Join the Two Futures Project

The world needs to choose the future of no nuclear weapons/war. We need to fulfill the vision of Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev  and get rid of all nuclear weapons for the survival of the planet. Countries that are developing nuclear weapons should stop – but also countries, like the United States, should get rid of theirs.

It has been endorsed by many Christian leaders including Ron Sider, Leith Anderson, Rob Bell, Bill Hybels, Lynne Hybels, Miroslav Volf, and John Stott.

Here is a Christian initiative to do that:

http://twofuturesproject.org/

and you can order a free DVD from them – which I did this morning.

Abraham Lincoln on War with Mexico

When Abraham Lincoln was the freshman rep. from Illinois, he made a speech about the moral issues involved with the Mexican War. This was Lincoln’s first major speech in 1848. The United States was in the process of taking 500,000 square miles of land from Mexico (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California) and Lincoln was under the impression that this was imperialistic. He was against the Mexican War. Here were some of Lincoln’s points:

1. The war was unneccesarily  and unconstitionally started by President Polk.

2. The war was started by people who were working with bad and faulty intelligence and if had decent information, they would not conscientiously approve this war against the Mexicans. 

3. Polk claimed the Mexicans attacked us first on our soil. The United States actually attacked Mexico on Mexican soil. Lincoln says:

    I am now through the whole of the President’s evidence; and it is a singular fact, that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people, who had never submited, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there, and thereby, the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said, which would either admit or deny the declaration.

Lincoln’s argument for what constituted Texas and what constitutes Mexico is interesting, considering what happened in the 1860s. He argues that Texas should consist only of the piece of populated Texas that rebelled from Mexico since:

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,– most sacred right–a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

So the piece of Texas that was Mexico, but rebelled (partly because Mexico had anti-slavery laws, which were not enforced in Texas, and also forced the citizenry to be Roman Catholic, but mainly because they spoke English and not Spanish) had every right to do so. However, the part of Texas that was uninhabited by english speakers, did not rebel against Mexican rule, so it was still Mexican.

4. The War has gone on far too long – 20 months, when far less was expected.

The war has gone on some twenty months; for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score…

At it’s beginning, Genl. Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months.

5. The President has no idea how – after winning the war – how to keep the peace. Lincoln says:

But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country; and all it’s lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How then are we to make any thing out of these lands with this encumbrance on them? or how, remove the encumbrance? I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property. How then can we make much out of this part of the teritory?

6. Polk is not thinking straight

His (President Polk’s) mind, tasked beyond it’s power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease.

Here is the speech

This speech is regarded as making some rich points – but having poor timing. The United States soon signed a peace treaty with Mexico, where the US agreed to pay Mexico 15 million dollars in exchange for Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Soon after, in 1849, gold was discovered in California – over 200 million dollars worth of gold.

Abraham Lincoln, maybe partly because of this speech, failed to keep his seat after his freshman term. He later became not a pacifist at all!

Wendell Berry’s Question

“Did you finish killing

everybody who was against peace?”

From The Contrariness of The Mad Farmer by Wendell Berry

Bomb sales to the Saudis

Charles Colson makes some goood arguments on why the United States should not sell twenty billion dollars of American’s most sophisticated weapons to the Saudis. He says:

What’s more, it is the version of Islam that inspires bin Laden and other extremists and seeks to dominate other, more moderate, versions of Islam and destroy non-Muslim nations like ours. Without Saudi petro-dollars, Salafism would be confined to the Arabian peninsula.

We ought to recall also that Saudi Arabia has never recognized Israel’s right to exist. While it is difficult to imagine what good JDAMs would do against al Qaeda or the kingdom’s restive Shiites, it is easy to imagine how they could be used against Israel.

Or us, for that matter. It is common knowledge that Saudi security and intelligence forces contain al Qaeda sympathizers. Saudi intelligence files were found on al Qaeda computers in Afghanistan. It is not a stretch to imagine some of these weapons finding their way into terrorists’ hands and not unreasonable to fear that these weapons might one day be used against us.

http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=7520

Congress has until February 14 to disaprove of this sale so Colson is urging people to call their congressmen

Why “To The Moon” opposes the war in Iraq

The reason I use the phrase “America attacked Iraq” is because all the other reasons for the operation turned out to be untrue. So it is like another country would have invaded the United States because of made-up reason. Attacking a country that has not attacked you does not meet St. Augustine’s Just War test.  

It is true that the United States was attacked on 9/11. Many of the troops who were defending the US, and tracking down Osama Bin Laden were diverted away from that mission to attack an innocent country. The United States has spent about 500 billion and lost about 4000 brave soldiers to a false premise. Many soldiers are becoming mentally ill for what they are being asked to do. Millions of Iraqi poor are relocating and living in refugee camps where there is no adequate education, food, or medical supplies. This is encouraging terrorism, rather than discouraging it.

The United States has done very little to help the poor in Iraq. Other countries are taking Iraq refugees. The United States has taken very few. Objective public opinion polls of the Iraqi people plainly show that things were better before the war.

Iraq is a diversion trap set by the enemy to get the nations and religions spawned by Abraham sons (not just his son Isaac and grandson Israel and including Ishmael) to destroy each other and to divert us from the true enemy. Iran is a similar trap. 

The American Civil War in Four Minutes

Quantrill’s raid in Harper’s

THE MASSACRE AT LAWRENCE,
KANSAS.

THE city of Lawrence was, on the evening of August 20, 1863, one of the most thriving towns between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. At daybreak on the next day it was a heap of ruins. A gang of guerrillas, 500 strong, under Quantrill, crossed the Missouri River on the evening of the 20th, and pushed forward to Lawrence, where they arrived just before daybreak. Guards

SEPTEMBER 5, 1863.]

HARPER’S WEEKLY.

were posted around the town so as to prevent all escape, and the work of pillage and murder at once commenced. The attack was wholly unexpected, and there was not the least show of resistance. The citizens were massacred by the light of their burning homes, and their bodies flung into wells and cisterns. In one case twelve men were driven into a building, where they were shot down, and the house burned over their bodies. The number of victims is stated at 180, including the Mayor and the principal citizens. Only one hotel was left standing, and this was spared because the guerrilla chief had been formerly entertained there free of expense. Two of the banks were plundered, and the third escaped because the marauders could not force the safe in time. The total loss of property is put down at two millions of dollars. No other such instance of wanton brutality has occurred during the American war. The names of Nena Sahib in India, Cut-Nose in Minnesota, and Quantrill in Kansas will go down in history together.

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/september/lawrence-kansas-atrocities.htm

Somebody lovingly took their full collection of Harper’s Magazine over the civil war and scanned them into a web site giving a comprehensive account ot that bloody war at sonotfthesouth.net 

I was able to find this account of Quantrill’s raid in the Sept 5, 1863 issue – a few days after the Aug 20, 1983 raid. I wonder who Nina Sahib and Cut-Nose were? 

Here is  link to a Quantrill T-shirt which was recently in the news.

Waterboarding is torture

Waterboarding – making somebody feel like they are dying by drowning and that you are trying to kill them – is torture. They used the technique in the Spanish Inquisition.

It is a no-brainer moral issue.

You do not torture. Torture is terrorism. Torture is unstrategic and counter to democratic and constitutional principles. You don’t combat evil with evil. You do not hire people to attorney general or to grocery clerk who believe in torture. Unless you are Darth Vader. This is basic morality. This is basic Christianity.

I do think that the new attorney general or the president or the congress or the supreme court should state the obvious.

In the media, waterboarding is called “simulated drowning,” but that’s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning.

Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

How much of this the victim is to endure depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs that show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia – meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.

The lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again. Call it “Chinese water torture,” “the barrel,” or “the waterfall.” It is all the same.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/10/31/2007-10-31_i_know_waterboarding_is_torture__because.html

Doug Lamborn rises to protect Rush Limbaugh’s Reputation

UPDATE: The “Liberal’s Fraudulent Attack” letter on Rush Limbaugh just sold for 2.1 million dollars to bettyc588 who is an AAAA+++ ebayer! The money is going for a charity that provides scholarships to children of dead soldiers. Here is Rush’s interpretation of the events – link. Limbaugh says that when he used the phrase “phony soldiers” he meant people who had flunked out of boot camp, and then lied about being in Iraq. He wasn’t referring to soldiers with peaceful opinions like the letter suggests.

Doug Lamborn, Colorado Rep, and old friend of mine, made the following speech in congress:

LAMBORN:  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to denounce the liberals’ fraudulent attacks on Rush Limbaugh.  Anyone who reads the widely available transcript, as I have done, sees that Mr. Limbaugh was appropriately referring to the pretenders who pose as medal winners, or who falsely claim to have committed atrocities in Iraq, when he used the phrase “phony soldiers.”  No, the real scandal here is that liberals in America and here in this Congress are willing to manipulate facts to smear those they disagree with.  But there’s an even more insidious agenda by liberals going on, and that is to reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which is actually a way to silence conservatives on the radio waves.  Mr. Limbaugh deserves mega kudos for being a forceful and effective voice on the side of common sense and for being an example of the First Amendment in action.  After all, isn’t that what our country is supposed to be about?

…and the funny letter that speaker of the house  Harry Reid wrote to Rush - and which Rush promptly put on auction at EBAY, which I have been watching today, has gone up to over $850,000!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Original-Harry-Reid-Rush-Limbaugh-Smear-Letter_W0QQitemZ260170172469QQihZ016QQcategoryZ4105QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

So it is time to cry Crocodile Tears for Rush. 

 … however Rush was wrong about McNabb and he was wrong about Lawrence KS.  and he is wrong here. Read this article in yesterday’s Washington Post to get back into reality:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101500841.html

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” – Psalm 137:3

For the first time that I can remember – Israel has put Jerusalem, the capital of Israel,  on the peace table:

Israel signals readiness to cede parts of Jerusalem to Palestinians

Are the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem happy about this? Not according to this article from the GlobeAndMail.

Some Palestineans Prefer Life In Israel

But the mayor of Ras Hamis, a Palestinian neighbourhood on the eastern fringe of this divided city, says that he can’t think of a worse fate for him and his constituents than being handed over to the weak and ineffective Palestinian Authority right now.

“If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority,” Mr. Gheit said, smoking a water pipe as he whiled away the afternoon watching Lebanese music videos. “We will not accept it. There would be another intifada [uprising] to defend ourselves from the PA.”