Kate's Takes

Walter E. Williams wrote a thought-provoking essay on this subject.

It provoked these thoughts:

There is one consideration no one as yet has seen fit to mention: Several days each month a woman is hors de combat from menstruation, with or without the accompanying PMS. Can’t you just see the women on a march, carrying the requisite 83-pound load, having to stop to change their tampon or pad?

Or shall we require all women in combat to have hysterectomies to bypass this physical inconvenience? Or accept only post-menopause females, whose physical prowess is even more reduced compared to males in their most robust years?

Maybe the thinking is that the only physical combat the women will be asked to do is sit at a desk and operate drones. Or maybe the women can be given steroids and testosterone supplements to turn them into Amazon warrior princesses.

It can't be just to pander to women's clamoring for equal rights and benefits, equal opportunities for careers in the military. The Pentagon must be running short of bodies to send to the near-1000 military bases and dozens of military action zones the U.S. is engaged in worldwide. The military has become a ravenous machine, devouring the people's money and the people themselves.

Do women really want a license to kill? Do they really want to kill people who are only defending their homelands which we have invaded, even though those countries have never attacked us?

Do we really want to ratchet up the degree of brutality in the world? Men by nature are programmed to protect women and children. That is the ostensible reason for wars in the first place: to provide a safe and sustainable environment (land, resources) for their populations. Now when a soldier faces a female enemy, that natural impulse must be suppressed. Just shoot.

If our government can justify shooting and bombing women and children, and teenagers because they might be militants, we have already gone over the edge of civilization. We are only one short step away from justifying and carrying out genocide. Do women really want to be in the forefront of that? Is that the only way to be the life-givers and nurturers they are created to be? Does exercising equal brutality constitute the only way to prove equality as human beings?

Women and men are not the same, aside from the physical differences. Women's brains work at a higher, more complex level. Women should be in the forefront of diplomacy, negotiation, and peace making. By trying to be more like men, women are actually diminishing themselves. By rushing to subordinate themselves to military discipline, obedience to orders and hierarchy of command, they are reducing their self-assertive sovereignty.

Women, you've been sold a bill of noxious goods. Think about it before swallowing that hook. The future of civilization hangs on your decision.

It used to be called St. Valentine’s Day, rooted in Christian history. Nowadays it has morphed into a commercial event for showing affection in general, not just for romantic wooing. We give flowers, cards, chocolates, hearts and cupids, a whole tossed salad of memes that say, “I like you. You’re special in my life.” Now we can say “Happy Valentine’s Day” to everyone we care about.

“Love makes the world go around.” What a picturesque way to recognize love as energy, the positive energy that holds not just personal relationships together but the very Universe itself. “You are my sunshine” is another poetic image of that same truth.

In some cultures, Valentine’s Day is banned altogether. They see it as a symbol of the West’s loose morals and preoccupation with sex. “Make love, not war” is viewed as hedonistic, not as the larger principle of benevolence over belligerence.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in addition to lip service on one official day, we would channel loving energy into every thought, every word, every act, every day of the year? How much healing and mending of conflicts, repairing of ruptures and restoring of peace could we bring about?

Love is the foremost example of a fusion of mind and heart. America will not win hearts and minds in countries it bombs. War is an illogical and self-defeating policy. Instead of an endless cycle of escalating enmities, what if we took the initiative to give love a chance. What if we set aside hawkish hype and declared non-violence as strength, not weakness? It takes real courage to resist the facile resort to force.

The greatest strength is love.

In November 2010, I received an email from Bill Miller of the Friends of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asking that question. On November 25, I posted the reply below. Unsurprisingly, they did not publish it. To see the posts they did see fit to include, visit Friends of the Chamber and type THANKSGIVING into the search box.

I'm thankful that I can still feel outrage at how our politicians have betrayed our trust, our principles and our future. Our incessant preemptive wars are a disease, and non-stop destruction of lives and resources is fatal to the economic health of our country and the world. We need commerce--free trade--among nations, not coercion, control and connivance. We need individual freedom to work and to choose how we spend our earnings, not to be forced to subsidize causes we don't approve of.

I'm thankful that I can see these truths and continue to protest against government incursions into our freedoms, and against government expropriation of our property. The bureaucracy has become a vampire on the lives and energies of the people. And the collusion between government and certain businesses is a recipe for continuing disaster, a continuing draining of the people and a distortion of their values. Where does the Chamber of Commerce stand on this issue?

I am grateful for my clear and free thinking, and for my ability to pity all those religious folk whose minds and emotions are held captive by myths, superstitions and fanaticisms of all stripes. Their religious infighting leads to horrible deaths, ceaseless enmity, and abandonment of the principle of love they claim as their prime directive. Their abandonment of Reason makes them create all the harm in the world.

I am thankful for the intelligence of the human race that has developed science, technology, tools, and a growing understanding of the laws of physics that help us find true answers to the problems of survival and attaining a healthy, peaceful, productive society.

I just received a "personal" email from President Obama. Here's what it said:

Kate --

If it were easy to do the big, meaningful things we believe will make our country better -- if it were quick -- someone would have done those things long before any of us showed up.

We've chosen to do something hard.

You know that our victories so far have been hard won: taking the difficult steps necessary to put our economy back on track, reforming Wall Street excess despite an army of lobbyists against us, and making health care more affordable and accessible despite well-organized opposition by those who profit from the status quo.

You also know we have not yet done everything we set out to do -- not nearly.

But that's a reason to work harder, not to let up. That's why we're building this campaign now. And you have to take ownership of it.

So I will be direct: Can you step up and make a donation of $5 to get us started?

...

As I've spoken with supporters who are helping get this campaign started, I've met folks who are frustrated by the pace of change.

I understand that. But we knew this wouldn't be easy. The kind of change we're working for never comes easily.

Now is the time to begin again, and build the campaign that will shape our country's future.

Thank you,

Barack

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Such a masterful piece of motivational tripe I could not swallow. This was my response:

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Barack (and "campaign helpers"),

To make the country better, a handbook of easy ways to do it was given to us by the Founders--the Constitution--well before "we" showed up to ruin it.

You and your predecessors have, like a slippery slope, drifted from that wisdom and brought our nation to disgrace and disaster. It will get harder and harder to restore it. And you have chosen to do, not something hard, but something evil.

You have been led astray from the decent values you professed to believe in during your first campaign. You have gone farther to the dark side even than George W. Bush, whose crimes against humanity will one day be punished.

You lack the courage to admit how wrong we have become, and to take the first brave step towards making restitution to the world. America cannot be the bully to the world, to sow hatred, anger and resistance in one nation after another, and expect to survive. Our moral principles have become terminally diseased if we pursue a course of force and fraud under phony sanctimonious slogans of "humanitarian" goals.

You cannot help other countries by destroying them. If you want America to rule the world, that is a formula for global genocide. The only way to eliminate opposition is for you to kill off all those who resist. And since others want to live, too, they will continue to resist. And they have every right to do so.

Labeling people who oppose your tyrannical predations as "terrorists" only seeks to cover the fact that America has become the biggest terrorist of them all. And I won't take ownership of that.

Even if you change and repent right now, it will take generations for America to gain forgiveness and to win back the esteem and admiration we once had as the land of freedom, honor, decency, and respect for individual human rights.

You want $5 to help your new campaign? Your administration has wasted trillions of dollars of Americans' substance and future. There is no $5 available to throw into your pot to allow you to continue on this devastating course. No matter how clever the emotional manipulation and marketing of your slogans, we're not buying it anymore.

If, with one nod of your head, you can send off a killer team to execute bin Laden, you could change course with one command. It is not a big and difficult task to say, "Enough, this is not the way to go, this is not what America is about." No more violence, no more preemptive wars, no more taking sides in foreign civil wars, no matter what lobbyists scream and wave money, no matter what special interests get cut off from the trough. You cannot recover a nation's economy with only the arms manufacturers thriving. You cannot recover a nation's morale and self-respect by pumping them up emotionally with kill statistics. Enough!

Make a real change. You can do it with one nod of your head, one short declaration. Let me see actual results: apologize for our war crimes, get our troops out of every foreign country, close Guantanamo, pull back the growing police state on U.S. soil, restoring our civil liberties, and then I'll consider sending you some money.

-- Kate Jones

Labels: campaign, change, Constitution, Obama, politics, war crimes

As part of Change.org's Blog Action Day, which for 2010 addresses the subject of clean water, here are my thoughts:

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WATER

It's an unconditional human need, but it's not an unconditional human right. Not since the days of small populations and nomadic tribes were humans free to wander up to any water source and partake of its clean, clear flow. The earth provided, and all were able to use it.

As populations grew and settlements expanded, more and more demands were made on the streams, rivulets, creeks, and rivers. People always built near water for easy access to this life-sustaining substance. They learned to use it for irrigation, navigation, cleaning, and harnessing its power.

More people produced more waste, and the water, believed to be a universal cleanser, began to fill with ever more pollutants and contaminants, long before early populations even understood the meaning of those concepts. They soon did understand that activities upstream could send troubled waters downstream to their own water supply. Battles ensued over water rights and access to the best sources. Not poisoning or dirtying wells was an early lesson learned. The folk belief that running water unconditionally cleans itself led to accelerating pollution and abuses.

There is the fairytale of the wolf, drinking from a creek upstream from a lamb, accusing the lamb of sullying his water, as a pretext to attack the lamb. The writer clearly understood the wiliness of predators, animal and human.

India's Ganges, its waters held sacred, gradually grew to a total sewer, while the inhabitants continue to drink it, bathe in it, defecate in it, and consign their dead bodies to it. Old ideas die hard.

To claim that all have a "right" to clean water is to demand that some people take action and invest time, money and energy to provide this water to all claimants. That is a formula for slavery. Those with the knowledge to manage water have a right to be paid for this service. Since no one can "own" all the water of the earth, and water flows downhill from a pure source, it behooves all of us to change our habits and infrastructure and prevent water contamination. That will require finding alternate means to process waste, to dispose of it and recycle it. We can learn from nature how to develop symbiotic systems. And we need to learn that not everything nature does is good for us.

For example, we live on a water planet, and we need drinking water. Why does nature wash more and more salt into the oceans? What is salt good for? Yes, we need some in our bodies and our food, but not in our water. Human intelligence needs to find a means to build efficient technology to turn ocean waters back into fresh, clean water. The desalination industry is our future. Now to find a good use for all that salt by-product.

In brief: everyone has the right to work to obtain what he or she needs to live, including water. No one has the right to demand that someone else provide it for them.

Doing productive work and exchanging it with others for what they have produced is the only just and lasting social relationship of intelligent beings. Let us solve our problems without resorting to force and servitude. Let's clean up our planet, our home, and be good custodians of its life-nurturing processes. Let's put our resources there, not throw them away on wars and sabotage.

Barack Obama's minions in cyberspace work through Change.Org and offer weekly updates and causes to respond to. On February 11, 2010, the topic was the Water Protection and Reinvestment Trust Fund. This was my reply:

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No! It is not up to government actions to step in here. The principle to establish is to let private companies in each community be responsible and to stop befouling our nest and our life support. The growth of bottled water, and the cost of that as a routine part of life, is moving us farther from what we would like to take for granted, namely that tap water is plentiful and safe and economical, like the clean springs and streams we have in our racial memories. Bottled water is only a stop gap that could become an excuse for letting our bodies of water continue to be polluted. But at least it is a means to secure safe drinking water through private effort.

Many households are still on well water and septic systems, and that needs to be watched carefully lest the sewage seep deep enough to pollute the groundwater the well pumps from. We need to find a way to recycle sewage so that nature itself reuses and purifies it, and so that it serves as a nutrient for plant life, rather than flushing it into the rivers and oceans. Our technology can find a way to establish a natural balance threatened by increasing population.

It is a false assumption that private companies do not have the public interest as a priority. Without the public they would have no business and no income. It is by pleasing the public and supplying what people need that the companies become successful. How else can they make money? Making money is not evil. It is the reward for good work done. It is the company's paycheck for value produced. If there were not productive private enterprises, there would be nothing for government to tax to pay themselves and their allegedly important social programs.

Further, we should encourage private investment in better husbanding of fresh-water supplies, such as major snow and ice run-offs. Rather than letting clean water run into the salty oceans, build aqueducts and pipelines to move the annual melts to regions that need it, as has been done for centuries in the desert regions of Persia.

Explore trading water for oil. We have disgraced ourselves in the eyes of the world by destroying the water processing infrastructure of Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths from polluted water supplies. Did Americans even know this was being done in their name?? As an American, I object profoundly to such crimes against humanity carried out by our government without our knowledge and consent.

Count me as a No vote against government control of our water management, and count me as a No against our wars in foreign lands. I am dismayed that Obama has broken his promises to end the wars. I feel thoroughly betrayed. So much for Change!

Change.org in January 2010 launched the 2010 "Ideas for Change in America" competition, and I just submitted an idea you might like to support. No money, just your vote. The title of the idea is "Protect Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights."

To vote for my idea, all you have to do is click on the link below and you can vote in less than 20 seconds.

The top 10 voted ideas will be presented at an event in Washington, DC, to relevant members of the Obama Administration, and then promoted to Change.org's full community of more than 1 million people. So we could have a real impact with this radical idea about unalienable rights.

Here's the text of my proposal. If you agree, please click on the link and vote. Thanks for your help!

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All the changes and programs being promoted and passed into law aim only to help certain groups and to spend ever more government money, which is either taxed or borrowed. Both come out of the people's substance, Socialism in action. I propose that every bill before Congress be first measured against our Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights, to make sure that it does not abrogate individuals' life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (i.e., property). You may have to set up a special Congressional committee or get advice from the Supreme Court. But the first question to ask is, "Will this harm any individual?" And if the answer is Yes, cease and desist from pursuing such legislation.

Please VOTE by Feb. 25, 2010