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I. Trump Considers More Military Action in Syria
A. Last week said might withdraw from Syria
B. Chemical attack in Damascus suburb of Douma
1. What We know
a) Residents heard objects falling from sky followed by smell like chlorine
b) Roughly 70 people died
c) Syrian government denies involvement
d) UN has not determined culprit
e) US believes Assad to blame, has threatened military action
Why US should get out of Syria
2. Risk of war with nuclear power Russia
3. ISIS has been defeated
4. US has already destabilized the whole region with Afghanistan and Iraq invasions
5. 20 trillion dollar debt and rising
6. Many more civilians will die
7. War enhances state power
8. Will do nothing to make Americans safer
C. Article- “America’s Long History of Trying to Determine Who Rules Syria
1. 1949 CIA coup
The CIA organized its very first coup in Syria in 1949 to overthrow a democratically elected president and install a military dictator. The U.S. has never given up trying to determine who rules Syria…
2. 1986 CIA memo
A CIA document declassified last year exposed a plot to overthrow the Syrian government by provoking sectarian tensions all the way back in 1986.
Here are a few juicy excerpts:
“Although we judge that fear of reprisals and organizational problems make a second Sunni challenge unlikely, an excessive government reaction to minor outbreaks of Sunni dissidence might trigger large-scale unrest. In most instances the regime would have the resources to crush a Sunni opposition movement, but we believe widespread violence among the populace could stimulate large numbers of Sunni officers and conscripts to desert or mutiny, setting the stage for civil war.”
3. 2007 General Wesley Clark statement
General Wesley Clark made the following statement on Democracy Now in 2007 about a conversation he had with a general in 2001:
About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in.
He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.”
…He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.”
…So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?”
And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs”?—?meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office?—?“today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
4. 2012 beginning of current civil war
a) U.S. proclaims its desire for regime change
b) Says Assad must go
c) U.S. backs rebel groups that include al-qaeda
d) U.S. public told that rebels were “moderates”
e) U.S. involvement results in ISIS caliphate once controlling large portions of Iraq and Syria.
f) Leftover U.S. weapons from Iraq war used by rebels in Syria
D. Why Trump probably won’t say no to the war hawks
1. Has been accused of false election collusion with Russia
2. Show he is not puppet of Putin
3. John Bolton new head of NSA
a) Was in favor of regime change in Iraq, says not a mistake
b) Would like regime change in Iran
c) Wants to scrap Iran nuclear agreement
Would like regime change in Syria
4. Strong Israel lobby
a) Antipathy towards Iran
b) Have conducted several bombing raids into Syria during civil war
5. Has already ramped up involvement in 17 year-old Afghan occupation
6. Lacks knowledge to “be his own man”, will listen to Generals
7. Ego, tough guy
E. Excuse for military action?
Excuse will be to protect the people of Syria from the evil Assad
The body count of civilians there will be greater from bombing than from any alleged chemical attacks.
F. Timing of the attack?
Before any international agency has had time to determine if there was a chemical attack and who was responsible.
G. Addendum
President Trump has ordered and military has conducted bombing and missile attacks on targets in Damascus Syria.
II. Speaker Paul Ryan Announces Retirement
A. Comment on Ryan cartoons
1. Will kill Medicare
Ryan never intended to end the Medicare program and never said he would. He did talk of reforming the program so as to try to tame the federal debt. In the end, he nor his Republican colleagues never had the guts.
2. Will repeal Obamacare and give savings to the rich
This is how Democrats always caricature any attempt at fiscal restraint. You are just a heartless monster that wants the poor to suffer.
3. I love deficits
This one has some truth to it. Although he talked a good fiscal responsibility game he never “walked the walk.”
4. House under new management, influenced by the far-right
New management did not apply to Ryan. He was part of the same mainstream Republicans that run huge budget deficits whenever they hold the reins of power.
5. New budget does not kill Obamacare
True. Although Trump ran on repealing Obamacare he along with the GOP controlled House and Senate never even came close to realizing the promise.
6. Medicare recipients watch out!(2 cartoons same message)
Are you kidding? Medicare reform by either party will never happen before U.S. government bankruptcy. If minor reform does occur they will simply be re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic that is the federal debt. Video of federal debt clock.Libertarian Humor
This graphic shows a lifeguard watching as several bodies are floating in the pool. The caption reads “Libertarians make bad lifeguards.” This common caricature of libertarians implies that we won’t lift a hand to help people in need. It is based on the fallacy that if government does not help people no one will. Never mind that humans had a long history of helping each other long before any government was created.
III. Campus insanity
Temple University Faculty Members Are Trying to Erase the ‘Gender Binary System’
The gender binary refers to the traditional classification of human gender into two distinct categories, masculine and feminine. Some professors at Temple University are looking to erase this “outdated” classification altogether.
Heath Fogg Davis, a professor of political science at Temple, argues in his new book that he wants to live in a world in which everyone uses a “gender-neutral pronoun.”
“My argument in the book is not that we try to live beyond gender, but [to minimize] the formal use of gender and gender policies because of the ways it infringes on people’s individual autonomy,” Davis said. “In an ideal world, I wish that we all used a gender-neutral pronoun.”
A. Students accused of ‘hatred’ for defending traditional marriage
LGBT students are attempting to defund Love Saxa, a Georgetown University student group that supports traditional marriage.
Love Saxa’s mission statement says the group “exists to promote healthy relationships on campus through cultivating a proper understanding of sex, gender, marriage, and family among Georgetown students.”
…Jasmin Ouseph submitted a formal notice to the university on September 25, on the grounds that Love Saxa’s definition of marriage fosters hatred and intolerance which would violate Georgetown’s Student Organization Standards.
B. Feminist prof says ‘traditional science’ is rooted in racism
A feminist professor at the University of California-Davis has vowed to “challenge the authority of Science” by “rewriting knowledge” through a feminist lens.
Sara Giordano argues that “traditional science” relies on “a colonial and racialized form of power,” and must be replaced with an “anti-science, antiracist, feminist approach to knowledge production.”
C. Harvard Hosts Anal Sex Workshop Entitled ‘What What in the Butt’
As a part of Harvard University’s sex week, the Ivy League Institution hosted an anal sex workshop entitled, “What What in the Butt: Anal 101.” The workshop taught students “how to put things in their butt,” according to a report from The College Fix.
As with most proceedings at Harvard, the anal sex workshop placed great emphasis on equality. After the presenter noted that “not all men have penises, not all women have vaginas,” she argued that “the butthole is the great sexual equalizer. All humans have a butthole.”
IV. The Myth of National Defense
This publication was a collection of essays edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The following excerpts are from one of the essays written by Murray Rothbard.
…The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one
may threaten or commit violence (“aggress”) against another
man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only
against the man who commits such violence; that is, only
defensively against the aggressive violence of another.1 In
short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor.
Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the
entire corpus of libertarian theory.
…This use of violence to obtain its revenue
(called “taxation”) is the keystone of State power. Upon this
base the State erects a further structure of power over the individuals
in its territory, regulating them, penalizing critics, subsidizing
favorites, etc. The State also takes care to arrogate to
itself the compulsory monopoly of various critical services
needed by society, thus keeping the people in dependence
upon the State for key services, keeping control of the vital
command posts in society and also fostering among the public. Thus the State is careful to monopolize police and judicial
service, the ownership of roads and streets, the supply of
money, and the postal service, and effectively to monopolize or
control education, public utilities, transportation, and radio
and television.
…In the modern world, each land area is ruled over by a State
organization, but there are a number of States scattered over
the earth, each with a monopoly of violence over its own territory.
…since each State can
mobilize all the people and resources in its territory, the other
State comes to regard all the citizens of the opposing country as
at least temporarily its enemies and to treat them accordingly by
extending the war to them. Thus, all of the consequences of
interterritorial war make it almost inevitable that inter-State war
will involve aggression by each side against the innocent civilians—
the private individuals—of the other.
…If one distinct attribute of inter-State war is interterritoriality,
another unique attribute stems from the fact that each State
lives by taxation over its subjects. Any war against another
State, therefore, involves the increase and extension of taxation-
aggression over its own people.
…All State wars, therefore, involve increased aggression
against the State’s own taxpayers, and almost all State wars (all,
in modern warfare) involve the maximum aggression (murder)
against the innocent civilians ruled by the enemy State.
…In short, the libertarian is
interested in reducing as much as possible the area of State
aggression against all private individuals. The only way to do
this, in international affairs, is for the people of each country
to pressure their own State to confine its activities to the area
which it monopolizes and not to aggress against other State monopolists.
…We cannot leave our topic without saying at least a word
about the domestic tyranny that is the inevitable accompaniment
of war. The great Randolph Bourne realized that “war is
the health of the State.”13 It is in war that the State really comes
into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in
absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society
becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out
and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily
betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society
becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale—as
Albert Jay Nock once phrased it—of an “army on the march.”
The root myth that enables the State to wax fat off war is the
canard that war is a defense by the State of its subjects. The
facts, of course, are precisely the reverse. For if war is the health
of the State, it is also its greatest danger. A State can only “die”
by defeat in war or by revolution. In war, therefore, the State
frantically mobilizes the people to fight for it against another
State, under the pretext that it is fighting for them.