regarded as a part of Nature, or in other words that it was a manifestation of, or an outflowing from matter, but so soon as it began to be considered as something apart from Nature, there at once arose a desire for some corporeal object to represent this unseen and occult principle.

During many of the ages of fire-worship, holy fire, although a material substance, seems to have been too subtle to clearly represent the god-idea, hence everywhere the worship of the serpent is found to be interwoven with it. In fact, so closely are serpent, fire, pillar, and other phallic faiths intermingled that it is impossible to separate them.

The Persians are by some writers said to have been the earliest fire-worshippers: by others the truth of this statement is denied, while many claim, and indeed the Maji themselves declared, that they never worshipped fire at all in any other manner than as an emblem of the divine principle which they believed resided within it. It is probable, however, from the evidence at hand, that they, like all the other nations of the globe, prior to the reformation led by Zarathustra and his daughter, had lost or nearly forgotten the profound ideas connected with the worship of Nature.

Passion, symbolized by fire, is declared by various writers to have been the first idol, but later research has proved the falsity of this assumption. It is true that at an early age of human experience the creative processes were worshipped, but such worship involved scientific and, I might say, spiritualized conceptions of the operations of Nature which in time were altogether lost sight of. Gross phallicism is clearly the result of degeneration, and of a lapse into sensuality and superstition.

I think no one can study the facts connected with fire and light as the Deity in the various countries in which this worship prevailed, without perceiving the change it gradually underwent during later ages, and the grossness of the ideas which became connected with it as compared with an earlier age when mankind "had no temples, but worshipped in the open air, on the tops of mountains."

In another portion of this work we have observed that in the rites connected with the worship of Cybele (Light or Wisdom), although phallic symbols were in use, the ceremonies were absolutely pure, and that throughout all the earlier ages her worship remained free from the abominations which characterized the worship of later times.

At what time in the history of the human race the organs of generation first began to appear as emblems of the Deity is not known. Within the earliest cave temples, those hewn from the solid rock, sculptured representations of these objects are still to be observed. Although until a comparatively recent period their true significance has been unknown, there is little doubt at the present time that they were originally used as symbols of fertility, or as emblems typifying the processes of Nature, and that at some remote period of the world's history they were worshipped as the Creator, or, at least, as representations of the creative agencies in the universe.

Concerning the origin and character of the people who executed them there is scarcely a trace in written history. Through the unravelling of extinct tongues, however, the monumental records of the ancient nations of the globe have been deciphered, and the system of religious symbolism in use among them is now understood.

A small volume by various writers, printed in London some years ago, entitled A Comparative View of the Ancient Monuments of India, says:

"Those who have penetrated into the abstruseness of Indian mythology, find that in these temples was practiced a worship similar to that practiced by all the several nations of the world, in their earliest as well as their most enlightened periods. It was paid to the Phallus by the Asiatics, to Priapus by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, to Baal-Peor by the Canaanites and idolatrous Jews. The figure is seen on the fascia which runs round the circus of Nismes, and over the portal of the Cathedral of Toulouse, and several churches of Bordeaux."

Of the Lingham and Yoni and their universal acceptance as religious emblems, Barlow remarks that it was a "worship which would appear to have made the tour of the globe and to have left traces of its existence where we might least expect to find it." In referring to the "sculptured indecencies" connected with religious rites, which, being wrought in imperishable stone, have been preserved in India and other parts of the East, Forlong says that when occurring in the temples or other sacred places they are at the present time evidently very puzzling to the pious Indians, and in their attempts to explain them they say they are placed there "in fulfilment of vows," or that they have been wrought there "as punishments for sins of a sexual nature, committed by those who executed or paid for them." It is, however, the opinion of Forlong that they are simply connected with an older and purer worship--a worship which involved the union of the sex principles as the foundation of their god-idea.

Regarding the cause for the "indecent" sculptures of the Orissa temples, the same writer quotes the following from Baboo Ragendralala Mitra, in his work on the Antiquities of Orissa.

"A vitiated taste aided by general prevalence of immorality might at first sight appear to be the most likely one; but I can not believe that libidiousness, however depraved, would ever think of selecting fanes dedicated to the worship of God, as the most appropriate for its manifestations; for it is worthy of remark that they occur almost exclusively on temples and their attached porches, and never on enclosing walls, gateways, and other non-religious structures. Our ideas of propriety, according to Voltaire, lead us to suppose that a ceremony (like the worship of Priapus) which appears to us infamous, could only be invented by licentiousness; but it is impossible to believe that depravity of manners would ever have led among any people to the establishment of religious ceremonies. It is probable, on the contrary, that this custom was first introduced in times of simplicity--that the first thought was to honor the Deity in the symbol of life which it has given us; such a ceremony may have excited licentiousness among youths, and have appeared ridiculous to men of education in more refined, more corrupt, and more enlightened times, but it never had its origin in such feelings. ... It is out of the question therefore to suppose that a general prevalence of vice would of itself, without the authority of priests and scriptures, suffice to lead to the defilement of holy temples."

Originally the Ionians, as their name indicates, were Yoni worshippers, i. e., they belonged to the sect which was driven out of India because of their stubborn refusal to worship the male energy as the Creator. During the later ages of their history, at a time when their religion had degenerated into a licensed system of vice and corruption, and after their temples had become brothels in which, in the name of religion, were practiced the most debasing ceremonies, the Greeks became ashamed of their ancient worship, and, like the Jews, ashamed also of their name.

It is believed that the Greeks received from Egypt, or the East, their first theological conceptions of God and religion. These ideas "were veiled in symbols, significant of a primitive monotheism; these, at a later period, being translated into symbolical or allegorical language, were by the poets transformed into epic or narrative myths, in which the original subject symbolized was almost effaced, whilst the allegorical expressions were received generally in a literal sense. Hence, to the many, the meaning of the ancient doctrine was lost, and was communicated only to the few, under the strictest secrecy in the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace. Thus there was a popular theology to suit the people, and a rational theology reserved for the educated, the symbolical language in both being the same, but the meaning of it being taken differently. In course of time, as knowledge makes its way among the people, and religious enlightenment with it, much of what had been received literally will relapse into its original figurative or symbolical meaning. Reason will resume her supremacy, and stereotyped dogmas will fall like pagan idols before advancing truth."

Although, during the later ages of the human career, the higher truths taught by an earlier race were lost, still a slight hint of the beauty and purity of the more ancient worship may be traced through most of the ages of the history of religion. Even among the profligate Greeks, the mysteries of Eleusis, celebrated in the temple of Ceres, were always respected. Care should be taken, however, not to confound these remnants of pure Nature- worship with that of the courtesan Venus, whose adoration, during the degenerate days of Greece, represented only the lowest and most corrupt conception of the female energy.

Down to a late date in the annals of Athens there was celebrated a religious festival called Thesmophoria. The name of this festival is derived from one of the cognomens of Ceres--the goddess "who first gave laws and made life orderly." Ceres was the divinity adored by the Amazons, and is essentially the same as the Egyptian Isis. She represents universal female Nature. The Thesmophorian rites, which are believed by most writers to have been introduced into Greece directly from Thrace, were performed by "virgins distinguished for probity in life, who carried about in procession sacred books upon their heads."

Inman, in his Ancient Faiths, quotes an oracle of Apollo, from Spencer, to the effect that "Rhea the Mother of the Blessed, and the Queen of the Gods, loved assemblages of women." As this festival is in honor of Female Nature, the various female attributes are adored as deities, Demeter being the first named by the worshippers. After a long season of fasting, and "after solemn reflection on the mysteries of life, women splendidly attired in white garments assemble and scatter flowers in honor of the Great Mother."

The food partaken of by the devotees at these festivals was cakes, very similar in shape to those which were offered to the Queen of Heaven by the women of Judah in the days of Jeremiah, an offering which it will be remembered so displeased that prophet that a curse was pronounced upon the entire people.

As the strictest secrecy prevailed among the initiated respecting these rites, the exact nature of the symbols employed at the Thesmophorian festivals is not known; it is believed, however, that it was the female emblem of generation, and that this festival was held in honor of that event which from the earliest times had been prophesied by those who believed in the superior importance of the female, namely, that unaided by the male power, a woman would bring forth, and that this manifestation of female sufficiency would forever settle the question of the ascendancy of the female principle. Through a return of the ancient ideas of purity and peace, mankind would be redeemed from the wretchedness and misery which had been the result of the decline of female power. The dual idea entertained in the Thesmophorian worship is observed in the fact that although Ceres, the Great Mother, was the principal Deity honored, Proserpine, the child, was also comprehended, and with its Mother worshipped as part of the Creator. Thus we observe that down to a late date in the history of Grecian mythology the idea of a Holy Mother with her child had not altogether disappeared as a representation of the god-idea.

To prove the worthiness of the ideas connected with the Eleusinian mysteries it is stated that "there is not an instance on record that the honor of initiation was ever obtained by a very bad man."

In Rome these mysteries took another name and were called "the rites of Bona Dea," which was but another name for Ceres. As evidence of their purity we have the following:

"All the distinguished Roman authors speak of these rites and in terms of profound respect. Horace denounces the wretch who should attempt to reveal the secrets of these rites; Virgil mentions these mysteries with great respect; and Cicero alludes to them with a greater reverence than either of the poets we have named. Both the Greeks and the Romans punished any insult offered to these mysteries with the most persevering vindictiveness. Alcibiades was charged with insulting these religious rites, and although the proof of his offense was quite doubtful, yet he suffered for it for years in exile and misery, and it must be allowed that he was the most popular man of his age."

In Greece, the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries was in the hands of the Emolpidae, one of the oldest and most respected families of antiquity. At Carthage, there were celebrated the Phiditia, religious solemnities similar to those already described in Greece. During the two or three days upon which these festivals were celebrated, public feasts were prepared at which the youth were instructed by their elders in the state concerning the principles which were to govern their conduct in after life; truth, inward purity, and virtue being set forth as essentials to true manhood. In later times, after these festivals had found their way to Rome, they gradually succumbed to the immorality which prevailed, and at last, when their former exalted significance had been forgotten, they were finally sunk into "the licentiousness of enjoyment, and the innocence of mirth was superseded by the uproar of riot and vice! Such were the Saturnalia."

From the facts connected with the mysteries of Eleusis and the Thesmophorian rites, it is evident that in its earlier stages Nature-worship was absolutely free from the impurities which came to be associated with it in later times. As the organs of generation had not originally been wholly disgraced and outraged, it is not unlikely that when the so-called "sculptured indecencies" appeared on the walls of the temples they were regarded as no more an offense against propriety and decency than was the reappearance of the cross, the emblem of life, in later times, among orthodox Christians.

Neither is it probable, in an age in which nothing that is natural was considered indecent, and before the reproductive energies had become degraded, that these symbols were any more suggestive of impurity than are the Easter offerings upon our church altars at the present time. Whatever may now be the significance of these offerings to those who present them, sure it is that they once, together with other devices connected with Nature-worship, were simply emblems of fertility--symbols of a risen and fructifying sun which by its gladdening rays re-creates and makes all things new again.

If we carefully study the religion of past ages we will discover something more than a hint of an age when the generative functions were regarded as a sacred expression of creative power, and when the reproductive organs had not through over-stimulation and abuse been tabooed as objects altogether impure and unholy, and as things too disgraceful to be mentioned above a whisper. Indeed there is much evidence going to show that in an earlier age of the world's history the degradation of mankind, through the abuse of the creative functions, had not been accomplished, and the ills of life resulting from such abuse were unknown.

We may reasonably believe that those instincts in the female which are correlated with maternal affection and which were acquired by her as a protection to the germ, or, in other words, those characters which Nature has developed in the female to insure the safety and well-being of offspring, and which in a purer and more natural stage of human existence acted as cheeks upon the energies of the male, were not easily or quickly subdued; but when through subjection to the animal nature of man these instincts or characters had been denied their natural expression, and woman had become simply the instrument of man's pleasure, the comparatively pure worship of the organs of generation as symbols of creative power began to give place to the deification of these members simply as emblems of desire, or as instruments for the stimulation of passion.

We are assured that on the banks of the Ganges, the very cradle of religion, are still to be found various remnants of the most ancient form of Nature-worship--that there are still to be observed "certain high places sacred to more primitive ideas than those represented by Vedic gods."

Here devout worshippers believe that the androgynous God of fertility, or Nature, still manifests itself to the faithful. Close beside these more ancient shrines are others representing a somewhat later development of religious faith--shrines, by means of which are indicated some of the processes involved in the earlier growth of the god-idea. Not far removed from these are to be found, also, numerous temples or places of worship belonging to a still later faith--a faith in which are revealed the "awakening and stimulation of every sensuous feeling, and which has drowned in infamy every noble impulse developed in human nature."

Of the depravity of the Jews and the immorality practiced in their religious rites, Forlong says:

"No one can study their history, liberated from the blindness which our Christian up-bringing and associations cast over us, without seeing that the Jews were probably the grossest worshippers among all those Ophi--Phallo--Solar devotees who then covered every land and sea, from the sources of the Nile and Euphrates to all over the Mediterranean coasts and isles. These impure faiths seem to have been very strictly maintained by Jews up to Hezekiah's days, and by none more so than by dissolute Solomon and his cruel, lascivious bandit-father, the brazen-faced adulterer and murderer, who broke his freely volunteered oath, and sacrificed six innocent sons of his king to his Javah."

Of Solomon he says that he devoted his energies and some little wealth "to rearing phallic and Solophallic shrines over all the high places around him, and especially in front of Jerusalem, and on and around the Mount of Olives." On each side of the entrance to his celebrated temple, under the great phallic spire which formed the portico, were two handsome columns over fifty feet high, by the side of which were the sun God Belus and his chariots.

In a description of this temple it is represented as being one hundred and twenty feet long and forty feet broad, while the porch, a phallic emblem, "was a huge tower, forty feet long, twenty feet broad, and two hundred and forty feet high." We are assured by Forlong that Solomon's temple was like hundreds observed in the East, except that its walls were a little higher than those usually seen, and the phallic spire out of proportion to the size of the structure. "The Jewish porch is but the obelisk which the Egyptian placed beside his temple; the Boodhist pillars which stood all around their Dagobas; the pillars of Hercules, which stood near the Phoenician temple; and the spire which stands beside the Christian Church."

The rites and ceremonies observed in the worship of Baal-Peor are not of a character to be described in these pages: it is perhaps sufficient to state that by them the fact is clearly established that profligacy, regulated and controlled by the priestly order as part and parcel of religion, was not confined to the Gentiles; but, on the contrary, that the religious observances of the Jews prior to the Babylonian captivity were even more gross than were those of the Assyrians or the Hindoos.

These impure faiths arose at a time when man as the sole creator of offspring became god, when the natural instincts of woman were subdued, and when passion as the highest expression of the divine force came to be worshipped as the most important attribute of humanity.

The extent to which these faiths have influenced later religious belief and observances is scarcely realized by those who have not given special attention to this subject.

It has been stated that in the time of Solon, law-giver of Athens, there were twenty temples in the various cities of Greece dedicated to Venus the courtesan, within which were practiced, in the name of religion, the most infamous rites and the most shameless self-abandonment; and that throughout Europe, down to a late period in the history of the race, religious festivals were celebrated at certain seasons of the year, at which the ceremonies performed in honor of the god of fornication were of the grossest nature, and at which the Bacchanalian orgies were only equalled by those practiced in the religious temples of Babylon.

It is impossible longer to conceal the fact that passion, symbolized by a serpent, an upright stone, and by the male and female organs of generation, the male appearing as the "giver of life," the female as a necessary appendage to it, constituted the god-idea of mankind for at least four thousand years; and, instead of being confined to the earlier ages of that period, we shall presently see that phallic worship had not disappeared, under Christianity, as late and even later than the sixteenth century.

Such has been the result of the ascendancy gained by the grosser elements in human nature: the highest idea of the Infinite passion symbolized by the organs of generation, while the principal rites connected with its worship are scenes of debauchery and self-abasement.

At the present time it is by no means difficult to trace the growth of the god-idea. First, as we have seen, a system of pure Nature-worship appeared under the symbol of a Mother and child. In process of time this particular form of worship was supplanted by a religion under which the male principle is seen to be in the ascendancy over the female. Later a more complicated system of Nature-worship is observed in which the underlying principles are concealed, or are understood only by the initiated. Lastly, these philosophical and recondite principles are forgotten and the symbols themselves receive the adoration which once belonged to the Creator. The change which the ideas concerning womanhood underwent from the time when the natural feminine characters and qualities were worshipped as God, to the days of Solon the Grecian law-giver, when women had become merely tools or slaves for the use and pleasure of men, is forcibly shown by a comparison of the character ascribed to the female deities at the two epochs mentioned. Athene who in an earlier age had represented Wisdom had in the age of Solon degenerated into a patroness of heroes; but even as a Goddess of war her patronage was as nought compared with that of the courtesan Venus, at whose shrine "every man in Greece worshipped."

The extent to which women, in the name of religion, have been degraded, and the part which in the past they have been compelled to assume in the worship of passion may not at the present time be disguised, as facts concerning this subject are well authenticated. In a former work, attention has been directed to the religious rites of Babylon, the city in which it will be remembered the Tower of Belus was situated. Here women of all conditions and ranks were obliged, once in their life, to prostitute themselves in the temple for hire to any stranger who might demand such service, which revenue was appropriated by the priests to be applied to sacred uses. This act it will be remembered was a religious obligation imposed by religious teachers and enforced by priestly rule. It was a sacrifice to the god of passion. A similar custom prevailed in Cyprus.

Most of the temples of the later Hindoos had bands of consecrated women called the "Women of the Idol." These victims of the priests were selected in their infancy by Brahmins for the beauty of their persons, and were trained to every elegant accomplishment that could render them attractive and which would insure success in the profession which they exercised at once for the pleasure and profit of the priesthood. They were never allowed to desert the temple; and the offspring of their promiscuous embraces were, if males, consecrated to the service of the Deity in the ceremonies of this worship, and, if females, educated in the profession of their mothers.

That prostitution was a religious observance, which was practiced in Eastern temples, cannot in the face of accessible facts be doubted. Regarding this subject, Inman says:

"To us it is inconceivable, that the indulgence of passion could be associated with religion, but so it was. The words expressive of 'sanctuary,' 'consecrated,' and 'sodomites' are in the Hebrew essentially the same. It is amongst the Hindoos of to-day as it was in the Greece and Italy of classic times; and we find that 'holy woman' is a title given to those who devote their bodies to be used for hire, which goes to the service of the temple."

The extent to which ages of corruption have vitiated the purer instincts of human nature, and the degree to which centuries of sensuality and superstition have degraded the nature of man, may be noticed at the present time in the admissions which are frequently made by male writers regarding the change which during the history of the race has taken place in the god-idea. None of the attributes of women, not even that holy instinct--maternal love, can by many of them be contemplated apart from the ideas of grossness which have attended the sex-functions during the ages since women first became enslaved. As an illustration of this we have the following from an eminent philologist of recent times, a writer whose able efforts in unravelling religious myths bear testimony to his mental strength and literary ability.

"The Chaldees believed in a celestial virgin who had purity of body, loveliness of person, and tenderness of affection, and she was one to whom the erring sinner could appeal with more chance of success than to a stern father. She was portrayed as a mother with a child in her arms, and every attribute ascribed to her showing that she was supposed to be as fond as any earthly female ever was."

After thus describing the early Chaldean Deity, who, although a pure and spotless virgin, was nevertheless worshipped as a mother, or as the embodiment of the altruistic principles developed in mankind, this writer goes on to say: "The worship of the woman by man naturally led to developments which our COMPARATIVELY SENSITIVE NATURES shun as being opposed to all religious feeling," which sentiment clearly reveals the inability of this writer to estimate womanhood, or even motherhood, apart from the sensualized ideas which during the ages in which passion has been the recognized god have gathered about it.

The purity of life and the high stage of civilization reached by an ancient people, and the fact that these conditions were reached under pure Nature-worship, or when the natural attributes of the female were regarded as the highest expression of the divine in the human, prove that it was neither the appreciation nor the deification of womanhood which "led to developments which sensitive natures shun as being opposed to all religious feeling," but, on the contrary, that it was the lack of such appreciation which stimulated the lower nature of man and encouraged every form of sensuality and superstition. In other words, it was the subjection of the natural female instincts and the deification of brute passion during the later ages of human history which have degraded religion and corrupted human nature.

Although at the present time it is quite impossible for scholars to veil the fact that the god-idea was originally worshipped as female, still, most modern writers who deal with this subject seem unable to understand the state of human society which must have existed when the instincts, qualities, and characters peculiar to the female constitution were worshipped as divine. So corrupt has human nature become through over-stimulation and indulgence of the lower propensities, that it seems impossible for those who have thus far dealt with this subject to perceive in the earlier conceptions of a Deity any higher idea than that conveyed to their minds at the present time by the sexual attributes and physical functions of females--namely, their capacity to bring forth, coupled with the power to gratify the animal instincts of males, functions which women share with the lower orders of life.

The fact that by an ancient race woman was regarded as the head or crown of creation, that she was the first emanation from the Deity, or, more properly speaking, that she represented Perceptive Wisdom, seems at the present time not to be comprehended, or at least not acknowledged. The more recently developed idea, that she was designed as an appendage to man, and created specially for his use and pleasure,--a conception which is the direct result of the supremacy of the lower instincts over the higher faculties,--has for ages been taught as a religious doctrine which to doubt involves the rankest heresy.

The androgynous Venus of the earlier ages, a deity which although female was figured with a beard to denote that within her were embraced the masculine powers, embodied a conception of universal womanhood and the Deity widely different from that entertained in the later ages of Greece, at a time when Venus the courtesan represented all the powers and capacities of woman considered worthy of deification.

To such an extent, in later ages, have all our ideas of the Infinite become masculinized that in extant history little except occasional hints is to be found of the fact that during numberless ages of human existence the Supreme Creator was worshipped as female.

One has only to study the Greek character to anticipate the manner in which any subject pertaining to women would be treated by that arrogant and conceited race; and, as until recently most of our information concerning the past has come through Greek sources, the distorted and one-sided view taken of human events, and the contempt with which the feminine half of society has been regarded, are in no wise surprising. We must bear in mind the fact, however, that the Greeks were but the degenerate descendants of the highly civilized peoples whom they were pleased to term "barbarians," and that they knew less of the origin and character of the gods which they worshipped, and which they had borrowed from other countries, than is known of them at the present time.

About 600 years B.C., we may believe that mankind had sunk to the lowest depth of human degradation, since which time humanity has been slowly retracting its course; not, however, with any degree of continuity or regularity, nor without lapses, during which for hundreds of years the current seemed to roll backward. Indeed when we review the history of the intervening ages, and note the extent to which passion, prejudice, and superstition have been in the ascendancy over reason and judgment, we may truly say: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth have been set on edge." --E. B. Gamble

News for any gender:
Kofi talks Kosovo. Mr. Annan has said the status talks could include the options of independence or autonomy for the province, where Albanians outnumber Serbs and other minorities by 9 to 1, but Serbian officials have already rejected the idea of independence.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the story that never quits. "The detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political leaders wrongfully imprisoned in Myanmar is a travesty of justice," said Catherine Baber, Deputy Asia Director at Amnesty International. "The Burmese authorities should take this opportunity to release all peaceful critics, and advance measures to allow political dialogue to take place without fear of recrimination." Same old song and dance by all parties.

Questions about the selection for the CEO of Thicky's Big Adventure Park. This farce is being played out at a time when the people of Zimbabwe face increasingly dire economic times - 75 per cent unemployment, over 300 per cent inflation and acute shortages of necessities of all descriptions caused by gross economic mismanagement. It has been estimated that the World Food Programme (WFP) will soon be feeding some 4.3 million Zimbabweans, or about a third of the population.

Putin Seems to be playing the same game. A pro-Kremlin party is leading after Sunday's parliamentary elections in Chechnya, held amid tight security. United Russia won about 60% of the vote, according to early returns in the North Caucasus republic, which has been ravaged by more than a decade of war. Chechen separatist rebels and human rights activists dismissed the vote. European parliamentary observers questioned the legitimacy of the poll, saying real power in Chechnya was "not democratic" and "out of control". The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Chechnya says the polling stations he was able to visit were memorable for their absence of voters and for the presence of armed guards.

Saddam in court again. Purple fingers anyone? Nice try there young man, but that's just blood loss from the "threads of freedom" applied by your "democracy enabler".

Also in Iraqi news. A senior Canadian official confirmed that two Canadian nationals were seized in the capital Baghdad on Saturday. The UK Foreign Office later named a Briton believed to have been abducted with them. The fourth is said to be American, but there is no confirmation. It is estimated that over the past year and a half, at least 200 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq.

In other election news -- Opposition front-runner Manuel Zelaya claims victory in the Honduras presidential election.

Free and not dead press. Police in Nepal have closed a radio station and arrested four staff members for trying to rebroadcast a BBC interview with the Maoist rebel leader. In the interview, Prachanda says the rebels may reconsider their opposition to the monarchy if the king holds free elections for a constituent assembly. Radio Sagarmatha was about to broadcast when the station in the capital, Kathmandu, was raided late on Sunday. Four staff members were arrested for what police called an act of terrorism.

OYAITJ:
91516 : Visual guide to various Texttoons, Anzar, Ukraine elections, Kerry gets a thrashing, Operation Maple Leaf, and more.

TYAITJ:
53500 : Camp Delta, Toxic fleets, Dead Iraqi generals(ex), Ms. Clinton's wider roll plus a bunch of other items.

TYAITJ:
17610 : Shit Another Obsolete Library.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of George W. Bush talking to the press. Overlayed speech bubble with music notes as quote marks has him singing;
"We've taken care of everything/
The words you hear, the songs you sing/
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes/
It's one for all and all for one/
We work together, common sons/
Never need to wonder how or why/"

Quote:
The subject which pressed most seriously on the mind of the good archbishop, was the conversion of the Moors, whose spiritual blindness he regarded with feelings of tenderness and charity, very different from those entertained by most of his reverend brethren.

He proposed to accomplish this by the most rational method possible. Though late in life, he set about learning Arabic, that he might communicate with the Moors in their own language, and commanded his clergy to do the same. He caused an Arabic vocabulary, grammar, and catechism to be compiled; and a version in the same tongue to be made of the liturgy, comprehending the selections from the Gospels; and proposed to extend this at some future time to the whole body of the Scriptures.

Thus unsealing the sacred oracles which had been hitherto shut out from their sight, he opened to them the only true sources of Christian knowledge; and, by endeavoring to effect their conversion through the medium of their understandings, instead of seducing their imaginations with a vain show of ostentatious ceremonies, proposed the only method by which conversion could be sincere and permanent.

These wise and benevolent measures of the good prelate, recommended, as they were, by the most exemplary purity of life, acquired him great authority among the Moors, who, estimating the value of the doctrine by its fruits, were well inclined to listen to it, and numbers were daily added to the church.

The progress of proselytism, however, was necessarily slow and painful among a people reared from the cradle, not merely in antipathy to, but abhorrence of, Christianity; who were severed from the Christian community by strong dissimilarity of language, habits, and institutions; and now indissolubly knit together by a common sense of national misfortune. Many of the more zealous clergy and religious persons, conceiving, indeed, this barrier altogether insurmountable, were desirous of seeing it swept away at once by the strong arm of power.

They represented to the sovereigns, that it seemed like insensibility to the goodness of Providence, which had delivered the infidels into their hands, to allow them any longer to usurp the fair inheritance of the Christians, and that the whole of the stiff- necked race of Mahomet might justly be required to submit without exception to instant baptism, or to sell their estates and remove to Africa. This, they maintained, could be scarcely regarded as an infringement of the treaty, since the Moors would be so great gainers on the score of their eternal salvation; to say nothing of the indispensableness of such a measure to the permanent tranquillity and security of the kingdom.

But these considerations, "just and holy as they were," to borrow the words of a devout Spaniard, failed to convince the sovereigns, who resolved to abide by their royal word, and to trust to the conciliatory measures now in progress, and a longer and more intimate intercourse with the Christians, as the only legitimate means for accomplishing their object. Accordingly, we find the various public ordinances, as low down as 1499, recognizing this principle, by the respect which they show for the most trivial usages of the Moors, and by their sanctioning no other stimulant to conversion than the amelioration of their condition.

Among those in favor of more active measures was Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo. Having followed the court to Granada in the autumn of 1499, he took the occasion to communicate his views to Talavera, the archbishop, requesting leave at the same time to participate with him in his labor of love; to which the latter, willing to strengthen himself by so efficient an ally, modestly assented.

Ferdinand and Isabella soon after removed to Seville; but, before their departure, enjoined on the prelates to observe the temperate policy hitherto pursued, and to beware of giving any occasion for discontent to the Moors.

No sooner had the sovereigns left the city, than Ximenes invited some of the leading alfaquies, or Mussulman doctors, to a conference, in which he expounded, with all the eloquence at his command, the true foundations of the Christian faith, and the errors of their own; and, that his teaching might be the more palatable, enforced it by liberal presents, consisting mostly of rich and costly articles of dress, of which the Moors were at all times exceedingly fond. This policy he pursued for some time, till the effect became visible.

Whether the preaching or presents of the archbishop had most weight, does not appear. It is probable, however, that the Moorish doctors found conversion a much more pleasant and profitable business than they had anticipated; for they one after another declared their conviction of their errors, and their willingness to receive baptism. The example of these learned persons was soon followed by great numbers of their illiterate disciples, insomuch that no less than four thousand are said to have presented themselves in one day for baptism; and Ximenes, unable to administer the rite to each individually, was obliged to adopt the expedient familiar to the Christian missionaries, of christening them en masse by aspersion; scattering the consecrated drops from a mop, or hyssop, as it was called, which he twirled over the heads of the multitude.

So far all went on prosperously; and the eloquence and largesses of the archbishop, which latter he lavished so freely as to encumber his revenues for several years to come, brought crowds of proselytes to the Christian fold. There were some, indeed, among the Mahometans, who regarded these proceedings as repugnant, if not to the letter, at least to the spirit of the original treaty of capitulation; which seemed intended to provide, not only against the employment of force, but of any undue incentive to conversion. Several of the more sturdy, including some of the principal citizens, exerted their efforts to stay the tide of defection, which threatened soon to swallow up the whole population of the city. But Ximenes, whose zeal had mounted up to fever heat in the excitement of success, was not to be cooled by any opposition, however formidable; and if he had hitherto respected the letter of the treaty, he now showed himself to be prepared to trample on letter and spirit indifferently, when they crossed his designs.

Among those most active in the opposition was a noble Moor named Zegri, well skilled in the learning of his countrymen, with whom he had great consideration. Ximenes having exhausted all his usual artillery of arguments and presents on this obdurate infidel, had him taken into custody by one of his officers named Leon, "a lion," says a punning historian, "by nature as well as by name," and commanded the latter to take such measures with his prisoner, as would clear the film from his eyes.

This faithful functionary executed his orders so effectually, that, after a few days of fasting, fetters, and imprisonment, he was able to present his charge to his employer, penitent to all outward appearance, and with an humble mien strongly contreating with his former proud and lofty bearing. After the most respectful obeisance to the archbishop, Zegri informed him, that "on the preceding night he had had a revelation from Allah, who had condescended to show him the error of his ways, and commanded him to receive instant baptism;" at the same time, pointing to his jailer, he "jocularly" remarked, "Your reverence has only to turn this lion of yours loose among the people, and my word for it, there will not be a Mussulman left many days within the walls of Granada." "Thus," exclaims the devout Ferreras, "did Providence avail itself of the darkness of the dungeon to pour on the benighted minds of the infidel the light of the true faith!"

The work of proselytism now went on apace; for terror was added to the other stimulants. The zealous propagandist, in the mean while, flushed with success, resolved not only to exterminate infidelity, but the very characters in which its teachings were recorded. He accordingly caused all the Arabic manuscripts which he could procure to be heaped together in a common pile in one of the great squares of the city. The largest part were copies of the Koran, or works in some way or other connected with theology; with many others, however, on various scientific subjects.

They were beautifully executed, for the most part, as to their chirography, and sumptuously bound and decorated; for, in all relating to the mechanical finishing, the Spanish Arabs excelled every people in Europe. But neither splendor of outward garniture, nor intrinsic merit of composition, could atone for the taint of heresy in the eye of the stern inquisitor; he reserved for his university of Alcala three hundred works, indeed, relating to medical science, in which the Moors were as pre-eminent in that day as the Europeans were deficient; but all the rest, amounting to many thousands, he consigned to indiscriminate conflagration.

This melancholy auto da fe, it will be recollected, was celebrated, not by an unlettered barbarian, but by a cultivated prelate, who was at that very time actively employing his large revenues in the publication of the most stupendous literary work of the age, and in the endowment of the most learned university in Spain.

It took place, not in the darkness of the Middle Ages, but in the dawn of the sixteenth century, and in the midst of an enlightened nation, deeply indebted for its own progress to these very stores of Arabian wisdom. It forms a counterpart to the imputed sacrilege of Omar, eight centuries before, and shows that bigotry is the same in every faith and every age. --W. H. Prescott

News consumed at the stake:
Indonesian "political correctness". On 1 September 2005 Rebekka, Ety and Ratna - were charged with Christianization because they allowed some Muslim children to attend their Sunday School called "Happy Week". The children had the parents permission but these women, witnesses and judges were constantly under the threats of violence from hundreds of Islamic radicals who threatened to kill the three ladies, witnesses, pastors, missionaries and even the judges if the women were acquitted. The jihadists arrived at the court in 9 trucks and brought a coffin to bury the accused if they were found not guilty. Their violent threats continued in their speeches before the session began. When the Panel of Judges read the verdict finding the three ladies guilty of all charges and sentencing them to 3 years imprisonment, the crowd erupted with "Allahu akbar" or "Allah is Greater". Also more Pakistani blasphemy shuffling [shuttling surely?].

The Camp Delta Deathwing should be fully operational by now. If they are equipped with incinerators is still a Rummy 'unknown'.

Yet another Afghan election. Occupational government version 3.1.2 applauded.

Shrub and the Vicar having a tough time controlling the press. Having a tank fire a quick round won't 'fix' it this time boys.

Here's an excellent idea for the UK and USA. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has dismissed his entire cabinet and deputy ministers after voters rejected a draft constitution in a referendum. Mr Kibaki said he would announce a new line-up of ministers in two weeks. The result is seen as a protest against Mr Kibaki, and there is speculation it might lead to a parting of ways with ministers opposed to the draft.

First Post claimed by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been declared the winner of Liberia's presidential poll, making her Africa's first elected female head of state. She took 59.4% of the vote in elections earlier this month, compared to 40.6% for former football star George Weah.

Previous FP'ers recipe was; Women's Roll: A sour old bun served on a cracked and worn plate.

Air Strikes on the usual suspects. Israeli warplanes have bombed southern Lebanon, a day after Lebanese guerrillas attacked Israeli soldiers in a border area. The planes fired rockets at a suspected outpost of the Hezbollah group. Mr. M. Jackson of Bahrain was unavailable for comment.

OYAITJ:
91201 : Deutsche Telekom, Chicken farms, HolyLand(tm), On Election Day and throughout the month of November, angry Ohio citizens have expressed frustration with long lines, malfunctioning voting machines and undelivered absentee ballots. There have been inconsistencies in the unofficial reports of the election, including an error in one Franklin County precinct that gave George Bush 3,893 more votes than actually cast for him. and more.

TYAITJ:
53006 : Tubby Black hunts cash, Berlusconi is not funny, etc.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of George W. Bush in front of a red wall, with yellow domes, attempting to open the door. Caption at the bottom; "Leadership In Action".

Quote:
"Your English critics may rail as they list," said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the moat; "but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong;--his romantic manhood, in which passion assumes the form of strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his sublime old age,--the age of serene and classic repose, where he stands like Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary locks."

"A good illustration of what the world calls his indifferentism."

"And do you know I rather like this indifferentism? Did you never have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very `storm and pressure period' of his indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified attitude which the old philosopher assumes."

"It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read the various epithets, which they apply to him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man! The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets."

"I confess, he was no saint."

"No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy. You will find it all in a convenient and concentrated, portable form in Horace's beautiful Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the old gentleman is his sensuality."

"O nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the Iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble statue."

"Very true; but you cannot say the same of some of the Roman Elegies and of that monstrous book the Elective Affinities."

"Ah, my friend, Goethe is an artist; and looks upon all things as objects of art merely. Why should he not be allowed to copy in words what painters and sculptors copy in colors and in marble?"

"The artist shows his character in the choice of his subject. Goethe never sculptured an Apollo, nor painted a Madonna. He gives us only sinful Magdalens and rampant Fauns. He does not so much idealize as realize."

"He only copies nature."

"So did the artists, who made the bronzelamps of Pompeii. Would you hang one of those in your hall? To say that a man is an artist and copies nature is not enough. There are two great schools of art; the imitative and the imaginative. The latter is the most noble, and most enduring; and Goethe belonged rather to the former. Have you read Menzel's attack upon him?"

"It is truly ferocious. The Suabian hews into him lustily. I hope you do not side with him."

"By no means. He goes too far. He blames the poet for not being a politician. He might as well blame him for not being a missionary to the Sandwich Islands."

"And what do you think of Eckermann?"

"I think he is a toady; a kind of German Boswell. Goethe knew he was drawing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly. He works very hard to make a Saint Peter out of an old Jupiter, as the Catholics did at Rome."

"Well; call him Old Humbug, or Old Heathen, or what you please; I maintain, that, with all his errors and short-comings, he was a glorious specimen of a man."

"He certainly was. Did it ever occur to you that he was in some points like Ben Franklin? a kind of rhymed Ben Franklin? The practical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and a vast number of his little poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard, versified."

"What most offends me is, that now every German jackass must have a kick at the dead lion."

"And every one who passes through Weimar must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers did of old a stone upon the grave of Manfredi, at Benevento. But, of all that has been said or sung, what most pleases me is Heine's Apologetic, if I may so call it; in which he says, that the minor poets, who flourished under the imperialreign of Goethe `resemble a young forest, where the trees first show their own magnitude after the oak of a hundred years, whose branches had towered above and overshadowed them, has fallen. There was not wanting an opposition, that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree. Men of the most warring opinions united themselves for the contest. The adherents of the old faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground. The followers of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any rate, as a barricade. In fact the tree was too high; no one could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance the Carmagnole beneath its branches. The multitude, however, venerated this tree for the veryreason, that it reared itself with such independent grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with its odor, while its branches, streaming magnificently toward heaven, made it appear, as if the stars were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.' Don't you think that beautiful?"

"Yes, very beautiful. And I am glad to see, that you can find something to admire in my favorite author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to use an old German saying, that you can drive the hens out of the garden without trampling down the beds."

"Here is the old gentleman himself!" exclaimed Flemming.

"Where!" cried the Baron, as if for the moment he expected to see the living figure of the poet walking before them.

"Here at the window,--that full-length cast. Excellent, is it not! He is dressed, as usual, in his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat crossed in front. What a magnificent head! and what a posture! He stands like a tower ofstrength. And, by Heavens! he was nearly eighty years old, when that was made."

"How do you know?"

"You can see by the date on the pedestal."
--Longfellow

News of pros and cons:
West Papua fiasco. The 1969 Act of Free Choice, intended to be an act of self-determination by the people of Indonesian-occupied West Papua, was doomed to failure from the outset suggests a Dutch government-commissioned report released today. The Papuans' fate was sealed when Indonesia's autocratic President, Suharto, whose army was in control of the territory, stipulated that no outcome 'other than a ruling in favour of Indonesia would be acceptable to him'.

Angela Merkel slated to be new German Chancellor. Her foreign policy stance is more pro-US than her predecessor. Un-possible.

O RLY? US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said he does not believe it is wrong for opponents to criticise American policy on Iraq and the War on Terror. It wouldn't stop me if you did think it was wrong.

Juan objects. They ran a brief letter of mine (eliminating my word "fabrication") stating that I take no responsibility for anything that is attributed to me--all of which they recognize is false, as they could have discovered in five minutes investigation; and if the target of the defamations were anywhere near the mainstream, those alleged quotes and other charges would certainly have been checked before publication.

Kenya change the constitution? No!

Free and not dead press.

PAUL KELLY- THE AUSTRALIAN: A question for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Can you tell us if the meeting ... Paul Kelly from The Australian newspaper. Can you tell us if the meeting looked at a possible new mission for the Australian forces in Iraq, beyond the current Australia-Japan mission when that expires next year?

And can you also tell us whether the Bush Administration would like to see Australian forces involved in some new mission beyond that current Australian-Japan mission?

RUMSFELD: Yes, sir. I'm kind of old fashioned. About five years ago when I came back to this post I decided that I would prefer to let other countries speak for themselves about things that involve their country, so I'll leave it to one of the ministers to discuss their interest or respond to the first part of your question.

With respect to the United States interest in having countries participate, that's clear. There's no question [waves hands like a spastic] but that in Afghanistan, in Iraq, the contributions of a large number of coalition countries has been significant. They've done a superb job, they have contributed to the progress, the solid progress that we've seen in both Afghanistan and in Iraq and to the extent that countries want to participate in that. We think it's a terrific thing and we encourage it.

But in terms of what took place in the meeting, I'll leave that to the ministers from Australia.

KELLY: I wonder if I could just clarify that answer, Sir; does that mean that the Bush Administration would like to see Australia involved in a new military mission beyond the current Australian-Japan operations?

RUMSFELD: I thought I answered it pretty well. I kind of liked my answer.

OYAITJ:
90999 : Pupet Polls, APEC costumes, including 'I won't sit down with Pikey', QUESTION: Therefore, do you believe that Iran is, in fact, weaponizing? Is that -- you talked about solid ground.

MR. ERELI: As I said, we believe there is solid information to substantiate Iranian -- clandestine Iranian efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems, and this is something we've been saying for quite some time. And I would note, in the context of the current discussion in the Board of Governors and regarding Iran's enrichment program, that four years ago, when we started, I think, forcefully and vocally bringing this issue to the attention of the international community, we were greeted with skepticism and doubt, and that over the course of our persistent efforts to press this issue, we succeeded in, I think, moving the pendulum in the other direction, where now the international community recognizes there's a problem, believes that our claims from before are substantiated, and as a result is working together to address the problems posed by Iran's nuclear activity, which is in contravention of many of its treaty commitments.

QUESTION: But which -- exactly what countries agree with you that your evidence is substantiated about Iran's drive?

MR. ERELI: Well, I would point to the fact that Russia, as a result of, you know, this effort, has agreed that -- not to supply fuel to Bushehr until these concerns are addressed, and if they did supply fuel, it would only be on a closed fuel cycle. If you didn't think the concerns were substantiated, or didn't think the concerns would have merit, you wouldn't do that.

And I'd also point to seven Board of Governor resolutions, adopted by consensus, that raise serious questions about Iran's program, that point to Iran's failings and that call for Iran to undertake actions to reassure the IAEA and to reassure the international community. So that are very tangible -- those are very tangible indicators.

QUESTION: None of them -- none of them say -- come out and say what you've just said, that they agree that the United States has evidence that substantiates that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

MR. ERELI: I would say --

QUESTION: Do they or do they not? I mean, the IAEA has been specific in saying, in saying not that. In saying --

QUESTION: (Inaudible) said it today.

MR. ERELI: Okay, let me, perhaps, rephrase it and say that what we're seeing in the IAEA Board of Governors, what we're seeing in our dealings with other countries is that -- compared to where we were four years ago -- is that there is a recognition that the position of the United States regarding Iran's nuclear activity is -- has merit and that there are -- that it is of concern, and that therefore, based on the fact that our position has gained currency because of our diplomacy, we see a level of consensus and a level of commitment to dealing with this problem that did not exist.

Now, on the question of a covert nuclear weapons program, there are differences of opinion. We believe that the arguments stack up in our favor. We will continue to press this case. We do not believe that a country with the world's second largest reserves of natural gas has a need for nuclear energy, and that there is no rationale other than non-peaceful for this kind of investment in this kind of activity. And we will continue to make our case.

QUESTION: But the fact that -- your answer to the first bit -- not that second part, but the answer to the first bit leads directly back to Tammy's question. You have -- yes, you have succeeded in swinging the pendulum of world opinion to share at least, if not your conclusions, your concerns. Is there not a fear that the information that was shared the other day might hurt that effort and the effort to get other people to come around to your conclusions, rather than just your concerns?

MR. ERELI: I think the point that we're consistently making is, look at this in context. Don't just focus on an enrichment -- uranium enrichment program. Don't just focus on a nuclear plant here or a nuclear plant here. But look at it in the totality of the picture. And the picture is you've got undeclared and -- undeclared nuclear activity, deliberate misinformation on nuclear activity, development of delivery systems and other technical research that, added all up, paints a very troubling picture.

And you need to look at it in that perspective, rather than just, you know, one specific issue or one specific aspect of the problem divorced from another problem, from another -- from the totality of it. And in that context, when you add it all up, it's a very troubling picture. And I think that what we're trying to do is explain that this is all part and parcel of a coordinated attempt.

QUESTION: Doesn't it strike you as unusual that you're using the exact same -- the exact opposite rationale on this that you used with Iraq, where you were telling people to focus on particularly one specific thing? Doesn't that give you any pause at all when you're standing up there?

MR. ERELI: I don't understand. I don't understand the question.

QUESTION: Nevermind... plus plenty more fun.

TYAITJ:
52891 : 'Turkey and the Strawdog', waiting for oil, Rummy TV, and more.

TYAITJ:
17123 : "Warhawk In America" A mashed song about the Quebec politico calling Bush a "Moron"

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Donald Rumsfeld speaking to the press. Overlayed speech bubble has his singing;
"It's unbelievable like a lead balloon/
So impossible to even line the tomb/
Kill that beast and fete that swine/
Scale that wall and smoke that wine/
Beat that horse and saddle up that drum/
It's unbelievable the day would finally come/"

Quote:
I was particularly fortunate to be able to secure a card of admission to the Strangers' Gallery of the Reichstag on January 17, the day set for discussion of military matters. I went to my place early--a few minutes past the noon hour, as the Reichstag usually convenes at 1 p.m. The floor was still quite empty, though the galleries were filled with people anxious, like myself, to see the show from start to finish.

The Reichstag's decorative scheme is panelled oak and gilt-paint. The members' seating space spreads fanlike round the floor, with individual seats and desks exactly like those used by schoolboys, which is not an inappropriate simile. On the extreme right are the places of the Conservative-Junker--landowners--Party; to their left sit, in succession, the Roman Catholic Clericals (who occupy the exact centre of the floor and are thus known as the Zentrum, or Centre Party). The "Centre" includes many priests, mostly Rhinelanders and Bavarians. Then come the National Liberals, the violently anti-British and anti-American Party, the Progressive People's Party, and the Social Democrats. The latter are on the "extreme left." That is why they are often so described in reports of Reichstag proceedings abroad. The Socialists comprise 111 out of 397 members of the House, so their segment of the fan is the largest of all. Next in size is the Centre Party, with eighty-five or ninety seats, the Conservatives, National Liberals, and Progressives accounting for the rest of the floor in more or less equal proportions.

The outstanding aspect of the Reichstag is the tribune for speakers, which faces the floor and is elevated above it some five or six feet. It is flanked on the right by the Government "table," consisting of individual seats and desks for Ministers. In the centre of the tribune the presiding officer, who is "President," not Speaker, of the House, sits. On his left is a row of seats and desks, like the opposite Government "table," for the members of the Federal Council. The Federal Council, I may remind my readers, consists of the delegates of the various States of Germany. They are not elected by the people, but are appointed by the rulers of the several States. They constitute practically an Imperial Upper Chamber, and are the real legislative body of the Empire. Bills require the Federal Council's approval before submission to the Reichstag.

On so-called "big days" in the Reichstag a host of small fry from the Departments collects behind the Government and this dominent Federal Council. The Chancellor, whose place is at the corner of the Government "table" nearest the President, is always shepherded by his political aide-de-camp, Dr. Wahnschaffe. There is always a group of uniformed Army and Navy officers on the tribune, too, and to-day, of course, as the Army discussions were on the agenda, there was an unusually brave array of gold braid and brass buttons. Herr von Oldenburg, a prominent Junker M.P., once said if he were the Kaiser he would send a Prussian lieutenant and ten men to close up the Reichstag.

Liebknecht arrived early, a slight and unimpressive figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. The "debate" having begun, I noticed how he listened eagerly to every word spoken, jotting down notes incessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the grandiloquent utterances about our "glorious army of Kultur-bearers" which were falling from the lips of "patriotic" party orators. Liebknecht had earned the displeasure of the House a few days before by asking some embarrassing questions about Turkish massacres in Armenia. He was jeered and laughed at hilariously; when he went on to say that a "Black Chamber" was spying on his every movement, shadowing other members of the Reichstag, even eavesdropping on their telephone conversations and opening their private correspondence.

While a Socialist comrade, Herr Davidssohn, was speaking from the desk in the centre of the tribune, at which all members must stand when addressing the House, I now saw Liebknecht walking up the aisle leading from the Socialist seats to the President's chair as unobtrusively as possible. He was walking furtively and he cut the figure of a hunted animal which is conscious that it is surrounded by other animals anxious to pounce upon it and devour it if it dares to show itself in the open.

Liebknecht has now reached the President's side. The President, a long-whiskered septuagenarian, is popularly known as "Papa" Kaempf. I see Liebknecht whispering quietly in Kaempf's ear. He is asking for permission to speak, probably as soon as comrade Davidssohn has finished making his innocuous suggestions of minor reforms to relieve discomforts in the trenches. Kaempf is shaking his head negatively. As the official executor of the House's wishes, the old man understands perfectly well that Liebknecht must under no circumstances have a hearing.

Davidssohn has now stopped talking. Liebknecht has meantime reached the bottom step of the stairway of five or six steps leading from the tribune to the level of the floor. He can be plainly seen from all sections of the House. I hear him start to say that he has a double right to be heard on the Army Bill, not only as a member of the House, but as a soldier. He gets no further. The Chamber is already filled with shouts and jeers. "Maul halten!" (shut your mouth!) bursts from a dozen places in the Conservative and rational Liberal and Centre benches. "'Raus mit ihm!" (throw him out!) is another angry taunt which I can distinguish in the bedlam. Liebknecht has been howled down many times before under similar circumstances. He is not terrified to-day, though his face is pale with excitement and anger. He stands his ground. His right arm is extended, a finger levelled accusingly at the Right and Centre from which imprecations, unceasingly, are being snarled at him. But he cannot make himself heard amid the uproar.

A Socialist colleague intervenes, Ledebour, a thin, grey-haired, actor-like person, of ascetic mien and resonant voice. "Checking free speech is an evil custom of this House," declares Ledebour. "Papa" Kaempf clangs his big hand-bell. He rules out "such improper expressions as 'evil custom' in this high House." Ledebour is the Reichstag's master of repartee. He rejoins smilingly:--"Very well, not an 'evil custom,' but not altogether a pleasant custom." Now the House is howling Ledebour down. He, too, has weathered such storms before. He waits, impassive and undismayed, for a lull in the cyclone.

It comes. "Wait, wait!" he thunders. "My friend Liebknecht and I, and others like us, have a great following. You grievously underestimate that following. Some day you will realise that. Wait----" Ledebour, like Liebknecht, can no longer proceed. The House is now boiling, an indistinguishable and most undignified pandemonium. I can detect that there is considerable ironical laughter mixed with its indignation. Members are not taking Ledebour's threat seriously.

Liebknecht has temporarily returned to his seat under cover of the tornado provoked by Ledebour's intervention, but now I see him stealthily crawling, dodging, almost panther-like, back to the steps of the tribune. He is bent upon renewing the attempt to raise his voice above the hostile din. The sight of him unchains the House's fury afresh. The racket is increased by the mad ding-donging of "Papa" Kaempf, trying hopelessly to restore a semblance of quiet. It is useless. The House will not subside until Liebknecht is driven from the speakers' tribune. He is not to have even the chance of the lull which enabled Ledebour to say a pertinent thing or two. A score of embittered deputies advance toward the tribune, red-faced and gesticulating in the German way when excitement is the dominant passion. Their fists are clenched. I say to myself that Liebknecht will this time be beaten down, if he is not content to be shouted down. He makes an unforgettable figure, alone there, assailed, barked and snarled at from every side, a private in the German Army bidding defiance to a hundred men, also in uniform, but superior officers. Mere Kanonenfutter (cannon fodder) defying the majestic authority of its helmeted and epauletted overlords! An unprecedented episode, as well as an unforgettable one. . .

Liebknecht insists upon tempting fate once more. He is going to try to outshout the crazy chorus howling at him. He succeeds, but only for an instant and to the extent of one biting phrase:--"Such treatment," I can hear him shrieking, "is unverschaemt (shameless) and unerhoert (unheard of)! It could take place in no other legislative body in the world!"

With that the one German Social Democrat of conviction, courage, and consistency retires, baffled and discomfited. Potsdam's representative in the Reichstag is at last effectually muzzled, but in the muzzling I have seen the German Government at work on a task almost as prodigious as the one it now faces on the Somme--the task of keeping the German people deaf, dumb, and blind.

Of what has meantime happened to Liebknecht the main facts are known. He was arrested on May 1 for alleged "incitement to public disorder during a state of war," tried, convicted, and sentenced to penal servitude. A couple of months previously (on March 13) he had delivered another bitter attack on the War Government in the Prussian Diet. He accused the German educational authorities of systematically teaching hate to school children and of distorting even contemporary history so as to poison their minds to the glorification of Prussian militarism. He said it was not the business of the schools to turn children into machines for the Moloch of militarism.

"Let us teach history correctly," declared Liebknecht, "and tell the children that the crime of Sarajevo was looked upon by wide circles in Austria-Hungary and Germany as a gift from Heaven. Let us. . . ."

He got no farther, for the cyclone broke. He had dared to do what no other man in Germany had done. He had publicly accused his Government of making the war. From that moment his doom was certain.

This narrative should be instructive to those Britishers and Americans who think it possible that German Socialists may one day have the power to end the war. There are two effective replies to this curious Anglo-Saxon misunderstanding of Germany. The first is that Liebknecht had not, and has not, the support of his own party; the second, that were that party twice as numerous as it is its votes would be worthless in view of the power wielded by the Kaiser's representative, von Bethmann-Hollweg, backed up by the Federal Council.

It is difficult to drive this fact into the heads of British and American people, who are both prone to judge German institutions by their own.

For, remember always that behind the dominant Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, stands the All-Highest War Lord, and behind him, what is still, if damaged, the mightiest military machine in the world--the German Army. Opposed to that there is at present a slowly increasing Socialist vote--the two have grown to about twenty.

In the beginning of the war, when all seemed to be going well, there was no disunity in Germany. When Germany was winning victory after victory, practically no censorship was needed in the newspapers; the police were tolerant; every German smiled upon every other German; soldiers went forth singing and their trains were gaily decorated with oak leaves; social democracy praised militarism.

All that has changed and the hosts who went singing on their way in the belief that they would be home in six weeks, have left behind homes many of them bereaved by the immense casualties, and most of them suffering from the increased food shortage.

Class feeling soon increased. The poor began to call the rich agrarians "usurers." The Government forbade socialistic papers such as the Vorwaerts to use the word "usurer" any more, because it was applied to the powerful junkers. Such papers as the Tagliche Rundschau and the Tageszeitung could continue to use it, however, for they applied it to the small shopkeeper who exceeded the maximum price by a fraction of a penny.

As the rigour of the blockade increased, the discontent of the small minority who were beginning to hate their own Government almost as much as, and in many cases more, than they hated enemies of Germany, assumed more threatening forms than mere discussion. Their disillusionment regarding Germany's invincibility opened their eyes to faults at home. Some of the extreme Social Democrats were secretly spreading the treasonable doctrine that the German Government was not entirely blameless in the causes of the war. It has been my custom to converse with all classes of society, and I was amazed at the increasing number of disgruntled citizens.

But the German Government is still determined to have unity. They had enlisted the services of editors, reporters, professors, parsons and cinema operators to create it; they are now giving the police an increasingly important role to maintain it.

As the German Parliament in no way resembles the British Parliament, so do the German, police in no way resemble the British police. The German police, mounted or unmounted, are armed with a revolver, a sword, and not infrequently provided with a machine-gun. They have powers of search and arrest without warrant. They are allowed at their discretion to strike or otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers. Always armed with extraordinary power, their position during the past few months has risen to such an extent that the words used in the Reichstag, "The Reign of Terror," are not an exaggeration.

Aided and even abetted by a myriad of spies and agents-provocateurs, they have placed under what is known as "preventive arrest" throughout the German Empire and Austria so great a number of civilians that the German prisons, as has been admitted, are filled to repletion.

With the Reichstag shut up, and the hold on the newspapers tightening,-what opportunity remains by which independent thought can be disseminated?

In Poland meetings to consider what they call "Church affairs," but which were really revolutionary gatherings, afforded opportunity for discussion. These have been ruled out of order.

The lectures taking place in their thousands all over Germany might afford a chance of expression of opinion, but the professors, like the pastors, are, as I have said, so absolutely dependent upon the Government for their position and promotion, that I have only heard of one of them who had the temerity to make any speech other than those of the "God-punish-England" and "We-must-hold-out" type. His resignation from the University of Munich was immediately demanded, and any number of sycophants were ready to take his place.

Clubs are illegal in Germany, and the humblest working-men's cafes are attended by spies. In my researches in the Berlin East-end I often visited these places and shared my adulterated beer and war bread with the working folk--all of them over or under military age.

One evening a shabby old man said rather more loudly than was necessary to a number of those round him:--"I am tired of reading in the newspapers how nice the war is. Even the Vorwaerts (then a Socialist paper) lies to us. I am tired of walking home night after night and finding restaurants turned into hospitals for the wounded."

He was referring in particular to the great Schultheiss working-men's restaurants in Hasenheide. His remarks were received with obvious sympathy.

A couple of nights later I went into this same place and took my seat, but it was obvious that my visit was unwelcome. I was looked at suspiciously. I did not think very much of the incident, but ten days later in passing I called again, when a lusty young fellow of eighteen, to whom I had spoken on my first visit, came forward and said to me, almost threateningly, "You are a stranger here. May I ask what you are doing?"

I said: "I am an American newspaper correspondent, and am trying to find out what I can about the ways of German working folk."

He could tell by my accent that I was a foreigner, and said: "We thought that you had told the Government about that little free speaking we had here a few days ago. You know that the little old man who was complaining about the restaurants being turned into hospitals has been arrested?"

This form of arrest, by which hundreds of people are mysteriously disappearing, is one of the burning grievances of Germany to-day. In its application it resembles what we used to read about Russian police. It has created a condition beneath the surface in Germany resembling the terrorism of the French Revolution. In the absence of a Habeas Corpus Act, the victim lies in gaol indefinitely, while the police are, nominally, collecting the evidence against him. One cannot move about very long without coming across instances of this growing form of tyranny, but I will merely give one other.

A German family, resident in Sweden, were in correspondence with a woman resident in Prussia. In one of her letters she incautiously remarked, "What a pity that the two Emperors cannot be taught what war really means to the German peoples." She had lost two sons, and her expression of bitterness was just a feminine outburst, which in any other country, would have been passed by. She was placed under preventive arrest and is still in gaol.

The police are armed with the censorship of the internal postal correspondence, telegrams and telephones. One of the complaints of the Social Democrat members of the Reichstag is that every movement is spied upon, and their communications tampered with by what they call the "Black Chamber."

There is no reason to suppose that the debates in the closing session of the Reichstag in 1916 on police tyranny, the Press censorship, the suppression of public opinion, will lead to any result other than the familiar expressions of mild indignation--such as that which came from the National Liberal and Pan-German leader, Dr. Paasche--and perhaps a little innocent legislation. But the reports of the detailed charges against the Government constitute, even as passed by the German censorship for publication, a remarkable revelation. It should be remembered in reading the following quotations that the whole subject has been discussed in the secrecy of the Reichstag Committee, and that what is now disclosed is in the main only what the Government has been unable to hush up or hide.

In his famous speech on "preventive arrest" the Social Democratic Deputy, Herr Dittmann said:--

"Last May I remarked that the system of preventive arrest was producing a real reign of terror, and since then things have got steadily worse. The law as it was before 1848 and the Socialist Law, of scandalous memory, are celebrating their resurrection. The system of denunciation and of agents-provocateurs is in full bloom, and it is all being done under the mask of patriotism and the saving of the country. Anybody who for personal or other reasons is regarded by the professional agents-provocateurs as unsatisfactory or inconvenient is put under suspicion of espionage, or treason, or other crime. And such vague denunciations are then sufficient to deprive the victim of his freedom, without any possibility of defence being given him. In many cases such arrest has been maintained by the year without any lawful foundation for it. Treachery and low cunning are now enjoying real orgies. A criminal is duly convicted and knows his fate. The man under preventive arrest is overburdened by the uncertainty of despair, and is simply buried alive. The members of the Government do not seem to have a spark of understanding for this situation, the mental and material effects of which are equally terrible.

"Dr. Helfferich said in the Budget Committee in the case of Dr. Franz Mehring that it is better that he should be under detention than that he should be at large and do something for which he would have to be punished. According to this reasoning the best thing would be to lock up everybody and keep them from breaking the law. The ideal of Dr. Helfferich seems to be the German National Prison of which Heine spoke. The case of Mehring is classical proof of the fact that we are no longer far removed from the Helfferich ideal."

Herr Dittmann went on to say that Herr Mehring's only offence was that in a letter seized by the police he wrote to a Reichstag deputy named Herzfeld in favour of a peace demonstration in Berlin, and offered to write a fly-sheet inviting attendance at such a meeting. Mehring, who is over 70 years of age, was then locked up. Herr Dittmann continued:--

"How much longer will it be before even thoughts become criminal in Germany? Mehring is one of the most brilliant historians and writers, and one of the first representatives of German intellectual life--known as such far beyond the German frontiers. When it is now known abroad that such a man has been put under a sort of preventive arrest merely in order to cut him off from the public for political reasons, one really cannot be astonished at the low reputation enjoyed by the German Government both at home and abroad. How evil must be the state of a Government which has to lock up the first minds of the country in order to choke their opposition!" -- D. T. Curtin

Obviously I have no need for any framing text with that quote what so ever.

News armed with a bowl of frosted flakes:
A very frosted dennis the peasant and KOS have been (are still, surely?) slapping the OpenSoresMedia fools about. A venture in to the realm of online journalism by Frilly Underpants New Media (formerly Dumbass Peckerwood Interactive... and some of you know/remember the original parent company name... [ILHT] which they likely all still do). Anyways, I've got my money on they're a rake-and-pay-off scam for LuneCantalopeMardeoque International to funnel money into the likes of Judy Miller, and the rest of the "little-shits", while astroturfing themselves into the blogospshere. A further 5 bucks (Kunukistani) says David "Boy, am I bitter!" Frum will be honoured and/or showcased by this bunch within the next 60 days.

Speaking of Turd Polishers. QUESTION: Thank you. I have a two-part question. First is addressed to Madame Secretary. Madame Secretary, since you have seen the area devastated by this earthquake, and we have seen with gratitude the efforts on part of the United States troops, especially when we saw from here the flying Chinook choppers, we really feel indebted about it.

My question to you is: Do you think that the international community's support, keeping in view the devastation, matches with that? And will you ask your friends in G8 and since you are leader of the developed world, to come out to sustain the help until the last person is settled and restored?

My question to Mr. Jim Kelly and his colleagues is that the private sector of the United States and this developed world was very much forth-coming when this tsunami occurred, but unfortunately we could not see the zeal the effort of that state. Could you, sir, assure that the private sector will do the same in case of Pakistan? Thank you very much.

UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: First let me address the issue of the international community. We are strongly urging members of the international community to do more, and that is one of the reasons that we are here. I think that all of us can do more. We are here to urge the American people to do more.

You mention the tsunami. The tsunami received very widespread media coverage and so I want to challenge and urge all of our friends in the news media to help us in this path of publicizing what's happened here. The tsunami happened at the time of year after the holidays when it was a quiet time, so there was a lot of coverage for a very intense period of time.

This situation is a little different. It has lasted longer and it has the potential to continue to be an emergency situation as winter comes. As you have so many people who are without shelter and who have been left homeless, and as it gets colder and colder and the snows begin to come. Yes, we will be urging the international community -- Secretary Rice on her trip to the Middle East this week is urging other nations to step up and will be talking to the United Nations and others to urge all of us to do more because obviously this is a catastrophic event and as we witnessed today, a lot of people still need our help.

MR. MCKINNELL: I can't actually guarantee that the private sector in American does anything because we are a very large number of independent companies. But I can say, if leaders of American companies saw what I saw today that would be willing to match what Pfizer is prepared to do. Shortly after the earthquake struck we announced that we were contributing $1 million to several relief organizations and $5 million of Pfizer medicines.

Mr. Prime Minister, based on the need I saw today, I am pleased to announce we are increasing our cash contribution to $2 million and Pfizer medicines to $10 million, and if you use the $10 million, talk to me again.

In meeting with the President, I like the idea of sponsorship by anybody who is willing to be involved and be recognized. We are also going to sponsor a clinic in the affected areas, a hospital. What was that brandname again? Hughes lays out the need and he fills it. It's like fucking info-mercial dialog.

And she keeps going. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss a subject we all care deeply about: America's dialogue with the world. When I accepted this challenging new role, I promised to reinvigorate America's public diplomacy efforts. I've been on the job now for 87 days - and I suspect that on many of them, our staff thinks I've reinvigorated a little too vigorously given our growing list of new or expanded projects. As for "America's dialogue with the world"... Mr. Cheney has already made his position clear. And the feeling is, un-surprisingly, mutual. I'll take this opportunity to repeat those/his words to you "Go fuck yourself!" And Dick, fold your "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" into 5 sharp corners before inserting it into your enormous ass.

A Saudi court has sentenced a high school chemistry teacher to more than three years in prison and 750 lashes for talking to his pupils about his views on a number of current topics, such as Christianity, Judaism and the causes of terrorism. In Qassim province, north of Riyadh, the prosecution department pressed blasphemy charges against Muhammad al-Harbi, labeling the teacher an "apostate," after his students and fellow teachers filed legal complaints against him. The judge in the case, `Abdullah Dakhil, reportedly accused the teacher of "trying to sow doubt in a student's creed." On Saturday, a court in Bukairia banned him from teaching and sentenced him to 40 months in prison and public flogging of 750 lashes.

Saddam only gets a few slaps about the head.

The Nurses of Doom are in the news again. In a trial last year they were found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad. They have denied all the charges. Their defence team has argued that the virus was already present at the hospital and that the children became infected through the use of unsterilised needles. There are calls for more than a slap from the locals. There was a demonstration. Not an anti-government protest, that still remains a dangerous and almost unthinkable proposition. This was an angry demonstration by the families of the children. They burned the Bulgarian flag, threw stones and sticks at diplomats and visiting journalists and called for vengeance.

In the 'Free and not dead press' dept. A golden pen for Akbar Ganji.

OYAITJ:
90795 : Mark Thatcher, MSFUD We think our software is far more secure. It is more secure because we stand by it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software," he said. , QUESTION: Adam, can I -- one more. Are you saying, or was the Secretary saying, that you're just talking about your general concerns about Iran's missile deliver -- missile program, or is he suggesting that Iran is developing warhead designs?

MR. ERELI: I'd refer you to the specific remarks he has -- his specific remarks. I'm not going to -- I'm not in a position to elaborate on what the Secretary said. I think what we've made clear consistently is we believe Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program and they are -- and their programs to develop delivery systems are of concern and a threat to the region and to the United States.

QUESTION: Okay, but without parsing the Secretary's comments, does the U.S. believe that Iran is developing a warhead design?

MR. ERELI: I don't have a judgment to share with you on that. and more.

TYAITJ:
52454 : Tubby Black, Maher Arar, A'nold President George Bush and Tony Blair have agreed [on] an exit strategy for pulling out of Iraq, officially ending the occupation next year while committing troops to the region until 2006. etc.

TYAITJ:
16930 : Tossing off Apple. The boiled-frog OS is still working as usual. Although they seem to have reduced the rate of increase by a bit.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of PM Paul Martin speaking to the press. Overlayed speech bubble has him saying; "It'll be a cold day in hell...Hull before you get more seats than I do, Layton."

The quote today is a little rant by ol'can't-hold-his-shandy. News, nYAITJ and the texttoon too.

Quote:
After this summary view of M. Comte's conception of Positive Philosophy, it remains to give some account of his more special and equally ambitious attempt to create the Science of Sociology, or, as he expresses it, to elevate the study of social phaenomena to the positive state.

He regarded all who profess any political opinions as hitherto divided between the adherents of the theological and those of the metaphysical mode of thought: the former deducing all their doctrines from divine ordinances, the latter from abstractions. This assertion, however, cannot be intended in the same sense as when the terms are applied to the sciences of inorganic nature; for it is impossible that acts evidently proceeding from the human will could be ascribed to the agency (at least immediate) of either divinities or abstractions. No one ever regarded himself or his fellow-man as a mere piece of machinery worked by a god, or as the abode of an entity which was the true author of what the man himself appeared to do. True, it was believed that the gods, or God, could move or change human wills, as well as control their consequences, and prayers were offered to them accordingly, rather as able to overrule the spontaneous course of things, than as at each instant carrying it on.

On the whole, however, the theological and metaphysical conceptions, in their application to sociology, had reference not to the production of phaenomena, but to the rule of duty, and conduct in life. It is this which was based, either on a divine will, or on abstract mental conceptions, which, by an illusion of the rational faculty, were invested with objective validity. On the one hand, the established rules of morality were everywhere referred to a divine origin. In the majority of countries the entire civil and criminal law was looked upon as revealed from above; and it is to the petty military communities which escaped this delusion, that man is indebted for being now a progressive being.

The fundamental institutions of the state were almost everywhere believed to have been divinely established, and to be still, in a greater or less degree, of divine authority. The divine right of certain lines of kings to rule, and even to rule absolutely, was but lately the creed of the dominant party in most countries of Europe; while the divine right of popes and bishops to dictate men's beliefs (and not respecting the invisible world alone) is still striving, though under considerable difficulties, to rule mankind. When these opinions began to be out of date, a rival theory presented itself to take their place.

There were, in truth, many such theories, and to some of them the term metaphysical, in M. Comte's sense, cannot justly be applied. All theories in which the ultimate standard of institutions and rules of action was the happiness of mankind, and observation and experience the guides (and some such there have been in all periods of free speculation), are entitled to the name Positive, whatever, in other respects, their imperfections may be. But these were a small minority. M. Comte was right in affirming that the prevailing schools of moral and political speculation, when not theological, have been metaphysical. They affirmed that moral rules, and even political institutions, were not means to an end, the general good, but corollaries evolved from the conception of Natural Rights. This was especially the case in all the countries in which the ideas of publicists were the offspring of the Roman Law. The legislators of opinion on these subjects, when not theologians, were lawyers: and the Continental lawyers followed the Roman jurists, who followed the Greek metaphysicians, in acknowledging as the ultimate source of right and wrong in morals, and consequently in institutions, the imaginary law of the imaginary being Nature.

The first systematizers of morals in Christian Europe, on any other than a purely theological basis, the writers on International Law, reasoned wholly from these premises, and transmitted them to a long line of successors. This mode of thought reached its culmination in Rousseau, in whose hands it became as powerful an instrument for destroying the past, as it was impotent for directing the future. The complete victory which this philosophy gained, in speculation, over the old doctrines, was temporarily followed by an equally complete practical triumph, the French Revolution: when, having had, for the first time, a full opportunity of developing its tendencies, and showing what it could not do, it failed so conspicuously as to determine a partial reaction to the doctrines of feudalism and Catholicism. Between these and the political metaphysics (meta-politics as Coleridge called it) of the Revolution, society has since oscillated; raising up in the process a hybrid intermediate party, termed Conservative, or the party of Order, which has no doctrines of its own, but attempts to hold the scales even between the two others, borrowing alternately the arguments of each, to use as weapons against whichever of the two seems at the moment most likely to prevail.

Such, reduced to a very condensed form, is M. Comte's version of the state of European opinion on politics and society. An Englishman's criticism would be, that it describes well enough the general division of political opinion in France and the countries which follow her lead, but not in England, or the communities of English origin: in all of which, divine right died out with the Jacobites, and the law of nature and natural rights have never been favourites even with the extreme popular party, who preferred to rest their claims on the historical traditions of their own country, and on maxims drawn from its law books, and since they outgrew this standard, almost always base them on general expediency. In England, the preference of one form of government to another seldom turns on anything but the practical consequences which it produces, or which are expected from it. M. Comte can point to little of the nature of metaphysics in English politics, except "la metaphysique constitutionnelle," a name he chooses to give to the conventional fiction by which the occupant of the throne is supposed to be the source from whence all power emanates, while nothing can be further from the belief or intention of anybody than that such should really be the case.

Apart from this, which is a matter of forms and words, and has no connexion with any belief except belief in the proprieties, the severest criticism can find nothing either worse or better, in the modes of thinking either of our conservative or of our liberal party, than a particularly shallow and flimsy kind of positivism. The working classes indeed, or some portion of them, perhaps still rest their claim to universal suffrage on abstract right, in addition to more substantial reasons, and thus far and no farther does metaphysics prevail in the region of English politics. But politics is not the entire art of social existence: ethics is a still deeper and more vital part of it: and in that, as much in England as elsewhere, the current opinions are still divided between the theological mode of thought and the metaphysical. What is the whole doctrine of Intuitive Morality, which reigns supreme wherever the idolatry of Scripture texts has abated and the influence of Bentham's philosophy has not reached, but the metaphysical state of ethical science? What else, indeed, is the whole a priori philosophy, in morals, jurisprudence, psychology, logic, even physical science, for it does not always keep its hands off that, the oldest domain of observation and experiment?

It has the universal diagnostic of the metaphysical mode of thought, in the Comtean sense of the word; that of erecting a mere creation of the mind into a test or norma of external truth, and presenting the abstract expression of the beliefs already entertained, as the reason and evidence which justifies them. Of those who still adhere to the old opinions we need not speak; but when one of the most vigorous as well as boldest thinkers that English speculation has yet produced, full of the true scientific spirit, Mr Herbert Spencer, places in the front of his philosophy the doctrine that the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition is the inconceivableness of its negative; when, following in the steps of Mr Spencer, an able expounder of positive philosophy like Mr Lewes, in his meritorious and by no means superficial work on Aristotle, after laying, very justly, the blame of almost every error of the ancient thinkers on their neglecting to _verify_ their opinions, announces that there are two kinds of verification, the Real and the Ideal, the ideal test of truth being that its negative is unthinkable, and by the application of that test judges that gravitation must be universal even in the stellar regions, because in the absence of proof to the contrary, "the idea of matter without gravity is unthinkable;"--when those from whom it was least to be expected thus set up acquired necessities of thought in the minds of one or two generations as evidence of real necessities in the universe, we must admit that the metaphysical mode of thought still rules the higher philosophy, even in the department of inorganic nature, and far more in all that relates to man as a moral, intellectual, and social being.

But, while M. Comte is so far in the right, we often, as already intimated, find him using the name metaphysical to denote certain practical conclusions, instead of a particular kind of theoretical premises. Whatever goes by the different names of the revolutionary, the radical, the democratic, the liberal, the free-thinking, the sceptical, or the negative and critical school or party in religion, politics, or philosophy, all passes with him under the designation of metaphysical, and whatever he has to say about it forms part of his description of the metaphysical school of social science. He passes in review, one after another, what he deems the leading doctrines of the revolutionary school of politics, and dismisses them all as mere instruments of attack upon the old social system, with no permanent validity as social truth.

He assigns only this humble rank to the first of all the articles of the liberal creed, "the absolute right of free examination, or the dogma of unlimited liberty of conscience." As far as this doctrine only means that opinions, and their expression, should be exempt from legal restraint, either in the form of prevention or of penalty, M. Comte is a firm adherent of it: but the moral right of every human being, however ill-prepared by the necessary instruction and discipline, to erect himself into a judge of the most intricate as well as the most important questions that can occupy the human intellect, he resolutely denies. "There is no liberty of conscience," he said in an early work, "in astronomy, in physics, in chemistry, even in physiology, in the sense that every one would think it absurd not to accept in confidence the principles established in those sciences by the competent persons. If it is otherwise in politics, the reason is merely because, the old doctrines having gone by and the new ones not being yet formed, there are not properly, during the interval, any established opinions."

When first mankind outgrew the old doctrines, an appeal from doctors and teachers to the outside public was inevitable and indispensable, since without the toleration and encouragement of discussion and criticism from all quarters, it would have been impossible for any new doctrines to grow up. But in itself, the practice of carrying the questions which more than all others require special knowledge and preparation, before the incompetent tribunal of common opinion, is, he contends, radically irrational, and will and ought to cease when once mankind have again made up their minds to a system of doctrine. The prolongation of this provisional state, producing an ever-increasing divergence of opinions, is already, according to him, extremely dangerous, since it is only when there is a tolerable unanimity respecting the rule of life, that a real moral control can be established over the self-interest and passions of individuals. Besides which, when every man is encouraged to believe himself a competent judge of the most difficult social questions, he cannot be prevented from thinking himself competent also to the most important public duties, and the baneful competition for power and official functions spreads constantly downwards to a lower and lower grade of intelligence.

In M. Comte's opinion, the peculiarly complicated nature of sociological studies, and the great amount of previous knowledge and intellectual discipline requisite for them, together with the serious consequences that may be produced by even, temporary errors on such subjects, render it necessary in the case of ethics and politics, still more than of mathematics and physics, that whatever legal liberty may exist of questioning and discussing, the opinions of mankind should really be formed for them by an exceedingly small number of minds of the highest class, trained to the task by the most thorough and laborious mental preparation: and that the questioning of their conclusions by any one, not of an equivalent grade of intellect and instruction, should be accounted equally presumptuous, and more blamable, than the attempts occasionally made by sciolists to refute the Newtonian astronomy.

All this is, in a sense, true: but we confess our sympathy with those who feel towards it like the man in the story, who being asked whether he admitted that six and five make eleven, refused to give an answer until he knew what use was to be made of it. The doctrine is one of a class of truths which, unless completed by other truths, are so liable to perversion, that we may fairly decline to take notice of them except in connexion with some definite application. In justice to M. Comte it should be said that he does not wish this intellectual dominion to be exercised over an ignorant people. Par from him is the thought of promoting the allegiance of the mass to scientific authority by withholding from them scientific knowledge. He holds it the duty of society to bestow on every one who grows up to manhood or womanhood as complete a course of instruction in every department of science, from mathematics to sociology, as can possibly be made general: and his ideas of what is possible in that respect are carried to a length to which few are prepared to follow him.

There is something startling, though, when closely looked into, not Utopian or chimerical, in the amount of positive knowledge of the most varied kind which he believes may, by good methods of teaching, be made the common inheritance of all persons with ordinary faculties who are born into the world: not the mere knowledge of results, to which, except for the practical arts, he attaches only secondary value, but knowledge also of the mode in which those results were attained, and the evidence on which they rest, so far as it can be known and understood by those who do not devote their lives to its study.

We have stated thus fully M. Comte's opinion on the most fundamental doctrine of liberalism, because it is the clue to much of his general conception of politics. If his object had only been to exemplify by that doctrine the purely negative character of the principal liberal and revolutionary schools of thought, he need not have gone so far: it would have been enough to say, that the mere liberty to hold and express any creed, cannot itself be that creed.

Every one is free to believe and publish that two and two make ten, but the important thing is to know that they make four. M. Comte has no difficulty in making out an equally strong case against the other principal tenets of what he calls the revolutionary school; since all that they generally amount to is, that something ought not to be: which cannot possibly be the whole truth, and which M. Comte, in general, will not admit to be even part of it. Take for instance the doctrine which denies to governments any initiative in social progress, restricting them to the function of preserving order, or in other words keeping the peace: an opinion which, so far as grounded on so-called rights of the individual, he justly regards as purely metaphysical; but does not recognise that it is also widely held as an inference from the laws of human nature and human affairs, and therefore, whether true or false, as a Positive doctrine.

Believing with M. Comte that there are no absolute truths in the political art, nor indeed in any art whatever, we agree with him that the laisser faire doctrine, stated without large qualifications, is both unpractical and unscientific; but it does not follow that those who assert it are not, nineteen times out of twenty, practically nearer the truth than those who deny it.

The doctrine of Equality meets no better fate at M. Comte's hands. He regards it as the erection into an absolute dogma of a mere protest against the inequalities which came down from the middle ages, and answer no legitimate end in modern society. He observes, that mankind in a normal state, having to act together, are necessarily, in practice, organized and classed with some reference to their unequal aptitudes, natural or acquired, which demand that some should be under the direction of others: scrupulous regard being at the same time had to the fulfilment towards all, of "the claims rightfully inherent in the dignity of a human being; the aggregate of which, still very insufficiently appreciated, will constitute more and more the principle of universal morality as applied to daily use... a grand moral obligation, which has never been directly denied since the abolition of slavery". There is not a word to be said against these doctrines: but the practical question is one which M. Comte never even entertains--viz., when, after being properly educated, people are left to find their places for themselves, do they not spontaneously class themselves in a manner much more conformable to their unequal or dissimilar aptitudes, than governments or social institutions are likely to do it for them?

The Sovereignty of the People, again,--that metaphysical axiom which in France and the rest of the Continent has so long been the theoretic basis of radical and democratic politics,--he regards as of a purely negative character, signifying the right of the people to rid themselves by insurrection of a social order that has become oppressive; but, when erected into a positive principle of government, which condemns indefinitely all superiors to "an arbitrary dependence upon the multitude of their inferiors," he considers it as a sort of "transportation to peoples of the divine right so much reproached to kings".

On the doctrine as a metaphysical dogma or an absolute principle, this criticism is just; but there is also a Positive doctrine, without any pretension to being absolute, which claims the direct participation of the governed in their own government, not as a natural right, but as a means to important ends, under the conditions and with the limitations which those ends impose.

The general result of M. Comte's criticism on the revolutionary philosophy, is that he deems it not only incapable of aiding the necessary reorganization of society, but a serious impediment thereto, by setting up, on all the great interests of mankind, the mere negation of authority, direction, or organization, as the most perfect state, and the solution of all problems: the extreme point of this aberration being reached by Rousseau and his followers, when they extolled the savage state, as an ideal from which civilization was only a degeneracy, more or less marked and complete. -- J. S. Mill

He says that like it's bad thing. But one cannot escape the fact that in all to many ways we are just that. It's nothing to be that ashamed of, if kept to quiet din. However, when it spills out, and usually it does, there is all too much of it.

And it feasts on the young, in the battlefields. Wasted there by their political masters-- who more often than not claim the title of "Servant". To you, their gods, a higher power, but in hind sight most were servants only to their greed. It did not end on Nov 11 1919 and has not today, but one hopes that by remembering those who fought with it we may tame it yet.

News fit for a Kang:
France there will be no marching. It makes them nervous.

Turkey riot! Timm-meeeh!!! There has been a third day of violent protests in the south-east of Turkey close to the border with Iraq. Locals accuse state security officers of planting a bomb in a bookstore which killed one person on Wednesday. Another man died in the clashes that followed. The government has promised a full investigation as local media suggest gendarmerie intelligence officers may have been acting outside the law.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper has agreed to pay damages to Kojo Annan, the son of the UN secretary general, after backing down in a libel case. The paper had alleged that Mr Annan was involved in oil trading linked to the discredited Iraqi oil-for-food scheme. Questions over Mr Annan's role came as pressure grew on his father, Kofi, to resign over the oil-for-food scandal. In a British court on Friday, the paper withdrew the claims, offered an apology and agreed to pay undisclosed damages. Rightwingers in the USA suffer many casualties among the 101st keyboarders. Cable news pundits are, of course, immune to anything less than a +2 mace of the obvious.

"The stakes in the global war on terror are too high and the national interest is too important for politicians to throw out false charges." Fair enough, but the ones that are true will still remain. Nice try George.

Tigers take a sarcastic posture. Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka say they will allow Tamils to vote in the 17 November presidential election. The leader of the largest Tamil group in parliament said the rebels would not interfere with the electoral process. There will be no voting in Tiger areas but polling booths are to be set up just outside rebel-held territory. Observers say the Tamil vote is key in the close-run election. The rebels say Sinhalese leaders let them down in the past and the result is of no interest.

UN troops battle Liberian crowd is the BBC headline Supporters of Liberian presidential candidate George Weah have clashed with United Nations peacekeepers after official results showed him losing. At least one person was injured when UN forces fired tear gas and wielded batons as hundreds of people protested in Monrovia at alleged election fraud. With 97% of ballots counted, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has a lead of 18% over Mr Weah, official results show. Mr Weah has called on his supporters to react peacefully to news of his defeat. Background from Dyer from before that election. That is where Johnson-Sirleaf, for all her qualities, cannot deliver the goods. As a 66-year-old member of the old Americo-Liberian elite, she simply lacks the street credibility that might persuade the tens of thousands of recently demobilised boy soldiers with no immediate prospect of improvement in their circumstances that there is somebody in power who understands their anger and their impatience. George Weah is undoubtedly less well equipped than Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to run an efficient administration and rebuild the economy, but the brutal fact is that it will be years before Liberia can provide either jobs or education for all those angry young men who fought in Liberia's wars no matter who is president. If they lose patience, the country will tumble back into the horrors that it has just recently left behind. So the new president's main task will be to persuade them to be patient, and Weah has at least a chance of doing that.

Highlights from the weeks games: Rice league car racing, Freestyle Whirling from the whitehouse, and the State dept ball game.

Rice car driving.
QUESTION: Can I draw you out on Syria? The Syrians have first called for some kind of memo of understanding with Mehlis to get the six people, six Syrians, into some -- to an investigation. Then they launched their own investigation and that would prevent the six from going to Beirut to be questioned by Mehlis. Are you concerned about what kind of game the Syrians may be playing? Do you have -- do you believe that they are trying to stonewall (inaudible) -- and are you concerned about it?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let me just say I don't think this constitutes cooperation. The UN Security Council couldn't have been clearer. The resolution couldn't have been clearer and, in fact, more detailed about what was expected of the Syrians. They are expected to answer affirmatively, positively, yes, to whatever Mehlis needs to complete his investigation. And I do not believe that the UN Security Council resolution contemplated the Syrians negotiating how they would say yes.

So, you know, it's perhaps not surprising given the speech that Dr. Al-Shara decided to give in the Security Council meeting, which I still think was remarkable given that everybody around that table supported immediate and complete cooperation with Mehlis. So that's what's expected. That's what was anticipated in 1636 and that's really what the Syrians should do.
Oh dear, she's hit a pit crew member.
QUESTION: The trial of Saddam Hussein. Just about a quarter of his defense team is either dead or wounded. Is it time -- can he have a fair -- can you make the show of a fair trial in Iraq or should it be moved outside?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we've been very careful that this is an Iraqi process and I think that the Iraqis are going to make decisions about this trial. I think they believe that it is important to conduct it in Iraq and what we've been trying to do is to support that process. I might just note that, you know, it is obviously a tragic thing that these people were killed. There are, unfortunately, any number of people who are using high-level assassination as a way to try and disrupt any number of processes. I was just with Adil Abdul-Mahdi a couple of days ago, whose brother was assassinated.

And so it's just another indication of how these violent people are trying to disrupt processes in Iraq that are moving pretty inexorably toward a political outcome in which Iraqis, more and more Iraqis, are seeing their future in their politics, not in violence. And so I think people will look again at security. They'll look again at ways to support the trial process. But I think the Iraqis have to make any decisions about it, but it's their hope that this -- it's their very strong view that it needs to be conducted in Iraq for a number of reasons.
And crashed into the stacks of old tires.

Scott McClellan runs up to the mat.
Q I'd like you to clear up, once and for all, the ambiguity about torture. Can we get a straight answer? The President says we don't do torture, but Cheney --

MR. McCLELLAN: That's about as straight as it can be.

Q Yes, but Cheney has gone to the Senate and asked for an exemption on --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, he has not. Are you claiming he's asked for an exemption on torture? No, that's --

Q He did not ask for that?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- that is inaccurate.

Q Are you denying everything that came from the Hill, in terms of torture?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, you're mischaracterizing things. And I'm not going to get into discussions we have --

Q Can you give me a straight answer for once?

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me give it to you, just like the President has. We do not torture. He does not condone torture and he would never --

Q I'm asking about exemptions.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me respond. And he would never authorize the use of torture. We have an obligation to do all that we can to protect the American people. We are engaged --

Q That's not the answer I'm asking for --

MR. McCLELLAN: It is an answer -- because the American people want to know that we are doing all within our power to prevent terrorist attacks from happening. There are people in this world who want to spread a hateful ideology that is based on killing innocent men, women and children. We saw what they can do on September 11th --

Q He didn't ask for an exemption --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are going to --

Q -- answer that one question. I'm asking, is the administration asking for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: I am answering your question. The President has made it very clear that we are going to do --

Q You're not answering -- yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, you don't want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen, and I'm going to tell them the facts.

Q -- the American people every day. I'm asking you, yes or no, did we ask for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: And let me respond. You've had your opportunity to ask the question. Now I'm going to respond to it.

Q If you could answer in a straight way.

MR. McCLELLAN: And I'm going to answer it, just like the President -- I just did, and the President has answered it numerous times.

Q -- yes or no --

MR. McCLELLAN: Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people. We are engaged in a global war against Islamic radicals who are intent on spreading a hateful ideology, and intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

Q Did we ask for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: We are going to do what is necessary to protect the American people.

Q Is that the answer?

MR. McCLELLAN: We are also going to do so in a way that adheres to our laws and to our values. We have made that very clear. The President directed everybody within this government that we do not engage in torture. We will not torture. He made that very clear.

Q Are you denying we asked for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, we will continue to work with the Congress on the issue that you brought up. The way you characterize it, that we're asking for exemption from torture, is just flat-out false, because there are laws that are on the books that prohibit the use of torture. And we adhere to those laws.

Q We did ask for an exemption; is that right? I mean, be simple -- this is a very simple question.

MR. McCLELLAN: I just answered your question. The President answered it last week.

Q What are we asking for?

Q Would you characterize what we're asking for?

MR. McCLELLAN: We're asking to do what is necessary to protect the American people in a way that is consistent with our laws and our treaty obligations. And that's what we --

Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from the military?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, let's talk about people that you're talking about who have been brought to justice and captured. You're talking about people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad; people like Abu Zubaydah.

Q I'm asking you --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, this is facts about what you're talking about.

Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from rules that would govern the conduct of our military in interrogation practices?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are already laws and rules that are on the books, and we follow those laws and rules. What we need to make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as effectively as possible, not only --

Q What does that mean --

MR. McCLELLAN: What I'm telling you right now -- not only to protect Americans from an attack, but to prevent an attack from happening in the first place. And, you bet, when we capture terrorist leaders, we are going to seek to find out information that will protect -- that prevent attacks from happening in the first place. But we have an obligation to do so. Our military knows this; all people within the United States government know this. We have an obligation to do so in a way that is consistent with our laws and values.

Now, the people that you are bringing up -- you're talking about in the context, and I think it's important for the American people to know, are people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh -- these are -- these are dangerous killers.

Q So they're all killers --

Q Did you ask for an exemption on torture? That's a simple question, yes or no.

MR. McCLELLAN: No. And we have not. That's what I told you at the beginning.

Q You want to reserve the ability to use tougher tactics with those individuals who you mentioned.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, obviously, you have a different view from the American people. I think the American people understand the importance of doing everything within our power and within our laws to protect the American people.

Q Scott, are you saying that Cheney did not ask --

Q What is it that you want the -- what is it that you want the CIA to be able to do that the U.S. Armed Forces are not allowed to do?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into talking about national security matters, Bill. I don't do that, because this involves --

Q This would be the exemption, in other words.

MR. McCLELLAN: This involves information that relates to doing all we can to protect the American people. And if you have a different view -- obviously, some of you on this room -- in this room have a different view, some of you on the front row have a different view.

Q We simply are asking a question.

Q What is the Vice President -- what is the Vice President asking for?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's spelled out in our statement of administration policy in terms of what our views are. That's very public information. In terms of our discussions with members of Congress --

Q -- no, it's not --

MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of our members -- like I said, there are already laws on the books that we have to adhere to and abide by, and we do. And we believe that those laws and those obligations address these issues.

Q So then why is the Vice President continuing to lobby on this issue? If you're very happy with the laws on the books, what needs change?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you asked me -- you want to ask questions of the Vice President's office, feel free to do that. We've made our position very clear, and it's spelled out on our website for everybody to see.

Q We don't need a website, we need you from the podium.

MR. McCLELLAN: And what I just told you is what our view is.

Q But Scott, do you see the contradiction --

MR. McCLELLAN: Jessica, go ahead. [...]
8.2 8.1 8.3 and a 1.2 from the only judge not on crack who said, "Quite a round of Whirling from Scotty. However, the dismount was the shits".

SDDBP league softball continues with Adam Ereli at bat.
MR. ERELI: Afternoon, everyone. No statements to begin with so let's start with your questions.

QUESTION: How about the U.S. account of the Secretary's meeting with Ahmad Chalabi? And if you could touch on what U.S. interest is there in all this -- many meetings. He's seen Cheney, now you can't speak for the whole Administration. What is the U.S. interest in having these extensive talks with Chalabi?

MR. ERELI: The United States meets with a wide range of Iraqi Government officials on a regular basis, here in Washington, in Baghdad, and in international fora and conferences and other occasions. So the way to look at this visit, and the meetings with Chalabi, is in the context of a broad and sustained and intensive partnership between the United States and Iraq and consistent with our shared goals of promoting Iraq's political development, helping its economic reconstruction and assuring its security. And as I said yesterday, as Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Iraq, Dr. Chalabi has a role to play in all that.

So we meet with Dr. Chalabi, we meet with Foreign Minister Zebari, we meet with Prime Minister Jafari, we meet with Deputy President Al-Mahdi, we meet with the oil minister, the finance minister. So I guess the simple answer would be this is a meeting with an Iraqi Government official as part of a sustained and broad set of engagements with the Iraqi Government as a whole. That's number one.

Number two, the meeting itself. It was a good meeting. They had a wide-ranging discussion over a full range of issues regarding Iraq -- economic, security, political. I think in view of the fact that Dr. Chalabi does have the portfolio for energy and finance issues, the bulk of the conversation focused on those sectors, taking note of really the devastating state which Saddam Hussein's regime left Iraq's energy infrastructure and finance sectors. They talked about some of the challenges that Iraq is working to overcome, particularly in the areas of refining capacity, oil production, encouraging private and foreign investment in Iraq, on the security front looking at progress made in developing Iraqi capabilities to provide for its own security, on the political front, looking forward to the December elections. And the Secretary making the point, as we regularly do, that inclusiveness and the broadest participation possible is in everybody's interest. Spending time on both the finance and agricultural sectors and focusing on, you know, how to build institutions that operate on the basis of technocratic principles as opposed to secrecy and privilege and corruption, as was the case under Saddam Hussein.

So that's basically how I'd characterize their discussion.
"No statements" huh? Strike, Ball on a pre-prepared curveball. Play ball!

QUESTION: I guess going back to the original question -- just trying to get you to elaborate on the reasons why you -- the Secretary would meet with Chalabi. The U.S. Government does veto meeting government officials, you know, you'll say that a Hezbollah member can get in the cabinet in Lebanon, but we won't speak to them. So I want to know about the criteria for Chalabi, not making it a comparison that he is in any way connected to a guerilla group, but he is accused of having passed U.S. intelligence information to Iran. So you would imagine, therefore, he'd be extremely unpopular despite all these things that you've said in the Bush Administration. So was that criterion ignored, the fact that he is accused of passing U.S. secrets to Iran?

MR. ERELI: Well, I don't really have much to add to that issue other than to say that as far as the accusations that are out there, that's a matter under investigation. I'd leave it to the competent authorities to talk about that. As far as Chalabi's meeting with U.S. Government officials goes, he is the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and he's meeting with us in that context and it's appropriate and right and in everybody's interest to do so.

QUESTION: Well, is the issue of the investigation that -- with Iran came up?

MR. ERELI: No.

QUESTION: Did the issue of faulty intelligence come up and --

MR. ERELI: No.

QUESTION: Any intelligence --

MR. ERELI: Not that I'm aware of, nope.

QUESTION: He don't go for two years and a half. Why does he come today?

MR. ERELI: I don't think that's right. I think he's been since the last two and a half years.

QUESTION: At least eight months ago, at least eight months ago. Can we stay on Iraq?

QUESTION: Sure.

QUESTION: You've said, obviously, that they talked about security, which is key. One problem with security is it's affecting the trial of Saddam, the defense lawyers for him and for his aides, that they've decided to cut off contact with the court because of the killings.

MR. ERELI: Yeah.
It's a hit into centerfield[...] they're all scabbling.

QUESTION: Now, yesterday we asked you is it possible to have this trial in Baghdad? Do you hold to the fact that it is if you can't even get the lawyers to be there because of their problems with safety?

MR. ERELI: I'd make the following points, similar to what we said yesterday. Number one, this is an Iraqi trial. This is an Iraqi process. It's taking place under Iraqi laws, through Iraqi institutions. And those laws, those institutions and those officials will determine the way ahead. We are committed to supporting them as they do so. We leave it to them to make the decisions about what's in the best interest of Iraq and Iraqis. We will support them when they make those decisions.

There's -- to my knowledge and at this point -- there's no change in the way forward. We also made the point yesterday that we are offering security support to the facilities that are designated for the trials. I would also note that the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi security forces have offered protection for all the defense lawyers and that it is their decision whether they accept that protection or not. But certainly there are steps being taken by both the coalition and the Iraqi Government to provide the kind of security and protection that people are looking for, for the trial and that's right and good and let's move forward.

Yes.

QUESTION: Back to the thorny subject of secret prisons. The Secretary of State again was asked about this and she did her dance of the seven veils. Why can't we have just a straight answer whether these reports are true or false?

MR. ERELI: I guess it's not enough to look back at the daily transcripts of the last week to answer your question. You want it repeated?

QUESTION: They were not answered, is my point.

MR. ERELI: Pardon?

QUESTION: There's no straight answer.

MR. ERELI: The straight answer is I'm not going to comment on intelligence -- reports about intelligence.

QUESTION: Okay, then. What about the fact that she said the President doesn't support torture. Do we take it that the State Department supports John McCain's proposal not to exempt the CIA?

MR. ERELI: There's a statement of Administration policy on that issue that I would refer you to.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. ERELI: Yes. Go ahead.

QUESTION: On a new subject. Did the Secretary, when she was National Security Advisor, know of the existence of secret CIA prisons?

MR. ERELI: I don't have -- again, I told you I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters.

QUESTION: But -- but did she --

MR. ERELI: I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters.

QUESTION: Okay. Here's a follow-up to that then. The Secretary, when she's going abroad will no doubt, as she always does, try to further the President's freedom agenda.

MR. ERELI: Yes.

QUESTION: She will be doing that with a great doubt over her about whether or not she supported a policy --

MR. ERELI: I disagree.

QUESTION: That restricts freedom.

MR. ERELI: I disagree.

QUESTION: You have not done anything to clear up the doubt.

MR. ERELI: I will tell you -- and the Secretary, I think, spoke very eloquently and forcefully to this issue yesterday in talking about the principles, values, and image of the United States throughout the world. And that is one where we state clearly what we believe in. We represent an example for the rest of the world and that example has proved, I think, beneficial to the development of freedom and democracy throughout the world as evidenced, as the Secretary said yesterday, in the changes that swept the Soviet Union in the final years of that system.
And it's caught by Red Godwin for the doubleplay. Earning him the most-"value"-able player award.

OYAITJ:
90008 : Meat!!!-man, Dean, Tony Blair insisted today that no decision had been made on the future of Scottish regiments including the Black Watch, after claims that he was on the brink of a U-turn. Mr Blair clashed angrily in the Commons with the Tory leader, Michael Howard, who said his treatment of the Black Watch and soldiers' families at a time when they were in action in Iraq was "shameful". The six Scottish regiments are due to be trimmed to five and then merged under plans announced by the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon. plus plenty more.

TYAITJ:
51863 : Meat!!!-man and the Saudis, Boris Johnson, Bush Warns Extremists Seek to Rule Iraq is the headline [...] How true it is! Oh, they don't mean Bush and Co.? Never mind! and more.

TYAITJ:
16450 : A vulture on a palm bites borg.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Video capture of Karl Rove speaking at the Fedralist Society. Overlayed speech bubble with music notes as quotemarks has him singing:
"Hello, they have sent us from outer space/
Somebody from California said something about men and women/
Do you know of he don't know us?/

Wan'na try again to be on the quarter too? No!/
Wan'na try again to be on the quarter too? No!/"
Inset oval with A'nold saying in a bubble; "Hey, I'ze not a girlie man!"

I direct your attention to the lyrical title. However, I'm quite sure my many kind readers know that/the score by now. And most, if not all of you, can decode the direction(s) that my barbs have sought with it. The News and a Texttoon are included too, as always.

I have left a fair number of loose ends in my JE sequences over the spring & summer. The History of Physics and Mathematics, the seemingly endless rants to draw attention to the misunderstandings and misdirections propagated about the evolutionary writings of Huxely and Darwin, ontop of my never ending general histories of the conflicts we face today. What a mess.

I'll get back to the physics/math cycle, when time is available to me. [as] It takes a fair amount of time and mental effort to keep it all organized. And come up with the connecting stories too. But I *will* continue it, someday soon, with; Gauss, Galois, and the rest of the bright lights of the 18th and 19th centuries.

As for the Evolution thread, I'll cheat, a bit, and link(scroll down for the index) you back to one of my previous sequences on the subject. No doubt I'll be moved to present more on this at some point.

Which leaves me room/time/space to continue to fill in more about the nature of the conflicts facing us [USA surely?] today. And let's get right to this, hopefully topical and timely, quote that I've selected for this journal entry.

Quote:
That there ought to be one court of supreme and final jurisdiction, is a proposition which is not likely to be contested. The reasons for it have been assigned in another place, and are too obvious to need repetition. The only question that seems to have been raised concerning it, is, whether it ought to be a distinct body or a branch of the legislature.

The same contradiction is observable in regard to this matter which has been remarked in several other cases. The very men who object to the Senate as a court of impeachments, on the ground of an improper intermixture of powers, advocate, by implication at least, the propriety of vesting the ultimate decision of all causes, in the whole or in a part of the legislative body.

The arguments, or rather suggestions, upon which this charge is founded, are to this effect:

"The authority of the proposed Supreme Court of the United States, which is to be a separate and independent body, will be superior to that of the legislature. The power of construing the laws according to the SPIRIT of the Constitution, will enable that court to mould them into whatever shape it may think proper; especially as its decisions will not be in any manner subject to the revision or correction of the legislative body. This is as unprecedented as it is dangerous. In Britain, the judical power, in the last resort, resides in the House of Lords, which is a branch of the legislature; and this part of the British government has been imitated in the State constitutions in general. The Parliament of Great Britain, and the legislatures of the several States, can at any time rectify, by law, the exceptionable decisions of their respective courts. But the errors and usurpations of the Supreme Court of the United States will be uncontrollable and remediless."

This, upon examination, will be found to be made up altogether of false reasoning upon misconceived fact. In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which DIRECTLY empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State.

I admit, however, that the Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of the convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution; and as far as it is true, is equally applicable to most, if not to all the State governments. There can be no objection, therefore, on this account, to the federal judicature which will not lie against the local judicatures in general, and which will not serve to condemn every constitution that attempts to set bounds to legislative discretion. But perhaps the force of the objection may be thought to consist in the particular organization of the Supreme Court; in its being composed of a distinct body of magistrates, instead of being one of the branches of the legislature, as in the government of Great Britain and that of the State.

To insist upon this point, the authors of the objection must renounce the meaning they have labored to annex to the celebrated maxim, requiring a separation of the departments of power. It shall, nevertheless, be conceded to them, agreeably to the interpretation given to that maxim in the course of these papers, that it is not violated by vesting the ultimate power of judging in a PART of the legislative body. But though this be not an absolute violation of that excellent rule, yet it verges so nearly upon it, as on this account alone to be less eligible than the mode preferred by the convention. From a body which had even a partial agency in passing bad laws, we could rarely expect a disposition to temper and moderate them in the application.

The same spirit which had operated in making them, would be too apt in interpreting them; still less could it be expected that men who had infringed the Constitution in the character of legislators, would be disposed to repair the breach in the character of judges. Nor is this all. Every reason which recommends the tenure of good behavior for judicial offices, militates against placing the judiciary power, in the last resort, in a body composed of men chosen for a limited period.

There is an absurdity in referring the determination of causes, in the first instance, to judges of permanent standing; in the last, to those of a temporary and mutable constitution. And there is a still greater absurdity in subjecting the decisions of men, selected for their knowledge of the laws, acquired by long and laborious study, to the revision and control of men who, for want of the same advantage, cannot but be deficient in that knowledge. The members of the legislature will rarely be chosen with a view to those qualifications which fit men for the stations of judges; and as, on this account, there will be great reason to apprehend all the ill consequences of defective information, so, on account of the natural propensity of such bodies to party divisions, there will be no less reason to fear that the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice.

The habit of being continually marshalled on opposite sides will be too apt to stifle the voice both of law and of equity. These considerations teach us to applaud the wisdom of those States who have committed the judicial power, in the last resort, not to a part of the legislature, but to distinct and independent bodies of men. Contrary to the supposition of those who have represented the plan of the convention, in this respect, as novel and unprecedented, it is but a copy of the constitutions of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia; and the preference which has been given to those models is highly to be commended. It is not true, in the second place, that the Parliament of Great Britain, or the legislatures of the particular States, can rectify the exceptionable decisions of their respective courts, in any other sense than might be done by a future legislature of the United States.

The theory, neither of the British, nor the State constitutions, authorizes the revisal of a judicial sentence by a legislative act. Nor is there any thing in the proposed Constitution, more than in either of them, by which it is forbidden. In the former, as well as in the latter, the impropriety of the thing, on the general principles of law and reason, is the sole obstacle. A legislature, without exceeding its province, cannot reverse a determination once made in a particular case; though it may prescribe a new rule for future cases. This is the principle, and it applies in all its consequences, exactly in the same manner and extent, to the State governments, as to the national government now under consideration. Not the least difference can be pointed out in any view of the subject. It may in the last place be observed that the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority, which has been upon many occasions reiterated, is in reality a phantom.

Particular misconstructions and contraventions of the will of the legislature may now and then happen; but they can never be so extensive as to amount to an inconvenience, or in any sensible degree to affect the order of the political system. This may be inferred with certainty, from the general nature of the judicial power, from the objects to which it relates, from the manner in which it is exercised, from its comparative weakness, and from its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force. And the inference is greatly fortified by the consideration of the important constitutional check which the power of instituting impeachments in one part of the legislative body, and of determining upon them in the other, would give to that body upon the members of the judicial department.

This is alone a complete security. There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body intrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations.

While this ought to remove all apprehensions on the subject, it affords, at the same time, a cogent argument for constituting the Senate a court for the trial of impeachments.

Having now examined, and, I trust, removed the objections to the distinct and independent organization of the Supreme Court, I proceed to consider the propriety of the power of constituting inferior courts, and the relations which will subsist between these and the former. The power of constituting inferior courts is evidently calculated to obviate the necessity of having recourse to the Supreme Court in every case of federal cognizance. It is intended to enable the national government to institute or AUTHORIZE, in each State or district of the United States, a tribunal competent to the determination of matters of national jurisdiction within its limits. But why, it is asked, might not the same purpose have been accomplished by the instrumentality of the State courts?

This admits of different answers. Though the fitness and competency of those courts should be allowed in the utmost latitude, yet the substance of the power in question may still be regarded as a necessary part of the plan, if it were only to empower the national legislature to commit to them the cognizance of causes arising out of the national Constitution. To confer the power of determining such causes upon the existing courts of the several States, would perhaps be as much "to constitute tribunals," as to create new courts with the like power. But ought not a more direct and explicit provision to have been made in favor of the State courts?

There are, in my opinion, substantial reasons against such a provision: the most discerning cannot foresee how far the prevalency of a local spirit may be found to disqualify the local tribunals for the jurisdiction of national causes; whilst every man may discover, that courts constituted like those of some of the States would be improper channels of the judicial authority of the Union. State judges, holding their offices during pleasure, or from year to year, will be too little independent to be relied upon for an inflexible execution of the national laws. And if there was a necessity for confiding the original cognizance of causes arising under those laws to them there would be a correspondent necessity for leaving the door of appeal as wide as possible. In proportion to the grounds of confidence in, or distrust of, the subordinate tribunals, ought to be the facility or difficulty of appeals. And well satisfied as I am of the propriety of the appellate jurisdiction, in the several classes of causes to which it is extended by the plan of the convention.

I should consider every thing calculated to give, in practice, an UNRESTRAINED COURSE to appeals, as a source of public and private inconvenience. I am not sure, but that it will be found highly expedient and useful, to divide the United States into four or five or half a dozen districts; and to institute a federal court in each district, in lieu of one in every State. The judges of these courts, with the aid of the State judges, may hold circuits for the trial of causes in the several parts of the respective districts.

Justice through them may be administered with ease and despatch; and appeals may be safely circumscribed within a narrow compass. This plan appears to me at present the most eligible of any that could be adopted; and in order to it, it is necessary that the power of constituting inferior courts should exist in the full extent in which it is to be found in the proposed Constitution.

These reasons seem sufficient to satisfy a candid mind, that the want of such a power would have been a great defect in the plan. Let us now examine in what manner the judicial authority is to be distributed between the supreme and the inferior courts of the Union. The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only "in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which A STATE shall be a party." Public ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of their sovereigns. All questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the public peace, that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and proper that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to the highest judicatory of the nation.

Though consuls have not in strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are the public agents of the nations to which they belong, the same observation is in a great measure applicable to them. In cases in which a State might happen to be a party, it would ill suit its dignity to be turned over to an inferior tribunal.

Though it may rather be a digression from the immediate subject of this paper, I shall take occasion to mention here a supposition which has excited some alarm upon very mistaken grounds. It has been suggested that an assignment of the public securities of one State to the citizens of another, would enable them to prosecute that State in the federal courts for the amount of those securities; a suggestion which the following considerations prove to be without foundation. It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual WITHOUT ITS CONSENT.

This is the general sense, and the general practice of mankind; and the exemption, as one of the attributes of sovereignty, is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union. Unless, therefore, there is a surrender of this immunity in the plan of the convention, it will remain with the States, and the danger intimated must be merely ideal. The circumstances which are necessary to produce an alienation of State sovereignty were discussed in considering the article of taxation, and need not be repeated here.

A recurrence to the principles there established will satisfy us, that there is no color to pretend that the State governments would, by the adoption of that plan, be divested of the privilege of paying their own debts in their own way, free from every constraint but that which flows from the obligations of good faith.

The contracts between a nation and individuals are only binding on the conscience of the sovereign, and have no pretensions to a compulsive force. They confer no right of action, independent of the sovereign will.

To what purpose would it be to authorize suits against States for the debts they owe? How could recoveries be enforced?

It is evident, it could not be done without waging war against the contracting State; and to ascribe to the federal courts, by mere implication, and in destruction of a pre-existing right of the State governments, a power which would involve such a consequence, would be altogether forced and unwarrantable. Let us resume the train of our observations.

We have seen that the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court would be confined to two classes of causes, and those of a nature rarely to occur. In all other cases of federal cognizance, the original jurisdiction would appertain to the inferior tribunals; and the Supreme Court would have nothing more than an appellate jurisdiction, "with such EXCEPTIONS and under such REGULATIONS as the Congress shall make." The propriety of this appellate jurisdiction has been scarcely called in question in regard to matters of law; but the clamors have been loud against it as applied to matters of fact.

Some well-intentioned men in this State, deriving their notions from the language and forms which obtain in our courts, have been induced to consider it as an implied supersedure of the trial by jury, in favor of the civil-law mode of trial, which prevails in our courts of admiralty, probate, and chancery. A technical sense has been affixed to the term "appellate," which, in our law parlance, is commonly used in reference to appeals in the course of the civil law. But if I am not misinformed, the same meaning would not be given to it in any part of New England. There an appeal from one jury to another, is familiar both in language and practice, and is even a matter of course, until there have been two verdicts on one side.

The word "appellate," therefore, will not be understood in the same sense in New England as in New York, which shows the impropriety of a technical interpretation derived from the jurisprudence of any particular State. The expression, taken in the abstract, denotes nothing more than the power of one tribunal to review the proceedings of another, either as to the law or fact, or both. The mode of doing it may depend on ancient custom or legislative provision (in a new government it must depend on the latter), and may be with or without the aid of a jury, as may be judged advisable. If, therefore, the re-examination of a fact once determined by a jury, should in any case be admitted under the proposed Constitution, it may be so regulated as to be done by a second jury, either by remanding the cause to the court below for a second trial of the fact, or by directing an issue immediately out of the Supreme Court. But it does not follow that the re-examination of a fact once ascertained by a jury, will be permitted in the Supreme Court.

Why may not it be said, with the strictest propriety, when a writ of error is brought from an inferior to a superior court of law in this State, that the latter has jurisdiction of the fact as well as the law?

It is true it cannot institute a new inquiry concerning the fact, but it takes cognizance of it as it appears upon the record, and pronounces the law arising upon it. This is jurisdiction of both fact and law; nor is it even possible to separate them. Though the common-law courts of this State ascertain disputed facts by a jury, yet they unquestionably have jurisdiction of both fact and law; and accordingly when the former is agreed in the pleadings, they have no recourse to a jury, but proceed at once to judgment.

I contend, therefore, on this ground, that the expressions, "appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact," do not necessarily imply a re-examination in the Supreme Court of facts decided by juries in the inferior courts. The following train of ideas may well be imagined to have influenced the convention, in relation to this particular provision. The appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (it may have been argued) will extend to causes determinable in different modes, some in the course of the COMMON LAW, others in the course of the CIVIL LAW. In the former, the revision of the law only will be, generally speaking, the proper province of the Supreme Court; in the latter, the re-examination of the fact is agreeable to usage, and in some cases, of which prize causes are an example, might be essential to the preservation of the public peace.

It is therefore necessary that the appellate jurisdiction should, in certain cases, extend in the broadest sense to matters of fact. It will not answer to make an express exception of cases which shall have been originally tried by a jury, because in the courts of some of the States ALL CAUSES are tried in this mode; and such an exception would preclude the revision of matters of fact, as well where it might be proper, as where it might be improper.

To avoid all inconveniencies, it will be safest to declare generally, that the Supreme Court shall possess appellate jurisdiction both as to law and FACT, and that this jurisdiction shall be subject to such EXCEPTIONS and regulations as the national legislature may prescribe. This will enable the government to modify it in such a manner as will best answer the ends of public justice and security. This view of the matter, at any rate, puts it out of all doubt that the supposed ABOLITION of the trial by jury, by the operation of this provision, is fallacious and untrue.

The legislature of the United States would certainly have full power to provide, that in appeals to the Supreme Court there should be no re-examination of facts where they had been tried in the original causes by juries. This would certainly be an authorized exception; but if, for the reason already intimated, it should be thought too extensive, it might be qualified with a limitation to such causes only as are determinable at common law in that mode of trial.

The amount of the observations hitherto made on the authority of the judicial department is this:
- that it has been carefully restricted to those causes which are manifestly proper for the cognizance of the national judicature; that in the partition of this authority a very small portion of original jurisdiction has been preserved to the Supreme Court, and the rest consigned to the subordinate tribunals;
- that the Supreme Court will possess an appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, in all the cases referred to them, both subject to any EXCEPTIONS and REGULATIONS which may be thought advisable; that this appellate jurisdiction does, in no case, ABOLISH the trial by jury;
-that an ordinary degree of prudence and integrity in the national councils will insure us solid advantages from the establishment of the proposed judiciary, without exposing us to any of the inconveniences which have been predicted from that source.
--A. Hamilton

The question arises for any observer of the USA's political situation as to how far they have drifted from the intent of their original goals. Alex (and Madison) presented several more papers on this subject and they are all worth your time to explore. But to continue, one could easily list out the more recent and contentious decisions by that body (Supreme Court, USA) to illustrate that this current period is one of its low points. However, there has been no period from 1800 to today in which you could not draw an equally bad scenario to that of the last 5 years. Alas, one must look at it in degrees of drift at such & such a time. I'll add some more on this subject as we approach the hearings for Alito (if he can even miers^h^h^h^hake it that far [/;-P )

To wrap up, I would expect it to be very unlikely that CNN's blog maidens will wish to highlight this journal entry (or any other of mine for that matter). As so much of the above contradicts the talking heads they have been trotting out of late. But then this journal is not intended to gather publicity, "ad clicks" or popularity. I only intend to illustrate the path we took to arrive at this unique time and place --known as the present. Odd, I know, but there you/we are.

As mentioned in the last JE there will be quotes from some books I've recently read and I will fill it all out with older quotes to add some bite. Until then.

News in haste:
Fark reviews David Wade's "The 17000 Mythical Lawyers", Fiction, $14,000,000.00 -- which is now available in paperback at the original price. Every page is suitable for use as a French Battle flag.

Too bad that is such an old and busted joke. The French have won their fair share of wars and battles of the centuries. However, the aftermaths of all of them have seemed to go to hell in a hand basket regardless of them winning or losing.

The USA is well on its way to following in their footsteps. The Council of Europe has demanded an investigation into claims the US ran secret jails for terror suspects. The human rights watchdog called the claims "extremely worrying" and said such prisons would constitute a serious human rights violation.

A Basque radical has been sentenced to a year in prison for saying the King of Spain was "in charge of torturers". Arnaldo Otegi, spokesman for the banned Basque nationalist party Batasuna, was charged with slandering King Juan Carlos during a 2003 news conference. The Supreme Court's decision overturns a ruling by the Basque Superior Tribunal, which cleared Otegi in March on grounds of freedom of expression.

Mixing in African news with the south of France and Northern Spain Prosecutors in South Africa have charged two subsidiaries of the French arms company Thales with corruption. The charges, denied by the firms, were included in the indictment against the former deputy president, Jacob Zuma, due to go on trial next year.

BP head claims that oil will drop. I've been saying, and waiting, for that to happen too. Yet somehow it has stayed high enough to be over the price Cheney's boys charged in Iraq. But one should remember some if not most of that fuel was for sailboats and aircars.

Free and not dead press. BBC accounts of an uprising in the Uzbek town of Andijan earlier this year - when government troops opened fire on protesters - have resulted in the closure of the BBC bureau in the capital, Tashkent.

And as we started with one I'll end todays news section with another Fark-ism. The Duchess of Cornwall took centre stage when the royal visit to the US took in an organic farmers' market in the Californian hills. Good plan visiting a farmers market on a hill. It should be fairly safe.

OYAITJ:
89932 : A round of stiff Fallujians, sore eagles, and --QUESTION: And also, Mr. Boucher, the National Public Radio dispatched a story talking about Secretary of State Colin Powell, "He is described by Wil Hylton in Gentleman's Quarterly Magazine as 'exhausted, frustrated, and bitter.' He is said to resent the refusal of the White House to let him represent the United States at the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Athens."

May we know if that is true in order to forget the previous stories that Mr. Powell postponed his trip to Athens due to the so-called anti-Americanism in Greece for which specifically Ambassador Tom Miller is very sensitive, because 15,000 -- 1,500 Greeks in the (inaudible) of his arrival called an anti-war demonstration in Athens against the war in Iraq?

You said similar stories to Mr. --

MR. BOUCHER: No, I know what you're saying. I'm trying to decide -- well, I'm gonna. That's a pile of crap and it was a pile of crap. We said so when the original story came out. We explained the reasons why the State Department -- why the Secretary didn't go to Greece. I wouldn't start connecting all the dots that you've ever heard about the Secretary, particularly when so many of them are so unfounded.

QUESTION: But I hate to make (inaudible) this characterization because you are the only one who told Mr. Hitchens to write a similar story in the Foreign Policy --

MR. BOUCHER: No, actually, we tried to talk to Mr. Hitchens, but after we finally got a hold of him he didn't really take much from us. So I'm afraid that story falls in the same category. category == memory hole.

TYAITJ:
51388 : US soldier Jessica Lynch was raped during captivity in Iraq, according to a new biography quoted by US media. The book, written with the help of a former New York Times journalist, cites medical reports as stating she was sexually assaulted, ABC News reported. [emph mine], plus Lady Shoe-Fitz-Burns-Chips, and the 6,866,444,606.82 to 7,433,611,782,126.69 is now more than 8,000,000,000,000.00.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of PM Paul Martin sitting beside GWB in Argentina. Overlayed thought bubble for Pierre Pettigrew who sits in the second row looking at George Bush; "Why is he looking back here? And why does he have his suit on backwards?"

As it seems to be the meme of the day. (edited...again)

1. Legal first name? David

2. Were you named after anyone? No

3. Do you wish on stars? No

4. When did you last cry? A couple of days ago

5. What is your favorite lunch meat? Salami

6. What is your birth date? I'm a male, you insensitive clod!

7. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you? Likely

8. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Nooooo!

9. What are your nicknames? BlackHat, Bird, Sweetpea

10. Would you ever bungee jump? Yes

11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Velcro rules

12. Do you think that you are strong? No

13. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Raspberry

14. Shoe size? 10

15. Red or pink? Red

16. Who do you miss most? Busses

18. What color pants and shoes are you wearing? Black denim, and sandals

17. Do you want everyone you send this to, to send it back? No

19. What are you listening to right now? Bach

20. What did you eat for breakfast? Coffee

21. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Cornflower

22. What is the weather like right now? Cold & damp

23. Last person you talked to on the phone? Dave

24. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex? Hair

25. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Don't know them well enough to say

26. Favorite drink? Coffee

27. Hair color? Natural

28. Do you wear contacts? No

29. Favorite food? Cow

30. Last movie you watched? Pirates of the Caribbean

31. Favorite day of the year? Today (and it will be the same the next day)

32. Scary movies or happy endings? Scary

33. Summer or winter? Summer

34. Hugs or kisses? Hugs

35. What is your favorite dessert? Pie

36. Living arrangements? Cats, as many as will stay

37. What author do you like Reading? Hard one! But "like" as in enjoy --beyond all others? I'd have to say Umberto Eco

38. What's on your mouse pad? Dirt, tobbaco, and dead skin

39. What did you watch last night on TV? See #30

40. Favorite smell? Sugar just before it burns

41. Favorite junk food? Yes

42. Rolling Stones or Beatles? Pink Floyd

43. What's the farthest you've been from home? Home is where my hat is. And I'm usually under it, so, 0.000001 km

See SJ's JE and johndiii's for a handy blank(note #17 is missing... and #37).

There seems to be some discussion, and bewailing, of the lack of JE's from the usual suspects. Surprisingly, my JEs seem to be missed as well. So I'll post once again and attempt to find the time to continue to spread the bile more regularly. See eno2001's JE and Ethelred Unraed's JE.

However, I'll ask for a bit of patience, as I do have an all too large number of projects on the go at this time. But do feel free to email me to stir me to post-- if you need a fresh shot of vitriol.

Let's get right to the main features; Quotes, News, and the texttoon.

First off I'll mention BrownLeatherJacket has revised WAR and has updated it to include events upto 2003. isbn 0-679-31312-5 And the binding on this edition might survive re-reading --unlike the first edition that fell apart much to soon.

The first quote today is from it and from his section titled "A short history of nuclear war".

Quote(1):
The post 1945 period [...], has seen a striking change in the pattern of wars between states. None of the great powers has fought any other great power directly for the past six decades. Most of them have fought wars in or against smaller countries, so they haven't changed their spots entirely, but this is a new and important factor in international affairs. It is certainly connected to the fact that all the great powers now possess nuclear weapons or are closely allied to those who do; they spend a fortune on their nuclear weapons, but they have not so far dared to use them in war even once since 1945.

Indeed, they dare not fight one another directly at all (though they do engage in proxy wars from time to time), since any fighting could so quickly escalate into nuclear war. Perhaps this is only a lengthy pause in the historical pattern before normal service is resumed, but it is nevertheless remarkable.

There has been no other sixty-year period when no great power has fought any other since the emergence of the modern Western state system in the seventeenth century, and quite possibly since the rise of the mesopotamian city-states.

Moving down a notch, however, wars between middle rank neighbouring countries --Israel and the Arab countries, Pakistan and India, Iran and Iraq-- have continued to occur fairly regularly. There has been no general outbreak of pacifism in the international system.

These wars are now known as "conventional" wars, to distinguish them from nuclear war, and they can be quite destructive --but the also tend to be short. This is partly because the high cost and great efficiency of modern weapons means that countries can afford relatively few weapons and run out of them quickly after the fighting starts, but it is also because the United Nations is usually quick to propose ceasefires and offer peace-keeping troops. The losing side, at least, will generally grab at this, making it hard for the winning side to continue the war. As a result, the total fatal casualties in wars where both sides were using conventional World-War II-style heavy weapons --May 1945 with laser sights and precision-guided missiles, so to speak-- have not exceeded ten million people in six decades. Since the Korean War ended, the average has been fewer than a million per decade.

The majority of the people killed in war since 1945 have died in quite different and seemingly new kinds of struggle: guerilla warfare, "revolutionary war", counter-insurgency campaigns, terrorism, and the like. Mostly they have been killed by their own fellow citizens, yet few of the conflicts fit the classic model of civil war either. At one point these wars seemed to be breaking out everywhere, but they turned out to mainly associated with anti-imperial liberation wars and post-colonial power struggles, and they have now subsided in most parts of the world. Terrorism, the weapon of the weak, continues to flourish in a variety of contexts, but when divorced from a territorially based guerilla war, it is rarely a major threat (though it certainly succeeds in getting people's attention). -- G. Dyer

It is interesting to note that the current administration[USA+UK...+Poland, hehe] has managed to bypass the point about the losing side grabbing a quick peace via the UN. Although it's not that new-- make sure the loser's government can't make peace; by controlling it, before, during, and after the conflict. Which leads into a couple of other books I've recently finished reading; "David Howarth, British Sea Power, aka Sovereign of the Seas" and "Arthur Herman, To Rule the Waves". The latter author has been mentioned in this journal before and I'll quote a bit from both sometime in the future. However, Onwards!

The next quote is a more of my usual historical bile, and it seemed to be rather fitting in light of the events unfolding in our own time.

Quote(2):
It is an undertaking of some degree of delicacy to examine into the cause of public disorders.

If a man happens not to succeed in such an inquiry, he will be thought weak and visionary; if he touches the true grievance, there is a danger that he may come near to persons of weight and consequence, who will rather be exasperated at the discovery of their errors, than thankful for the occasion of correcting them. If he should be obliged to blame the favorites of the people, he will be considered as the tool of power; if he censures those in power, he will be looked on as an instrument of faction. But in all exertions of duty something is to be hazarded. In cases of tumult and disorder, our law has invested every man, in some sort, with the authority of a magistrate.

When the affairs of the nation are distracted, private people are, by the spirit of that law, justified in stepping a little out of their ordinary sphere. They enjoy a privilege, of somewhat more dignity and effect, than that of idle lamentation over the calamities of their country. They may look into them narrowly; they may reason upon them liberally; and if they should be so fortunate as to discover the true source of the mischief, and to suggest any probable method of removing it, though they may displease the rulers for the day, they are certainly of service to the cause of government. Government is deeply interested in everything which, even through the medium of some temporary uneasiness, may tend finally to compose the minds of the subject, and to conciliate their affections. I

  have nothing to do here with the abstract value of the voice of the people. But as long as reputation, the most precious possession of every individual, and as long as opinion, the great support of the state, depend entirely upon that voice, it can never be considered as a thing of little consequence either to individuals or to governments. Nations are not primarily ruled by laws: less by violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed either in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental.

Nations are governed by the same methods, and on the same principles, by which an individual without authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors; by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management of it; I mean,--when public affairs are steadily and quietly conducted; not when government is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate and the multitude; in which sometimes the one and sometimes the other is uppermost; in which they alternately yield and prevail, in a series of contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions. The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being ignorant of what it is his duty to learn.

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind; indeed the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar. Such complaints and humors have existed in all times; yet as all times have not been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in distinguishing that complaint which only characterizes the general infirmity of human nature, from those which are symptoms of the particular distemperature of our own air and season.

Nobody, I believe, will consider it merely as the language of spleen or disappointment, if I say, that there is something particularly alarming in the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, who holds any other language. That government is at once dreaded and contemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and salutary terrors; that their inaction is a subject of ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office and title, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect; that our foreign politics are as much deranged as our domestic economy; that our dependencies are slackened in their affection, and loosened from their obedience; that we know neither how to yield nor how to enforce; that hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home, is sound and entire; but that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in parties, in families, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders of any former time: these are facts universally admitted and lamented.

This state of things is the more extraordinary, because the great parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in a manner entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has visited the nation; no pestilence or famine. We do not labor at present under any scheme of taxation new or oppressive in the quantity or in the mode. Nor are we engaged in unsuccessful war; in which, our misfortunes might easily pervert our judgment; and our minds, sore from the loss of national glory, might feel every blow of fortune as a crime in government.

It is impossible that the cause of this strange distemper should not sometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, and which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take notice in the first place of their speculation. Our ministers are of opinion, that the increase of our trade and manufactures, that our growth by colonization, and by conquest, have concurred to accumulate immense wealth in the hands of some individuals; and this again being dispersed among the people, has rendered them universally proud, ferocious, and ungovernable; that the insolence of some from their enormous wealth, and the boldness of others from a guilty poverty, have rendered them capable of the most atrocious attempts; so that they have trampled upon all subordination, and violently borne down the unarmed laws of a free government; barriers too feeble against the fury of a populace so fierce and licentious as ours. They contend, that no adequate provocation has been given for so spreading a discontent; our affairs having been conducted throughout with remarkable temper and consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of some libellers, joined to the intrigues of a few disappointed politicians, have, in their opinion, been able to produce this unnatural ferment in the nation.

Nothing indeed can be more unnatural than the present convulsions of this country, if the above account be a true one. I confess I shall assent to it with great reluctance, and only on the compulsion of the clearest and firmest proofs; because their account resolves itself into this short, but discouraging proposition, "That we have a very good ministry, but that we are a very bad people"; that we set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity, we oppose the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole object is our own peace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting under a knot of factious politicians, without virtue, parts, or character, (such they are constantly represented by these gentlemen,) are sufficient to excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the disposition of that people, amongst whom such a disturbance can be excited by such means.

It is besides no small aggravation of the public misfortune, that the disease, on this hypothesis, appears to be without remedy. If the wealth of the nation be the cause of its turbulence, I imagine it is not proposed to introduce poverty, as a constable to keep the peace.

If our dominions abroad are the roots which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit.

If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism, to fill up the deficiencies of law. Whatever may be intended, these things are not yet professed.

We seem therefore to be driven to absolute despair; for we have no other materials to work upon, but those out of which God has been pleased to form the inhabitants of this island. If these be radically and essentially vicious, all that can be said is, that those men are very unhappy, to whose fortune or duty it falls to administer the affairs of this untoward people. I hear it indeed sometimes asserted, that a steady perseverance in the present measures, and a rigorous punishment of those who oppose them, will in course of time infallibly put an end to these disorders.

But this, in my opinion, is said without much observation of our present disposition, and without any knowledge at all of the general nature of mankind. If the matter of which this nation is composed be so very fermentable as these gentlemen describe it, leaven never will be wanting to work it up, as long as discontent, revenge, and ambition, have existence in the world. Particular punishments are the cure for accidental distempers in the state; they inflame rather than allay those heats which arise from the settled mismanagement of the government, or from a natural indisposition in the people. It is of the utmost moment not to make mistakes in the use of strong measures; and firmness is then only a virtue when it accompanies the most perfect wisdom. In truth, inconstancy is a sort of natural corrective of folly and ignorance.

I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported, that there has been generally something found amiss in the constitution, or in the conduct of government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not their crime. But with the governing part of the state, it is for otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake.

"Les revolutions qui arrivent dans les grands etats ne sont point un effect du hazard, ni du caprice des peuples. Rien ne revolte les grands d'un royaume comme un gouvernement foible et derange. Pour la populace, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve, mais par impatience de souffrir."

These are the words of a great man; of a minister of state; and a zealous assertor of monarchy. They are applied to the system of favoritism which was adopted by Henry the Third of France, and to the dreadful consequences it produced. What he says of revolutions, is equally true of all great disturbances. If this presumption in favor of the subjects against the trustees of power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the more comfortable speculation; because it is more easy to change an administration, than to reform a people.

Upon a supposition, therefore, that, in the opening of the cause, the presumptions stand equally balanced between the parties, there seems sufficient ground to entitle any person to a fair hearing, who attempts some other scheme beside that easy one which is fashionable in some fashionable companies, to account for the present discontents. It is not to be argued that we endure no grievance, because our grievances are not of the same sort with those under which we labored formerly; not precisely those which we bore from the Tudors, or vindicated on the Stuarts. A great change has taken place in the affairs of this country. For in the silent lapse of events as material alterations have been insensibly brought about in the policy and character of governments and nations, as those which have been marked by the tumult of public revolutions.

It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed, that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them, without the exertion of any considerable diligence or sagacity. For which reason men are wise with but little reflection, and good with little self-denial, in the business of all times except their own. We are very uncorrupt and tolerably enlightened judges of the transactions of past ages; where no passions deceive, and where the whole train of circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set in an orderly series before us.

Few are the partisans of departed tyranny; and to be a Whig on the business of an hundred years ago, is very consistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospective wisdom, and historical patriotism, are things of wonderful convenience, and serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon constitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuous indignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied to the coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in. I believe there was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among the instruments of the last King James; nor in the court of Henry the Eighth was there, I dare say, to be found a single advocate for the favorites of Richard the Second.

No complaisance to our court, or to our age, can make me believe nature to be so changed, but that public liberty will be among us as among our ancestors, obnoxious to some person or other; and that opportunities will be furnished for attempting, at least, some alteration to the prejudice of our constitution. These attempts will naturally vary in their mode according to times and circumstances. For ambition, though it has ever the same general views, has not at all times the same means, nor the same particular objects. A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion. Besides, there are few statesmen so very clumsy and awkward in their business, as to fall into the identical snare which has proved fatal to their predecessors. When an arbitrary imposition is attempted upon the subject, undoubtedly it will not bear on its forehead the name of Ship-money. There is no danger that an extension of the Forest laws should be the chosen mode of oppression in this age. And when we hear any instance of ministerial rapacity, to the prejudice of the rights of private life, it will certainly not be the exaction of two hundred pullets, from a woman of fashion, for leave to lie with her own husband.

Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them; and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to resist its growth during its infancy.

Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no designs have ever been entertained since the revolution. Every one must perceive, that it is strongly the interest of the court, to have some second cause interposed between the ministers and the people. The gentlemen of the House of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the part of that intermediate cause. However they may hire out the usufruct of their voices, they never will part with the fee and inheritance. Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the will and pleasure of a court have, at the same time, been most forward in asserting a high authority in the House of Commons. When they knew who were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought it never could be carried too far. It must be always the wish of an unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons, who are entirely dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely dependent upon their pleasure. It was soon discovered, that the forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary government, were things not altogether incompatible.

The power of the crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of Influence. An influence, which operated without noise and without violence; an influence, which converted the very antagonist into the instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary system; the interest of active men in the state is a foundation perpetual and infallible. However, some circumstances, arising, it must be confessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of this influence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable of exciting any serious apprehensions. Although government was strong and flourished exceedingly, the court had drawn far less advantage than one would imagine from this great source of power.

At the revolution, the crown, deprived, for the ends of the revolution itself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against all the difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a government. The court was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men of such interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to, its establishment. Such men were able to draw in a greater number to a concurrence in the common defence. This connection, necessary at first, continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, in all situations, be an useful instrument of government.

At the same time, through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, the people possessed a security for their just proportion of importance in the state. But as the title to the crown grew stronger by long possession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helps have of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances. The powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favor, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country which gave them a consideration independent of the court. Men acted as if the court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation. The influence of government, thus divided in appearance between the court and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession rather to the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that influence, which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from whence it arose, and circulated among the people.

This method, therefore, of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration was viewed in a very invidious light by the true lovers of absolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all intermediate situations between boundless strength on its own part, and total debility on the part of the people.

To get rid of all this intermediate and independent importance, and to secure to the court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast influence, under the sole direction of its own private favor, has for some years past been the great object of policy. If this were compassed, the influence of the crown must of course produce all the effects which the most sanguine partisans of the court could possibly desire. Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on the part of the people; without any attention to the dignity of the greater, or to the affections of the lower sorts. A new project was therefore devised by a certain set of intriguing men, totally different from the system of administration which had prevailed since the accession of the House of Brunswick. This project, I have heard, was first conceived by some persons in the court of Frederick Prince of Wales.

The earliest attempt in the execution of this design was to set up for minister, a person, in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in fortune; but who, to the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was little known or considered in the kingdom. To him the whole nation was to yield an immediate and implicit submission. But whether it was from want of firmness to bear up against the first opposition; or that things were not yet fully ripened, or that this method was not found the most eligible; that idea was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the project was a little altered, to accommodate it to the time and to bring things more gradually and more surely to the one great end proposed.

The first part of the reformed plan was to draw a line which should separate the court from the ministry. Hitherto these names had been looked upon as synonymous; but for the future, court and administration were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation, two systems of administration were to be formed; one which should be in the real secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible to perform the official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be responsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually removed from all the danger.

Secondly, A party under these leaders was to be formed in favor of the court against the ministry: this party was to have a large share in the emoluments of government, and to hold it totally separate from, and independent of, ostensible administration.

The third point, and that on which the success of the whole scheme ultimately depended, was to bring Parliament to an acquiescence in this project. Parliament was therefore to be taught by degrees a total indifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities, connections, and character of the ministers of the crown. By means of a discipline, on which I shall say more hereafter, that body was to be habituated to the most opposite interests, and the most discordant politics. All connections and dependencies among subjects were to be entirely dissolved.

As, hitherto, business had gone through the hands of leaders of Whigs or Tories, men of talents to conciliate the people, and to engage their confidence; now the method was to be altered: and the lead was to be given to men of no sort of consideration or credit in the country. This want of natural importance was to be their very title to delegated power. Members of Parliament were to be hardened into an insensibility to pride as well as to duty. Those high and haughty sentiments, which are the great support of independence, were to be let down gradually. Points of honor and precedence were no more to be regarded in Parliamentary decorum than in a Turkish army.

It was to be avowed, as a constitutional maxim, that the king might appoint one of his footmen, or one of your footmen for minister; and that he ought to be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank or wisdom in the nation. Thus Parliament was to look on as if perfectly unconcerned, while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted in the place of a national administration.

With such a degree of acquiescence, any measure of any court might well be deemed thoroughly secure. The capital objects, and by much the most flattering characteristics of arbitrary power, would be obtained. Everything would be drawn from its holdings in the country to the personal favor and inclination of the prince. This favor would be the sole introduction to power, and the only tenure by which it was to be held; so that no person looking towards another, and all looking towards the court, it was impossible but that the motive which solely influenced every man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct; till at last the servility became universal, in spite of the dead letter of any laws or institutions whatsoever.

How it should happen that any man could be tempted to venture upon such a project of government, may at first view appear surprising. But the fact is that opportunities very inviting to such an attempt have offered; and the scheme itself was not destitute of some arguments, not wholly unplausible, to recommend it.

These opportunities and these arguments, the use that has been made of both, the plan for carrying this new scheme of government into execution, and the effects which it has produced, are, in my opinion, worthy of our serious consideration.--E. Burke

There is much much more to that section, including a number of points that should be addressed in any age, not just his and ours, and I've drawn from this/his 'well of wisdom' before --mayhap too often. And journal entries have been recently limited to a few paltry 'kay' --so I'll save it for another day. Until Then.

News with no chorus line:
The Vicar hangs tough, yet he must be laughing too. Now that Blunkett has been fully sidelined. And the forgotten war continues and continues to be in question.

King Silvio claims to be worth dying for. Ha.

Blogblock in China. Free and not dead press. A popular Chinese blog has been blocked by the Chinese authorities, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders. Wang Yi's Microphone is run by a teacher in Sichuan province. Reporters Without Borders says the site deals with "sensitive subjects" - including local officials' corruption.

In Thicky Land they admit land reform did not work as they said previously. A Zimbabwean minister has said that many of those given land since 2000 know little about farming and this has led to food shortages. The authorities have previously blamed hunger on poor rains, while critics have pointed to the seizure of most of the country's white-owned land.

Bear on girl-boy was going to plead not guilty, but could not remember for what.

Our Lady of Endless Agit-Prop sings the same old tune. Well, I hear a lot of different things, one of the things that I've heard in every country I've visited, including here in Malaysia last night, very strongly made, was the importance of people-to-people exchanges. How important it is that we increase the number of Malaysians coming to America and Americans coming to Malaysia. There's no substitute for that sort of contact, for having the opportunity to go to America and experience for yourself what it is like, or having Americans have the opportunity to come to Malaysia, as I have, to see for myself the kindness and warmth of the people, the beauty of the country, the spirit of friendship and cooperation that exists between America and Malaysia. So that's one of the things I've heard emphasized.

Another thing I've heard emphasized, is the importance of education, is one of the things that came up at the buka puasa last night, and one of the things that I'm committed to doing as part of America's Public Diplomacy efforts is to increase our English language programs, and that's something the Ambassador and I have discussed as being something that might be very helpful here, particularly in rural parts of Malaysia. When you help young people with English language training, you give them a skill they want and need, and it helps them to have a better life, and also opens a window into America and our values. And so, like the Lincoln Corner that we opened here today, I think those educational opportunities are very important parts of our increasing friendship and understanding between our peoples.

I also hear, obviously, about areas where we disagree. I know that many people here have concerns about the war in Iraq, as do some of my own fellow Americans. No one likes war. We believe that when we are able to build a stable and unified and democratic Iraq, that the cause of peace in the world will have been furthered. So, I hear a lot of different things.

Here in Malaysia I think one of the things I've heard most strongly, again, is the importance of exchanges. We want to increase the number of students from Malaysia who are coming to America. It's dropped somewhat since 1998. In 1998, we had about 12,000 students from Malaysia come to the United States. That was down to about 6,000 last year, and we want to build that back up. We want Malaysian students to know they're welcome in the United States and that our universities want them, that the American people would welcome them, that our Embassy is working very hard and has improved the visa process. I know that it was a little slow after September 11th. But we've worked very hard to improve that situation and we now have, I believe, about a day to get an appointment and about a day to get a visa is the average. So, it's actually very quick, and the Embassy wants to help more Malaysians travel to the United States. The "...importance of people-to-people exchanges..." Hmmm... why does that sound kinda wrong to me?

While Rice pats the backs and hands out awards to the backers. SECRETARY RICE: Karen and I were just making a date to play four hands piano at some point in time. (Laughter.)

I would like to recognize the people who are here from Lapa Rios and of course members of the Lewis family. Thank you very much for being here.

I now have the pleasure of talking about Cisco Systems, which understands that education is the key to success and prosperity for all developing countries. Cisco Systems of San Jose, California, is honored today for its unprecedented contribution to education in Jordan, and I would like to welcome the Ambassador, His Excellency, from Jordan.

I am also pleased because John Chambers and I come from the same area. We've known each other for a number of years. And so, John, congratulations to you for your leadership at Cisco.

The company worked with Jordanian King Abdullah on a project on education and with many and other private and other partners to develop a vision for educational reform that is called the Jordanian Educational Initiative. This program is revolutionizing how teachers are trained, how subjects are taught and how students are prepared for the future. Working with a local Jordanian company, Cisco developed an online interactive mathematics curriculum that is already being used in Jordan's schools.

The company is also building an internet network to link together 100 primary and secondary schools, called the Discovery Schools, and to connect them to universities and community centers and research institutions around the country. By next year Cisco hopes to unite 1.5 million students across Jordan through the power and reach of information technology.

Cisco, however, has gone even further. Working with the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the company has created 12 Cisco academies which focus primarily on preparing young women in Jordan for careers in the high-tech job market of our global economy. These academies are teaching math and science and information technology and they have produced 600 graduates so far.

Cisco's commitment to the future of Jordan is an inspiration for businesses everywhere. It therefore gives me great pleasure to present our Award for Corporate Excellence to John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems. John, if you would join me here. (Applause.)

To fill out the tripple header it's SD-DPB Softball. And it is a real crap-fest today. Play ball!
QUESTION: About Iran, sir. There are news reports today, you know, mentioning that Iran announcing officially that they will go back to their nuclear programs whatever are the results and the consequences. Any comment today?

MR. MCCORMACK: I have seen some news reports that -- from anonymous foreign diplomats that Iran intends to resume uranium conversion at its Isfahan plant. I think if true, this is yet another step that takes Iran in the wrong direction and serves only to further isolate Iran from the international community. What Iran should be focused on is working with the IAEA to resolve the long list of questions that the IAEA and the international community have concerning their nuclear program.

I think we have spoken out many times and the international community has spoken quite clearly, and most recently in the Board of Governors vote, to refer the issue of Iran's failure to comply with their international obligations to the Security Council. Now that referral takes the form of an IAEA report. We know that there's going to be an IAEA report that gets sent to the Security Council. What is contained in that report, in terms of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA, as well as where they stand with their negotiations in the EU-3, are going to be quite important, I think, for the Security Council and the international community, the IAEA Board of Governors in determining what next steps there are with regard to Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. These are serious issues and really it is incumbent upon Iran now to answer the questions. And if true, acts like resuming uranium conversion are things that take Iran in the wrong direction. So again, I will withhold any sort of final comment on this, as I said, I'd seen the news reports but it's based on an anonymous sourcing.
Failure to comply? Care to cite which obligation that was/is? No? Didn't think so --Strike One.

QUESTION: Okay, the Minister of Defense is here today and he's meeting with the Secretary in a couple of hours. He was in Egypt last week and talked about corridors and transfer of people and other things to Gaza. What is her message going to be at this point? We have the Wolfensohn report and she commented on it last week in Canada, but things aren't going well. I don't know that there's any other way to say that. In terms of the violence and the responses and the response to the response, so the optimism seems to have faded a bit.

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, she's going to have an opportunity to meet with the Defense Minister to talk about a variety of different issues, talk about regional issues, talk about ways that the Israelis and the Palestinians can coordinate their efforts to advance the cause of peace in the wake of Israel's historic withdrawal from Gaza. There are a number of different elements that you pointed out -- the issue on the crossings.

With the assistance of and the active intervention of Mr. Wolfensohn, and actually I think they have made progress on that issue. It's not done yet. We talked a little bit about that yesterday -- where there are still issues to work out. But these are, you know, these are difficult issues but they're important issues. They're important issues for the future economic viability of the Gaza and also to building on what most agreed was a successful withdrawal from the Gaza.

In terms of the violence, we've talked about that. We have talked about the importance of the Palestinian Authority acting to stop violence, to stop terror, to dismantle terrorist organizations. It's an obligation they have under the roadmap. On the Israeli side, they have obligations as well and part of them involve, under the roadmap, easing the daily plight of the Palestinian people. Part of that involves talking about crossings and checkpoints and those sorts of things.

But also we will underline, as we have in public and private, that Israel has a right to defend itself, but in taking steps and actions to defend itself, Israel must keep in mind the overall objective that all share and that is to building two states that live side by side in peace and security. So I'm sure that that will also part of the discussion this afternoon.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) recently that leads you to question that commitment of Israel -- two states living side by side in peace?

MR. MCCORMACK: No. No.

QUESTION: So why are you saying that you will emphasize this today?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, you brought up the issue of the recent violence in the region, obviously that will be a topic. What we encourage the Israelis and the Palestinians to do is to work together to build up the mutual trust on issues related to addressing terrorism, on issues related to things like the crossings, so that's positive. We encourage the Israelis and the Palestinians to work together. Sometimes, that involves General Ward working with both sides. Sometimes, that involves Mr. Wolfensohn working with both sides. Sometimes, that involves the intervention of Assistant Secretary Welch and even the Secretary.

But we encourage -- the way that you are going to make -- the way that you are going to make progress is to encourage those contacts and their working together. We saw good progress during the Gaza withdrawal and we would encourage a continuation of those kinds of contacts. So that will also be part of the conversation I think this afternoon.
Sometimes there is a call of --Two and one. And a warning to stop "terror"-izing the dialog from the umpire.

QUESTION: I think one thing we're interested in is the public diplomacy, the image of the United States involving such reports. We saw what can happen when reports cause a reaction over the desecration of the Koran.

The question originally was about Karen Hughes. Karen Hughes said that there were task forces around the world in embassies when the reports would come out then, the U.S. embassies would be proactive. They would get their message out. What are you doing to preserve the image of the United States amid this report? Does everyone in their embassy say, "Sorry, it's a CIA issue, you have to go talk to them?"

MR. MCCORMACK: I think that the general issue -- and again, I can't comment on the particular news report that you're referring to -- the general issue before us in the war on terror is how do we deal with individuals who are committed to violence, who are committed to the use of terror and killing innocent civilians, people who do not recognize any set of international standards or any set of international rules or any set of commonly accepted behaviors.

We, of course, as a signatory of the Geneva Convention, as well as others, need to -- since 9/11 searched for ways to apply those rules to a group of individuals who don't play by any rules. And, you know, these are tough issues. These are difficult issues and we have ongoing discussions on a variety of different fronts with countries around the world about these issues because the threat from terrorism and individuals who are committed to use of terror is a common threat to democracies and peace-loving nations around the world, including the United States.

Our view with regard to detainees at Guantanamo Bay is clear. Our policy is to treat all detainees in accordance with international obligations and the principles of the Geneva Convention. And detainees are provided with proper shelter, clothing, three meals per day that meet cultural dietary requirements, and medical care. Each detainee is also allowed to exercise his religious beliefs and those requesting them have been issued prayer beads, rugs and copies of the Koran. And we always strive for transparency in our operation at Guantanamo to the extent possible in the light of security and operational requirements. We have a continuous ICRC -- International Committee of the Red Cross -- presence at Guantanamo Bay. There have been numerous journalists who have visited Guantanamo Bay. Numerous foreign diplomats have also visited Guantanamo Bay. So you know, certainly, we understand that this is a difficult issue.

Our effort is to try to explain in as clear a manner what it is that we do at Guantanamo Bay, how we treat terrorist enemy combatants. And in those cases, like Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers are accused of mistreating detainees, that those allegations are thoroughly, quickly and transparently investigated. We have seen the military deal with a number of these cases in which those who have been found guilty of offenses, mistreatment of detainees, have been punished. And that is what we can do in terms of trying to explain the general issue, but also how our attempts to address the issue.

QUESTION: Well, why can't you talk more about the allegations of secret camps?

MR. MCCORMACK: Again --

QUESTION: I mean, you talk about the openness at Gitmo, but you don't want to talk about other allegations which are out there and which affect people around the world in Arab and Muslim countries that you're trying to convince you're doing the right thing there.

MR. MCCORMACK: Again, you know, I know the news reports. I've read them myself. And in terms of what was reported, it refers to the CIA, the intelligence community, and I'd refer all questions on that matter to the intelligence community.

QUESTION: Understood. But reports like this that are out there -- true, untrue -- can only make Karen Hughes' job that much harder. How does she deal with that then?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I think that those -- what I was trying to answer Saul's question in talking about the issue that we face. The issue that we face, again, is how to deal with a group of people, with individuals who are committed to killing innocents, who follow no set of rules. How do we as a country of laws, how do we as a country that stands by its international obligations, how do we deal with it, with that problem? And you know, we've had lots of discussions, from here at the State Department, at the White House, at Department of Defense and Department of Justice and elsewhere outlining how we have -- our attempts to deal with that issue.

And what we can do, what Karen can do, what I can do, what others can do, is to try to explain the issue before us, before the world, and talk about how we -- the solutions that we have come up with at this point to deal with this problem. It's a tough problem.

QUESTION: You talk about transparency, and now, you know, we've just heard from Rumsfeld that you're not going to allow this UN team to speak to prisoners in Guantanamo. That doesn't look very transparent, does it?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I guess appearances can be deceiving. I just talked a lot about who we have had visiting Guantanamo as well as who is there on a continuous basis. The decision that you talk about was announced by the Department of Defense but it was a government-wide decision and supported by the inter-agency.

The fact of the matter is, is that there is a continuous monitoring presence by the ICRC at Guantanamo Bay. They work very closely with the people running the facility at Guantanamo Bay to address any issues and concerns that may come up. We've had numerous foreign diplomats visit Guantanamo Bay as well. We have had many journalists travel down to Guantanamo Bay. So it is a place where we have made very real attempts, and I think very serious attempts, to open it up to the outside world.

Now, the Department of Defense can talk a little bit more and in more detail about the various restrictions that they -- and the reasons for the restrictions that they have for -- at Guantanamo. But the fact is there have been numerous visitors down there and there is a continuous presence down there.

QUESTION: The transparency applies only -- the transparency applies only to some detainees. The Red Cross does not have access to all detainees. Would you concede that?

MR. MCCORMACK: You know, again, what I can talk about, George, are the people being held at Guantanamo Bay.

QUESTION: Sean, the matter is not just for CIA -- the allegation of these secret prisons -- because the State Department is the go-between with foreign governments and you comment all the time on Gitmo issues and conversations that you have with foreign governments on that. So how can you refer everything to the CIA? And if this isn't true, wouldn't it be easy and quick for you to say it's not true?

MR. MCCORMACK: Again, I don't have anything to add on the issue.

QUESTION: Well, it's not just a CIA issue.

MR. MCCORMACK: Again, I don't have anything else for you on the issue.
And once "again" Sean is Out! There is, as usual, much more spinning to be found in the full text.

OYAITJ:
89484 : Falluja, Arafat did live long enough to make John Kerry eat his words, the Slope Slough dead went home, Mayor of Kabul does the dance of futility and we started another few years of USA's state dept. softball games.

TYAITJ:
51018 : Hitlers cottage pictures, more UK troops, rolls, and Tits serves for Bush.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Prince Charles and Laura Bush. Caption at the bottom; "Bad cross-overs: The Joker and The Man Who Would Be King."