What is going on in Peru? From this we can gather that it is only the beginning, a harbinger of things to come.
Interesting that there has been no mention of the tripod machines, the death rays and the like...
Which points, of course, to a massive cover-up and conspiracy.
I suppose that the real reason that the story hasn't broken is that there is no one in Peru who can speak like Orson Welles...
:-)
Mittwoch, September 19, 2007
Dienstag, September 11, 2007
My only comment on September 11th, 6 years later...
This was published by John Stuart Mill in Fraser's Magazine during the American Civil War and remains for me the core of why we, the US, are doing what we do. The key is the very last paragraph in this work:
For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I
cannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the
North, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on any
conditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories as
free soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require a
long war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of
the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or
consenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, in
a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War
is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing
worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human
instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service
and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people.
A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a
war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is
their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free
choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has
nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more
about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature,
who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice
have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the
affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do
battle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that the
present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of
this exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of being
altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was from
the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; and
this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in the
end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest
enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive
far earlier its coups de grâce than there has ever, until now,
appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States
will have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale of
morality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices
consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimable
benefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntary
efforts.
Read and understand this, and you will understand how critical it is to fight the fight that the US is fighting, and how appalling the pacifists are. The common pacifist refrain is that we have been lied to, that we have been misled, that the common soldier is nothing more than a tool.
This is not the case. I won't go into the absurdity of that position - simply go and read what Bush has actually said, and you will see that there is no validity to that purpose - but suffice to say that those serving are anything but some sort of capitalist tool, exploited for venal profit and therefore pitiful.
My deepest respect to those serving to fight this fight, to those who have died doing so.
My greatest contempt for those who think it isn't worth it. May their children, living in slavery, curse the names of those who condemned them to ignorance and despair.
For these reasons I cannot join with those who cry Peace, peace. I
cannot wish that this war should not have been engaged in by the
North, or that being engaged in, it should be terminated on any
conditions but such as would retain the whole of the Territories as
free soil. I am not blind to the possibility that it may require a
long war to lower the arrogance and tame the aggressive ambition of
the slave-owners, to the point of either returning to the Union, or
consenting to remain out of it with their present limits. But war, in
a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War
is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing
worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human
instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service
and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people.
A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a
war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is
their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free
choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has
nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more
about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature,
who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice
have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the
affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do
battle for the one against the other. I am far from saying that the
present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, is wholly of
this exalted character; that it has arrived at the stage of being
altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. But there was from
the beginning, and now is, a large infusion of that element in it; and
this is increasing, will increase, and if the war lasts, will in the
end predominate. Should that time come, not only will the greatest
enormity which still exists among mankind as an institution, receive
far earlier its coups de grâce than there has ever, until now,
appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free States
will have raised themselves to that elevated position in the scale of
morality and dignity, which is derived from great sacrifices
consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense of an inestimable
benefit to all future ages, brought about by their own voluntary
efforts.
Read and understand this, and you will understand how critical it is to fight the fight that the US is fighting, and how appalling the pacifists are. The common pacifist refrain is that we have been lied to, that we have been misled, that the common soldier is nothing more than a tool.
This is not the case. I won't go into the absurdity of that position - simply go and read what Bush has actually said, and you will see that there is no validity to that purpose - but suffice to say that those serving are anything but some sort of capitalist tool, exploited for venal profit and therefore pitiful.
My deepest respect to those serving to fight this fight, to those who have died doing so.
My greatest contempt for those who think it isn't worth it. May their children, living in slavery, curse the names of those who condemned them to ignorance and despair.
Abonnieren
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