Drink Tea? You Can't Be a Conscientious Objector

Conscientious Objection needs be holisitic, or the mores of any given time will catch an appellant up.  In WWI, the draft board tried to catch presumed hypocrites by asking if the drank tea:

It appeared that the tribunals tried to argue that as a taxed good, drinking tea was a contribution to the war effort.
Thousands of conscientious objectors refused to perform military service, usually on moral or religious grounds, as conscription laws enlisted 2.5 million extra British troops from 1916 onwards.
By March 1916, the British Government was desperately short of soldiers, conscription was introduced and all able-bodied men, aged between 18 and 41, were ordered to join the war effort.

Conscientious objectors can drink tea even if taxed, because a tea tax is a minor violation of human rights but killing others is an existential violation.  You'll need to be holistically formed to defend your objection when the next draft comes.

They drafted 41 year olds?

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Not Made For This World

When I see how wonderful life and the universe that is around us, I cannot deny there is a God.  When I see the abject evil, the depths of depravity, I cannot deny there is free will.  We were made to live forever as creatures in a perfect world.  We creatures destroyed that perfect world, by our free will,  but we did not lose immortality.  We live in an imperfect world, designed for immortality, so we are not made for this imperfect world, but for a prefect world.  We are made for eternity after death, where we will experience perfection.   If we live as though we belong in a perfect world, in spite of living in the imperfect world, then we can expect and eternity of perfection.

Anyway, that is how I understand it.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Dee Harkey: US Marshall/Anarchist

The Wild West was fairly anarchic, and rather productive:

According to U.S. Marshal Dee Harkey, the reality of the old West was order without law, society without state. It was anarchy in action.Dee Harkey was ninety-two years-old in 1958. At his home in New Mexico, the former lawman gave an interview to Monk Lofton just two weeks before he passed away. Harkey set the record straight about the old West. He also expressed the unease he felt for his own role in transferring the responsibility of law from the individual to the state.

I've made about a half-dozen arrests, citizen arrests, because I am a pacifist and a anarchist.  I don't think there should be police officers.  One these that always surprises me, is how people generally  accept being arrested.  It is like kids who push things until they are stopped.  I've had to get physical, but certainly I'd be no match for the PCP-laced berzerker, but that is why God put the invincibly ignorant among us who would simply kill the mad dog.  And then honestly say killing is wrong.  "Was that killing you just did wrong?"  "Yes, but he is dead." Or something like that.

There is necessary and sufficient violence among us without the state to deal with the bad guys.

.Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Irving Berlin Song about Bombing Berlin

In the good old days, they made no bones about taxes going to fund the escapades of the billionaires:



Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Snopes On the King Murder

Snopes:

Claim:   The United States government was sued and found culpable for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., but the news media refused to report it.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/mlktrial.asp#H2e9JdJaSVCgsPdV.99

Snopes claim:  Mostly false.

The USGovernment mostly did not murder Martin Luther King?

Or the media mostly did not cover it?

This is one in a long series of tendentious and misleading "investigations" be snopes, which I no longer find credible.  Too bad... it was good to have a go-to sight to debunk nonsense.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

OK, Now There Are Two of Us

With all the astonishment of a ham radio operator getting a verified intelligent message from deep space, I find another pro-peace Catholic website.

http://catholicsagainstmilitarism.com/about/

Their genesis was the Archdiocese of the Military being allowed to pass the plate in USA churches.  Whatever it takes, glad the are here.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Country Joe

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

It Ain't the Hand You Are Dealt...

A desiderata of sorts...

I won't compromise or negotiate with you respecting my integrity.

It is not the hand you are dealt, it is how you play the cards.

You cannot judge another on how they play their cards.

If you are a general, I have no objections, just don't ask me to believe you are defending my freedoms.  It's clearly not true, I don't believe it.

If you are a man who made a vowed a lifelong commitment to his male friend, it's none of my business, but do not ask me to call it "marriage."

If you run a casino and want to call it gaming, fine with me, but don't expect me to ignore the game is every customer loses.

And so on...

I'm no better than you, but don't you dare ask me to be less than you by pretending you are more than you are.  Not only does it deprecate me, it also, for what it is worth, militates against your integrity to have me view you in pretense.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

There Is No Competition In Aikido

I wince when I hear this.  People who make that claim do not understand the plain meaning of the word.  Competition come from the Greek, "to strive with."  The reason they run seven people at a time in a race is each does best when running (striving with) other runners.)

What I think they mean is in aikido there is no conflict.  This too is absurd.  In Japan as aikido was quickening plenty of practitioners were breaking off to do their own thing, like Shioda Sensei and his Yoshinkan style, there are plenty of authentic aikido styles, both associated and not associated with Hombu.

Aikido seems to be pretty good at accommodating splits, but it had a spectacular one when Tohei Sensei split with many top instructors to form Shin Shin Toitsu aikido, which in turn has at least three different groups now.

In the USA alone there are at least three major schools (and countless independent ones) directly affiliated with Hombu dojo:  Birankai, Aikido Schools of Ueshiba and US Aikido Federation.  Everyone one of these fine outfits manifested in conflict.

It is distressing to read a dojo teaches an aikido with no competition.  Either they do not understand the word, or far worse, they do.  In any event, fair warning.

Just as distressing is a dojo that offers no conflict.  Isn't the point of aikido an ethical response to conflict?  Isn't the result of conflict "divide and multiple?"

It seems to me a dojo ought to celebrate conflict, promote competition.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Cui Bono?

See, this is the problem....

"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinian daily La Nacion.
"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."

If true, then USA enemies will want Snowden whacked so USA is harmed.  These assertions do not protect Snowden.

Other observations:

1.  I don't doubt Snowden has USA's Best Secrets.

2. If Snowden had ANYTHING that China or Russia did not have, they would be sweating Snowden for it presently.  His personal well-being is a tribute to the fact he has nothing new.  Therefore, we can know Russia and China has USA's best secrets already, and our maintenance of secrecy is nonsense.

3.  Neither Russia nor China is about to make too big a deal of this, because they no doubt do the exact same thing.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

In Essence, the Argument Being Made

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

How Many Will Die For Your Values?

This is the kind of silly arguments that people who hate love to make.



In essence Cheney is arguing the ends justify the means.  The fact that an adult in USA, and one in power, could say such a thing is damnable to the rest of us.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

For The Children

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/130734.html


Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Bob Costas Doubles Down On Gun Comments

After the Jovan Belcher murder/suicide, Bob Costas said: "In the coming days, Jovan Belcher's actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? ..... If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

After Josh Brent was arrested early Saturday on a charge of intoxication manslaughter because his teammate, Jerry Brown, died in car accident, Bob Costas said: "In the coming days, Josh Brent's actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? ..... If Josh Brent didn't possess a car, he and Jerry Brown would both be alive today."

And spoons make you fat.  It's not about guns or cars or spoons it is about responsibility.  If you have a gun, match it's power with responsibility, so with a car and a spoon.  Some 8,000 die by guns each year, 40,000 by cars.  Depends on who is counting. But the point is responsibility, which takes human action, not the tool which does nothing but await human choice.

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

OK...

I agree to his proposal.....

Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.

Pentagon PR

My mother was head of al-qaeda at her old folks home, and #2 in the al-qaeda organization worldwide, until she was killed in a drone attack by the US Government.

Of course this is nonsense, but such fanciful stories are easy to write, and the amazing thing is how often people will pause as they consider the story, wondering at the veracity.  Try this:  tell people that about your mom, and see how long before they grin at the absurdity of it.

The fact they are not dismissing it as you say it, the fact they have to wonder for whatever amount of time, tells you just how absurd our society has become.

One reason is the half billion a year the pentagon alone spends on misinforming us.

Conscientious Objection and Obsequious Bishops

No Catholic is obliged to support the preferences that the Bishops offer:

Following enactment of ACA, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has not joined in efforts to repeal the law in its entirety, and we do not do so today.The decision of the Supreme Court neither diminishes the moral imperative to ensure decent health care for all, nor eliminates the need to correct the fundamental flaws described above. We therefore continue to urge Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, legislation to fix those flaws.

It is not a teaching of the Catholic Church, it is merely a personal preference of most Bishops in this time and place in USA.  The fact that there is a well known superior means to ensure decent health care for all is available and in place makes the preference of the Bishops curious, especially since the Bishops preference does violate church teaching on subsidiarity.

The church has been in a pas de deux with the state since the beginning, at times antagonistic, at other times obsequious.  We live in such times.  Mother Cabrini and other nuns built the Catholic Hospitals and schools and demonstrated an alternative to the state for the provision of health care.  The Bishops collectively sold that birthright for pottage, and are now reaping what they sowed.

Talk of Bonhoeffer is ill-advised for people who have had undying support for the regime.  And constantly cite Romans 13 and "prudential judgment."  From Panetta, to Chris Cox to Sebelius to Pelosi to Roberts, the powers that be that control the state can depend on Catholics to advance their agenda of warfare, usury and welfare, and the bishops to give everyone a pass.

And how come?  Follow the money.  Bishops can claim the mandates apply to all Catholic orgs, even those who take no tax money, and so it is an assault on religious liberty.  But those orgs that take no tax money are a sliver of the total money the church gets.  The bishops are like bears in Yosemite, who can no longer fend for themselves as they depend on handouts.

Why were the bishops not listening when warned about this 40 years ago, or 80 years ago?  Where were the bishops when individual Catholics had their rights violated?  No wonder the Vatican keeps stressing the laity is on their own, expect no help from Catholic Bishops in the USA.

This is not an act of division on my part to complain, it is just a realization that the Bishops have excused themselves from the conversation, for money.  We are on our own.

Here is a typical lie that people of good will must endure:

And in case you’re a little fuzzy on what Dr. Morse was talking about, consider the fact that the U.S. Government is preventing our Church from helping combat human trafficking because our beliefs in rejecting contraception, and abortion, don’t meet the Administrations “standards.”

Since when does combatting human trafficking depend on government cooperation?  The lie is we cannot do it without state support.  

One of the most dangerous things in life is to believe your own PR.  The Bishops and Catholic social justice types and the right wing warmongers are all in for a surprise.  Your opinion never mattered.

Romans 13

The new testament tells us to submit to authority.  The right wingers take the pledge of allegiance to idolatrous heights.  They love their state.  But at the same time, they advocate the overthrow of other states.  This is a contradiction.

The state the right wingers adore came to be in disobedience to authority, the American revolution.

The constitution of this USA provides for slavery to be legal.

It is not the just war haven we are told it is.

Laurence Vance has an interesting take:

Christians who recite their "obey the powers that be" mantra and chant "Romans 13" when they want to put a divine stamp of approval on U.S. wars and militarism are falsely leading people to believe that defending US wars and military interventions has something to do with obeying the government. Obeying the government has nothing to do with believing everything the government says, accepting everything the government does, supporting the government’s troops, or defending the government’s wars. The US government hasn’t commanded any American to think or say that the war on terror is a good thing, that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just wars, that US foreign policy should be supported, that prayers should be made for US troops, or that the US Navy is "a global force for good." And the government certainly hasn’t commanded any individual to go kill and maim on its behalf in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no draft. No one was forced to join the military. And no one who bothered to study US military history for five minutes would joined before these wars began and not known that there was a chance he would have to kill and maim for the state.

What Is the Difference?

As a conscientious objector, I am trying to comply with the command "Thou Shalt Not Kill."  To me this includes the yet born since so far every one of them is born a human.  As a liberal, I give them the benefit of the doubt and judge them human.  

The church does not condemn a decision to go to war, if under certain conditions and after careful moral reflection. It is a case of prudential judgment.

The church does not condemn a decision to take the life of a child, if under certain conditions and after careful moral reflection. It is a case of prudential judgment.

In both cases, the realm of prudential moral judgment is so rare as to be the modern version of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

But when Catholics step outside of cases of prudential judgment and clearly violate Catholic moral teaching, why do the bishops condone one and condemn the other?

Since the bishops are reviewing matters regarding their errors in managing relations with the state, they ought to consider this mater as well.

It is possible to take the life of a child legitimately.

But those who call for universal unrestricted abortion are scandalously rejecting church teaching. The church presses catholic politicians who proclaim a universal right to abortion any time and any place.

It is possible to wage war legitimately. But the current catholic candiadtes make clear they are calling for war beyond prudential judgment, and well with in the realm of active crime. Those who call for unrestricted war find no such challenge from the US bishops.

The popes have in fact condemned USA agression in the Middle East.

To make clear, the last two popes have specifically condemned the USA occupation of Iraq.

http://catholicism.about.com/od/thechurchintheworld/f/popes_on_iraq.htm

But there has been no contradiction of the call for widespread war crimes by candidates claiming to be “pro-life” and catholics in good standing.

There was once one Catholic archbishop, a cardinal, Bernardin by name, who conemned both. He called his consistent teaching a seamless garment. He was accused of child molesting, of course, although his accuser eventually recanted, but not before much damage was done.

Many people of good will say the USA bishops are hypocritical, in condemning active violations of Church teaching in the area of reproduction, but giving committed warmongers a pass.

To call for unrestricted abortion invites excommunication. The bishops warn such politicians.

To call for unrestricted war invites excommunication. The bishops give American candidates a pass.