EDITORIAL
The historic election we just endured has many facets, as one might expect in hindsight.
No person is an island, nor could one ever be, in spite of what a hardened narcissist might think.
There were also too many elements in play for the voters, or even pundits for the most part, to even grasp as they played their roles in the 2016 election event. Individual and group psychologies were the immediate drivers responding to Globalization that relocated jobs world-wide. Globalism is the most immediate and prominent mediator of trends in economics and political discourse we now observe. Societies evolve, just as species do, by the survival of the fittest and luckiest in terms of the latitude and natural resources that provide extraordinary means for families, tribes, communities, and ultimately nations to compete and evolve. Like their species counterpart, societal evolution is continuous over time with nations instead of individuals acting. And like natural evolution, mutations occur. We now live in such a “mutant period” comprising populism where only time will determine our survival polity. And populism itself shows many faces, both Left and Right.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Wednesday, December 21, 2016.
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Editorial
Sigmund Freud is the father and founder of the "soft" science of psychology. Like most fathers, his offspring did not turn out quite as he would have preferred. As new facts and practitioners took up psychiatry (MD required) and psychology (PhD required), Freud's many theories no longer fit as well as he would have liked. New schools of thought soon arose. Nevertheless, he left a primary mark. It turns out that his mark bears on peace.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Wednesday, December 08, 2010.
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Editorial
Is terrorism a natural expression of the human genome?
If so, what can be done about it?
If not, why not?
Terrorism does arise from the human genome--an architecture designed by natural variation and selection of species most fit to survive the environmental niche within which they live. Nature took her time. Her genomic experiments culminating in humanity were gradual over a period of several hundred million years. Some instinctive behaviors we share with insects as well as animals in the great phylum of vertebrates to which we belong! Over at least the last seven million years since we split from the gorillas, evolution preserved our aggressive, cooperative, nurturing, parenting and altruistic traits with some of these arising tens to hundreds of millions of years before that. Nature is nothing if not
Consilient.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Wednesday, August 19, 2009.
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Editorial
Harry Rosenberg
Imagine a hotshot, who is brilliant and innovative, does pioneering work, revises your thinking, and makes great public presentations with a stage presence that has no bounds. He is fit for just about any challenge, and he just might be worth an outrageous bonus. The key word is might.
Why doesn't it always work out that way? Most importantly, simple arithmetic gets in the way. How can any bank grow faster than the interest rates they charge less operating expenses. Banks can't create capital, but they can corral it via acquisitions or nefarious means--like unloading toxic assets on others at prime prices.
How can we hire the lead-in hot shot?
AIG CEO, Edward Liddy, has a formula (paraphrased):
"I can only retain the best and brightest by paying $165 million."
And that is supposed to be that!
What do you think?
Posted by RoadToPeace on Saturday, March 28, 2009.
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This gun is ready; always loaded, it hangs over each of us. This gun is not loaded with conventional lead slugs. It is loaded with MC squared.
Does that matter? Well let's put that into some perspective. No one knows how much energy has been loaded for the itchy trigger fingers. But the energy is so vast, any perspective at all is enough.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Saturday, October 04, 2008.
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Editorial
Shareholders in these government-sponsored enterprises, GSEs, lost half the value of their shares in a space of two weeks in the recent melt-down. That affected plutocrats as well as average Jane and Joe citizen. These GSEs together hold cash reserves of $80-90 billion. Sound like enough? Well not quite; by 80% it is not. These BSEs need some $400 billion to adequately back their combined portfolios of six trillion debt. This is more than the treasury could hope to bail out.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Thursday, August 21, 2008.
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Editorial
Mysterious, unknown, and scary to many Western peoples; misunderstood by diplomats as well. If you don't believe that, just read or listen to the media--it is all of these things. Or is it? This page was motivated by those who automatically condemn the Chinese in knee-jerk fashion. Our observations differ considerably from the Western news media and are based on visiting the whole of Taiwan and a half dozen large and small cities in Mainland China. There is a fundamental disconnect between most of the Western media and what one sees on the ground. Reporting the 2007 Party Congress, provides a case in point.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, August 08, 2008.
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How Times Change
Editorial
The State of the Union address has morphed from speeches by our first two presidents through letters from Jefferson's time down to Wilson who went back to speeches. It is now a ritual, a show for TV. Rarely will a sitting president in our day have anything new to say. It is now all about pomp and circumstance.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, February 04, 2008.
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Editorial
Mr. Bush has done his best to spread his version of democracy across the globe, but mainly in Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. So how is it going? Iraq has democracy in name only. Ditto for Afghanistan. Russia, a wonderful quarry that was also in his sights, has removed itself from the realm of the free.
South America? Well it was written off with Chavez thumbing his nose at the Administration. But lo and behold!
Posted by RoadToPeace on Sunday, December 09, 2007.
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Editorial
Since the US media mostly sees only two colors, black or white, thanks to their fear of standing up to the Administration, we entitled this page that way. Although few things are actually black or white, least of all in the political world, it is time that black and white behavior in the media is addressed on this site.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Sunday, December 02, 2007.
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Editorial
After Madeleine Bunting;
The Guardian Weekly, 11 Nov 2007
and
Lakshnmi Chaudhry; The Nation,3 Dec 2007
It may be that terrorists are morally flawed. It may also be that such morality is seen as martyrdom in the lands of Islam. Where is the truth? In 1994, Mark Saltveit offered a salient comment:
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"Today's press corps is largely worthless--a pack of shallow conformists so easily manipulated that it's a joke....Maybe the [boomer] Pepsi Generation is doomed to shallow group thought and trend-mongering through years of training by MCA, CBS, and Time. New technology for cable TV, desktop publishing, and cheap recording studios arrived just in time for slackers."
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Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, November 19, 2007.
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Editorial
From Wikipedia:
"Paul has been called conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. He advocates non-interventionist foreign policy, having voted against the Iraq War Resolution, but in favor of force against terrorists in Afghanistan. He favors withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations; supports free trade, rejecting NAFTA as "managed trade"; and opposes amnesty and birthright citizenship for illegal aliens.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Sunday, November 11, 2007.
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Editorial
"It's a very different kind of person." Mukasey said in reply to Senator Dick Durbin, Illinois Democrat, who asked about water boarding. This seems at first glance to be a 'so what.' But think about it. Is this not 'BLACK AND WHITE' thinking--Authoritarian to the core? Mukasey waffled the rest of the way, never clearly stating he does or does not approve water boarding. After all, he wanted the prestigious AG job, and he got it.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Sunday, November 11, 2007.
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"Democracies die behind closed doors"
Federal Judge Damon Keith |
Editorial
The Republican nightmare is that a Democrat will complete the dictatorship they so carefully crafted but choked on in the 2006 election.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Wednesday, October 31, 2007.
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Editorial
14 Sept 2007
Too often key events that affect the future of humankind go unnoticed or even forgotten. The works of
Mendel, who discovered the genetic code is one example coming to mind.
Charles Darwin himself was not fully appreciated in his own time in spite of a high and controversial profile. Some of his deepest insights are just now coming into general acceptance. Giants who followed him would include not only
Gregor Mendel, but
James Watson and
Francis Crick with vital help from
Rosalind Franklin. Because of them, humanity now has a much better view of itself. They enabled a new beginning on the question of nature/nurture. Neither was very clear before
Darwin.
Darwin, Mendel, Watson, Crick, and Franklin comprise humanity's heroes in biology, the nature side of the coin.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, September 14, 2007.
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Editorial
The White House and Congress agreed in May 2007 to a series of benchmarks that could lead to an end of American occupation of Iraq. The second report on progress is due 15 September.
Our take is that too little has been achieved to justify continued support. True downtown Baghdad is a basically safer behind the equivalent of an iron wall that is not quite impervious. Like the eye of the hurricane, Baghdad is relatively calm while being surrounded by the high winds of violence.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Sunday, September 09, 2007.
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Editorial
6 Sept 2006
Also known as simply Pvt Scott Thomas in news releases, Beauchamp reported extensive sadistic behavior on the part of three soldiers in his battalion in Iraq.
Believable?
- Yes, given the backdrop of Abu Ghraib and the Haditha massacre (Marines killed 24 civilians).
- No, if you want to hang tough on the idea that Americans are all good guys--because they are American.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Thursday, September 06, 2007.
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Editorial
Updated: 11 Oct 2008.
Abuse of Power?
Enrich the already rich?
Erstwhile Dictator?
Venal Personality?
All the Above?
We have collected the signing statements published by
Coherent Babble. Editorial comments following many raise serious questions.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, August 24, 2007.
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Editorial
Corrected 12 July 2010
Mr. Bush is not alone in forgetting or simply disregarding history. Congress people share his shortsightedness. And so, by and large, does the American public. This is not a new phenomenon. For example, Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, shared his thoughts on this subject in his acceptance speech:
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, June 25, 2007.
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Editorial
14 May 2005
Women are worse off now than when they were at the mercy of Saddam's mad offspring. Unbelievable to many, denied by even more, it is high time to withdraw when all we are doing is making a bad situation even worse. For those of you who would stay the course, please explain why there were 300,000 widows in Baghdad alone in 2005? Explain why one in six children in America lives in poverty while one in six in Iraq died in 2005!
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, May 14, 2007.
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Editorial
27 April 2007
How many dives into the
"Insufficient Memory" hole does it take an employee to get his boss's attention? Apparently 70 is not enough in the case of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. This is cronism at best. At worst it is a concerted effort to convert America into a dictatorhip, a Bush dynasty. Such a thought once was unthinkable.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, April 27, 2007.
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Editorial
19 April 2007
Vice President Dick Cheney recently addressed the "American Israel Public Affairs Committee," also known as AIPAC. His remarks may be found on
White House news release.
Mr Cheney proclaimed four myths:
"The most common myth is that Iraq has nothing to do with the global war on terror.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Thursday, April 19, 2007.
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Editorial
Bring charges against the detainees or close it.
490 men are held in this military prison. We can find no legal or moral reason for keeping most of them there. Most never belonged to al Aq'ida or fought for the Taliban.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, March 26, 2007.
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Editorial
Two counts of perjury, one count of obstructing justice, and one count of making false statements: so reads the list of guilty verdicts returned by a federal jury in Washington DC. Libby took a fall for Rove, Cheney and/or Bush. The jury was on firm ground to convict; at the same time they recognized its unfairness. The real criminals remained unindicted.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, March 26, 2007.
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Editorial
A favorite tactic of the Panzer Divisions of WWII, pincers that can surround and trap entire armies. Early in the war Hitler rolled over Western Europe, putting army after army in a vise. Later in the East at Stalingrad, the Soviets replied in kind. Hitler's generals saw the danger develop, but, in his egomania, Hitler ordered them to stand fast, never mind that his plans for the East had already come to naught. He hastened his own demise.
And so it is today. Only the context, players and issues differ.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, March 05, 2007.
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Editorial
Scott Ritter (a former marine intelligence officer) and Negar Azimi, (Senior editor of
Bidou, NY.) have a slant on Iran quite different from that on Pennsylvania Avenue. Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei "...has been navigating a path of moderation." (Ritter) There is no evidence he is in fact moving toward nuclear weaponry. "...Congress appropriated $66 million dollars to bolster prospects for democracy in Iran..." "seemingly harmless enough, the initiative has in fact made life even harder for some members of Iran's embattled civil society." (Azimi)
Posted by RoadToPeace on Saturday, November 18, 2006.
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Editorial
Jim Wallis plants his feet squarely on the ground: critically assessing
both the Left and the Right, politically. An evangelical Christian, Wallis is nevertheless an acute thinker who does not accept dogma (narrow or limited vision) when he can do better. Moral Values is one area where he reaches way beyond the political crowds who invoke God as being on their side. Much of what follows either comes from or was inspired by his recent book
God's Politics.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, November 13, 2006.
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Editorial
Central theme of this editorial:
It is time to move away from violence
in the war on terror. |
From the Stone Age forward, the history of humanity has been one of violence, escalating with population, exponentially since the development of metallurgy and the invention of gunpowder.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, November 10, 2006.
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Editorial
The American electorate has spoken. And Mr. Bush has replied. He obviously expected the electorate's verdict and his TV appearances diverted attention from the most earth-shaking, mid-term election ever. His promises appear to have been addressed to 2008. His reply to the election result was once again: We must stay the course--under new leadership--with bipartisanship. Although he seemed willing to give on the minimum wage issue, we wager he will not give much on "staying the course."
Posted by RoadToPeace on Thursday, November 09, 2006.
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Editorial
It is now an easy matter to realize the US must
exit Iraq and soon. The complications are formidable; consequences are most serious; missteps could be disastrous. With the mindset as it is on Pennsylvania Avenue, it seems pointless to illustrate the obvious. Still we must try.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Tuesday, November 07, 2006.
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Editorial
The Administration has no peer when it comes to using pejorative phrases to settle arguments--as if that were enough. Yet Iraq has come to the point where we see cutting our losses and soon as the wiser course.
There are many uncertainties about the future, but very few about the past. The latter is speaking to the future and is the theme of this page--unless of course we live in a state of denial.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Wednesday, November 01, 2006.
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Editorial
Updated 12 June 2010
North Korean nukes are now reality; Iran doubles its uranium processing capacity; Taliban resurgence continues in Afghanistan; Iraqi violence escalates as soldier levels increase; American deaths in Iraq reach all-time high; Darfur sinks further into genocide.
Just who might not be able to do anything about all that? Uncle Sam, that's who. Never in recent memory has Uncle Sam been so powerless against real threats. From apex to nadir in five short years is what this self-styled "war president" accomplished.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, October 27, 2006.
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Editorial
Updated 17 June '07
With all due respect for the office of the President of the United States, this incumbent has accomplished some negative achievements of historic import. The world will never be the same.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, October 23, 2006.
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Editorial
We wonder.
-
Only in the animal world does a female eat a male that she just mated with. (The Black Widow spider)
- Only in the amimal world does a male feast on his own children at every opportunity. (The Hyena.)
Posted by RoadToPeace on Saturday, October 21, 2006.
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Editorial
Maybe it is a sign of the times, of affluence, or simply modernization. Whatever, it seems Americans are especially prone to the "disease," otherwise known as the
"Quick Fix."
Posted by RoadToPeace on Saturday, April 15, 2006.
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Jullands Posten , a Danish newspaper started it. Believing they were only testing the limits of propriety, they ended up instigating a tidal wave that dwarfed anything since Hitler's occupation. Indeed, like a Tsunami, it swept all continents with some African and Near-Eastern nations recalling their ambassadors from Denmark.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Friday, February 17, 2006.
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Editorial
Also known as: Explosions: Nukes and Population; Driven by Extremism.
Jan 2006; Updated 26 May 2007.
What have expediency and band-aids wrought?
- An earth where small regional powers possess nuclear weapons with at least one having an unstable governance.
- A world with a human population already straining the biosphere.
- A world with a human population making no move to limit or even understand its own potential for extremism, the barrier to which is egg-shell thin as our modern ability to motivate people to: genocide, abuse in Abu Ghraib, and abuse in the Stanford Prison Experiment show.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Saturday, January 21, 2006.
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Seven Reasons
Links From MoveOn
Jan; Feb 2004
This page bears on terror because it relates to the leader against terror.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Tuesday, November 29, 2005.
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Editorial
Globalization
2003;
Revised Jan 2004
Globalization is happening
whether we like it or not. Jet travel, on-the-spot television coverage, satellite phones, and the Internet are "shrinking" the world.
Posted by RoadToPeace on Tuesday, November 29, 2005.
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Editorial
Dispossessed
What
is there about the Palestinians that people hate them so? Do the Jews hate them because they refuse to be treated like cattle?
Posted by RoadToPeace on Monday, November 28, 2005.
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Who we are