CONTEMPORARY ETHICS RESOURCES

2005-12-21T17:25:00.000-05:00

BUSINESS

* National Chamber of Commerce Online Directory
* U.S. Small Business Administration

CONSUMERS

* Better Business Bureau
* Consumer Federation of America
* Consumer Privacy Guide
* Consumer Reports Magazine
* Federal Consumer Information Center
* Federal Trade Commission
* First Gov for Consumers
* Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services
* Florida No Sales Program
* National Do Not Call Registry
* U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission

CONTACT BILL

You may contact Senator Nelson directly through his webform. You may find office locations and phone numbers here.

FORMS

* Online: Email about legislation or issues
* Online: Email for help dealing with an agency
* Online: Email with a general question
* Online: Apply for an internship in Washington, DC
* PDF: Consent for release of information form
* PDF: U.S. Service Academy nomination application
* PDF: Flag order form
* PDF: Apply for an internship in a Florida state office

GOVERNMENT

* Federal Agencies
* Federal Executive Branch
* Federal Judicial Branch
* Federal Legislative Branch

HEALTH

* American Cancer Society
* Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
* Federal Citizen Information Center
* Financial Assistance for Organ Transplantation
* Food and Drug Administration
* National Health Information Center
* National Institutes of Health
* United Network for Organ Sharing

KIDS

* American Library Association’s 700 Great Sites for Kids
* Ben Franklin’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids
* Department of Justice
* Environmental Protection Agency Explorers' Club
* FBI Kids and Youth Educational Page
* FirstGov for Kids
* Florida Governor's Office
* Florida Office of Cultural and Historical Programs
* Florida State Legislature
* Peace Corps Kids World
* Smithsonian Kids Guide
* White House

MILITARY

* Active Duty
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* Families
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* Florida Department of Military Affairs
* Guard and Reserve
o Florida National Guard
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o U.S. Army Reserve
o U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary
o U.S. Coast Guard Reserve
o U.S. Marine Forces Reserve
o U.S. Naval Reserve

NATIONAL MEDIA

* 25 Most-visited Newspapers
* Radio and Television

SENIORS

* Administration on Aging
* Federal and State Assistance Programs
* First Gov for Seniors
* Florida Department of Elder Affairs
* Healthfinder
* Living Wills
* Medicare
* Medicare Prescription Drugs
* National Health Information Center
* Social Security Online

STUDENTS

* College
o Financial Aid Calculator
o Florida Bright Futures Scholarship
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* K-12
o Florida Independent Schools
o Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test
o Accountability Report
o Florida Public Schools
o Florida Virtual School
o GreatSchools Database
o Home Schooling in Florida
o No Child Left Behind

TAXPAYERS

* Federal Refund Status for Individuals
* Federal Tax Information for Businesses
* Federal Tax Information for Individuals
* Florida Department of Revenue
* Florida Tax Forms and Online Filing
* Government May Owe You Money
* Internal Revenue Service

VETERANS

* American Legion
* American Legion Auxiliary
* Approved Schools for Veterans
* Department of Veterans Affairs
* U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
* Veterans Educational Assistance

Terrorism Notes 110805

2005-11-25T20:32:00.000-05:00

Definitions of Terrorism on the Web:
is defined by the US Department of Defense as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/alqaeda/glossary.html
The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp
The systematic use of violence to achieve political ends is not new – among many other examples, it featured during The Troubles in Ireland before its independence in 1922. In recent decades, it has become a common tactic among a wide variety of groups, from independence movements to the secret services of various countries. ...
www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/browse/glossary.html
use of terror, especially the systematic use of terror by the government or other authority against particular persons or groups; a method of opposing a government internally or externally through the use of terror
www.imuna.org/c2c/app_a.html
Any act including, but not limited to, the use of force or violence and/or threat thereof of any person or group(s) of persons whether acting alone or on behalf of, or in connection with, any organisation(s) or government(s) committed for political, religions, ideological or similar purposes, including the intention to influence any government and/or to put the public or any section of the public in fear.
www.ecis.org/finance/paisdefin.htm
"Systematic use of terror, manifesting itself in violence and intimidation. Terrorism has been used by groups wishing to coerce a govt in order to achieve political or other objectives, and also by dictatorships or other autocratic governments in order to overcome opposition to their policies." [BFH] Often anti-terrorist mercenaries will only do a job if they have a carte blanche to do whatever they want. ...
www.embassy.org.nz/encycl/t3encyc.htm
Acts of murder and destruction deliberately directed against civilians or military in non-military situations.
www.jafi.org.il/education/hasbara/glossary.html
The systematic use of terror, the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear for bringing about political change
wps.prenhall.com/chet_langan_preparing_1/0,9681,1613226-content,00.html
a violent act in violation of the criminal laws of the United States, which is intended to intimidate or influence the policy of a government.
www.njsbf.com/njsbf/student/respect/spring02-glossary.cfm
Terrorist activities are illegal and involve the use of coercion including the use of force, intended to intimidate or coerce, and committed in support of political or social objectives.
www.austin.cc.tx.us/audit/Glossary/LetterT.htm
a psychological strategy of war for gaining political ends by deliberately creating a well-founded climate of fear among the civilian popuation. Such a strategy may be used by an occupying army on the occupied population. Many terrorist acts, especially against an occupying military or against illegal occupants are acts of war or resistance, and not terrorism.
www.naiadonline.ca/book/01Glossary.htm
the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Terrorism is a controversial and subjective term with multiple definitions. One definition means a violent action targetting civilians exclusively. Another definition is the use or threatened use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, economic, religious, or ideological goal. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
Definitions of terrorist on the Web:
One who utilizes the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve political objectives, while disguised as a civilian non-combatant. The use of a civilian disguise while on operations exempts the perpetrator from protection under the Geneva Conventions, and consequently if captured they are liable for prosecution as common criminals.
www.aeroflight.co.uk/definitions.htm
Use should be restricted specifically to references to people and nongovernmental organizations planning and executing acts of violence against civilian or noncombatant targets.
www.careerjournaleurope.com/columnists/styleandsubstance/glossary.html
a radical who employs terror as a political weapon; usually organizes with other terrorists in small cells; often uses religion as a cover for terrorist activities
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Terrorism is a controversial and subjective term with multiple definitions. One definition means a violent action targetting civilians exclusively. Another definition is the use or threatened use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, economic, religious, or ideological goal. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist
Definitions of terrorist act on the Web:
means an act of violence, other than civil disorder or riot, (that is not an act of war, declared or undeclared) that results in loss of life or major damage to property, by any person acting of behalf of or in connection with any organization which is generally recognized as having the intent to overthrow or influence the control of any government.
alumniabroad.com/travelselect/8_definitions.asp
terrorism: the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Definitions of civil disorder on the Web:
Civil disorder is a broad term that is typically used by law enforcement to describe one or more forms of disturbance caused by a group of people. Civil disturbance is typically a symptom of, and a form of protest against, major socio-political problems. Typically, the severity of the action coincides with public outrage. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disorder
Definitions of revolutionary on the Web:
markedly new or introducing radical change; "a revolutionary discovery"; "radical political views"
rotatory: of or relating to or characteristic or causing an axial or orbital turn
relating to or having the nature of a revolution; "revolutionary wars"; "the Revolutionary era"
revolutionist: a radical supporter of political or social revolution
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
The term Revolutionary is some what vague and may be thought to be relative to the context it is used in. It is used to refer to diverse people from Che Guevara a Communist guerilla fighter to Nelson Mandela a nationalist and Gandhi a pacifist nationalist. A general definition might be any one who advocates and organises extreme change from the current status-quo i.e. a Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary
Definitions of civil disobedient on the Web:
Civil disobedience encompasses the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government or of an occupying power without resorting to physical violence. Civil disobedience has been used in struggles in India in the fight against British colonialism, South Africa in the fight against apartheid and civil rights movement in the USA and Europe.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedient
Definitions of oppressed on the Web:
laden: burdened psychologically or mentally; "laden with grief"; "oppressed by a sense of failure"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Definitions of civil liberties on the Web:
Freedoms that protect the individual from arbitrary government interference (as with the freedom of speech and movement).
www.csa.com/hottopics/terror/gloss.php
Civil liberties are protections from the power of governments. Examples include the right to life, freedom from torture, freedom from slavery and forced labour, the right to privacy, the right to a fair trial, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and the right to marry and have a family. These are usually guaranteed and protected by a constitution or by adherence to an international treaty.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties
Definitions of civil liberties vs. civil rights on the Web:
while the two terms may appear identical, in the United States they have two different meanings. Civil liberties are what bills of rights protect: freedom of speech, the right to privacy, freedom of and from religion, due process, the right to vote, etc. Civil rights are more social and deal with the rights of groups, eg emancipation for oppressed minorities and women, same-sex marriage, and various affirmative action programs.
www.ospolitics.org/knowledge/archives/2004/04/10/political_.php
Definitions of malcolm x on the Web:
a leader in the Black Power movement of the 1960s who became a symbol of a more militant and separatist side of the civil rights movement. Born Malcolm Little, he turned away from a past as a petty criminal to embrace the teachings of the Nation of Islam. (He and others in the movement used the X as a replacement for what they termed a “slave” name. ...
www.fasttrackteaching.com/termsmodern.html
militant civil rights leader (1925-1965)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965 – also: Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and Omowale) was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, and a founder of both the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was assassinated in February 1965 on the first day of National Brotherhood Week. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X
Malcolm X is a 1992 dramatic movie directed by Spike Lee about the African-American activist and Black nationalist Malcolm X. The story is based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X_(film)
Definitions of eugene debs on the Web:
Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American labor and political leader and five-time Socialist Party candidate for President of the United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Debs
Definitions of revolutionary war on the Web:
The War of Independence, 1775-1783, fought by the American colonies against Great Britain.
usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/gloss.htm
the American war for independence, 1776 - 1783, which involved many citizens and created a variety of records helpful to genealogists.
www.arkansasresearch.com/g-gloss.html
The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence, was a war fought primarily between Great Britain and revolutionaries within the thirteen North American colonies. The war, which eventually widened far beyond British North America, resulted in the overthrow of British rule in the thirteen colonies and the establishment of the United States of America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_War
Definitions of cuban revolutionary war on the Web:
The Cuban Revolution was the overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by the 26th of July Movement and the establishment of a new government led by Fidel Castro in the 1950s. It began with the assault on the Moncada base on July 26, 1953, and ended on January 1, 1959, when Batista was driven from the country and the cities Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba were seized by sections of the people's army, led by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, respectively. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_revolutionary_war
Definitions of french revolutionary war on the Web:
The French Revolutionary Wars occurred between the outbreak of war between the French Revolutionary government and Austria in 1792 and the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. It is usually divided between the First Coalition (1792-1797) and the Second Coalition (1798-1801), although France was at war with Britain continuously from 1793 to 1802.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_War
Definitions of al queda on the Web:
Al-Qaeda ( - al-Qā'idah, "the foundation" or "the base") is the name given to a worldwide network and alliance of militant Islamist organizations. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Queda
Definitions of al qaeda on the Web:
ahl-KY-duh International terrorist network that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks; "Al Qaeda means "the base"
school.newsweek.com/misc/pronunciation.php
The US government issued an indictment in November 1998 alleging that Osama bin Laden heads an international terrorist network called "Al Qaeda," an Arabic word meaning "the base." Al Qaeda is blamed for several attacks on US interests, including the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/alqaeda/glossary.html
Lowercase the al in the name of bin Laden's terrorist network, except starting a line in a headline.
www.careerjournaleurope.com/columnists/styleandsubstance/glossary.html
Al-Qaeda ( - al-Qā'idah, "the foundation" or "the base") is the name given to a worldwide network and alliance of militant Islamist organizations. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda
Definitions of al qaeda on the Web:
ahl-KY-duh International terrorist network that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks; "Al Qaeda means "the base"
school.newsweek.com/misc/pronunciation.php
The US government issued an indictment in November 1998 alleging that Osama bin Laden heads an international terrorist network called "Al Qaeda," an Arabic word meaning "the base." Al Qaeda is blamed for several attacks on US interests, including the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/alqaeda/glossary.html
Lowercase the al in the name of bin Laden's terrorist network, except starting a line in a headline.
www.careerjournaleurope.com/columnists/styleandsubstance/glossary.html
Al-Qaeda ( - al-Qā'idah, "the foundation" or "the base") is the name given to a worldwide network and alliance of militant Islamist organizations. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda

Paige calls NEA 'terrorist organization'
From John King
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability.
Paige later issued a written release saying that statement, made during a conversation with governors, "was an inappropriate choice of words" but reiterated his criticism of the NEA and its Washington lobbyists.
An administration official said the secretary was "clearly joking" but he should not have used the "terrorist" label in taking issue with the NEA -- which is not only the largest teachers union but also a major player in Democratic Party politics.
Several Democratic governors were quoted after the session saying they were taken aback by Secretary Paige's strong language.
In his written release, Secretary Paige said:
"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms.
"I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live.
"But, as one who grew up on the receiving end of insensitive remarks, I should have chosen my words better."
In a written statement, NEA President Reg Weaver said, "It is morally repugnant to equate those who teach America's children with terrorists. NEA is 2.7 million teachers and educators who are fighting for children and public education. Yet this is the kind of rhetoric we have come to expect from this administration whenever one challenges its world view."
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe called Paige's words "hate speech" and said "President Bush and the Republican Party should immediately renounce" it.
"Secretary Paige has demeaned America's teachers and denigrated the men and women in uniform who are fighting a deadly enemy," he said in a written statement.
"It is a revolting attack on America's teachers to suggest that it is an act of terrorism to disagree with President Bush and to be outspoken advocates for students and teachers."
The NEA is headquartered in Washington where every year the organization spends about $1 million lobbying, according to The Associated Press.
The NEA and its political action committee donated $3.1 million to federal candidates and the two political parties in the last presidential election cycle, the AP reported. About 90 percent of those donations went to Democrats.

Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea

Paige calls NEA 'terrorist organization'
From John King
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability.
Paige later issued a written release saying that statement, made during a conversation with governors, "was an inappropriate choice of words" but reiterated his criticism of the NEA and its Washington lobbyists.
An administration official said the secretary was "clearly joking" but he should not have used the "terrorist" label in taking issue with the NEA -- which is not only the largest teachers union but also a major player in Democratic Party politics.
Several Democratic governors were quoted after the session saying they were taken aback by Secretary Paige's strong language.
In his written release, Secretary Paige said:
"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms.
"I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live.
"But, as one who grew up on the receiving end of insensitive remarks, I should have chosen my words better."
In a written statement, NEA President Reg Weaver said, "It is morally repugnant to equate those who teach America's children with terrorists. NEA is 2.7 million teachers and educators who are fighting for children and public education. Yet this is the kind of rhetoric we have come to expect from this administration whenever one challenges its world view."
Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe called Paige's words "hate speech" and said "President Bush and the Republican Party should immediately renounce" it.
"Secretary Paige has demeaned America's teachers and denigrated the men and women in uniform who are fighting a deadly enemy," he said in a written statement.
"It is a revolting attack on America's teachers to suggest that it is an act of terrorism to disagree with President Bush and to be outspoken advocates for students and teachers."
The NEA is headquartered in Washington where every year the organization spends about $1 million lobbying, according to The Associated Press.
The NEA and its political action committee donated $3.1 million to federal candidates and the two political parties in the last presidential election cycle, the AP reported. About 90 percent of those donations went to Democrats.
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

Links referenced within this article

Associated Press
http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#AP

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea

By the Project for Excellence in Journalism
Five Major Trends
Last year we identified the underlying trends shaping the transformation. In 2005, our research has led us to five main conclusions about the nature of the media landscape.
There are now several models of journalism, and the trajectory increasingly is toward those that are faster, looser, and cheaper. The traditional press model - the journalism of verification - is one in which journalists are concerned first with trying to substantiate facts. It has ceded ground for years on talk shows and cable to a new journalism of assertion, where information is offered with little time and little attempt to independently verify its veracity. Consider the allegations by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," and the weeks of reporting required to find that their claims were unsubstantiated. The blogosphere, while adding the richness of citizen voices, expands this culture of assertion exponentially, and brings to it an affirmative philosophy: publish anything, especially points of view, and the reporting and verification will occur afterward in the response of fellow bloggers. The result is sometimes true and sometimes false. Blogs helped unmask errors at CBS, but also spread the unfounded conspiracy theory that the GOP stole the presidential election in Ohio. All this makes it easier for those who would manipulate public opinion - government, interest groups and corporations - to deliver unchecked messages, through independent outlets or their own faux-news Web sites, video and text news releases and paid commentators. Next, computerized editing has the potential to take this further, blending all these elements into a mix.
The rise in partisanship of news consumption and the notion that people have retreated to their ideological corners for news has been widely exaggerated. A year ago we mentioned a third, older form of news that seemed to be gaining momentum - the journalism of affirmation. Here the news is gathered with a point of view, whether acknowledged or not, and audiences come to have their preconceptions reinforced. In 2004, that notion gained new force when Pew Research Center survey data revealed that Republicans and conservatives had become more distrustful of the news media over the past four years, while the perceptions of Democrats, moderates and liberals had remained about the same. This led to the popular impression that independent journalism was giving way to a European-style partisan press, in which some Americans consume Red Media and others Blue. The evidence suggests that such perceptions are greatly overstated. The overwhelming majority of Americans say they prefer independent, non-partisan news media. So, apparently, do advertisers and investors. In addition, distrusting the media does not correlate to how or whether people use it. Not only do Republicans and Democrats consume most news media outlets in similar levels, but those in both parties who distrust the news media are often heavier consumers of news outlets than those who are more trusting. The only exceptions to this are talk radio and cable news. In the latter, Republicans have tended to congregate in one place, Fox. For most other media, the political orientation of the audience mirrors the population. The political makeup of the network news audience, for instance, matches that of the Weather Channel.
To adapt, journalism may have to move in the direction of making its work more transparent and more expert, and of widening the scope of its searchlight. Journalists aspire in the new landscape to be the one source that can best help citizens discover what to believe and what to disbelieve - a shift from the role of gatekeeper to that of authenticator or referee. To do that, however, it appears news organizations may have to make some significant changes. They may have to document their reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to trust it. Doing so would help inoculate their work from the rapid citizen review that increasingly will occur online and elsewhere. In effect, the era of trust-me journalism has passed, and the era of show-me journalism has begun. As they move toward being authenticators, news organizations also may have to enrich their expertise, both on staff and in their reporting. Since citizens have a deeper range of information at their fingertips, the level of proof in the press must rise accordingly. The notion of filling newsrooms only with talented generalists may not be enough. And rather than merely monitoring the official corridors of power, news organizations may need to monitor the new alternative means of public discussion as well. How else can the press referee what people are hearing in those venues? Such changes will require experimentation, investment, vision and a reorganization of newsrooms.
Despite the new demands, there is more evidence than ever that the mainstream media are investing only cautiously in building new audiences. That is true even online, where audiences are growing. Our data suggest that news organizations have imposed more cutbacks in their Internet operations than in their old media, and where the investment has come is in technology for processing information, not people to gather it. One reason is that the new technologies are still providing relatively modest revenues. The problem is that the traditional media are leaving it to technology companies - like Google - and to individuals and entrepreneurs - like bloggers - to explore and innovate on the Internet. The risk is that traditional journalism will cede to such competitors both the new technology and the audience that is building there. For now, traditional media brands still control most of where audiences go online for news, but that is already beginning to change. In 2004, Google News emerged as a major new player in online news, and the audience for bloggers grew by 58% in six months, to 32 million people.
The three broadcast network news divisions face their most important moment of transition in decades. A generation of network journalists is retiring. Two of the three anchors are new. One network, CBS, has said it wants to rethink nightly news entirely. Nightline, one of the ornaments of American broadcast journalism, was fighting for its life. After years of programming inertia and audience decline, network news finds itself at a crossroads. If the networks rethink nightly news, will they build on the programs' strengths - carefully written, taped and edited storytelling - or cut costs and make the shows more unscripted, like cable interview programs? Will they try to find network evening news a better time slot, or begin to walk away from producing signature nightly newscasts altogether because of the programs' aging demographics? Will ABC try to save Nightline because it adds to the network's brand, or drop it because the company could make more money with a variety show? The next year will likely signal the degree to which passion, inertia or math drives the future of network news.

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2005/narrative_overview_eight.asp?cat=10&media=1

Ashcroft says 46 groups to be designated as terrorist organizations
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday he wants the State Department to designate 46 groups as terrorist organizations, a move that he said would help authorities stop terrorists from entering the country and deport any who are already here.
At a news conference, Ashcroft also announced new security measures for the issuance of non-immigrant visas. At times, he said, "security advisory opinions" and background investigations will be solicited in consultation with the State Department, the FBI and CIA before a visa is granted.
"America will not allow terrorists to use our hospitality as a weapon against us," he said.
He also announced that Steven C. McCraw, an FBI agent, will head the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, which will coordinate the work of several federal agencies to prevent would-be terrorists from entering the country, and tracking down and deporting those who get in.
He also said that aliens who provide material support to terrorist activity will also be barred from entering the country or deported if they are here.
"Just as we welcome America's friends, we will not allow our welcome to be abused by those who are America's enemies," he said.
Speaking to reporters at a separate event, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the "big challenge" to a tighter and more effective immigration policy is crafting up-to-date database that can be accessed by key authorities easily.
"We have to make sure that all derogatory information we have on individuals who might be trying to get into the country are in that database, so that when our consular offices around the world receive a request for a visa and they put it into the database, we check every single name against our databases," Powell said.
The 46 groups cited by Ashcroft include many linked to al Qaeda, the network run by Osama bin Laden.
"All these groups have committed or planned violent terrorist acts or serve as fronts for terrorist organizations. ... Designating these groups as terrorist organizations will enable us to prevent aliens who are affiliated with them from entering the United States. In addition, any aliens who are inadmissible because of their affiliation with these groups at the time they managed to enter our country would also be subject to removal," Ashcroft said.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AG
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2001
(202) 616-2777, TDD (202) 514-1888
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHCROFT OUTLINES MOBILIZATION AGAINST TERRORISM ACT

WASHINGTON, D.C. Attorney General John Ashcroft today presented the Mobilization Against Terrorism Act to Congress. Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Ashcroft outlined the comprehensive legislative initiative which will redefine the antiterrorism effort while protecting civil liberties. The purpose of the legislation is to provide the President and the Department of Justice with the tools and resources necessary to disrupt, weaken, thwart, and eliminate the infrastructure of terrorist organizations, to prevent or thwart terrorist attacks, and to punish perpetrators of terrorist acts.
"The danger that darkened the United States of America and the civilized world on September 11 did not pass with the atrocities committed that day," said Ashcroft. "It requires that we provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to identify, dismantle, disrupt and punish terrorist organizations before they strike again. Terrorism is a clear and present danger to American's today."
The proposed legislation seeks to combat terrorist activity on several fronts. Title I enhances the Department's capacity to gather intelligence necessary to combat terrorist organizations who increasingly employ sophisticated modes of global communications. Existing wiretap authority and procedures have not kept pace with the development of modern technology or the mode of operations of international terrorist organizations. Since current wiretap authority is often restricted to specific property as opposed to allowing law enforcement to follow suspects, current authority is inadequate for investigative personnel to monitor terrorist agents and associates. These proposals update the law to the technology. Terrorist offenses necessitate and justify comprehensive intelligence gathering.
Title II enhances the authority of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to detain and remove suspected terrorists by expanding the definition of terrorists to include those who lend support to terrorist organizations. The ability of terrorists to enter the United States and operate within the country is the obvious prerequisite to their capacity to inflict damage on citizens and facilities. These proposals protect the integrity of the United States borders without sacrificing the ability to welcome law-abiding visitors and legal immigrants.
Title III proposes changes to enhance prosecutors' ability to disable terrorists organizations through the legal process. The proposal amends current law to encourage investigation and prosecution prior to successful completion of a devastating terrorist attack. Terrorism should be considered no less than murder and the elimination of the statute of limitations on terrorist acts is reflective of these sentiments. In addition, this legislation provides for alternative maximum sentences, up to life, for the commission of terrorist acts, giving judges the ability to punish terrorists commensurate to their crimes. A number of other proposals are designed to punish or deter those who would assist terrorists and their organizations through concealment of their activities or their members. The lending of support that works to further terrorist organizations and to perpetuate terrorist attacks is expressly criminalized. In these specific changes to the law of crimes and criminal procedure, the constitutional rights of the accused are respected.
Title IV aims at the financial infrastructure of terrorist organizations whose sophisticated operations require substantial financial resources. Often such resources are provided by those not directly responsible for terrorist acts. These proposals will cripple the capacity of terrorist organizations to finance their illegal activities through criminal and civil forfeiture of resources. In addition, criminal liability is specifically imposed on those who knowingly engage in financial transactions involving the proceeds of these acts.
Title V authorizes emergency operations in response to the September 11 attacks and assists the Attorney General in providing support and relief to the victims. These proposals provide the Attorney General greater discretion and authority to disburse funds with regard to rewards to be offered in connection with crimes of terrorism.
###
01- 492
09 April 2002
Four Indicted for Aiding Convicted Terrorist, Ashcroft Announces, April 9, 2002
(Four accused of helping Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman pursue terrorism from prison)
A U.S. grand jury has indicted four people for supporting and providing resources for convicted blind terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and the organization known as the Islamic Group, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced at an April 9 news conference in New York.
"The Islamic Group is a global terrorist organization that has forged alliances with other terrorist groups, including al Qaeda," Ashcroft said, noting that it has an active membership in the United States, concentrated in the New York City metropolitan area.
The four indicted include New York City attorney Lynne Stewart, one of Rahman's lawyers; Ahmed Abdel Sattar, described as a Staten Island resident and a "surrogate" for Rahman; Yassir Al-Sirri, the former head of the London-based Islamic Observation Center and currently in custody in Britain; and Mohammed Yousry, identified as an Arabic language translator.
Ashcroft said the four helped the 62-year-old Rahman "direct" terrorist activity from his prison cell.
Sheik Rahman is in prison in Rochester, Minnesota, after being convicted in 1995 along with nine others of joining in the plot that resulted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a conspiracy to destroy several New York landmarks, including the United Nations.
Ashcroft said the indictment charges that the four defendants worked in concert with Rahman in violation of special administrative measures restricting Rahman's communications with the outside world, to provide material support and resources to the Islamic Group.
"The indictment charges that Rahman used communications with Stewart, translated by Yousry, to pass messages to and receive messages from Sattar, Al-Sirri and other Islamic Group members," Ashcroft said.
Federal officials learned of the activity between the four and Rahman by, in part, monitoring conversations the Muslim cleric had with his lawyer and associates, the Attorney General said.
Such monitoring of conversations, Ashcroft added, would continued in an effort to thwart any possible terrorist activity.
Following is a transcript of the news conference:
(begin transcript)
U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General
Transcript
April 9, 2002
New York, NY
Islamic Group Indictments
ASHCROFT: This afternoon I'm announcing the indictment of four associates of Sheik Abdel-Rahman, leader of the U.S. government-designated terrorist organization, the Islamic Group. Since 1995 Sheik Rahman has been serving a life term, plus 65-year prison sentence for conspiring to wage a war of terrorism against the United States. Included in that conspiracy term is the plot that resulted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a conspiracy to destroy several New York landmarks, including the United Nations.
Today's indictment charges four individuals, including Rahman's lawyer, a United States citizen, with aiding Sheik Abdel-Rahman in continuing to direct terrorist activities of the Islamic Group from his prison cell in the United States. The United States charges the following individuals: Lynne Stewart, who was Sheik Abdel-Rahman's attorney during his 1995 conviction for the World Trade Center bombing and who has continued to act as one of his attorneys since he has been in prison.
Mohammed Yousry, the Arabic language interpreter for communications between Lynne Stewart and the imprisoned Sheik Rahman.
Ahmed Abdul Sattar, a resident of Staten Island, New York and an active Islamic Group leader, whom the indictment describes as a surrogate for Rahman.
And also indicated is Yasser al-Sirri, the former head of the London-based Islamic observation center. He is currently in custody in the United Kingdom. He is charged with facilitating communications among Islamic Group members and providing financing for their activities.
The indictment charges that these defendants worked in concert with Sheik Abdel-Rahman in violation of special administrative measures restricting Rahman's communications with the outside world, to provide material support and resources the Islamic Group.
ASHCROFT: The indictment charges that Rahman used communications with Stewart, translated by Yousry to pass messages to and receive messages from Sattar, al-Sirri and other Islamic group members.
The terrorist movement at the center of the facts alleged in this indictment is the Islamic group which has as its credo a message of hate that is now tragically familiar to Americans, to oppose by whatever means necessary the nations, governments, and individuals who do not share its radical interpretations of Islamic law.
The Islamic Group is a global terrorist organization that has forged alliances with other terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. It has an active membership in the United States, concentrated in the New York City metropolitan area.
According to the indictment, since at least the early 1990s, Sheik Abdel-Rahman has been one of the principal leaders of the Islamic group and has directed its terrorist operations.
He has defined its goals, has recruited its membership in the United States. In 1997, following his 1995 imprisonment, the Bureau of Prisons implemented special administrative measures that defined the conditions of his imprisonment. Among these restrictions, these measures prohibited Rahman from, and I quote, ``from passing or receiving any written or recorded communications to or from other inmates, visitors, attorneys, prison staff, or anyone else.''
According to the indictment, in 1999, these restrictions were amended to prohibit Rahman from communicating with any member of the news media in person or through his attorneys. Before being allowed access to Rahman, his attorneys, including Lynne Stewart, were required to sign and did sign an affirmation acknowledging that they would abide by these measures and they would be accompanied by a translator only to communicate with Sheik Rahman according to and regarding legal matters. ASHCROFT: Today's indictment charges that Lynne Stewart and Mohammed Yousry repeatedly and willfully violated these order in order to maintain Sheik Abdel-Rahman's influence over the terrorist activities of the Islamic group.
Among other overt acts, the indictment charges that, during a May 2000 visit to Sheik Abdel-Rahman, Stewart allowed Yousry to read letters from Ahmed Abdul Sattar regarding whether the Islamic group should continue to comply with a cease-fire in terrorist activities against Egyptian authorities that had been in place following the shooting and stabbing of 58 tourists and four Egyptians visiting an archaeological site in Luxor, Egypt in 1997. That's a terrorist attack for which the Islamic group claimed credit.
The indictment charges that because these special communications--pardon me. The indictment charges that because these communications violated the special administrative measures placed on Sheik Rahman, Stewart took affirmative steps to conceal the conversation from prison guards, making extraneous comments in English to mask the Arabic conversation between Rahman and Yousry. Following the meeting, and in further violation of the special administrative measures to which she had agreed, Stewart is charged with announcing to the news media that Rahman had withdrawn his support for the cease-fire.
The indictment further alleges that in a January 2001 phone call, Ahmed Abdul Sattar informed Stewart that prison administrators had pleaded with Rahman's wife to tell Rahman to take his medicine. The indictment charges that although they knew Rahman was voluntarily refusing to take insulin for his diabetes, Sattar and Stewart agreed to issue a public statement falsely claiming that Rahman was being denied medical treatment.
The indictment charges that Stewart stated that this misrepresentation was, quote, ``safe,'' because no one on the, quote, ``outside,'' would know the truth. Shortly after terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, the Department of Justice promulgated a rule creating the authority to monitor the attorney-client communications of federal inmates whom we suspected of facilitating acts of terrorism.
ASHCROFT: At the time, we attempted to make clear of the 158,000 inmates in the federal system, this authority would apply to only 16 inmates who, like Sheik Abdel-Rahman, were already under special administrative measures, a definition of the conditions of their custody. The authority was carefully circumscribed to protect inmates' rights while preventing acts of terrorism.
Each prisoner would be told in advance his conversations would be monitored.
None of the information that is protected by the attorney-client privilege would be used for prosecution. Information would only be used to stop impending terrorist attacks and save American lives.
The Department of Justice announced this authority back in October, with the knowledge, which could not be publicly shared for fear of exposing Americans to greater risk, that inmates such as Sheik Abdel-Rahman were attempting to subvert our system of justice for terrorist ends. In fact, the training manual for Al Qaeda terrorists offers detailed constructions to recruits on how to continue their terrorist operations in the event they get caught.
Imprisoned terrorists are instructed to take advantage of any contact with the outside world to, quote--and now I'm quoting from the terrorist manual--''communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to them in their work. The importance of mastering the art of hiding messages is self-evident here.'' And I'm closing now the quotation from the Al Qaeda training manual.
As today's indictment sets forth, Sheik Abdel-Rahman has learned the lessons of the Al Qaeda manual well. Sheik Rahman is determined to exploit the rights guaranteed to him under the United States system of justice.
The United States cannot and will not stand by and allow this to happen. Accordingly, today, I am announcing that the Department of Justice is invoking for the first time to monitor the communications between Sheik Abdel-Rahman and his attorneys under the new Justice Department regulations.
Since America was attacked over six months ago, I have sought to reassure the American people that the acts of the Department of Justice are carefully designed to target terrorists and to protect the rights of Americans and their freedom. Today's actions pursue the same objectives with the same protections in mind. We will not look the other way when our institutions of justice are subverted.
We will not ignore those who claim rights for themselves, while they seek to destroy the rights of others. We will in the president's words ``defend freedom and justice no matter what the cost.''
Thank you. Now we'd be happy to respond to your questions.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) Is there any information pertaining to the September 11 attacks that is not contained in these documents but might be forthcoming later?
ASHCROFT: I don't want to try and discuss all the evidence, but I think it's clear that the indictment does not indicate that there's any information regarding the September 11 attacks, and I think it's safe to assume that there is not any that would be likely to be forthcoming.
QUESTION: Do you know what, if anything, is the consequence of the letters that you allege were read to the Sheik, and if you read letters back in addition to (inaudible) which you say was issued under his name in the year 2000? What, if any, are the consequences of these communications?
ASHCROFT: Well, the first consequence is that the agreement and that the rules relating to his incarceration have been broken.
The second is that the communication, in accordance with the items mentioned in the indictment, that he had lifted his approval of the cease-fire is a very important signal to members of the Islamic group.
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: How did these people provide financial support (inaudible) and other things, including sending money to Sheik Rahman's son in Afghanistan?
ASHCROFT: The indictment alleges that money was transferred, but frankly, for us to go beyond the indictment at this time would be improper.
QUESTION: Can you describe (inaudible) listing his son as, I believe, a co-conspirator but not a defendant, can you explain that?
ASHCROFT: Well, we're talking about Rahman...
(CROSSTALK)
QUESTION: ... Rahman's son.
ASHCROFT: His son?
Let me just call upon Jim (ph) to make a comment on (OFF-MIKE)
(UNKNOWN): I can't comment other than to say the investigation is continuing. The people we've indicted are the people we've indicted. So I'm sorry I can't give you more than that.
QUESTION: All right. Just to be clear, you said that you're announcing for the first time that the attorney--that Sheik Rahman's conversations will be monitored, his conversations with the attorney. Is this the first instance in which attorney-client conversations will be monitored under the new provisions?
ASHCROFT: Under the new provisions, that's correct.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
ASHCROFT: We've had about a dozen and a half people who have been subject to special administrative measures. But under the new regulations promulgated last fall, this is the first time we'll be imposing those regulations as a means of monitoring conversations.
Yes, ma'am?
QUESTION: Do you have information beyond September 11 (inaudible) do you have any information that these particular communications (inaudible)
ASHCROFT: We're not going to go beyond the information in the indictment at this time.
QUESTION: Can you characterize the relationship between the Islamic group and Al Qaeda? What is the nature of that? How close did they work together (inaudible)
ASHCROFT: I don't want to get into the facts that we're likely to develop at one time or another. The indictment alleges a formal relationship, that there's an allied relationship between the two. And at this time, we wouldn't go further.
Yes?
QUESTION: Could you talk about the Luxor attack and the taking of the tourists as hostages? Did the sheik--the information that got out--what were the repercussions, that they encouraged these gentlemen to take the hostages?
ASHCROFT: Well, you know that dozens of people died in Luxor.
QUESTION: Right.
ASHCROFT: And the sheik is a person whose leadership is substantial in the community of terrorists. Scattered on the bodies of those who died in Luxor were the pamphlets saying, ``Release the sheik from his imprisonment in the United States,'' just to indicate that his influence in the Islamic group as a terrorist organization was a profound influence, and so that signaling from him would be important.
QUESTION: To encourage other attacks? But this is one instance that you're suggesting occurred, where they actually did kill people... ASHCROFT: Well, I think that instance occurred prior to the time in which we...
QUESTION: OK.
ASHCROFT: We're not going to go beyond the indictment at this time and provide other information. Yes, sir?
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) what is your concern about what would happen if you didn't take this action that you're announcing today?
ASHCROFT: Well, I've stated on repeated occasions that we will not allow individuals to continue to perpetrate criminal acts or terrorist acts from their prison cells. And we will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that that opportunity, either to direct or otherwise guide or plan or executive acts of terrorism or criminality is restrained.
ASHCROFT: And the regulations which we are now imposing on this particular individual provide for us to be able to monitor his conversations very thoroughly.
QUESTION: And how seriously do you think (inaudible)?
ASHCROFT: I'm not in a position to comment on those things at this time.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
ASHCROFT: I think that's a good question, yes. For a number of years, the conversations have been monitored, pursuant to court order, monitor these conversations, and with judicial authority and authorization.
In order to be able to respond aggressively in a timely fashion, I promulgated regulations last fall that allow to do so with a different set of safeguards and a framework that could provide more expeditious opportunities for surveillance. So, for the first time, we are imposing the ability to surveil a conversation under this new framework.
But for several years now, this office of the United States attorney and the office of the Department of Justice, aided by the FBI and law enforcement authorities, has been taking the steps necessary to assemble this case. And frankly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, its local officials in this office, deserve credit for an investigation which is extending over several years to culminate in the action which is taken today.
QUESTION: How would you characterize the relationship between Sheik Rahman and Lynne Stewart?
ASHCROFT: I think for me to go beyond the indictment today would be inappropriate. We've alleged in the indictment that Sheik's attorney has gone outside the confines of the agreement to which she had come with the officials, and the fact that she has done so has resulted in charges being brought.
QUESTION: When did you start monitoring conversations? Can somebody answer that question?
ASHCROFT: 1998, I believe, is it? December of 1998.
Thank you very much.
(end transcript)
Anti-terrorism and Domestic Gun Violence: A Case of Misplaced Priorities, 10/1/2003
Commentary
by Dick Dahl

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been touring the country on a public-relations blitz for the USA Patriot Act, proclaiming that the U.S. is now a safer place than it was two years ago following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In his speeches before carefully selected audiences, Ashcroft has been claiming that the U.S. is winning the war on terror because there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since the World Trade Center and Pentagon were struck on Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, said Ashcroft in Tallahassee, Fla. on Sept. 25, "Today America is freer than at any time in the history of human freedom."

It would seem that the nation's top prosecutor is encouraging us to uncork the champagne and offer a toast to ourselves for this singular achievement. We are the freest people in history!

If only it were so. First, there is mounting concern that the USA Patriot Act is providing the Justice Department tools that enable it to pry too deeply into Americans' private lives. Second, Ashcroft's rosy pep talks are even more problematic in their refusal to acknowledge the true ongoing terror of gun violence in the U.S. Perhaps terrorists have claimed no more victims on American soil since some 2,800 were killed Sept. 11, 2001, but nearly 60,000 people in the U.S. have been shot to death in that span of time and hundreds of thousands more injured, vastly more than any other industrialized nation that is not nominally at war. And while Ashcroft has been bragging to his mostly hand-picked audiences about crime going down because of his efforts, the national Centers for Disease Control has just released a report that reveals a certain hollowness in his boasts.

The CDC's new National Vital Statistics Report shows that the long decline in annual gun deaths and gun homicides that began under the Clinton Administration in the 1990s came to a halt in the first year of Ashcroft's (and President Bush's) tenure. In 2001, gun deaths in the U.S. rose by more than 3 percent, from 28,663 the previous year to 29,572. Gun homicides also rose, albeit by a slightly lesser rate, from 11,071 the previous year to 11,348 in 2001.

So, what is John Ashcroft's Justice Department doing about continuing gun violence in the U.S.?
In 2002 the Justice Department looked at the 136,000 people who were rejected for gun ownership by the National Instant Background Check system because they had lied about criminal backgrounds, domestic-abuse histories, and other prohibition categories -- and chose to prosecute fewer than 600 of them. "President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft promised to enforce the gun laws on the books," Americans for Gun Safety president Jonathan Cowan said in a statement on Sept. 17, "and this ... is further evidence that they are breaking the biggest promise that they made on guns."
In early March, Ashcroft testified before Congress and refused to offer support for continuation of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, which expires next year. Ashcroft's position is a stark and shameless contradiction to a statement he made during his Senate confirmation hearing in 2001 when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked him whether he would support continuation of the law. He stated, "It is my understanding that the president-elect of the United States has indicated his clear support for extending the assault weapons ban, and I would be pleased to move forward that position, and to support that as a policy of this president, and as a policy of the Justice Department."
The Justice Department has had little or nothing to say about the documented connection between the nation's lax gun laws and terrorist organizations' exploitation of them. In May, a Congressional Research Service report found that loopholes in U.S. gun laws can be exploited, and already have been, for purchases of assault weapons and explosives by terrorists. Violence Policy Center public policy director Joe Sudbay wrote in a commentary that he believes the influence of the National Rifle Association (of which Ashcroft is a member) has kept the Bush Administration mum on the issue. "A free flow of assault weapons and .50-caliber sniper rifles is the NRA's goal, despite the benefit it presents to the terrorists who aim to deny us the freedoms that Bush and Ashcroft claim to defend," Sudbay wrote. "When it comes to the gun issue, the White House repeatedly contradicts its own anti-terror message, a glaring lesson in hypocrisy that benefits only terrorists and the NRA."
Early in his tenure as attorney general, Ashcroft received plaudits from the NRA and its supporters when he told the organization that he believes the Second Amendment guarantees an absolute right to gun ownership. This assessment stands at odds with the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation that the amendment's purpose was to ensure the arming of state militias, and not individuals. Despite the fact that during his confirmation hearings Ashcroft had stated that he would not allow his personal beliefs to affect his job as upholder of federal laws, he has subsequently contradicted himself on the Second Amendment just as he has with assault weapons. In May, 2002, the Justice Department filed briefs to the Supreme Court stating that it has officially adopted the NRA position that the amendment guarantees broad individual rights. The reaction? Criminal defendants across the land, including the "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh, now cite their new Second Amendment rights.
Besides handing the Justice Department unprecedented powers to spy on us, Congress has allocated more than $30 billion this year for the Office of Homeland Security to try to keep us safe from terrorists in the U.S. and is considering President Bush's ill-defined request for $87 billion to fund the military and reconstruction activity in Iraq. Meanwhile, police departments and crime-prevention programs all across the U.S. are being decimated by budget cuts.

Over the last 20 years or so, the concept of "community policing" has risen as an effective means of reducing crime and violence, particularly in urban areas. Police departments found that forging links with programs, schools, community organizations, and creating after-school programs and athletic leagues were effective ways to keep the peace. "Crime prevention is anti-terrorism," Jeffrey Fryrear, director of the National Crime Prevention Institute at the University of Louisville, said in an interview. "It begins at the block level, the neighborhood level, the street level, and builds up. It's a very difficult proposition to build from the top down."

With fewer resources and greater demands from the Department of Homeland Security to perform anti-terrorist security functions, police are less able to hold the community-policing programs together. Now they're more focused on responding to crime than preventing it.

The prospects for the future do not bode well, as the troubling new CDC data on increasing gun deaths and crime would seem to verify. As Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said recently in an interview, "I truly believe that (community policing) had a strong influence in why, before this, we went through eight years of crime reduction in this country. As we pull away from those things, you're not going to see some dramatic increase, but I think that over time this will have an extremely negative effect."

It would be useful and refreshing if Attorney General Ashcroft would acknowledge the reality that professionals like Fryrear and Kerlikowske describe. The accounts of Ashcroft's boosterish speeches around the country all report his heavy emphasis on September 11 and the spectre of more attacks on U.S. soil by foreign terrorists. From Ashcroft's position as an NRA operative, which he surely is, perhaps the tactic does make nefarious sense. If people are frightened enough, they'll accept intrusions into their private lives. They'll consider common-sense crime prevention an extravagance. And maybe they'll buy a gun.

The war on terrorism is certainly necessary. But it would be useful if the U.S. attorney general, among others, would draw a clearer distinction between threat and reality. Terror is already a big problem in the U.S., and as the nation's top prosecutor, John Ashcroft is negligent in misleading the public about its true nature.

Dick Dahl is a freelance journalist who contributes frequently to Join Together Online. His work also has appeared in the The Boston Globe Magazine, The Nation, and the National Law Journal.

Visit www.jointogether.org for complete news and funding coverage, resource links and advocacy tools supporting community-based efforts to reduce and prevent substance abuse and gun violence.

Attorney Lynne Stewart is Not the Terrorist Ashcroft Wanted Her to Be
John Ashcroft must be tearing out his primly coiffed hair about now. On July 21, Federal District Judge John G. Koeltl (Southern District of New York) dismissed the terrorist charges against New York attorney Lynne Stewart. In a 77-page opinion, Judge Koeltl agreed with famed civil rights attorney Michael Tigar's argument that the anti-terrorist act under which she was charged was overly vague as applied to attorney speech and conduct related to client representation.
Stewart had been charged with aiding and abetting the terrorist activities of Sheikh Abdel Rahman, whom she, as court-appointed attorney, defended in connection with the 1993 bombings of the World Trade Center. After visiting her client in prison, Stewart answered a press question about Rahman's support of a cease-fire of then ongoing terrorist activities such as those that were implicated in bombings of U.S. embassies. She said that he did not support a cease-fire. That statement was the basis of one of the charges that could have put her away for 15 years (she faced 40 years if convicted of all four charges). The other had to do with her supposedly being a "mouthpiece" to pass on messages from Rahman to the organization he was tied to, the Islamic Group, which is on the government's list of terrorist organizations.
Judge Koeltl said that the provision in the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act that forbids providing communication methods and personnel to a terrorist organization did not give an attorney notice that communicating with our about his or her client could amount to conspiring to engage in terrorism.
"The Government accuses Stewart of providing personnel, including herself, to [the Islamic Group]," Koeltl said. "In so doing, however, the Government fails to explain how a lawyer, acting as an agent of her client, an alleged leader of an FTO [foreign terrorist organization], could avoid being subject to the criminal prosecution as a 'quasi-employee' allegedly covered by the statute."
The government, in its war on defense attorneys, would have liked to be able to charge attorneys who represent alleged terrorism suspects with being terrorists themselves. To their line of reasoning, Stewart's providing her legal services to a terrorist and using the phone to communicate with him was a violation of the law that presaged loss of liberties under the USA Patriot Act (as with the Patriot Act, few people took notice of the Antiterrorism Act when passed).
Koeltl refused to find the material support for terrorism statute unconstitutionally overbroad, saying its prohibitions are content-neutral and its purposes are "aimed not at speech but at conduct." He let stand charges that Stewart violated the conditions imposed upon her when she visited Rahman in his prison hospital cell. It was there that she is alleged to have used subterfuge so that her client could pass messages to the Islamic Group through an interpreter whom Stewart brought with her to translate her conversations with Rahman (Stewart does not speak Arabic).
Attorney General John Ashcroft signed an executive order giving him the power to order the Bureau of Prisons to monitor certain attorney-client conversations. Stewart was the first, and to date, only, defense attorney charged with violating the conditions imposed on attorney-client communications. Known as SAMs (for Special Administrative Measures), the conditions are arbitrarily imposed at the whim of the Attorney General. The attorney only knows that he or she may be monitored while engaging in what used to be thought of as sacrosanct communication afforded the highest and oldest privilege under the law--the attorney client privilege. Stewart did not know she was under surveillance until she was indicted.
While not admitting that she violated the SAMs, Tigar argued that Stewart was forced to sign what the government put before her in order to do her duty to her client. A strong argument could be made that the purpose of SAMs are to chill attorney-client conduct related to certain defendants. For an attorney has two choices: sign the SAM and see the client, or not-sign and abrogate their legal duty to the client. It is troubling that Judge Koeltl let these charges stand, for a government win would have a dramatic impact on defense attorneys. For while few defense attorneys will be charged as terrorists, any attorney representing anyone upon whom Ashcroft wants to conduct surveillance (or even the attorney herself) could be the target of a SAM.
The net result of Judge Koeltl's decision is that while Stewart is not facing terrorist charges, she is being charged for other crimes arising out of the same acts--speaking to and about her client. The heart of the case against Stewart remains what it always has been--defending the 6th amendment rights of defendants to have a meaningful defense (hard to do with the government is listening to your conversations with your client) and the right of attorneys to diligently and zealously represent their clients, as lawyer conduct codes demands.
Stewart and Tigar were guests on the July 23 edition of Democracy Now, the Pacifica Radio Network show hosted by Amy Goodman. Tigar said that Judge Koeltl’s opinion protects not only lawyers from being charged as terrorists, but ordinary citizens from being prosecuted for speaking out against events such as aspects of the war on terror and the war in Iraq.
Not willing to call it quits just yet, prosecutors said they were exploring possibilities of an appeal. "We continue to believe that the statute prohibiting material support of terrorism is constitutional, and we are reviewing our appellate options," said a spokesman for James B. Comey, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

Posted by Elaine Cassel at July 24, 2003 05:37 A
Prosecutor Under Investigation in Detroit Terrorism Case
I wrote about the case of the Detroit "sleeper cell" in my book, The War on Civil Liberties. When the book went to press, Judge Rosen was considering defense motions to set aside the verdicts. Apparently the Justice Department is probing whether the lead prosecutor set out to mislead the defense, and to convict the defendants with false evidence.
The prosecutor alleges that he is being smeared by the Justice Department, against who he testified about to Congress in a probe of case.
Considering that this administration would not likely investigate any prosecutor for dirty tricks--given that it lives by them in its Roveian universe--the more likely scenario is that the prosecutor IS being retaliated against for blowing the whistle on the big guns.
Here is the Washington Post story about the case.
Detroit 'Sleeper Cell' Prosecutor Faces Probe
Grand Jury Considering Indictment for Misconduct
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 20, 2005; A03
DETROIT -- Once trumpeted as one of the Justice Department's significant triumphs against terrorism, the case targeting the so-called "Detroit sleeper cell" began less than a week after the attack on the World Trade Center. It was only after a jury convicted two men of supporting terrorism that the flimsiness of the government's case became clear.
As hidden evidence spilled out and the Justice Department abandoned the effort, federal investigators began to wonder whether the true conspiracy in the case was perpetrated by the prosecution.
Now a federal grand jury in Detroit is investigating whether the lead prosecutor, Richard Convertino, or anyone else should be indicted for unfairly tipping the scales.
It is a highly unusual case. No charges have been brought and many details remain secret, but information in public documents and testimony in U.S. District Court in Detroit suggest an effort by federal prosecutors and important witnesses to mislead defense lawyers and deceive the jury. U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen said the government acted "outside the Constitution."
Rosen and Justice Department investigators concluded last year that the prosecution stuck doggedly to its theory in defiance of plausible explanations and advice from other U.S. government officials. Records suggest prosecutors withheld evidence that cast doubt on their conclusions, even when ordered by superiors to deliver documents to the defense.
Convertino, who resigned from the Justice Department earlier this year to practice law in Michigan, has denied wrongdoing. He sued former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other superiors, accusing them of mismanaging anti-terrorism efforts and retaliating against him for testifying to Congress about those efforts. His attorneys contend that Convertino was no renegade and was closely supervised by Washington.
It would be "extremely rare for a prosecutor to face criminal charges for misconduct," said former D.C. public corruption prosecutor Randall D. Eliason. "The key is going to be showing deliberate and willfully corrupt misconduct, as opposed to somebody who was pushing the envelope and got carried away."
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth threw out the retaliation claim in Convertino's civil lawsuit in October, saying federal court was not the proper venue. He allowed another portion of Convertino's case to proceed, though he has granted a delay while the Detroit grand jury investigation is underway.
The case of the sleeper cell that wasn't began on Sept. 17, 2001, when federal agents searching for a suspect named Nabil al-Marabh instead found three men in a Detroit apartment where al-Marabh had once lived. Among their possessions were fake identity documents, Islamic fundamentalist cassette tapes and a videotape with footage of tourist sites.
Prosecutors charged four men -- Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan, Farouk Ali-Haimoud and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi -- with conspiring to help terrorists. Convertino and his principal chief government witness, FBI agent Paul George, believed they had cracked an "operational combat cell" of Islamic terrorists.
Convertino told a jury when the trial began in March 2003 that the men were a "shadowy group" that was "planning, seeking direction, awaiting the call." The most important piece of evidence was a day planner that included a pair of sketches.
To the prosecution, they were the maps of a terrorist. The defense dismissed them as doodles.
Seeing that one drawing said "Queen Alia Jordan," Convertino and his team searched for a match in Jordan among an airport, hotel and military hospital that all bore the name of the former queen. FBI agent Michael Thomas and State Department security officer Harry Raymond Smith testified to seeing striking similarities between the sketch and the hospital's surroundings.
"Every time we turned," Smith testified, "it was getting more and more like this drawing."
There was much discussion during the trial about whether the prosecution had photographs that could settle the debate. When Convertino asked Smith under oath whether he had taken photographs, Smith replied that diplomats "never take pictures" of a military installation because "it could cause bigger political implications."
But Justice investigators said later that U.S. officials had taken photographs and Convertino knew it. E-mails from State Department liaison Ed Seitz reported that the photos had been forwarded to Detroit, where Convertino replied, "Thanks Ed!! We love ya."
Justice lawyers said the photographs and the e-mails should have been disclosed. They concluded, in remarks unusually critical of a fellow prosecutor, that "misleading testimony was elicited."
"It is difficult, if not impossible," the lawyers wrote, "to compare the day planner sketches with the photos and see a correlation between the documents and the hospital site."
Thomas told investigators after the trial that Jordanian intelligence officers believed the drawing more resembled the airport. But he testified differently, telling the jury: "We presented this document to the Jordanians. They said, 'We believe this is the military hospital.' " Convertino said a second day planner drawing portrayed Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. This time he introduced photographs. Thomas testified that the match was "almost identical," while Air Force Lt. Col. Mary Peterson described the sketch as "pre-operational surveillance."
What no one on the prosecution team revealed was that other military analysts thought the drawing was not a bomber's map of Incirlik, but a doodler's depiction of a map of the Middle East.
The Justice review team said Peterson had created the "strong inference" that all Air Force personnel agreed that an object in the drawing was a hardened bunker that existed at Incirlik. But undisclosed documents in the Air Force file called the drawing unclear and described any conclusions as "essentially opinion."
A group of U.S. terrorism specialists in Ramstein, Germany, also studied the drawing and concluded that it might be a Middle East map. That detail took on more importance after the trial when an Air Force investigator described a conversation with FBI agent Thomas.
According to the investigator, Thomas reported that a Yemeni source named Nasser Ahmed told him his mentally unstable brother might have drawn a map of the Middle East while doodling in the day planner. Defense lawyers were never told of the potentially exculpatory evidence, as required by law.
Rosen was so troubled by another piece of hidden evidence that he conducted a December 2003 hearing to find out why the U.S. attorney's office had failed to disclose it. The subject was a letter written by Milton "Butch" Jones, a Detroit drug gang leader awaiting sentencing on a federal murder charge.
Jones wrote to prosecutors that he had spoken in jail with Youssef Hmimssa, the only witness to tie the Detroit defendants to a terrorist cell. He quoted Hmimssa as saying he had lied to the FBI and fooled the Secret Service. Jones offered to show prosecutors his notes and take a polygraph test.
Federal prosecutor Joseph Allen testified in a post-trial hearing that he showed the letter to Convertino more than a year before Hmimssa took the witness stand. When it became clear during the trial that the letter remained secret, Allen was so upset that he notified the head of the Detroit U.S. attorney's office criminal division, Alan Gershel.
Gershel told Rosen how, with the letter in front of him, he instructed Convertino's co-counsel, Keith Corbett, during the trial to release it. Allen said Gershel told him later the same day that the matter had been taken care of.
But Convertino and Corbett did not release the letter. Questioned later by Rosen, Convertino said "it slipped through the cracks" and would not have helped the defense anyway. Corbett admitted a "mistake in judgment on our part," but added that he did not recall Gershel's order to surrender the letter.
Rosen ordered the internal Justice Department inquiry in December 2003, six months after the jury convicted Koubriti and Elmardoudi of supporting terrorism. Those two and Hannan were also convicted of document fraud. Ali-Haimoud was acquitted.
The Justice Department took its own case apart, witness by witness, and delivered scores of pages of evidence to defense lawyers. Rosen also traveled to the CIA to review classified documents.
Beyond the evidence about the trial, the Justice Department review quoted witnesses as saying that Convertino instructed an FBI agent not to fill out official reports on the lengthy interviews of Hmimssa, the questionable witness. The FBI reports -- standard procedure -- would have been accessible to defense lawyers.
Defense lawyers, who had accused the prosecution of concealing evidence and knowingly using false testimony, felt vindicated.
"This was, for lack of a better term, a conspiracy to present a fraudulent case to the court," said Detroit defense lawyer William Swor, who represented Elmardoudi. "They took what was a reasonable concern under the circumstances and turned it into a witch hunt."

Posted by Elaine Cassel at November 20, 2005 06:47 AM

UNITED STATES V. LYNNE STEWART
Stewart Reply Memo (573k PDF)
Michael Tigar Declaration (92k PDF)
Lynne Stewart Motions to Dismiss (1.48MB PDF)
Michael Tigar Letter to Judge Koeltl (110k PDF)
Amicus Brief filed by National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (1.2MB PDF)

Aboobaker Ismail: Once an anti-apartheid fighter, he now works for the South African Reserve Bank.
•
How do you define terrorism?
•
On the justness of a cause
•
What was the African National Congress cause?
•
Was the ANC a terrorist group?
•
What's the difference between freedom fighting and terrorism?
•
Why did the ANC resort to violence?
•
Do you stand by your actions?
•
On reconciling with Clarence
•
On moving on

Neville Clarence: Blinded in a bomb attack, he now owns his own technology company.
•
How do you define terrorism? Attacks on civilians
•
Where do you draw the line?
•
Why were you targeted in the bomb attack?
•
Do you consider the bombing terrorism?
•
Were you angry?
•
How did you reconcile with the ANC?
•
On reconciling with Ismail

2005 Fall: Ethics Course Summary

2005-11-25T20:30:00.000-05:00

Each word has an echo. So does each silence.
--Jean Paul Sarte

"Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." — Albert Einstein

A student approached me struggling with how the class fit. Although she openly admitted not reading homework assignments because I did not test them, she still felt that she could not see the connection of the individual classes to the course. Here is a summary of the 5 modules - in super-brief, brief and detailed manners. Please select the summary of your choice.

1. What is ethics? Ethics is an area of philosophy (love of wisdom) that is devoted to the unsolved issues of humam problems. Ethics is the science of moral decisionmaking.
2. Knowledge is critical to ethical analysis. Access to information and understanding how to use it will impact any ethical analysis.
3. Theories provide consistency to the analysis of ethical problems, just as math and science theories provide consistency to problems of their respective fields. While there are many theories, the five basic ones to study are:
a. Egoism
b. Virtue Theory
c. Utilitarianism
d. Rights Theory
e. Deontology
4. Theories can be observed in your personal life. If you examine your relationship with your own self, your family and your friends, you should find that you analyze moral problems with some general consistency. To the extent that you are inconsistent in your use of a theory for an ethical issue, you may well appear to lack integrity, just as a person changing the formula for 1+ 1 to 1 X 1, will have a different answer. There may be strongly held beliefs that are also inconsistent with any theory in which you identify your self with; while you don't have to change your beliefs, the beliefs that cannot be subjected to testing should not be a basis for public policy, as the social contract with the state requires minimal, rational restrictions on citizens for the benefit of society.
5. Theories can help solve problems of today. If we examine homicide, capital punishment and terrorism, there will be solutions based upon theories. All three subject matters deal with death:
a. homicide: killing of one by another - intent and bad act is not assessed here
b. capital punishment: the homicide of a convicted felon as retribution for evil acts against members of society
c. terrorism: the homicide of civilians as a mechanism to trigger political change
The most contrasting theories are deontology and utilitarianism here. If you can identify the theories that you use and those that others use to discuss the matter, you are more likely to have a conversation than 2 independent talks. The failure to speak with one another leads to apathy and skepticism. The goal is to be instead an active critic. With conversation, we may be more motivated to learn about problems and solutions. We can learn more details about the theories and more facts about the situations to developing models for testing and use.
6. Other factors: We have the ability to solve many moral problems of our generation, but there is a mask of apathy amongst the US college generation that creates indifference to political issues that directly impact them and skepticism about any social problems. While this may be caused by police in high schools, Columbine and its effects, 9-11 as a teenager or increased focus on terrorism, students must learn that:
a. The active citizen has a duty to participate in society, which is more than voting and can include running for political office
b. The citizen most likely to be active is one in college, with the energy and enthusiasm of its generation, and the time to focus on society. Upon graduation, careers and family generally consume most of one's time for the next several decades.
c. The college generation is the generation of change, by teaching their parents (or reminding them) of the values learned as children. This generation tends to fight for fairness and freedom in paradigms the parents have never previously considered.
d. This generation is financially tied to their parents unlike previous generation, as the cost of public education has increased and wealth disparities have become more apparent. Either fear of loss of current financial benefits or future ones (inheritance, other support) contribute to the unwillingness of students to take political action.
e. This generation is extremely rule compliant, missing an important component of maturity, which includes testing one's boundaries. This generation prefers the comfort of rules to the fears of seeing the self in flight, away from the social mores and increasing laws.
f. This generation is one of the first to feel the effects of the loss of the fairness doctrine in media, requiring both positions of an issue to be granted equal time, the consolidation of media from hundreds of independent stations to just a few dozen, with ownership interests heavily invested in military production and services and the legal authority to lie to audiences without reproach.
g. The lack of information about citizenship, world issues and even issues of family is apparent in most students. There is also a lack of information about where to obtain information when the media does not provide it.

My Links

2005-11-18T22:28:00.000-05:00

http://ethical.iblogs.com/
www.cyber-ethics.info

Institute for Public Accuracy - IPA

2004-11-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

Institute for Public Accuracy - IPA

Governments on the WWW: Table of Contents

2004-10-11T16:21:00.000-05:00

Governments on the WWW: Table of Contents

The Smoking Gun

2004-10-11T06:28:00.000-05:00

The Smoking Gun

Bush Recasts Rationale For War After Report (washingtonpost.com)

2004-10-10T07:36:00.000-05:00

Bush Recasts Rationale For War After Report (washingtonpost.com)

Bush Nat Guard Docs slow response items

2004-10-10T07:05:00.000-05:00

firstamendmentcenter.org: news

Government Secrecy Related Web Sites

2004-10-10T07:02:00.000-05:00

Other Government Secrecy Related Web Sites

Sen. Feingold on Wartime Treatment Study Act - wwII outstang reparations due

2004-10-10T06:51:00.000-05:00

Sen. Feingold on Wartime Treatment Study Act

Congressional Documents on Secrecy, 2004

2004-10-10T06:46:00.000-05:00

Congressional Documents on Secrecy, 2004

Military base blocks anti-secrecy website - (United Press International)

2004-10-10T06:40:00.000-05:00

Military base blocks anti-secrecy website - (United Press International)

Bush Administration Documents on Secrecy Policy

2004-10-10T06:37:00.000-05:00

Bush Administration Documents on Secrecy Policy

Public Citizen | Significant Judicial Decisions Interpreting FOIA - Significant Judicial Decisions Interpreting the FOIA

2004-10-10T06:36:00.000-05:00

Public Citizen | Significant Judicial Decisions Interpreting FOIA - Significant Judicial Decisions Interpreting the FOIA

freedominfo.org

2004-10-09T10:19:00.000-05:00

freedominfo.org

Daniel Ellsberg - Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

2004-10-09T10:14:00.000-05:00

Daniel Ellsberg - Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

The Draft

2004-09-16T18:01:00.000-05:00

Cheney Disregarded Iraq Sanctions to do business with Iraq

2004-09-16T17:58:00.000-05:00

Misleader.org: Daily Mislead

Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says

2004-09-16T17:51:00.000-05:00

Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says

Freedom of Information Limitations

2004-09-16T17:46:00.000-05:00

MediaChannel.org - A Global Network of More Than 1,000 Media Issues Groups

Group Project Group 4: DU

2004-09-16T05:36:00.000-05:00

San Francisco Bay View - National Black Newspaper of the Year

Comedy Central: Indecision 2004

2004-09-04T11:12:00.000-05:00

Comedy Central: Indecision 2004

Scoop: Oil And War Fraud Traced to the White House

2004-09-04T09:53:00.000-05:00

Scoop: Oil And War Fraud Traced to the White House

Bush on the numbers

2004-09-04T09:34:00.000-05:00

News

Selective Service System: Fast Facts

2004-09-03T20:24:00.000-05:00

Selective Service System: Fast Facts

Operation Truth

2004-09-03T19:47:00.000-05:00

Operation Truth

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Suppress the Vote?

2004-08-16T03:28:00.000-05:00

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Suppress the Vote?

Visual Religious Education- Graphic Stories and Lessons Online

2004-08-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

Visual Religious Education- Graphic Stories and Lessons Online

Cheney lied in the voters' faces. Your "press corps" knows not to tell you

2004-08-11T05:23:00.000-05:00

Cheney lied in the voters' faces. Your "press corps" knows not to tell you

The Village Voice: Features: The Watchers by Janelle Nanos

2004-08-11T05:13:00.000-05:00

The Village Voice: Features: The Watchers by Janelle Nanos

Research Sites

2004-07-28T00:56:00.000-05:00

The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG)
http://www.sosig.ac.uk/philosophy/
The Humbul Humanities Hub
http://www.humbul.ac.uk/
Peter Suber's Guide to Philosophy on the Internet
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm
Dey Alexander's Philosophy in Cyberspace
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~dey/phil/
Epistemelinks
http://www.epistemelinks.com
Philosophy at Large
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Philosophy/philos.html
D Anthony Storm's Web site on Kierkegaard
http://home.pacbell.net/newcov/sk/index.html
The University of Queensland
http://www.library.uq.edu.au/natlibs/
The British Library
http://www.bl.uk/
Web of Science
http://wos.mimas.ac.uk/
David Chalmers
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/biblio.html
Noesis Philosophical Research Online
http://noesis.evansville.edu/bin/index.cgi
The Netlibrary
http://www.netlibrary.com
The Digital Texts Project
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/digitexts/index.html
The Perseus Project
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/
David Chalmers
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online.html
The Leeds Hume Project
http://www.etext.leeds.ac.uk/hume/
Mind
http://www3.oup.co.uk/mind/
Sorites
http://www.ifs.csic.es/sorites.htm
Philosophy at Large
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Philosophy/ejournals.html
Philosophy at Large
http://www.liv.ac.uk/Philosophy/philos.html
Warwick University Department of Philosophy
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/Philosophy/
The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society
http://www.sbg.ac.at/phs/alws/alws.htm
PHILOS-L
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html
The Directory of Scholarly and Professional E-Conferences
http://www.n2h2.com/KOVACS/index.html#Sindex
Philosophy in Cyberspace
http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~dey/phil/section4.htm
Liszt
http://www.liszt.com/

D I S C O V E R
Resource Discovery Network
http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com/
Britannica
http://www.britannica.com/
StudyWeb
http://www.studyweb.com/,
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/
Excite
http://www.excite.com/
Google
http://www.google.com/
Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/
Metacrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/
Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
Searching the Web
http://cwis.kub.nl/~dbi/english/instruct/www/indexuk.htm
The Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG)
http://www.sosig.ac.uk/
Humbul Humanities Hub
http://www.humbul.ac.uk/
RDN
http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
Hippias
http://hippias.evansville.edu/
Noesis: Philosophical Research On-line
http://noesis.evansville.edu/bin/index.cgi/
Google Groups
http://groups.google.com/

The Hindu : International : 2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert

2004-07-27T12:50:00.000-05:00

The Hindu : International : 2,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq: Russian expert

Security Theater in Boston and harrassment

2004-07-27T12:49:00.000-05:00

Richard Forno: Security Theater in Boston

Herald.com | 07/23/2004 | GOP gets scolded on recruitment

2004-07-27T12:47:00.000-05:00

Herald.com | 07/23/2004 | GOP gets scolded on recruitment: "Posted on Fri, Jul. 23, 2004

CITIZENSHIP CEREMONIES

GOP gets scolded on recruitment

Naturalization ceremonies in Jacksonville are to be relocated after complaints that GOP activists registered new citizens as Republicans.

BY GARY FINEOUT AND ALFONSO CHARDY

gfineout@herald.com

Posted on Fri, Jul. 23, 2004

CITIZENSHIP CEREMONIES

GOP gets scolded on recruitment

Naturalization ceremonies in Jacksonville are to be relocated after complaints that GOP activists registered new citizens as Republicans.

BY GARY FINEOUT AND ALFONSO CHARDY

gfineout@herald.com

The citizenship ceremony in Jacksonville seemed to go off as usual, with a crowd of nearly 200 people going home as new Americans.

Just before the new citizens left the June 29 event, an immigration official directing the swearing-in urged the them to stop by a voter registration table -- a not uncommon sight at naturalization ceremonies.

But this table was unusual: Those handing out forms were Republican volunteers -- and the party affiliation box had been checked off ahead of time to make all of the new voters members of the GOP.

All of it was suspicious to Linda Cross, who was there to watch her husband, Dario Cruz, take his citizenship oath. Cross asked one of the women sitting at the table in the foyer of the University of North Florida auditorium whether there were any forms that left the party affiliation blank.

NO CHOICE OFFERED

She was told no.

''They said they didn't have any forms that weren't checked,'' Cross recalled. 'She said, `We're a Republican organization.' ''

Now, after complaints from Democrats, immigration officials say the table was unauthorized and that the incident will mean delays in swearing in naturalized citizens in Jacksonville. Top Republican party officials insist they did not authorize the voter registration effort, but Democrats remain skeptical as to how a Republican group would know when and where to show up.

''We don't know if this is happening anywhere else,'' said Ann Farra, voter registration director for the Duval County Democratic Party. ``Our other concern is, how long has this been going on?''

Jack Bulger, the Florida district director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told The Herald that the group was not authorized to pass out pre-checked voter registration forms. He said that from now on, naturalization ceremonies in Jacksonville will be held at the local immigration office or in a federal courthouse, where immigration officials can have better control of the premises.

''The outcome of all this is that I understand better than anybody the sensitivity of voter registration, at any time . . . and I will not permit the naturalization process to be politicized in any way,'' Bulger said. ``It will not happen.''

A top immigration official sent an e-mail last week to aides to Florida's two senators to alert them to the naturalization ceremony changes, ``because of a recent flap regarding the registration of voters.''

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Wednesday that the Melbourne Democrat wants assurances that those eligible for citizenship will not endure lengthy delays because of the change.

Bulger said no other cities in Florida have reported any similar occurrences and that no limitations on where to hold citizenship ceremonies will affect other cities. Only one ceremony in Jacksonville will be delayed a few days, he said, to accommodate the change of venue from the university campus to the Jacksonville immigration office.

Joseph Agostini, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida, said that voter registration efforts are directed by local clubs and local party organizations and that the state party had no involvement in the June 29 registration drive.

''At the local level, volunteers often attend these kind of events to register voters,'' said Agostini, who said he had registered voters at swearing-in ceremonies in Hillsborough County in past years.

Dick Carlberg, assistant supervisor of elections for Duval County, said that on the basis of complaints from Democrats, the elections office set aside 36 registration forms from June 29 that

were dropped off by the Duval County Republican Party. It is a third-degree felony in Florida to alter voter registration forms without the voter's consent.

But he said those registrations were processed after the office got an opinion from the division of elections that nothing illegal had happened. Carlberg said that while the forms were pre-checked Republican, some voters had crossed it out and selected another party affiliation, indicating they understood they had a choice.

''At worst it was unethical,'' Carlberg said. ``It depends on your point of view. But illegal, no.''

Bulger, the immigration chief in Florida, said that immigration officials typically allow nonpartisan groups or local election offices to register voters at ceremonies and no one thought to question the identity of the people who showed up to register voters in Jacksonville.

'In this particular incident, when our people were almost ready to start the ceremony, a group came in and had a nondescript sign that said `voter registration,' and our people made the assumption, without verifying it, that it was one of the nonpartisan groups we typically have dealt with,'' he said. ``Later, someone approached one of our people and said they thought they had received a form that was pre-checked. That would be inappropriate.''

SOMEONE NAMED

While immigration officials said that the organization that offered voter registration cards to new citizens was ''unknown,'' a story about the initial controversy in The Florida Times-Union identified one of those registering voters as being a Republican volunteer named Millie McLean.

McLean was identified last October as being in charge of voter registration drives for the Republican Women's Club of Duval County Federated, one of dozens of clubs statewide that are chartered by the Republican Party of Florida. McLean refused to answer questions from The Herald, but she denied any wrongdoing to the Times-Union.

Judith Albertelli, a Jacksonville resident and president of the Florida Federation of Republican Women, said she had been told that the women's club itself did not sponsor the voting booth at the June 29 naturalization ceremony.

Herald staff writer Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this report.

The Puzzling 9/11 Report - by Sibel Edmonds

2004-07-27T12:05:00.000-05:00

The Puzzling 9/11 Report - by Sibel Edmonds

9-11 Report Fails to address major issues

2004-07-27T11:46:00.000-05:00

Who's in Charge Here?

Blocking young criminals up produces older, more determined criminals - 17/2/2003

2004-07-26T12:15:00.000-05:00

Bernie Matthews argues that the only result of locking young criminals up is to produce older, more determined criminals - On Line Opinion - 17/2/2003

excessive executive remuneration damages companies - On Line Opinion - 26/5/2003

2004-07-26T12:11:00.000-05:00

Peter Lewis reports on a study that shows how excessive executive remuneration damages companies - On Line Opinion - 26/5/2003

Peace in 2004 - On Line Opinion - 8/4/2004

2004-07-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

Stuart Rees discusses the local, national and international prospects of peace in 2004 - On Line Opinion - 8/4/2004

New U.S. �Terror Warning�: Suppressing Protest in the Name of �Protecting Democracy� --RW/OR ONLINE

2004-07-23T15:24:00.000-05:00

New U.S. �Terror Warning�: Suppressing Protest in the Name of �Protecting Democracy� --RW/OR ONLINE

Protecting Our Health: Birth Defects and the Environment

2004-07-23T15:15:00.000-05:00

Protecting Our Health: Birth Defects and the Environment

ozone exposure levels

2004-07-23T14:57:00.000-05:00

Projects Earth Article Archive - Let It Be Known

2004-07-23T14:54:00.001-05:00

Projects Earth Article Archive - Let It Be Known

Projects Earth Article Archive - The Chlorine Cover-up

2004-07-23T14:54:00.000-05:00

Projects Earth Article Archive - The Chlorine Cover-up

Projects Earth Article Archive - This is Our Body

2004-07-23T14:53:00.000-05:00

Projects Earth Article Archive - This is Our Body

Projects Earth Article Archive -COMMON SENSE: Re-Dreaming the American Dream.

2004-07-23T14:52:00.000-05:00

Projects Earth Article Archive -COMMON SENSE: Re-Dreaming the American Dream.

The World of Free Energy by Peter Lindemann, D.Sc.

2004-07-23T14:51:00.000-05:00

The World of Free Energy by Peter Lindemann, D.Sc.

The Truth About ZP Technology: A Wake-Up Call to the American People

2004-07-23T07:32:00.000-05:00

The Truth About ZP Technology: A Wake-Up Call to the American People

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Vol 2 Feb 2002

The Truth
About ZP
Technology

A Wake-Up Call to
the American People

an interview with Adam Trombly
by Celeste Adams

Adam Trombly is one of the top scientists in the world in the development and creation of Zero Point Energy technology. Devices that he built are working today in other parts of the world. And yet, instead of using Zero Point Energy, Adam Trombly's own house in Maui is being fitted with a bank of expensive solar panels.

Why can't Trombly use his own expertise to fuel his own home? Trombly has spent most of his professional life under one gag order or another. But he decided, he told us, "that if I was going to give an interview for this particular publication, I wasn't going to pull any punches."

If much of this seems overly negative, keep reading. Trombly wants to wake us up, and to shine a light upon things that have been kept dark. But his grounding is deeply spiritual. It's just that the Divine forces that seek to assist us cannot do so unless we call upon them. "Now, in this moment," he tells us, "we must come out and ask for help. When we can ask for help, we get it."

Adam Trombly's revelations will shock you to the depths. But it is his hope, and ours, that it will help you to awaken, or to assist you in your task of awakening others.

Trombly's ultimate vision is the "redreaming of the American Dream."

Adams: How did you become interested in free energy?

Trombly: I was raised as a scientist and I have spoken the language of science all of my life. My mother was a blood specialist, my father was a biochemist, and my sister was at one time a biophysicist.

When my father had just gotten his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue University — I was a young child — he was enlisted as a biochemist, by a fellow Purdue alumnus named Frank Olsen, into a U.S. Air Force/CIA joint project. He was stationed at the biological warfare laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. This was in 1952 during the Korean Conflict. He had been a highly decorated U.S. Army Air Corp officer in World War II, but the government felt that he had a skill of strategic importance to the national security.

At Fort Detrick, he and Olsen, along with a couple of other scientists, were working on a very compartmentalized project. Since he died when I was in the eighth year of this body, I knew very, very little about what this project involved. On the seventh anniversary of his death (4/3/1967) I was in my mother's attic, putting out mousetraps, when I discovered a couple of boxes that contained journals my father had kept during his time at Detrick. You weren't supposed to keep journals, but he did.

One of the things he wrote about in his journals was his exposure to alien technology that totally defied what were considered, at that time and even still to this day, the laws of physics.

He wrote a letter to Dr. Quackenbush, who was on his dissertation board at Purdue, saying that what he had seen challenged even his "most vivid imagination." This was right after he got there.

After he had been there about a year, the notes he wrote got really interesting. He specifically described various technologies which he stated plainly were of "alien origin." He described not only flying disk-shaped craft and their related energy and propulsion systems, but Extraterrestrial Biological Entities. His work was actually concerned with them.

On November 19, 1953, my father (along with Dr. Frank Olson and a couple of other colleagues) was taken by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to a summer camp near Baltimore. While there, he and his colleagues were involuntarily given large doses of LSD in their cocktails; doses on the order of 10,000 to 15,000 micrograms. Olsen knew about the experiment, and out of concern for my father told him, "Harvey you have been given a psychoactive drug and you are beginning to feel its effects. Don't worry."

Olsen had also taken a large dose of acid, and later freaked out because he said he had, "blown the experiment." It was supposed to be a double-blind experiment for all of the participants other than Olsen. He was supposed to keep silent.

Frank Olsen continued to feel unsettled, and was rushed by CIA personnel to New York for psychiatric examination. Something terrible happened instead. Frank was bludgeoned in the head and then thrown from his hotel room window. He was murdered. This, at least, was the conclusion of forensic pathologists hired by Frank's son Eric in 1994.

My father filed an internal protest demanding an investigation of his friend's and colleague's death, and that was what ultimately triggered the events that killed him.

In January of 1954, under the illusion that he was being immunized from a new retroviral biological warfare agent, he was injected instead with a live virus that he had discovered during his research. He became extremely ill. In his notes, he indicated that he immediately knew. "They killed Frank," he said, "and now they have killed me. The difference is that I will die slowly, very slowly."

He died in 1960, from a form of lymphoma as eleven government labs did morphological workups of his cells.

When I discovered that his death had not been an accident of nature, I was heartbroken. I despaired of life. I sat with a knife a quarter inch into my chest, with blood already trickling down, begging whoever was present at Infinity to reveal the truth of existence.

And in the next moment, I suddenly had no doubt of God or, if you prefer, the Buddha Nature, and I saw things with great clarity.

Adams: Do you believe that we're in denial about the involvement of aliens in the affairs of this planet?

Trombly: The American public has been lied to for so long, they wouldn't be able to recognize the truth if Jesus told them personally.

It's very difficult for the American public to know what is going on. In many ways, we are a nation in denial, and all too often a nation of alcoholics and drug addicts. We are in incredible mass denial.

People see what are referred to as flying saucers and UFOs. Sometimes they are not saucers but triangles. Sometimes they're small, and sometimes they're huge and look like buildings.

It doesn't matter how many people in remote places or in cities see them, or photograph or videotape them. The perceptions are simply shut out.

There are amazing mind-control projects going on. People literally cannot maintain their attention span. More than once I have stood and watched crafts 100 or 200 feet over my head and had people say things like, "Well that's not an airplane," or "Oh, my God, are we actually seeing this?" "Is that real?"

But by the next day, the whole chemistry of denial has set in and those same people say, "Wow, that was a strange airplane, it was going really slow, or really fast, and how did it make that right turn?"

This is what got me started in free energy technology — though I hate the term free energy, because it's anything but free. Many have paid dearly for its advent. I don't even know what term I like at this point. I use the term Zero Point Fluctuation Technology — ZP Technology.

I used to have a company called Zero Point Technology. As soon as you put something like that on your shingle, you discover just how unacceptable this concept is to those whose growth stopped so long ago.

People are being bombarded with subliminal messages that tell them that aliens don't exist. Even The "X-Files," which is a joke (thank God they're canceling it), was originally intended, by Chris Carter, to be something more than just random amusement. It was intended to be groundbreaking. But there's government interference. And this is a huge subject. People don't understand that the "other U.S. government" has had contact for decades with cultures that aren't from this planet.

We're like the aboriginal people of New Zealand, or Papua, New Guinea, or any other remote tribe. When they see an airplane, they think that it is a God — or they at least, they used to. Of course, now they think that it's just people who are more primitive than they are, but who have technology.

We are the same way with "alien" cultures. We are the same way with really clean and advanced electrical technologies that could begin to help us understand just how wonderful and abundant Being — simply being — is.

When I got involved in ZP in 1979, I was warned by Buckminster Fuller that if we were successful there'd be hell to pay. If we were actually successful, then it could develop into a real nightmare, because the humans we're dealing with are a species that has been kept in the dark. We've been treated like mushrooms (which are kept in the dark and fed a lot of feces -- there's no nice way of putting this).

The extremes to which these people are willing to go to make your life miserable are phenomenal. They go out of their way to torment those who challenge their utter mediocrity.

Then there are certain people who hang around in the so-called free energy field, who speak at conferences and who have never discovered, engineered, or invented anything in their entire lives that is worthy of note. What they have done is mediocre at best. I won't name them, but they just haven't produced. These are the people who say, "No one has ever bothered me."

These are the same people who — behind my back and behind the backs of those who have actually produced functional technologies — say, "Well I've never seen anything that he's produced."

Adams: Can you tell us more about this alien agenda?

Trombly: I know that there's an alien agenda because my father wrote this in his journals. He said he had discovered that the U.S. government had become involved in its implementation. He went further to say that this alien agenda, in his opinion, was contrary to the good of the human species and the planet.

He believed that a sector of the military/industrial complex was involved in a program, basically, to transform our atmosphere, which is benign to our species and other Earth species, into one that is greatly reduced in terms of its oxygen content.

So this is a force which doesn't have good intentions for us. It is a force that would gladly exterminate us. And yet human beings act as agents for this force. The "human" species is exterminating itself, by its own hands.

My father spoke of alien agendas in his most secret thoughts. This was not something he spoke of in public. He would never have given this interview, I'll tell you that much.

Adams: What species is this alien force?

Trombly: I can't say, but I can say that the species that are trying to harm us are a tiny minority of a vast host of alien species. My father knew of a couple. It wasn't just one, even back then. This sounds very far fetched — I know it sounds nuts. But I decided if I was going to give an interview for this particular publication, I wasn't going to pull any punches.

Adams: Many of the people who read this will share your belief system.

Trombly: Well, this is not about a belief system. I don't like belief systems! This is about reality! We are the ones who are collectively destroying the womb of the Earth in which our species gestates, in which we evolve.

There are real terrorists in Washington, and even, I dare say, in the White House. And we are very rapidly approaching the time when that statement will be considered criminal. The incident we call 9-11 was a mockery. Now, every time someone dials 911 they'll think of the evil demon Osama bin Laden who in fact is someone we helped to create.

Alkhaida was largely financed by the U.S. government. We gave the Taliban 128 million dollars last year to suppress the growth of opium in Afghanistan. Where do you think that money came from? Where do you think it went?

Everyone thinks the 9-11 was caused by Osama bin Laden and his cronies. There's no doubt that some of his money comes from Saudi Arabia, but the fact is that the U.S. government is the primary source of funding for the Taliban. Why? Because Dick Cheney and his cohorts want to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan.

Adams: What has happened to the free-energy technologies that you've produced?

Trombly: Every single technology that I have either invented or co-produced is no longer in my possession. There's one in Arizona that has supposedly become a national security issue.

A former colleague of mine once went off on his own with a design that he and I had come up with. He built a device that was very successful — and is now in a can, and he is a shell of his former self.

Forget about whatever technologies I have had a hand in reducing to practice. We have heard from very credible sources that these are nothing compared to the technologies already being produced by certain prime contractors right here in the United States.

Why is it a national security issue? Why is a generator that generates several times more output than input a security issue? Why is it that the American people cannot enjoy what their tax dollars are paying for? Why is it that we have a government that is willing to deny the American people access to the very technologies they themselves are secretly producing?

It's not a joke. Our government has produced technologies, with our tax dollars, that could immediately begin to reverse the damage done by the irresponsible use of fossil fuels, and they are not allowed to be used.

They continue to pollute this atmosphere, and they continue to reduce the amount of metabolically available oxygen. Who could possibly benefit from that? What species do you know of that is actually better off today than, say, fifty years ago?

What is it that we do when we burn these fuels? We make fire. What is fire? Fire is a rapid oxidation process that releases heat. The real destroyers of the equatorial rain forest are forest fires, because of the incredibly poor husbandry. There's nothing good you can say about what's being done to this planet!

There are far too many people in the U.S. government and other national governments who are acting in a way that is completely moronic and self-destructive. It is not a human agenda! This is what I'm trying to get you to see. There is this whole other thing happening.

We are exploited by a corporate structure — by the "military/industrial complex" Dwight Eisenhower warned us against in his farewell address to the nation. Eisenhower got the term "military/industrial complex" from Mussolini, who was describing Fascism. These are words you don't want to use in our society.

At Project Earth we get mail from all over the world, and the one word that keeps coming up since our last so-called presidential election — about that debacle, that tragedy — is the word "coup." From the perspective of the vast majority of the human species, it was a coup. They say this in India, Japan, South Korea, France, Holland, Spain — everywhere. In spite of the fact that we never posted an article on our website that said or even suggested that we had a coup, people write to us and say, "How come the American people don't realize that they just had a coup?"

Then, following on that coup, we have 9-11. Everybody is terrified, but people don't want to talk the way I'm talking now. They think it's self-destructive.

I tell you truly, it is our collective silence that is truly destructive.

The United States of America is a sacred idea. It is a sacred thought-form. What was America to the people who risked and frequently lost their lives to create it? It was the New Jerusalem. The spiritual foundation of the United States of America is an absolute necessity of our spiritual dimension. It was founded on the basis of the absolute need of the human spirit for freedom.

But freedom brings with it great responsibility and demands great intelligence.

We do not want to live in hell, but we are creating hell for ourselves. We are tormenting each other and ourselves. We're doing these things as if we have no choice. We are truly brainwashed.

The real ultimate cult that's going on in America is this one of jingoistic, flag-waving, unquestioning patriotism. We can get ourselves all hyped up on Zoloft, and that still doesn't change the fact that we as a nation have lost an incredible amount of prestige and trust because of what happened in 2000.

No matter how much money we put into the military budget, we will not be able to restore that trust in our own people or in the rest of the world until, through grace or the incarnation of the Divine Process, our democracy is resurrected from its present contrived state. It is a travesty.

When Dick Cheney refuses to turn over documents to investigators, he gives comfort to our enemies. Truly dangerous and deranged people in truly difficult countries like Pakistan cite the actions of our corrupt public officials as justification for their actions.

If we say to the world that we represent Freedom and Democracy, then by God we have an obligation to be Free and Democratic.

In the meantime, the world laughs, because perfectly capable intelligence officers in the United States are oppressed for the sake of short-term political agendas.

The Central Intelligence Agency attempted to warn the White House before September 11. The entire affair was handled with what can only be called incompetence. While three-oletter agencies spent our tax dollars listening to my calls, true terrorists were going to flight. And in spite of over an 18-minute warning crash, a second full-size passenger jet went into the World Trade Center.

Even so, we are all supposed to fall into line and cheer.

Once, in 1986, I was introduced to a man in Toronto, Canada, who turned out to be a major Soviet technology spy. When he offered me a lot of money and a lot of benefits if I would turn over mechanical drawings for an electrical generating technology I had co-invented, I told that agent to go screw himself. I told him I was under a gag order, and that I would not violate that order.

He responded by saying, "What loyalty do you owe to your country? They have done nothing to help you or your work. If you cooperate with us we will appreciate you and take good care of you and your family. Three hundred million people will benefit from your technology. Who cares if a shaft is made in Leningrad or if assembly occurs near Moscow?"

Once again, I told him to go screw himself, to go back to the totalitarian hell that he came from — and then I got the hell out of his office.

In September of 1986, I turned this man in to the FBI — and as a consequence, I ended up under investigation myself!

In February of 1987, the counter-intelligence unit of the FBI contacted me. During my second so-called "interview," one of the special agents who interviewed me was Robert Hanson, now known as a famous spy for the former Soviet Union.

Hanson interviewed me about whether or not I was a spy. But he knew I wasn't a spy, because he was!

It's not just the U.S. government that's suppressing all this stuff, it's the whole theater of this species. The "human" species has rarely demonstrated qualities that say that it should be maintained or can be sustained.

This species has never acted in a way that is consistently to its own benefit. For thousands of years, this species has acted in a manner that can only be described as both sadistic and masochistic, and on a planetary scale. It has not acted intelligently.

At the same time, there is no decision to change, because the vast majority of the human species don't even realize that we have a choice to do that. They don't realize that we have the choice live intelligently. They don't even know or what that would entail.

My protests to the "powers above" are consistently related to this central fact: "I know there's a choice, you know there's a choice, but the general population on this planet has no clue that there's a choice. We can choose to live in a completely abundant and pollution-free environment. We can make that choice and have more abundance, and not less abundance. We can stop spending money for fuel. The capital expenditure for fuel could be completely eliminated. That would free up trillions of dollars annually, globally, from the world budget, from the planetary budget."

If you want to know why I got involved in this technology, it's because we have a way to generate almost boundless levels of electrical power without any pollution or fuel, without even the need for solar panels or wind power.

It's ridiculous that I am installing solar panels in my home, when I have spent the last 23 years of my life in the field of ZP Fluctuation Technology research and development and have one more than one occasion successfully demonstrated it along with colleagues who have also learned the same hard lessons that I have.

Adams: Can we still restore this planet?

Trombly: We can if we act with great clarity and great speed. No obstacle could stand in our path.

We could even reclaim the Sahara Desert. It didn't used to be a desert. It was destroyed by people who cut down the forest and overgrazed the grasslands that were once there. Now the same thing is happening in Brazil, Indonesia, China and South East Asia.

These forests and grasslands are like your skin. What does the skin do? It keeps us from becoming dehydrated. When a person gets third-degree burns, one of the leading causes of death is dehydration. The same thing is true of the forests and grasslands.

It's about maintaining that tissue and understanding that it is very vulnerable. These membranes are being taken away.

We can also reclaim the desert that is forming in the northeastern corner of Brazil, where there was rainforest a hundred years ago. The Brazilian desert exists because the Brazilian people won't stop cutting down their own trees. I say this very bluntly. If the Brazilian people want to demonstrate that they have some intelligence, then they'll stop cutting down the rainforest, which is the equatorial life support of our planet.

If the United Nations and if the American government want to demonstrate their intelligence, then they will suggest that we should give credits to these countries for their oxygen production.

We can reclaim the deserts by these new technologies, by taking the water out of the oceans and using it on the desert.

Where you run into the logjam, over and over with all these issues, is the question of energy.

How can we heal the ozone layer? It's going to take a tremendous amount of energy to do that. We have to replenish the oxygen that's not getting into the stratosphere.

One of the fundamental points that I try to make is about chlorine. It is a molecular demon once it gets into the ozone layer. One chlorine ion can interfere with the production of 100,000 molecules of ozone. So we have to eliminate as much free chlorine and bromine as possible.

But even if we entirely eliminated chlorine and bromine production, that would still not be enough to heal the stratospheric ozone layer.

Another significant cause of ozone depletion, one that is often overlooked, is the reduction in the amount of oxygen that should be transported into the stratosphere over the equatorial rainforests. Project Earth has been trying to educate people to this fact since the mid-eighties. The oxygen source has literally been cut off by deforestation. But we can heal that by reintroducing a tremendous amount of oxygen up there, and replanting the forest down here, on Earth.

It will take energy. Lots of it.

Adams: Can you describe how your life has been endangered because of your perspectives on free energy?

Trombly: If I had described my life to you since 1980, it would be a long, long story, and it would sound like a bad spy novel.

I've had a number of attempts on my life through really serious poisonings. My wife has had to revive me and give me CPR.

So we've had a whole nightmare component to our life. But we don't live in a nightmare at all. It's quite the opposite.

However, I must say that it has been almost unimaginable at times.

Once, in 1988, I was visited by a couple of scientists at my home in Colorado. One of them was Bob Dratch, a man who has done a lot of work in creating microwave detection equipment, which is widely used by the Department of Defense.

Basically, I was standing in my office, which was a large room, 27 feet long, and Bob Dratch was shaking change in his pocket, to demonstrate that his very sensitive microwave detector could pick up the signal this jingling generated. The signal would appear on the meter and the printout.

I pointed the horn of the device at Dratch to measure the effect. And then, as I pointed the horn away, I kept my finger on the trigger and happened to point it out the window of my office. To our surprise, the alarm went off on the machine! The red light went on, and the meter peaked.

My office was being microwaved!

We walked into my back yard and found the place where the signals were being broadcast. It was right behind my house, in a little forest, right next to an engineering company that is well known for making satellite antennas.

We clipped the cable to the antenna that was broadcasting microwaves at my house, and I called the FCC in Denver and I said told them that this was illegal and I wanted it stopped now. I said, "Stop microwaving me." I already had cancer.

Within three weeks, this engineering company was totally gone. I assume they themselves had something to do with the broadcast, or they wouldn't have left so suddenly.

So dozens of people had to relocate to Kansas, or whereever.

But why were they trying to kill this body? We are perplexed at times by the strange modus operandi of this group.

The world is not going around very well right now, because people aren't loving. When people love, they become geniuses. Intelligence isn't about thinking, it's about feeling. I don't care how many times the force of darkness, which resists love, has attacked you and made you feel separate.

I don't care how difficult anyone's life has been. I guarantee you, I can match it. But suffering is finite, it's limited, it's not eternal. You can transcend suffering through love.

The resurrection we are called to is our resurrection. Once Jesus stood in front of Lazarus' tomb, and commanded, "Lazarus, come out." And we are told that Lazarus came out.

That is similar to what is happening right now. Surrounding this planet, there is a gathering which is inviting the human species into a new dimension. They are saying, "Lazarus come out, come out of your subjective tomb and out of your corruption. Come out of your doubt of God and out of your doubt of Love. In the midst of Infinity and Eternity, We command you."

Now, in this moment, we must come out and ask for help. When we can ask for help, we get it.

People don't understand that you become realized by incarnating love. We live only as expressions of love, in eternity. The only thing that is eternal is Love. Love as the presence of consciousness is eternal and infinite.

Time and space are subsets of eternity and infinity. Space and time are subjective states, and they have nothing to do with limiting the ultimate reality of consciousness, not even a little bit. They have to do with the gnarled subjective states of the contracted world.

Scientists talk about the accelerating expansion of the universe, but it's not that, it's the unremitting transformation of the universe that's happening, the inescapable transformation of the universe.

You don't have a choice about it this time. It isn't the same as it was two thousand years ago. We are in the midst of the time of the resurrection. It involves you and me and everyone on this planet, I don't care who they are.

There will be miracles everywhere. The most powerful thing is love. The whole astrophysical community is now acknowledging this power, but they call it the "dark energy." They give it this Darth Vader quality, because they don't know how to relate to the Light. It is the contraction of form and the denial of the Infinite Divine that causes the appearance of darkness.

Adams: How long has there been a conspiracy to prevent the development of free energy?

Well, if you are referring to the technological side of things, I guess you could say it started with Nikola Tesla. (Although the crucifixion was really an attempt to stop Free energy as well.)

Nikola Tesla was given the vision of infinite electrical power, without fuel, in the 1880s. He demonstrated it in 1886 and 1889, and then throughout the 1890s. He tried to give this gift, but the fossil fuel boys decided he couldn't give it. The fossil fuel boys decided that maybe they could make use of him, so they didn't kill him right away. They killed Tesla in 1943.

One of the detectives approached me in 1981, at a conference. This man told me that Tesla had been murdered. So I guess you could say that it all began right there. When I was a kid in school, nobody knew about Tesla. Tesla was the father of alternating current electricity. Tesla said he was inspired by aliens, beings from other dimensions. He was anathematized because he refused to kowtow; he refused to attend the same temple that the others worshipped in.

Adams: How can we make free energy available to the planet?

Trombly: There is no such thing as free energy without enlightenment and liberation. The technologies point to free energy. We are the technology. We are the free energy.

Great yogis like Sri Babaji demonstrate this. Yogananda talked about him. He was the physical demonstration of free energy. He was the physical demonstration of what the Tibetans called the Rainbow Body. He was transparent and transfigured in God realization, the realization of the Buddha Nature.

There are alien cultures and cultures in other universes who happen to be attentive to the events on this planet because this is one of the last archetypal moments. This will not continue anymore. This entire kind of universe is obsolete and will not occur again, because it would be masochism and sadism to allow it to be perpetuated.

There's a transformation that is occurring. It is about the liberation of all the energy that has been bound up in all of these worlds that are subject to corruption. That is the real physics. This is what is really important.

In the meantime, by understanding that this is true, we can tap into a field that we call Zero Point Vacuum Fluctuation or the quantum ether, and we can generate electrical power. Electrical power exists in complete abundance, without any capital cost for fuel.

Solar technology is so very expensive. We have 108 solar panels in our two facilities on Maui and it takes up a great deal of space. I would love to have ZP Technology here, but the fact of the matter is, if I had that working right now, this place would become a target.

The other side of this story is always the same thing. Just when Light appears on this planet, the subjective forces of darkness manifest with great tenacity. This government was overthrown and nobody knows anything about it. People are silent about it.

On the cover of Newsweek, on September 11, was an article about the secret vote that made Bush president. The article was about a conspiracy in the Supreme Court. Newsweek at that time was willing to challenge the Supreme Court. The Executive Branch of the United States government was about to fall, because it was going to be exposed.

But then the planes hit the World Trade Center.

If Al Gore had been elected, I know the man well enough to know that we would have been in a different economy after four years. We would've begun to implement these technologies.

The United States government has, right now, the technology to eliminate the energy crisis. This consoling gesture that George Bush made the other day, about developing hydrogen fuel-cell technology, is just a carrot that he's dangling before the American people.

Now there are military people who have come forward and are talking about the presence of aliens and alien technology on this planet. They are even talking about the fact that we are making our own flying saucers. This Disclosure Project is extremely important for people to know about (see Secrets from the Stars elsewhere in this issue).

We could be having the greatest economic boom in the history of history. We could actually do that. The technology exists. As early as the 1970s, Henry Kissinger, George Bush, Richard Nixon — all kinds of these guys — knew about this physics. But the downside is that we are on the brink of oblivion.

Parents are paying all this money to educate their children into the lie of physics instead of the truth of physics. Meanwhile, they are taking Prozac. We have legalized the anesthetization of our species. Depression is appropriate.

Adams: What is the purpose of your organization, Project Earth.

Trombly: The original foundation of Project Earth was to reveal to the human species the actual condition of our planet. We're not being told the truth about it. For the most part, the scientific community doesn't know the truth and has been so disempowered by their so-called education that they've lost vision.

Vision is the only thing that will save us. You have to be able to see where you're going.

The agreement that I made with the Divine is one that Bucky and I talked about. We would never just illuminate the problem, we would always offer a solution. If we talked about an energy crisis, we would talk about only it in the context of the fact that there is no energy crisis.

Electrical power is already abundantly available, pollution free. We like electricity. We can power our cars and flying saucers with infinite electrical power. We could have so much fun that living on earth wouldn't be a drag, but would be really great.

Your eyes would be so open that you would walk out the door and you wouldn't see the smog in Los Angeles, but you'd see the clear, sacred air.

Project Earth is not just about communicating the problems. It's about the transformation of humanity.

Adam Trombly, Director of Project Earth, is an internationally acknowledged expert in the fields of Physics, Atmospheric Dynamics, Geophysics, Rotating and Resonating Electromagnetic Systems, and Environmental Global Modeling.

Taking the advice of his friend and mentor R. Buckminster Fuller, Adam has maintained a "synergistic, global view" within a multi-disciplinary scientific background. From this perspective, Adam offers unique insights into the changes humankind has effected on our environment, and the adjustments our future requires of us.

For further information about Project Earth, please visit ProjectEarth.com.

Trombly and Celeste Adams spoke on January 21, 2002.

Project Earth

2004-07-23T07:20:00.000-05:00

A Project Earth Action Alert

Friends of the Earth: England, Wales and Northern Ireland

2004-07-23T07:18:00.000-05:00

Friends of the Earth: England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Breast Cancer and Silent Spring Institute

2004-07-23T07:16:00.000-05:00

about us

Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program

2004-07-23T07:14:00.000-05:00

Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program

Rachel Carson - Environmentalist

2004-07-23T07:10:00.000-05:00

Rachel Carson .org

"The more clearly we can focus our attention on
the wonders and realities of the universe about us,
the less taste we shall have for destruction."
-- Rachel Carson © 1954

Mind Control: Definition and Information

2004-07-23T07:06:00.000-05:00

Mind Control: Definition and Information

Terrorism as cults delivers different strategies to manage than used as warriors

2004-07-23T07:01:00.000-05:00

Newsletter October 2001

Vail fires - Arson by environmentalists???

2004-07-23T06:59:00.000-05:00

Vail fires

earth liberation front - About the E.L.F.

2004-07-23T06:57:00.000-05:00

earth liberation front - About the E.L.F.

is this based upon utilitarian model?

The logical Fallacies: Index

2004-07-23T06:04:00.000-05:00

The logical Fallacies: Index

research copyright restrictions

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies - by Stephen Downes

2004-07-23T06:03:00.000-05:00

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies - by Stephen Downes

Fallacies

2004-07-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Fallacies

Description of Fallacies
In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. Very briefly, an argument consists of one or more premises and one conclusion. A premise is a statement (a sentence that is either true or false) that is offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion (which is also a sentence that is either true or false).

There are two main types of arguments: deductive and inductive. A deductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) complete support for the conclusion. An inductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) some degree of support (but less than complete support) for the conclusion. If the premises actually provide the required degree of support for the conclusion, then the argument is a good one. A good deductive argument is known as a valid argument and is such that if all its premises are true, then its conclusion must be true. If all the argument is valid and actually has all true premises, then it is known as a sound argument. If it is invalid or has one or more false premises, it will be unsound. A good inductive argument is known as a strong (or "cogent") inductive argument. It is such that if the premises are true, the conclusion is likely to be true.

A fallacy is, very generally, an error in reasoning. This differs from a factual error, which is simply being wrong about the facts. To be more specific, a fallacy is an "argument" in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support. A deductive fallacy is a deductive argument that is invalid (it is such that it could have all true premises and still have a false conclusion). An inductive fallacy is less formal than a deductive fallacy. They are simply "arguments" which appear to be inductive arguments, but the premises do not provided enough support for the conclusion. In such cases, even if the premises were true, the conclusion would not be more likely to be true.

Common Argumentative Fallacies

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Analysis of Arguments

PREFACE

The following piece on propaganda analysis was written ChipBerlet. It was published in a 1997 book on the campus Right that I co-edited at the Center for Campus Organizing (seewww.cco.org/right). Chip was also the editor of an excellent 1995 book, "Eyes Right: Challenging the Right Wing Backlash"(South End Press, 1995). The propaganda piece originally appeared in a working paper published by Political Research Associates (see http://www.publiceye.org/), where Chip works.

The article is based on research conducted in the late 1930s by an institute that was set up to counter right-wing propaganda in the US. This was a priority, of course, because of the rampant anti-Semitic propaganda associated with the rise of Nazi Germany. It is a fair statement, I think, to say that many of the tactics used by the most aggressive partisans indebates over the internet employ many of the propaganda techniques identified in Berlet's piece. This piece offers some ways of identifying this manipulation, so you can call people on their insistence to spout unsubstantiated assertions as fact. I have tried this on several Internet discussions where aggressive partisans were pushing their points of view and it seemed to work (for lists that had even a minimal level of moderator control) by putting the propaganda pushers on the defensive rather quickly. It also works if you stay on the discussion for a few days to feed additional facts when your point is challenged. If you find the techniques in this article helpful, please don't just tell us; please send it to friends and other email lists where it might be useful.

-rich cowan rich@organizenow.net
-------------------------------------------------

An Introduction to Propaganda Analysis[Based on the 1997 publication of this article in a publicationthat made refereence to campus publications. The article is moregeneral than that, so that lead was removed for this repost. -rc]by Chip Berlet

[Right-wing publications] have the potential to createa great deal of political and journalistic confusion. Inanalyzing and in responding to the Right, it is useful toremember that academia has produced a long list of usefultools and techniques to evaluate the logical and conceptualvalidity of any argument regardless of political content orviewpoint.

Useful standards by which to judge the merits of anystatement or theory abound in textbooks on debate, rhetoric,argument, and logic. These books discuss which techniquesof argumentation are not valid because they fail to followrules of logic. Among the more common fallacious techniquesor inadequate proofs:

o Raising the volume, increasing the stridency, or stressing    the emotionalism of an argument does not improve its validity.    This is called argument by exhortation.

o Sequence does not imply causation. If Joan is elected to    the board of directors of a bank on May 1, and Raul gets a    loan on July 26, further evidence is needed to prove a causal    connection.

o Association does not imply agreement, hence the term "guilt    by association" has a pejorative meaning. Association proves    association: it suggests further questions are appropriate,    and demonstrates the parameters of networks, coalitions, and    personal moral distinctions - nothing more.

o Participation in an activity, or presence at an event, does    not imply control.

o Congruence in one or more elements does not establish    congruence in all elements. Gloria Steinem and Jeane    Kirkpatrick are both intelligent, assertive women accomplished    in political rhetoric. To assume they therefore also agree    politically would be ludicrous. If milk is white and powdered    chalk is white, would you drink a glass of powdered chalk?

o Similarity in activity does not imply joint activity and    joint activity does not imply   congruent motivation. When a    person serves in an official advisory role or acts in a position    of responsibility within a group, however, the burden of    proof shifts to favor a presumption that such a person is not    a mere member or associate, but probably embraces a considerable    portion of the sentiments expressed by the group. Still, even    members of boards of directors will distance themselves from a    particular stance adopted by groups they oversee, and therefore    it is not legitimate to assume automatically that they    personally hold a view expressed by the group or other board    members. It is legitimate, however, to assert that they need    to distance themselves publicly from a particular organizational    position if they wish to dissociate themselves from it.

o Anecdotes alone are not conclusive evidence. Anecdotes are used    to illustrate a thesis, not to prove it.    In 1936 Boston merchant Edward Filene helped establish theshort-lived Institute for Propaganda Analysis which sought toeducate Americans to recognize propaganda techniques.

AlfredMcClung Lee, Institute director from 1940-2, and his wifeElizabeth Briant Lee, co-authors of The Fine Art of Propaganda,Social Problems in America, recently wrote an article in theperiodical Propaganda Review which they suggested that educatingthe public about propaganda techniques was an urgent priority. The Lees named seven hallmark tricks of the manipulativepropagandist:

Name Calling: hanging a bad label on an idea

Card Stacking: selective use of facts or outright falsehoods

Band Wagon: a claim that everyone like us thinks this way

Testimonial: the association of a respected or hated person with    an ideaPlain Folks: a technique whereby the idea and its proponents are    linked to "people like you and me"

Transfer: an assertion of a connection between something valued or    hated and the idea or commodity discussedGlittering Generality: an association of something with a "virtue    word" to gain approval without examining the evidence

[Chip Berlet is a researcher at Political Research Associates (PRA) in Somerville, MA. This article is was originally published in 1991and is excerpted from "Uncovering the Right on Campus" (Center forCampus Organizing (CCO), 1997; excerpts at www.cco.org/right) copyright Political Research Associates 1991]p.p.s. people can email rich@organizenow.net if they areinterested in getting their hands on the CCO book.

Applied Ethics

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The Field of Applied Ethics Applied Ethics emerged during the 1960s and 1970s due, in part, by an unexpected confluence of advances in medical technology and a growing patients' rights movement. People of good will had sincere disagreements over what ought to be done, and ethical guidance was sought. With the establishment of the Hastings Center (1969) and Georgetown's Kennedy Institute of Ethics (1971), the turn in applied ethics began as professional philosophers sought to address these concrete issues.
But as these philosophers soon discovered, applied ethics involves more than the straightforward application of ethical theory. If meta-ethics is a reflection upon the scope and limits of ethics itself (e.g., analyses of ethical relativism) and if normative ethics seeks general theories that provide substantial action guides (like the anthologized versions of Kant's Categorical Imperative or Bentham's Principle of Utility), applied ethics focuses on domain-specific areas like medicine, business, and engineering. Ethical analyses in these domains require a level of detail not immediately available to the general theorist.

Module 2: Tragedy

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Tragedy of the Commons

Module 2: Ethic of Care

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Ethics of Care
In the 1970s and 80s feminist writers began to question the assumptions behind many of the traditional ethical theories. Carol Gilligan’s work in moral psychology (A Different Voice, 1982) challenged "justice-based" approaches to moral discussion: "...men tend to embrace an ethic of rights using quasi-legal terminology and impartial principles … women tend to affirm an ethic of care that centers on responsiveness in an interconnected network of needs, care, and prevention of harm. Taking care of others is the core notion." (B&C. 371)
Annette Baier’s philosophical account ("What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory" 1985) of an ethics of care "does not recommend that we discard categories of obligation, but that we make room for an ethic of love and trust, including an account of human bonding and friendship." (B&C, 371)
In both of these accounts, there is a specific criticism of "Traditional Liberal Theory" and its emphasis on impartiality and universality:
The impartiality and the ‘standpoint of detached fairness’ advocated by liberal theories of justice, overlook, for example, the moral role of attachment to those close to us. Speaking from the perspective of medical ethics, "The care perspective is especially meaningful for roles such as parent, friend, physician, and nurse, in which contextual response, attentiveness to subtle clues, and the deepening of special relationships are likely to be more momentous morally than impartial treatment" (B&C, 372)
In articulating the challenge to "universal principles," Beauchamp and Childress write:
"We can produce rough generalizations about how caring physicians and nurses respond to patients, for example, but these generalizations will not be subtle enough to give helpful guidance for the next patient. Each situation calls for a set of responses outside any generalization…." (B&C, 373)
Proponents of an Ethics of Care emphasize the roles of Mutual Interdependence and Emotional Response that play an important part in our moral lives: "…many human relationships involve persons who are vulnerable, dependent, ill, and frail … [and] the desirable moral response is attached attentiveness to needs, not detached respect for rights" (B&C, 373) and "The person who acts from rule-governed obligations without appropriately aligned feelings such as worry when a friend suffers seems to have a moral deficiency. In addition…insight into the needs of others and considerate alertness to their circumstances often come from the emotions more than reason." (B&C, 4th Ed. 89) Thus the emotions seem to have a ‘cognitive role,’ allowing us to grasp a situation that may not be immediately available to one arguing solely from a ‘justice perspective.’
Critical Evaluation of the Care Ethic
The example of a nurse who personally wants to help a patient die, but who will not do so as it violates professional duty, shows that "…the ethics of care must confront situations in which bona fide requirements of impartiality conflict with acting partially from care." (B&C, 4th Ed. 90)
Some feminists actually interpret the ‘care ethic’ as culturally determined by the male hierarchy. For example, a terminally ill grand mother may request to be allowed to die because she doesn’t want to be ‘a bother’ to her family. Here someone like Susan Sherwin "sees a need to examine the social context of care as well as to establish limits to the ethics of care. Both enterprises would involve appeals to justice…" (B&C, 375)
Constructive Evaluation of the Care Ethic
Sensitivity and emotional response to particular situations (like family discussions with physicians) provide important guides to morally acceptable actions. A care ethic also seems to favor adopting procedures from Conflict Resolution and Dispute Mediation as alternative ways to approach an apparent ethical conflict.

Compare Contrast to: Lifeboat Ethics

Module 2: Case Based Reasoning

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Case-Based Reasoning argues that "...moral belief and knowledge evolve incrementally through reflection on cases, without essential recourse to a top-down theory." In this belief, case-based moral reasoning is analogous to case law ("Social ethics develops from a social consensus… this consensus is then extended to new cases by analogy to past cases…" (95)
Certain paradigm cases like Quinlan and the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment become sources of authority for new judgments. "Just as case law (legal rules) develops incrementally from legal decisions in cases, so the moral law (moral rules) develops incrementally" (96)

CASUISTRY
Casuistry
Critical Evaluation of Casuistry
"Interpretation of cases is essential for moral judgment and principles and theories typically play a legitimate role in the interpretation" (97) Furthermore, principles can be held prior to judging cases and then selected and weighed in the particular circumstances.
"Casuists have no clear methodological resources to prevent a biased development of cases…Without some stable framework of general norms, there is no control on judgment and no way to prevent prejudiced or poorly formulated social conventions" (97)
Constructive Evaluation of CasuistryDespite criticisms, we must note the importance of analogical reasoning, paradigm cases, and practical judgment as an avenue to moral knowledge. (99) Furthermore, ethical generalizations are often best learned, accommodated, and implemented by using cases, case discussion and case methods. (99) Finally, sensitivity to context and individual differences is often essential for a discerning use of principles. (100)

Module 2: Overview

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Deontological Theories

Acting from Duty
Deontological normative ethical theories place the locus of right and wrong in autonomous adherence to moral laws or duties.

Monistic deontology -- Kant's Categorical Imperative ("Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law") provides the source of right action. Its first formulation states "Act as if the maxim of your action were to secure through your will a universal law of nature;" its second formulation states "Always act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, as an end in itself, never as a means only." Actions that conform to these imperatives (i.e., right actions) and are, furthermore, done from a sense of duty, are the epitome of morally praiseworthy actions.

Critics of Kant's approach claim that his Categorical Imperative does not contain within it a way to resolve conflicts of duties. "Lying is wrong" can be interpreted as "Never lie" and thus Universal Principles can 'harden' into Absolute Principles.

Pluralistic deontology -- For the 20th Century philosopher W. D. Ross, there are a number of duties that reflection reveals -- and these form a group of prima facie obligations. The phrase "prima facie" ('all things being equal') refers to the fact that these duties do not bind us absolutely, but rather that they generally hold -- absent any further considerations. Two key duties are nonmaleficence (don't harm others) and beneficence (help others). Other prima facie duties include 'don't lie,' 'don't kill,' keep promises,' etc.

When conflicts occur between duties, our actual duty becomes that which "intuitive judgment" discerns as the right thing to do (e.g., lying to save the life of an innocent person). Critics are cautious about referring to 'intuition' as the criterion for determining our actual course of action. Stephen Toulmin (Reason in Ethics, 1950) suggested that we "weigh up, as well as we can, the risks involved in ignoring either, and choose 'the lesser of two evils'." Thus, while the principles may be deontic in nature, a resolution of conflicts of principles could appeal to probable consequences. See excerpts from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "Universalism."

Module 1: Overview: Virtue Ethics

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Virtue Ethics: the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

Historical Perspective
There is a long tradition in ethics that places great importance on the "kind of person one is." We not only want those around us to "tell the truth" (for example, according to the Categorical Imperative), but also to be honest. Both Aristotle (arete) and Aquinas (virtu) emphasized this aspect of ethics by highlighting the role of what we would today call character in their discussions of ethics (and the classic virtues of courage, justice, and moderation). David Hume also gave virtue and personal merit a key role in his ethical theory. The recent revival of interest in virtue ethics can be traced back to Philippa Foot. She writes that a person’s "virtue may be judged by his innermost desires as well as by his intentions; and this fits with our idea that a virtue such as generosity lies as much in someone’s attitudes as in his actions" (Virtue and Vices, 1977, 5).

The Moral Concept of Virtue
virtues found in a particular society or culture (e.g., chastity) may be different from those virtues that can be supported by moral reasoning (e.g., honesty). "A virtue is a trait of character that is socially valued, and a moral virtue is a trait that is morally valued…Moral reasons must support a claim…of moral virtue" (B&C, 27).

By emphasizing the priority of character in discussions of ethics, virtue theorists can say: "…rather than using rules and government regulations to protect subjects in research, some claim that the most reliable protection is the presence of an ‘informed, conscientious, compassionate, responsible researcher’" (Beecher, quoted in B&C, 28-29). The underlying view here is that "character is more important than conformity to rules and that virtues should be inculcated and cultivated over time through educational interactions, role models," etc. (B&C, 29)

A practical consequence of this view is that the education of, for example medical doctors, should include the cultivation of virtues such as compassion, discernment, trustworthiness, integrity, conscientiousness as well as benevolence (desire to help) and nonmalevolence (desire to avoid harm).

Critical Evaluation of "Virtue Ethics"
Often times we encounter "morality between strangers" (as when one enters an Emergency Room after a car accident). At these times, it’s not the person’s character, but his/her need to follow rules and procedures that seem to come to the forefront ("Virtue is not enough"). Furthermore, persons of ‘good character’ can certainly formulate ‘bad policy’ or make a ‘poor choice’ -- and we need to evaluate those policies and choices according to moral principles.
Constructive Evaluation of "Virtue Ethics"Yet "…ethical theory is more complete if the virtues are included…motives deserve to be at center stage in a way that some leading traditional theories have inadequately appreciated" … "To look at acts without also looking at the moral appropriateness and desirability of feelings, attitudes, forms of sympathy, and the like is to miss a large area of the moral picture" (B&C, 4th Ed., 69)

Notes on Utilitarianism, Bentham and Mill

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http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mponeill/ethics/utilitarianism.html

Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism as an Account of Morality
A technical definition: Utilitarianism is a view which combines:
(i) consequentialism (the view that we should judge actions in terms of their consequences);
(ii) welfarism (the view that all moral ‘good’ or ‘bad’ can be accounted for in terms of ‘the wellbeing’ of individuals (i.e. how well their lives go)). (The specific form of wellbeing adopted by most utilitarians is some form of Hedonistic theory, whether that be ‘Narrow’ (Bentham) or akin to ‘Preference Hedonism’ (Mill)) ; and
(iii) sum-maximization (the view that what is morally important about wellbeing (which, for the utilitarian, is equal to is the total amount).

What sort of objections could be brought against each of (i), (ii) and (iii)?

(a) Utilitarianism and moral decision-making:
There is a commonly marked difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Mill would seem to be advocating a version of the latter position.
Thinking about the difference between the two is useful when one comes to consider how one would use utilitarianism to make moral decisions.
Both Mill and Bentham seem to be hedonists (albeit of different kinds). What is the relationship between hedonism and utilitarianism?
Are utilitarians right in thinking that the overall good for society is just a sum of the levels of happiness of each individual within that society? Is aggregate happiness the only moral standard?
What do you think should be the relevant community to consider when making utilitarian considerations? A state? A nation? Humankind? All sentient creatures? Should we take account only of currently living people, or should we also take into account future (or even past) generations?

Bentham


on Well-Being
Where does Bentham fit under Parfit’s typology of different kinds of theories?
Are the problems with comparing and ranking pleasures too great for Bentham’s theory, or does he have a way of coping with these problems?

Is mankind really “under the governance of two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain?” (Bentham, I.I).
Are pleasure and pain always the things that really matter?
If other things seem to be important, are they actually only important because of their effects in terms of pleasures and pains?

Is Mill correct when he says that (p. 279), “It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.”?
How convincing is Mill’s procedure for ranking which pleasures are ‘higher’ and ‘lower’? (pp. 279-280)?
Is Mill right that “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”?
In stating this claim, is Mill staying true to a Hedonistic Theory of Wellbeing, or has he actually crossed the line to an Objective List account?

How is Mill’s account of higher and lower pleasures (where some pleasures are more valuable than others) similar to, and how are they distinct from, the view expressed by Socrates in the Gorgias?

Both Socrates and Mill maintain that some pleasures are more valuable than others. Judging from the examples they give, would you agree about which pleasures are more valuable? What kind of reasons would each of them offer in support of his view?

Mill
Where does Mill fit in on Parfit’s typology?

According to Mill's utilitarianism, is it okay to tell a lie whenever doing so would result in more happiness than telling the truth? why or why not, taking into account what Mill says on pp. 294-295. If you think the answer is no, explain when one should lie, according to utilitarianism.

Mill’s proof of the ‘Principle of Utility’ and his account of Virtue:
How effective is Mill’s ‘Proof’ of the ‘Principle of Utility’ in Ch. IV?
As it stands, of what is it a proof?
Is it a proof of utilitarianism, or simply a proof of hedonism?

Mill’s use of an analogy between ‘visibility’ and ‘desirability’ in his proof (p. 307), has been criticized (not least by Bertrand Russell). Are these criticisms justified, or is Mill actually doing something more sophisticated here?

What do you make of Mill’s claim that (p. 309): “Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.” ?

How justifiable is Mill’s move from the view that everyone rightly desires their own happiness, to the view that the general happiness is rightly desired by all? (pp. 307-308).

Do Mill’s ‘proof’ (pp. 307-308) and his account of the relation of virtue to happiness (pp. 308-311) provide an adequate response to Callicles’s claim that “the strong” have no reason not to take as much as they can get?
Does Mill’s account (in Chapter III) of the motivational basis of morality do anything to bolster this argument?

Mill on moral motivation, and issues related to the ‘paradox of pleasure’:
Mill’s claims (p. 312) that desire cannot be directed towards anything ultimately except pleasure and exemption from pain. Is this claim plausible?
What would Feinberg have to say about such a claim?
Think about the difference between considering utilitarianism as (a) an account of the ultimate value of our actions, as opposed to (b) being a principle which we could adopt when choosing how to act.

What does Mill mean when he says (pp. 308-309) that: “The ingredients of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely when considered as swelling an aggregate.”?

What do you make of Mill’s claim that “desiring a thing and finding it pleasant are … two parts of the same phenomenon”, in his discussion at pp. 311-312?

What is Mill’s account of the relationship between willing and desiring? (pp. 312-313). Why is it significant? Is it plausible?

Mill claims (p. 311) that whenever we desire something we think of it as pleasant. And he appears to conclude from this (p. 312) that desire cannot possibly be directed toward anything ultimately except pleasure and exemption from pain. Assess this argument, taking into account what Feinberg says in sections 12 and 13 of his article.

Utilitarianism, Contractualism and Justice

an objection to utilitarianism that it fails to take into account the role of individual rights, and of considerations of justice, in its procedures for making moral decisions.

Bentham’s view is often seen as being deficient insofar as it fails to take account of the rights of individuals, and the constraints which those rights place on our actions.
How well does Mill’s account of the relationship between utilitarianism, rights, and justice in Ch V of Utilitarianism answer these objections?
Does Mill’s version of utilitarianism avoid the sorts of problems to which Bentham’s view is subject?
Scanlon’s contractualism is an alternative view to utilitarianism, which gives more of a role to individuals, and which avoids some of the problems associated with the aggregation of individual wellbeing which we find in utilitarianism.
Is Scanlon’s view to be preferred to utilitarianism? If so, why? If not, why not?
How far should the acceptance of utilitarianism involve us in departing from our usual intuitions about moral matters?
Should we try to revise the theory to make it more acceptable, or, on the other hand, should we instead reject our moral intuitions when they come into conflict with the theory?

Introduction to utilitarianism

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Introduction to utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

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Overview
http://ethics.sandiego.edu/theories/Utilitarianism/
Utilitarianism
Overview

Utilitarianism is a normative ethical theory that places the locus of right and wrong solely on the outcomes (consequences) of choosing one action/policy over other actions/policies. It moves beyond the scope of one's own interests and takes into account the interests of others.

Bentham's Principle of Utility: (1) Recognizes the fundamental role of pain and pleasure in human life, (2) approves or disapproves of an action on the basis of the amount of pain or pleasure brought about i.e, consequences, (3) equates good with pleasure and evil with pain, and (4) asserts that pleasure and pain are capable of quantification (and hence 'measure').
In measuring pleasure and pain, Bentham introduces the following criteria: INTENSITY, DURATION, CERTAINTY (or UNCERTAINTY), and its NEARNESS (or FARNESS). He also includes its "fecundity" (will more of the same follow?) and its "purity" (its pleasure won't be followed by pain & vice versa). In considering actions that affect numbers of people, we must also account for its EXTENT.

John Stuart Mill adjusted the more hedonistic tendencies in Bentham's philosophy by emphasizing (1) It is not the quantity of pleasure, but the quality of happiness that is central to utilitarianism, (2) the calculus is unreasonable -- qualities cannot be quantified (there is a distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures), and (3) utilitarianism refers to "the Greatest Happiness Principle" -- it seeks to promote the capability of achieving happiness (higher pleasures) for the most amount of people (this is its "extent").

Act and Rule Utilitarianism
We can apply the principle of utility to either PARTICULAR ACTIONS or GENERAL RULES. The former is called "act-utilitarianism" and the latter is called "rule-utilitarianism."
Act-utilitarianism -- The principle of utility is applied directly to each alternative act in a situation of choice. The right act is then defined as the one which brings about the best results (or the least amount of bad results).

Criticisms:
1. difficulty of attaining a full knowledge and certainly of the consequences of our actions.
2. It is possible to justify immoral acts using AU: (i.e. you could end a regional war by torturing children whose fathers are enemy soliders, thus revealing the hide outs of the fathers.)
Rule-utilitarianism -- The principle of utility is used to determine the validity of rules of conduct (moral principles). A rule like promise-keeping is established by looking at the consequences of a world in which people broke promises at will and a world in which promises were binding. Right and wrong are then defined as following or breaking those rules.

criticisms
if the Rules take into account more and more exceptions, RU collapses into AU.
it is possible to generate "unjust rules" according to the principle of utility. For example, slavery in Greece might be right if it led to an overall achievement of cultivated happiness at the expense of some mistreated individuals.

Module 1 Readings: Plato - mini-bio

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Definition of Plato - wordIQ Dictionary & Encyclopedia

Module 1: Readings - Nietzsche

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http://www.gutenberg.net/etext99/spzar10.txt

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich NietzscheTranslated by Thomas Common December, 1999 [Etext #1998]

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA

INTRODUCTION BY MRS FORSTER-NIETZSCHE..

FIRST PART.
Zarathustra's Prologue.
Zarathustra' Discourses.
I. The Three Metamorphoses.
II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
III. Backworldsmen.
IV. The Despisers of the Body.
V. Joys and Passions.
VI. The Pale Criminal.
VII. Reading and Writing.
VIII. The Tree on the Hill.
IX. The Preachers of Death.
X. War and Warriors.
XI. The New Idol.
XII. The Flies in the Market-place.
XIII. Chastity.
XIV. The Friend.
XV. The Thousand and One Goals.
XVI. Neighbour-Love.
XVII. The Way of the Creating One.
XVIII. Old and Young Women.
XIX. The Bite of the Adder.
XX. Child and Marriage.
XXI. Voluntary Death.
XXII. The Bestowing Virtue.

SECOND PART.
XXIII. The Child with the Mirror.
XXIV. In the Happy Isles.
XXV. The Pitiful.
XXVI. The Priests.
XXVII. The Virtuous.
XXVIII. The Rabble.
XXIX. The Tarantulas.
XXX. The Famous Wise Ones.
XXXI. The Night-Song.
XXXII. The Dance-Song.
XXXIII. The Grave-Song.
XXXIV. Self-Surpassing.
XXXV. The Sublime Ones.
XXXVI. The Land of Culture.
XXXVII. Immaculate Perception.
XXXVIII. Scholars.
XXXIX. Poets.
XL. Great Events.
XLI. The Soothsayer.
XLII. Redemption.
XLIII. Manly Prudence.
XLIV. The Stillest Hour.

THIRD PART.
XLV. The Wanderer.
XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.
XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.
XLVIII. Before Sunrise.
XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.
L. On the Olive-Mount.
LI. On Passing-by.
LII. The Apostates.
LIII. The Return Home.
LIV. The Three Evil Things.
LV. The Spirit of Gravity.
LVI. Old and New Tables.
LVII. The Convalescent.
LVIII. The Great Longing.
LIX. The Second Dance-Song.
LX. The Seven Seals.

FOURTH AND LAST PART.
LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
LXII. The Cry of Distress.
LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
LXIV. The Leech.
LXV. The Magician.
LXVI. Out of Service.
LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
LXIX. The Shadow.
LXX. Noon-Tide.
LXXI. The Greeting.
LXXII. The Supper.
LXIII. The Higher Man.
LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
LXXV. Science.
LXXVI. Among Daughters of the Desert.
LXXVII. The Awakening.
LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.
LXXIX. The Drunken Song.
LXXX. The Sign.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Overview

2004-07-22T12:18:00.000-05:00

Friedrich Nietzsche - encyclopedia article about Friedrich Nietzsche. Free access, no registration needed. What does Friedrich Nietzsche mean? What is Friedrich Nietzsche? Provided by the Free Online Encyclopedia.

His Life
Nietzsche was born in the small town Röcken bei Lützen Lutzen or Lützen can have the following meanings:
Lützen is a town in Germany
The Battle of Lützen (1632) in the Thirty Years' War
The Battle of Lützen (1813) in the Napoleonic Wars

..... Click the link for more information. not too far from Leipzig

Coat of Arms of LeipzigLeipzig is the largest city in the federal state (Bundesland) of Saxony. The name is derived from the Slavic word (see Sorbian) Lipsk (settlement where the linden trees stand). It is situated at the confluence of the rivers Pleisse, White Elster and Parthe. Leipzig's population, which peaked at 750,000 before the second world war, has diminished to just about 500,000 by 2002.
..... Click the link for more information. , Prussia

The word Prussia (German: Preußen (Preussen), Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prusai) has had various (often contradictory) meanings:

The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of Lithuania, the Kaliningrad district of Russia and north-eastern Poland);
The lands controlled by the Teutonic Knights;
Part of the lands of the Polish Crown called Royal Prussia;
A Polish fief ruled by the Hohenzollern dynasty and called Ducal Prussia;
The entire Hohenzollern realm, whether within or outside Germany proper;
An independent country, from the 17th century until 1871;
The largest territorial unit within Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich from 1871 to 1945.

..... Click the link for more information. (now a part of Germany The Federal Republic of Germany or FRG (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is one of the world's major industrialized countries, located in Western Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to its east by Poland and the Czech Republic, to the south by Austria and Switzerland and to its west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. West Germany was a founding member of the European Union.
..... Click the link for more information. ). He was born on the 49th birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia

The word Prussia (German: Preußen (Preussen), Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prusai) has had various (often contradictory) meanings:

The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of Lithuania, the Kaliningrad district of Russia and north-eastern Poland);
The lands controlled by the Teutonic Knights;
Part of the lands of the Polish Crown called Royal Prussia;
A Polish fief ruled by the Hohenzollern dynasty and called Ducal Prussia;
The entire Hohenzollern realm, whether within or outside Germany proper;
An independent country, from the 17th century until 1871;
The largest territorial unit within Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich from 1871 to 1945.

..... Click the link for more information. and was thus named after him. His father was a pastor
A pastor is the head minister or priest of a Christian church, i.e., a parish. Many Protestant denominations use pastor as a title (e.g. Pastor Smith) or as a job title (e.g. Senior Pastor, Pastor of Worship, Children's Pastor, meaning the church leader in charge of those areas). The term is particularly common among denominations that believe in the priesthood of all believers and therefore reject the use of the term priest for their leaders. Such denominations include the Mennonites.
..... Click the link for more information. and died when Nietzsche was only four years old leaving him to be raised by his mother and three sisters. He was very pious as a child. A brilliant student, he became professor of classical philology Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. The term originally meant a love (Greek philo-) of learning and literature (Greek -logia). Philology was one of the 19th century's first scientific approaches to human language but gave way to the modern science of linguistics in the early 20th century due to the influence of Ferdinand de Saussure, who argued that the spoken language should have primacy.
..... Click the link for more information. at the University of Basel

The University of Basel (German: Universität Basel) is located at Basel, Switzerland.

Founded in 1459, it is Switzerland's oldest university. Erasmus, Paracelsus, Daniel Bernoulli, Jacob Burckhardt, Leonhard Euler and Friedrich Nietzsche are among those associated with the university, which is nowadays famous for research into tropical medicine. This University is also renowned for its former research into Earth Sciences, Slavistics and Astronomy (R.I.P. 2004).
..... Click the link for more information. in 1869 Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century

Decades: 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s - 1860s - 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s

Years: 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 - 1869 - 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874

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This is a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar)
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Events
Invention of barbed wire, see ranching.
May 10 - Transcontinental Railroad completed at Promontory, Utah.

..... Click the link for more information. , but retired in 1879 Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century
Decades: 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s - 1870s - 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s

1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 - 1879 - 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884

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Events
January 11 - Anglo-Zulu War begins
January 22 - Zulu troops massacre British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana
February 12 - At New York City's Madison Square Garden the first artificial ice rink in North America opens.

..... Click the link for more information. due to poor health. From 1880 Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century
Decades: 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s - 1880s - 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s

Years: 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 - 1880 - 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885

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Events
January 1 - Construction of the Panama Canal begins
February 2 - The first electric streetlight is installed in Wabash, Indiana
February 13 - Thomas Edison becomes the second person to observe the Edison Effect.

..... Click the link for more information. until his collapse in January 1889 Centuries: 18th century - 19th century - 20th century
Decades: 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s - 1880s - 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s

Years: 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 - 1889 - 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894

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Events
January 8 - Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his electric tabulating machine
January 22 - Columbia Phonograph is formed in Washington, DC.

..... Click the link for more information. , Nietzsche led a wandering existence as a "stateless" person, writing most of his major works during this period. His fame and influence came later, despite the meddling of his sister. She has been associated with the Nazis Nazism or National Socialism (German Nationalsozialismus) refers to the totalitarian ideology of the dictatorship which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945: the 'Third Reich'. In this ideology, the German nation and the purported "Aryan" race were considered superior to all other races. Nazism is often associated with Fascism.
The dictator Adolf Hitler rose to power as leader of a political party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP for short). Germany during this period is also referred to as Nazi Germany. Adherents of Nazism were called Nazis. Nazism has been outlawed in modern Germany, although tiny remnants, known as Neo-Nazis, continue to operate in Germany and abroad.
..... Click the link for more information. in the 1930s Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century

Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s - 1930s - 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s

Years: 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

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Events and Trends
Worldwide Great Depression
Socialists proclaim The death of Capitalism
Radio becomes dominant mass media in industrial nations.

..... Click the link for more information. , and is responsible for selective quoting and abuse of his philosophy in Nazi ideology. Nietzsche may have contracted syphilis Syphilis (previously called lues) is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that is caused by a spirochaete bacterium, Treponema pallidum. Syphilis has many alternate names, such as: Miss Siff, the Pox, and has been given many national attributions, e.g. the French disease.
The route of transmission is almost invariably by sexual contact; however, there are examples of direct contact infections and of congenital syphilis.
..... Click the link for more information. as a student (some think this was the cause of his madness) and endured periods of illness during his adult life, which forced him to resign from the University of Basel. After the completion of Ecce Homo his health rapidly declined until he collapsed: in Italy Alternate uses: Italy (disambiguation)

The Italian Republic or Italy is a country in the south of Europe, consisting mainly of a boot-shaped peninsula together with two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Sicily and Sardinia. To the north it is bound by the Alps, where it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent countries of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves of Italian territory.
..... Click the link for more information. , wearing only underwear, he tearfully embraced a horse because it had been beaten by its owner. From that moment on he never recovered. Nietzsche spent the last ten years of his life insane and unaware of the immense success of his works. The cause of Nietzsche's condition has to be regarded as undetermined, as doctors later in his life said they were not so sure about the initial diagnosis of syphilis, since he lacked typical symptoms. However, it is difficult to diagnose second and third stage syphilis symptoms without long term observations, and many modern historians believe he did have it. Other possibilities could be a tumor or an endogenous illness, possibly paranoia Paranoia is excessive concern about one's own well being, sometimes suggesting the person holds persecutory beliefs concerning a threat to themselves or their property.

In the original Greek παράνοια (paranoia) means self-referential, and it is this meaning which has been adopted in psychiatry, especially European psychiatry, in reference
..... Click the link for more information. .

His Works and Ideas
Nietzsche is famous for his rejection of what he calls "slave Slavery is involuntary servitude, enforced by violence or by other methods. It is sometimes an expectation associated with other relationships, such as marriage and other family relations, military service, or debt relationships. See debt slavery.
Unfree labour is a generic term which includes all forms of slavery and similar labour systems.

The article on abolitionism deals in detail with the 19th century advocacy to abolish formal slavery, in first Britain and the British Empire and later the United States.
..... Click the link for more information. morality" (which he felt reflected the inverse of the "will to power" and a perversion of useful altruism Altruism is an unselfish interest in helping someone else. It is a motivation that emphasizes the welfare of others while minimizing or ignoring the individual's own welfare. The concept has a long history in philosophical and ethical thought, and has more recently become a topic for psychologists, sociologists, evolutionary biologists, and ethologists. While ideas about altruism from one field can have an impact on the other fields, the different methods and focuses of these fields lead to different perspectives on altruism. Different perspectives on altruism can arise from using narrow or broad definitions of self-interest. At one extreme, self-interest is limited to material benefits for the actor, while at the other extreme, self-interest includes psychological rewards.
..... Click the link for more information. ); his attacks on Christianity Christianity is a monotheistic religion, encompassing many religious traditions that trace their origins to the Jewish preacher and healer Jesus Christ. Christians assert that Jesus is the son of God, and the Lord and sole Savior of all humanity as the Jewish Messiah. With over two billion adherents, Christianity is the world's largest religion.

History
Main article: History of Christianity.
..... Click the link for more information. (a character in one of his works declared that "God The noun God refers to any of a number of postulated immortal, supernatural beings, usually said to rule, alone or in company with other gods, over the destinies of humankind and the universe. When spelled with a capital "G" it is a proper noun, usually the name given in English to the one supreme being, as postulated, especially but not exclusively, by the three major Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as well as Sikhism and Zoroastrianism. When spelled with a small "g" it is a common noun, referring to an influential teacher or postulated supernatural being of any religious system, as for example the gods of the Greek and Roman religions.
..... Click the link for more information. is dead"); his origination of the Übermensch In Thus spake Zarathustra (in German: Also sprach Zarathustra), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explains the three steps through which man can become an Übermensch (literally, "overman") but actually could mean Superior man or Superman:
By his will to destruction
By re-evaluating or destroying old ideals
By overcoming nihilism

The will to destruction

..... Click the link for more information. concept (translated as "Overman" or "Superman") in only one of his books; his embrace of a sort of a-rationalism; and something he called "the Will to Power" (Wille zur Macht). Nietzsche was strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 - September 21, 1860) is one of the most important 19th century German philosophers, most famous for his work, The World as Will and Representation.

Life
Schopenhauer was born in Danzig (Gdansk), Poland, the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and Johanna Schopenhauer. His parents were both from Danzig, and Johanna was an
..... Click the link for more information. and his concept of "the Will to live". H.L. Mencken H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956) was a twentieth century journalist and social critic, a cynic and a freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore." He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century.

Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a cigar factory owner. He became a reporter for the
..... Click the link for more information. 's book on Nietzsche described his work as an early effort to reconcile the philosophical implications of Charles Darwin's "survival of the fittest" evolutionary theory with contemporary moral and ethical systems. In many respects his thinking anticipated the "heredity" side of the ongoing debate about which has more influence on human behavior: learning vs. heredity in the modern discipline of psychology. Nietzsche's thoughts also anticipated the "biological world view" and genetic interpretation of social behavior in the modern discipline of sociobiology (c.f. one can find updated "Nietzsche" in A New Morality From Science: Beyondism by Dr. Raymond Cattell, which draws from concepts elucidated in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis by Harvard professor Dr. Edward Osborne Wilson as well as other emergent disciplines such as "medical anthropology." Nietzsche's concept of breeding upwards towards the "higher man" is indirectly addressed in biological interpretations of human history, such as Dr. Elmer Pendell's Why Civilizations Self-Destruct or Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West).

The "Will to Power"
One of Nietzsche's central concepts is "the Will to Power" (Wille zur Macht), an abstract process of expansion and imposition. He hypothesizes that it could be taken as the fundamental causal power in the world, something to which all other causal powers can be reduced. That is, Nietzsche in part hoped Will to Power could be a "theory of everything", providing the ultimate foundations for explanations of everything from whole societies, to individual organisms, to lumps of matter. In contrast to the "theories of everything" attempted in physics, Nietzsche's was teleological in nature. Nietzsche perhaps developed the Will to Power concept furthest with regards to living organisms, and it is there where the concept is perhaps easiest to understand. There, the Will to Power is taken as an animal's most fundamental instinct or drive. Will to Power is something like the desire to exert one's will, although it may well be unconscious. Arthur C. Danto says that "aggression" is at least sometimes an approximate synonym. In any case, since the Will to Power is fundamental, any other drives are to be reduced to it; the "will to survive" (i.e. the survival instinct) that Biologists (at least in Nietzsche's day) thought to be fundamental, for example, was really to be explained as a manifestation of the Will to Power. Not just instincts but also higher level behaviors (even in humans) were to be reduced to the Will to Power. This includes both such apparently harmful acts as physical violence, lying, and domination, on one hand, and such apparently non-harmful acts as gift-giving, love, and praise on the other. In Beyond Good and Evil, he claims that philosophers' "will to truth" (i.e., their apparent desire to dispassionately seek objective truth) is actually nothing more than a manifestation of their Will to Power; when it is not, the will to truth is nothing more than nihilism. As indicated above, though, the Will to Power is to explain more than just an individual animal. The Will to Power is also to be the explanation for, e.g., why matter behaves as it does, why plants grow, and why social classes behave as they do.
The Will to Power and psychology
The Will to Power is in part a psychological theory. Nonetheless, it has been more or less ignored by psychology as a discipline.
Similar ideas in others' thought
With respect to the Will to Power, Nietzsche was strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and his concept of "the Will to live". Other ideas similar to Nietzsche's are Crowley's "Law of Thelema" (the Law of Willpower--"Do what thou wilt"), Taoism, which holds that to follow one's own natural wills will bring about a happier existence, and Hegel's theory of history.
Criticism of the idea
Although the idea may seem harsh to some, others see Nietzsche's "will to power" -- or, as he famously put it, the ability to "say yes! to life" -- as life-affirming. Creatures affirm instinct in exerting power and dominance. The suffering born of conflict between competing wills and the efforts to overcome one's environment is not evil, but a part of existence to be embraced in that it signifies the healthy expression of the natural order. Enduring satisfaction and pleasure result from living by instinct and successfully exerting the will to power. (Note: part of this follows from Nietzsche's somewhat quirky definition of "life".)
Ethics
Nietzsche's work addresses ethics from several perspectives; in today's terms, we might say his remarks pertain to meta-ethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics. As far as meta-ethics is concerned, Nietzsche can perhaps most usefully be classified as a moral skeptic; that is, he claims that all ethical statements are false, because any kind of correspondence between ethical statements and "moral facts" is illusory. (This is part of a more general claim that all facts are false, roughly because none of them more than appear to correspond to reality.) Instead, ethical statements (like all statements) are mere "interpretations". Sometimes, Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what is moral or immoral. Moreover, his idea of noble men imposing their own values on the world suggests a non-skeptical meta-ethical view, namely ethical subjectivism. Note, however, that Nietzsche's moral opinions may be explained without attributing to him the claim that they are true. For Nietzsche, after all, we needn't disregard a statement merely because it is false. On the contrary, he often claims that falsehood is essential for "life". In the juncture between normative ethics and descriptive ethics, Nietzsche distinguishes between "master morality" and "slave morality". Although he recognizes that not everyone holds either scheme in a pure fashion, he presents them in contrast to one another. Some of the contrasts in master vs. slave morality:
"good" and "bad" vs. "good" and "evil"
"aristocratic" vs. part of the "herd"
determines own values vs. determines values on an instrumental, utilitarian basis
not like Christianity vs. like Christianity
Nietzsche's assessment of both the antiquity and resultant impediments presented by the ethical and moralistic teachings of the world's monotheistic religions eventually led him to his own dualistic epiphany, resulting in his work Also sprach Zarathustra.
Religion
According to Dr. Norman Ravitch, professor of history at U.C. Riverside, "What Spengler, Toynbee, and Nietzsche can teach us is how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, despite superficial differences, were all forged and/or altered by a religious revolution in ancient Iran associated with the name Zoroaster or Zarathustra. The central notions of dualism between Good and Evil, Salvation through an Expected Messiah, and the Final Battle between St Michael and Satan animate these world religions and their devotees. Pragmatism, reason, and common sense have little place in these primitive Semitic world views. All conflict is interpreted as part of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil and there is no room for compromise or tolerance." ... In his important work "The Anti-Christ[ian]" Nietzsche frontally attacked German scholarly Christianity for what he called its "transvaluation" of healthy instinctive values. He went beyond agnostic and atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment who felt that Christianity may simply be an untrue religion to claiming it may have been deliberately propagated as an inherently bad and subversive religion (or in late 20th century parlance: a "psychological warfare weapon" or "ideological computer virus") within the Roman Empire by the Apostle Paul as a form of covert revenge for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple during the Jewish War. However, in the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche has a remarkably high view of Jesus, claiming the scholars of the day fail to pay any attention to the man, Jesus, and only look to their construction, Christ. According to the American writer H.L. Mencken, Nietzsche felt that the religion of the ancient Greeks of the heroic and classical era was superior to Christianity because it portrayed strong, heroic, smart, and muscular men as role models and did not try to demonize healthy natural desires, such as creativity and writing poetry. Nietzsche made it acceptable to view one's pre-Christian ancestors as "noble savages". His works have also been valued as a religious "deprogramming tool", such as in the large tome Which Way Western Man? by former American Christian minister and co-founder of the ACLU William Gayley Simpson in which he recounts in great theological detail how Nietzsche's works allowed him to see the light of Darwin and overcome the dysfunctional "slave morality" that had been programmed into him by society and co-religionists.
Misc
Nietzsche is important as a precursor of 20th century-existentialism and an inspiration for post-structuralism and an influence on postmodernism. However, dry academic summaries of his thought cannot capture the liveliness of his writing, and his extraordinary sense of humor, as in the famous exchange: "God is dead" - Nietzsche; "Nietzsche is dead" - God, and the riposte, "Some are born posthumously!" - Nietzsche. In many respects his writings today appear "romantic" relative to modern sociobiological and medical anthropological theory in the same sense that the Wright Brothers' flying machines appear quaint relative to modern high performance jets. Nietzsche's works helped to reinforce not only agnostic trends that followed Enlightenment thinkers, and the biological worldview gaining currency from the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin (which also later found expression in the "medical" and "instinctive" interpretations of human behavior by Sigmund Freud), but also the "romantic nationalist" political movements in the late 19th century when various peoples of Europe began to celebrate archeological finds and literature related to pagan ancestors, such as the uncovered Viking burial mounds in Scandinavia, Wagnerian interpretations of Norse mythology stemming from the Eddas of Iceland, Italian nationalist celebrations of the glories of a unified, pre-Christian Roman peninsula, French examination of Celtic Gaul of the pre-Roman era, and Irish nationalist interest in revitalizing Gaelic. Apart from "noble savage" and "religious deprogramming" themes, in his brazen work "The Anti-Christ" Nietzsche wrestled with a major tragic issue that remains very much with us today. The politics of urbanized society may tend to reverse the evolutionary processes that bred for various strengths and nobility in primitive man. Ugly, physically weak, and inadequate men who would never make it in a frontier environment nevertheless through low cunning and mafia-like behavior might through financial manipulation acquire control of society. In "The Anti-Christ" Nietzsche said that while it was necessary for Jews at points in their history to affect "slave morality" as an oppressed minority as a means to get their oppressors off their backs by deceiving them while hiding their own strengths, the deception practiced by Saul of Tarsus in spreading Christianity went too far in its social destructiveness. Hence a paradox: a person who practices "slave morality" shows true inferiority if he really believes in it, but one can show strength and superiority if one uses it as sheep's clothing to disguise the stalking wolf. (As Sun Tzu put it: "All war is based on deception.") Some people have suggested that Dostoevsky may have specifically created the plot of his Crime and Punishment as a Christian rebuttal to Nietzsche. This cannot be correct, however, as Dostoevsky finished Crime and Punishment well before Nietzsche published any of his works).
List of Works
Die Geburt der Tragödie, 1872 (The Birth of Tragedy)
Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1876 (Untimely Meditations)
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878 (Human, All Too Human)
Morgenröte, 1881 (Daybreak, or The Dawn)
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882 (The Gay Science)
Also sprach Zarathustra, 1885 (Thus Spake Zarathustra)
Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886 (Beyond Good and Evil)
Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887 (On the Genealogy of Morals)
Der Fall Wagner, 1888 (The Case of Wagner)
Götzen-Dämmerung, 1889 (The Twilight of the Idols)
Der Antichrist, 1895 (The Antichrist)
Nietzsche contra Wagner, 1895 (Nietzsche vs. Wagner)
Der Wille zur Macht, 1901 (The Will to Power, a highly selective collection of notes from various notebooks, not intended for publication by Nietzsche himself, but released by his sister)
Ecce Homo, 1908 (Behold the Man, an attempt at autobiography; the title refers to Pontius Pilate's statement upon meeting Jesus of Nazareth)
External links
Beyond Good And Evil from Project Gutenberg
Thus Spake Zarathustra from Project Gutenberg
http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/
Wikiquote page
POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis
http://www.hypernietzsche.org