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Responses: I've gotten responses here and there to some of these topics and since it's not fair for me to blast away like this without giving voice to other opinions I've decided to add responses. After each article there will be links to individual responses. If I get many responses then I will have them all in a single page but for now it's enough to have them individually.
I reserve the right to edit responses to remove personal information which I deem to be inappropriate and to run responses through the spelling and grammer checker. When you respond please use the e-mail address provided, and remember to tell me if you want to remain anonymous. In certain cases it is also advisable to state some personal info about yourself since it helps readers to know where you're coming from. Personal info such as age and gender, experiences with the issue, profession etc., all these things can help other readers understand your twist on the specific issue.

Politics

You see below some links to the three documents used to shape the country I live in. They are a must to this particular section of the Tower since I will often refer to them, either literally or figuratively. If you have not read them since Jr. High Government class then I strongly suggest you reread them now. Ignorance by choice is shameful. If you are a U.S citizen you owe it to me, to our country, and most of all to yourself and family to know the letter and spirit of these documents. If you are not a citizen, then you too should know that this is not necessarily the "Land of Dreams" of your myths. Life here may appear to be so much more wealthy than your homeland in some cases, but I can assure you the liberties and freedoms that are traded, and the ethics and morals that are sacrificed in the name of profit, mark ours as a nation of strife. The "presidential oath of office" is there because our current president is one whom I often refer to in here.

Further Links of note:

Lighter Links of note:

To you President clinton go any number of curses for deeds done (The Clinton Death Count), contemplated, and those not yet uncovered. There are so many that I will number them:

1. You took the oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. Your history proves that you have done neither, and have in fact worked to undermine it whenever possible. You are a corrupt liar.
2. You would disarm my countrymen. The founding fathers of this country knew that to be guarenteed their freedom they would have to maintain an armed public. The government before them was merciless and tyrannical and they avowed to never let the populace of their land be so maligned again. So they included in their new country's Constitution a quarentee that the government would not attempt to disarm them and, further a notice to that public that if ever their govenment were to try, to heed the warnings of that attempt. Tyranny begins when the people can no longer fight back. But hear this, you who would leave me helpless against oppression: there is no weapon greater than the human spirit and drive for freedom. You will never quell that. For further reading please see the NRA Homepage and read some truth.
3. A coward who has not done his duty, you would disarm my military and leave my country defenseless against outside threats. Our military is now weaker and worse off than the last of your kind in office ever dreamed of making it. Our airplanes are falling out of the sky for lack of adequately trained maintenance personnel and suitably equiped depots. Our pilots are leaving the military in droves because they know that it is only a matter of time before their number is up in these tragedies waiting to happen. Our armed forces are filled with untrained and unresolved soldiers, sailors and airmen because the veterans are leaving in droves as well. You are chasing away the core of the military with your foolish politically correct policies. You are killing my country and leaving us open to invaders from without and within. For further recommended reading please see David Hackworth's page and read some detailed truth (for some excerpts from Col. Hackworth's newsletter, Defending America, click here).
4. You would sell my country to the outside influences of a brutal and vicious regime of evil, China, for campaign money. And further, you would give to them bases inside our country to train their terrorists, give away our needed bases of operation to them, and peddle your influence for money.
5. You have "downsized" the military and the civilian workforce to the point where the country is simply "lucky" to be able to "get the job done". Then after being personally accountable for the displacement of countless employees, you announce that government agencies are being forced to hire people off the welfare roles. In effect you have laid off and otherwise displaced thousands of loyal and experienced people in favor of less expensive unskilled labor. You have sold out the civilian workforce and the American people they work for to further your own political goals and to insure future votes for your party. Come election time you will claim this as a victory for getting people back to work, while those you put out of work are forgotten and left to rot.
6. OK so I cannot let this "affair" go without at least one commentary. I agree with an esteemed colleague who said that Clinton should have admitted it from the very beginning and gotten on with things - it would have been over before it had the chance to get started! When she stated further that one cannot ever expect a man to tell the truth about sex I laughed, but ya know, she's got a point! So, on with my commentary...

   Would someone please tell me the difference between a truth and a lie?

   "Clinton has admitted giving misleading statements about his extramarital affair with Lewinsky, but denies his evasive answers amounted to perjury. " - Fox news 12/14 (emphasis mine)

   Seems to me there are still some very solid lines in these modern and often confusing times of ours.

   We humans seem to redefine morals depending on "the times" - in the name of progress of course :-). For example, when I was a kid I got some well deserved spankings which today could be construed as abuse - and just my making that accusation would automatically indict my parents in the eyes of the press and many politically correct and very vocal extremist groups. Same thing with marrying someone "too young" for you, or the ever popular "be persistent" - which is still popularly portrayed today in romance movies - that my father taught me about trying to get the right woman which these days could land me in jail for stalking!

   Forgive the deviation. I believe that truth is still something tangible, something solid, one of the few remaining "black and white" things left to us. It IS, or it IS NOT. In the physical world there is truth, there is untruth. What is in between is manipulation, and countless adjectives to "dumb down" or pretty up the deception.

   To close I offer a list.....

   TRUTH

   LIE

   That's the end of my list, come up with your own words for the middle, then tell me where our President sits.

   When you decide where he sits, tell me finally, how high does one have to be before one is above the law?

   This is a man who has personally seen to, overseen, or put in place cronies who will see to the destruction of many a military career for the same "crimes" which he now places himself above reproach for. This, I remind you is the Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces. All are punished...with the exception of the King. This man not only places himself above the law, he places himself above his own laws.

   Post Script

   When you offer your argument that between IS and IS NOT there is still "MAY BE", I offer that that is true in science and religion and other avenues of human thought and experiment, but not in this case. There is a man who has betrayed his family - where do you think you stand in relation to his family? And to extend the metaphor, where do you think the country as a whole stands? IS and IS NOT, TRUE and FALSE are solid and definable - it's a matter of proof, which, of course, is what takes time. Don't blame congress for "dragging it out" or indict them for a witch hunt. They're doing what they were elected to do, uphold the laws, and to some extent, the morals upon which they based their individual campaigns. When a detective goes after a criminal we do not indict the detective, why is this so different, or so difficult to understand to so many people?

To Vice President gore who, when asked how he would rid the country of the evil of smoking cigarettes replied, "we will tax them out of existance". Now I don't care how you feel about smoking or any other issue for that matter. That statement is a gross abuse of power. You were elected to enforce the laws of the land, not to use them to further political goals and re-elections. If the people want it they will vote for it, but to use the system to tax something out of existance is just not right. And you people who may agree that he has that authority please understand, what will happen when he and his henchmen decide there is something else they don't like, alcohol let's say, perhaps certain foods or conveniences?. Think about it.

To a Government who would further the cause of tyranny by attempting to impose censorship on the internet equal to Communism and Naziism, I give you the Cyberspace Declaration of Independance, with a preface by the author, John Barlow. Your attempt to impose a gag on this medium was yet another direct attack on the Constitution of my country - how dare you?! Further reading: Supreme Court overturns CDA (Communications Decency Act)

When I blast the government I certainly can't leave out the Federal Civil Service. The newspaper article I will be referring to was published in the Saturday, 1/2/98 edition of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, page A13, and was written by Thomas Hargrove, Scripps Howard News Service. The headline:

Plan to 'reinvent' government didn't cut management

Only the lover-level jobs got axed

My singular comment? Duh!
Did you, the taxpayer, really think that a vote for smaller government would result in the cutting of red tape and bureaucracy? Please tell me you're not that naive! Bureaucrats are the absolute best at saving themselves and none are better than government bureaucrats are! Ever hear the term "cover your ass" (CYA)? Who do you think invented it?
Research has shown that the jobs that got cut are the heart of the Civil Service, not the management. Did you think it would be any different? When I hear the term "smaller government" I think, like you, 'yeah! Get rid of those damn useless high paid bureaucrats and their red tape'! The bureaucrats think 'we need to make sure that the regulations are written to insure that rank and seniority favor us'. And that is exactly the way it is. It's also more than a little annoying to see such an abuse of government power and position burried in the back of the paper.
More from the article:

• The Clinton administrations massive five-year effort to reinvent the federal government has abolished more than 300,000 lower-ranking jobs across the country, while adding 3,500 high-paid bureaucrats to the payroll.

[While it is very difficult for me to give credit to Bubba Clinton for doing anything honest or intelligent, I have to admit that he was acting on a promise here and in response to the voter. He talked the talk on smaller government and walked the walk in a way that was meant to be the least devastating to the worker. He was no doubt advised that existing federal regulations for reduction-in-force were adequate to handle federal downsizing. He was also no doubt given this advice by high paid federal bureaucrats who had a lot to protect. Existing federal regulations for reduction-in-force are antiquated and preferential. And where they were not preferential enough to protect enough managers they were outright ignored - by the only people who could get away with it - powerful, high-paid bureaucrats.]

• The records indicate a major disparity in the kinds of jobs that have been cut, creating a more top-heavy government.

]No surprise here, sorry. To think otherwise is dangerously naive.]

• Elaine Kamarck, former senior policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore and director of the National Performance Review to redesign government, defended the results [duh]: "Since the federal government is not a low-tech work force, it's not surprising that the grades would be getting higher".

{Karmack is expected to defend this since hers was some of the advice given to the executive office. She does, after all, have an ass to cover. Her inane remark shows a practiced way of avoiding the question. The figures do not show the grades getting higher. The figures show the ratio of management to worker getting higher, or to put it so she can understand it, workers are being shown the door and managers are being protected.]

• Karmack said federal downsizing has not been noticed in the economy.

[Tell that to the 300,000 people who have been laid off. I'll bet their economy has been noticeably affected, not to mention the general economy in all the places where military bases and federal offices have been closed. The reason the U.S. economy in general doesn't show a negative affect, if indeed it doesn't, is that the general economy is in a boom, shadowing the gross negative effects of these layoffs. You're not going to notice the effects of a small sector going bust when the larger sector, business, is going with such a boom. The facts are being shaded and jaded here folks.]

• Jeffery Sumberg, field services director for the American Federation of Government Employees [(AFGE)]: "This is exactly the opposite of what the administration had been intending to do". "We're hearing complaints from employees around the nation that there are too many managers and not enough people to do the work".

[As more workers are shown the door, those remaining have to pick up the burden. Many people with more to do than they could handle effectively already are having more work dumped on them as their coworkers are being screwed. Now you tell me what the affect of that will be in terms of efficiency, moral, and loyalty?]

• Carol Fehner, AFGE union official at the Social Security Administration: "The overall number of employees has gone way down, but the management numbers haven't changed". "What's happened is that many managers have been placed into what I call 'play money' positions, where they retain their GS grades and their pay. All of this is a deliberate effort to circumvent the president's executive order. My understanding of reinventing government was that management positions were supposed to be cut [too] and government regulations and supervision would be reduced".

[As I said, naive.]

• At the outset, the administration set a goal: to reduce the layers of management and "empower" [quotes theirs] frontline workers.

[An admirable and proven way of doing business, but bureaucrats will never let go of the power they have. Ever. Would you? Think about it, there is more than a little human instinct at work here too - self-preservation! But it does go beyond that, it goes into the realm of wielding power.]

• Karmack said such complaints are natural. "The hardest part about this change is the re-engineering part. A lot of federal government is tied up in it's own self-generated red tape". "If they're going to survive, they are going to have to do away with a lot of bureaucratic process for the sake of process. It is going to take a long time".

[Easy for her to blow it off with some trite remark like "complaints are natural", but I think my point is made that her words are paid for. Not only paid for with tax-payer dollars, but with blood, for federal regulation and the bureaucrats handling of downsizing has caused a virtual bloodbath, and statistics are now showing that the only one's who are surviving are the bureaucrats themselves. Get a clue!]

(1/97) Bubba is at it again. AP Washington: "Scientist's plan for human cloning spurs Clinton to call again for congressional ban". The meat of the article, again buried in the back pages of the paper, tells that a Chicago Physicist intends to clone humans and that our president has, once again, ventured into the place where government does not belong, invoking arguments not within his purview. Clinton has exercised all his executive power already by banning the use of federal money for cloning but he has asked congress for a law that will ban any cloning technology for 5 years while its "ethical and social ramifications" are analyzed, and outright making the cloning of human's illegal. Clinton enforced his actions with the argument that the intention to clone humans is "untested and unsafe and morally unacceptable". "Untested"? Well duh! Of course it's not tested, neither was penicillin once! The basics of the scientific method are theory, experiment and proof. And, Bubba, you don't stop science and technology by just saying, "don't go there"! History records that people feared electricity too but no president was stupid enough to outlaw it out of ignorant paranoia! "Unsafe"? How the hell do you know? The scientific method exists to prove the safety of a theory, so let the process work, then make your judgement. That way you may judge it with knowledge and not ignorance. And, finally, "morally unacceptable" was his last justification. Bubba, you were not elected to tell the people or the scientific community what is and is not moral. Believe it or not, the American people do not all subscribe to your moral codes. If we did we'd all be making secret deals with the Chinese and fornicating with our "assistants"! People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

"Personally I believe that human cloning raises deep concerns given our cherished concepts of faith and humanity". Bubba, your personal views are as valid as anyone's, but you are in the position of putting your personal views aside, you have a country to run. Further, your cherished concepts of faith and humanity are not mine. To ask for laws based upon your religious convictions is a breech of one of the fundamental concepts of the American system, the separation of church and state. And my concepts of humanity do not include you in any sort of a leadership role. If you want to lead the American people you don't do it by putting the kibosh on science tantamount to burning books.

Finally, "scientific advancement does not occur in a moral vacuum...we must move with caution, care and deep concern about the impact of our actions". Well as usual bubba likes to throw one rational-sounding cliche' in per pack of lies to confuse us and this one, on the face of it, makes pretty darn good sense. However, scientific advancement does too occur within a moral vacuum. If it didn't we wouldn't have all these wonderful ways to destroy ourselves would we?

Religion

Religion is supposed to be a guiding light of righteousness and piety, or hope and salvation. Yet for all it's blather it has been used more often than not as one of the major excuses for the bloodiest conflicts known to man. People have the right to believe what they want and religions have the right to teach what they want. But when you use your religion to justify murder, rape, destruction and genocides, you are false, and I damn you with all the might of the universe. You that would use your powers to cause strife and sadness ARE the evil you claim to be the antithesis of. You are the vilest form of scum and villiany there is for your evil is shrouded in love.

To any religion or perported religion who would exact a price of blood and flesh in order to further your Gods - the most vile of curses. You would use peoples love and need for spiritual guidance to rid the world of your enemies. I damn all religions who would kill to further a cause, all in the name of an invented God or a few words of text on a parchment or scroll. To quote Ian Anderson "you've got the whole damn thing all wrong. He's not the kind you have to wind up in Sundays".

To you supposedly religious people out there who damn me for not following your beliefs, a question: What makes you so sure you are right and I am wrong? What gives you the right to damn me? Your God? What gives you the right to pity me? Your self-righteousness? Remember the old saying "live and let live? So how bout it? Here's something else to think about: You Christians believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, that Jesus turned water to wine or fed hundreds with only a smattering of bread? You do? Fine. Cool. You call them miracles. I can accept that. But what makes you so sure that Zeus and the other Gods of ancient Greece didn't do all the things they were said to have done? What makes your ancient texts right, and theirs wrong? What makes your beliefs "Religion", and theirs "Mythology"? Who do you think you are? Damned arrogant if you ask me, but then that's the human way isn't it? Well here's a new cliche for you and it's proven throughout history - "Todays religion IS tomorrow's mythology". Remember that well for one day you too will be accepted historically as simply ignorant and vain.

Jesus said that "The poor will always be with you". Do you buy that? If you do then you are enabling the system of poverty by accepting it's existance as divine. You are part of the problem, not the solution. It is time to rid the world of poverty and hunger. To make the world safe for our children. I recently read about the incidence of rape among teenage girls who, for one reason or another (and frequently very good reasons) are forced to leave their homes and live on the streets. It is not a matter of "if" that 14 year old girl will be raped, but "when". This is something even they accept. And it's not just the girls either. The words above are not the words which would be uttered by a true prophet of divinity because they would lull us into complacency. The poor are with us because we allow it, and for no other reason. Simply stated, it's our own damn fault and the words of a Jesus do NOTHING to release us of that guilt. So the next time you see a child on the street, how about giving them the benifit of the doubt once, because that street is frequently more survivable than the hell which many of them would face at "home". It's time to wake up people.

Society

I love picking on society, like most people I know. Society gives us the "norms", the little rules both spoken and unspoken, that we are supposed to live by in order to get along in the great race of living among the masses. In my opinion our modern society has outgrown it's usefulness.

Let's talk about priorities here. What's more important than what else. Let's talk education. We bitch about it plenty. And nobody more than our teachers for they are the one's who would know the most about it. And, they are the one's with the most right to bitch about it too. The American educational system was founded and expanded on the principals that all the people deserved the right to be schooled. But what we do with that "right" is shameful. The American system of education is laughable when compared to others in the world. In other countries they seem to respect the power of education while in America we respect the power of the dollar and the ability of the people to survive. While it's true that we can each make or break our own destinies, we need'nt make it such an uphill battle for our children. Our teachers are paid less than our executives, are they not? But I ask you who will benifit your life and the life of your children more? What is more important to you? The price you have paid for your sleek and sexy car is more than what you pay the teachers who spend more time per day with your kids than you do. I ask you, beg you to think about it. Think about your priorities. Stop bitching about it and do something dammit.

Society worships money. It influences and often causes everything we do. It is the one thing which stands between us and true freedom and happiness. It's priority is absolute in our lives. It comes before love, marriage, children, family, friends, and controls our lives. We use it as the final excuse for everything in our lives. It's worship is more absolute than that which we reserve for our Gods. Want proof? Do you go to church? How often? Compare that to how often you go to work. Do you pray? How many hours a day or week? Compared to chasing the dollar? We "can't afford to get married yet", "can't afford to start a family yet", "can't afford to visit friends or family"....lose the love of money and you will find that the space now open in your hearts and souls is vast. Our attachment to "things" has taken over our lives. Perhaps I am an idealist, but believe that the human capacity for love, compassion and understanding is boundless, albeit misguided for now. One day our ancestors will look upon us with more pity than we now reserve for our pet charities and they will be thankful for their growth beyond our present state of unmatched selfishness. It's a dream I have.

Considering how I feel about society and politics it's no wonder the two so often bond into a completely nonsensical, and often indefatigable, enemy of reason and nature. I am often befuddled by the society which so willingly gives up it's personal liberties to government out of convenience or moral code, and moreso enraged by an elected official or governemnt taking it upon themselves to enact legislation which would put big brother in the home, in the bedroom. To whit: In the newspaper this evening I read the headline:

"Bill Hits Sex and the Single Girl - Age of consent would rise from 16 to 18".

OK, ok, calming down now. Well, ok NOT calm at all. This breaches a number of pet peeves - government and/or society in the bedroom, government making unenforceable laws, society making judgements on an individuals personal life to name but a few.

The gut-wrenching verbiage of this proposal:

• "...Raises the statutory age of consent from 16 to 18...it would be illegal for anyone 5 or more years older to have sexual intercourse with a "consenting" [their quotes] 16 or 17 year old"
• "...Proposes a new misdemeanor category - 4^th degree rape of a child..."

Some of their justifications:

• "Current law wrongly presumes a 16 or 17 year old is capable of informed consent with an older, more mature and potentially more manipulative partner." - Bill supporters
• "...Her proposal sets sexual consent at the same culturally accepted age of judgement as voting, marrying without parental consent, contracting and joining the armed services" - Washington State Representative Kathy Lambert
• "Society still has this attitude that older men with young girls is cute. As long as we allow that attitude, girls will continue to be victimized." - Lambert again
• "Recent research bolsters the contentions of child advocates, law enforcement, and others long concerned that the sexual interest of men over age 18 in young girls is a major factor in teen pregnancy, sexual abuse, welfare dependency, child support, high school drop-out rates, substance abuse, dating violence, teen prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases." - Seattle PI
• "People look at kids today and they seem so mature...But they're not more mature than years ago; we just don't protect them like we used to." - Donna Fish, Family Therapist and Edmonds School District teacher
• "[The bill] recognizes 16 and 17 year-olds as among "a very vulnerable group of girls at a very vulnerable age."" - Washington State Representative Dawn Mason
• "Younger girls are preferred by older males because they are viewed as not having AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases." - Debra Boyer, University of Washington cultural anthropologist and affiliate assistant professor of women's studies

Phew. I would say that the weight of society is being thrown completely into this one. The sponsor of the bill, Washington State Representative Kathy Lambert was quoted as saying (of a 16-year-old mother whose partner had abandoned them) "The girl said she consented and she would have to prove she was not a willing partner to prosecute the man. I couldn't believe what I was hearing." Another supporter, Rep Dawn Mason said the bill "is very, very important to me" after admitting her "teenage niece became pregnant by man in his 20's who left her".

Frankly I am not even sure where to begin with this one. I was tempted to take on the individual quotes (taken from the Seattle Post Intelligencer) and rip them apart one by one but that may make this into a whole separate web page it would be so big! Then too I realized that my audience is an intelligent one and would instantly recognize - or perhaps after a little conscious deliberation acknowledge - that these arguments are preposterous, and therefore make rational decisions. The fact of the matter is that this whole bill was spawned from pure emotion, fueled by unpublished "facts" from uncited "studies", and will pass on the back of sanctimonious moralizing!

First I will tell you what I think (surprised?) will be the result of this misuse of legalese and ignominious (though admittedly heartfelt) verbosity. The law will:

• Further relieve teenagers of taking responsibility for their own actions.
• Further relieve parents of conscientious, attentive and responsible child rearing and education.
• Further burden the legal system with laws that CANNOT be enforced WHAT-SO-EVER until after the fact, by which time the punishment could ONLY serve to HARM the parent-parent and parents-child relationships and the individuals involved.
• Further relieve the educational system of having to deal with those embarrassing and disallowed issues like sex-ed and all that other disgusting yukky real-life stuff.

My issues:

• Parents cannot relieve themselves of their responsibilities towards raising their children in the society that they have chosen to partake.
• Society cannot relieve people of taking responsibility for their own actions.
• Government should not be asked to regulate these issues, or be compelled to, just because you are too weak and ineffectual to do so.
• This law cannot be enforced without the people giving up their rights to privacy. Think about it.
• Parents, society, government, individual people sometimes just can't help who they choose to fall in love with or choose to have sex with, and if you think you can change that with a law then you are ignorant of human behavior.
• Whether or not a 16 or 17 year old girl (or boy by the way) is "capable" (by whose standards?) to make the choice of sexual consent is not an issue for government (or religion for that matter) to dictate or enact as law. This is a MORAL issue and is one that is left to the family and the individual to consider.
• The "culturally accepted age of judgement [18]" is relative and convenient, and is also dictated to us by the government. It does not deal with individuals but dictates to the masses. Further, if in the judgement of our "culture" the age of 18 is supposed to be "accepted" as rational [enough] or mature [enough] for military service, voting, signing contracts, and as proposed, sexual consent, then why not the use of alcohol? Like I said, it's convenient. (It's also blackmail since the drinking age is tied to federal highway funds but that's another issue.). And now this society wishes to add the age sexual consent to it's list of governed conveniences based upon moral choices made by "the few" to control the masses.
• The money that would be used to enforce (that's a laugh) and prosecute these cases is better used to deal with REAL crime, not moral issues as adjudged by self-righteous and superficially pious bureaucrats who have set themselves up as evangelical saints.
• The issue is responsibility: If ANY male or female will not take responsibility for their parenting a child then they should be hunted and purged to the full extend of rational and sane law. Responsibility is TAUGHT, not governed.

Personal opinion:

I raised a teenage girl and will raise a teenage boy. It's my responsibility to teach them right from wrong and to instill in them the values I hold to be good and true. All along the way of growth they will reach ages when they will have to put these values to tests. These tests are in the form of "do I accept this value?", "does this value hold true for me?", "do I have the courage and strength within to live by this value I hold" etc. These are the points in my children's lives that I have prepared them for, hopefully. But they do reach that critical point where they have to make their own decisions based upon their own values. Further, if I brought them up wisely they also know that they will be faced with the consequences of their choices, THEIR CHOICES, and that THEY, and we as a family, will face the rewards or demons that result. Some 16 or 17 year olds are old enough to make the choice for sexual consent, some are not, but it's not the right of the government of the United States of America to tell me, or them, which, and I will NOT give them that right. Remember? OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people?

This country was founded by puritans and is still guided by many puritanical codes. But those puritanical values are no more realistic today than they were back then. You cannot and will not ever alter or govern human nature, no more than you will dictate human evolution. Nature takes it OWN course and you will HAVE to accept that fact. The universe will unfold as it should and in it's own good time.

• Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point - The heart has it's reasons that reason knows nothing of.

Business

The American way! Capitalism. Free Market Economy. Many terms are used to define business in America and most, on the face of it, are pretty decent sounding. What we've done with it is very typical of a spoiled and arrogant society. Business is used to "justify" some of the most deceitful and dangerous policies ever founded in this country. "It's business" is the term used to justify to people that the reasons their families will not be eating for a while is somehow "OK" and righteous. The sanctimonious bastards who sit on high collecting multi-million dollar salaries making decisions which affect the lives of millions usually have little idea of what it's like to be hungry. And if they ever did they have long forgotten it.
Most of these aritlces will not deal with these issues though as I am usually too busy in my business to write decent essays on the topic. I'm not paid for my writing, certainly not for my writing here! For now this is mostly just bitching - but just you wait till I have time!

BIG BUSINESS! I am sick and tired of being sick and tired! Money is not the be all and end all of life, and neither is the power is buys. But I repeat myself. This is to IBM whose recent commercials for their WEB services and product lines have begun to insult private use of the internet. While it is true that business has it's place on the net, so does private use. IBM has launched a campaign of insult, brash criticism and condemnation of private use of the internet. You've seen the commercials where the big snide jerk is crudely picking on the kid who's only interest in the net is fun, as if IBM is now against kids using the net. IBM's other television and radio commercials are the same, constant and flagrant criticism and abuse towards private citizens private use of the internet for entertainment. For a company whose personal computing line is SHIT they sure have balls. With any luck this is finally the death throes of a fallen giant whose last breath is being spent to cast aspersions on the public who outgrew them. Big business may run the world, IBM, but they do not own it. At least not yet.
(12/31/97) IBM has gone even further with their anti-recreational use campaign. The latest commercial I heard perpetuated their slander with the remarks, and I paraphrase, 'use the internet to learn how to count cards and beat your friends at poker'. Sweet Jesus! Now I ask you, if they have so little regard for the intelligence of people that they would actually advertise their lack of morals by suggesting we cheat our friends at poker, is this a company you want to put your money into?
Further, they use the trite term "get a life". OK, admittedly they are not the first or only to use that term in regards to recreational internet users, but supposedly being in the business of technology you'd think that they would at least recognize that traditional definitions of 'life' and 'recreation' are changing with the explosion of the internet! At least you'd think that, but in fact what their doing is glaringly obvious - prooving once again that they are in fact behind the times and still in the throes of "catch-up". The fact is they cannot offer a decent product and therefore have to play down the use of the internet because they don't offer any products or services that have a hope of keeping up, so naturally they want you to lower your expectation! And to answer the "get a life" accusation once and for all, seeking knowledge and communicating with people seems to me to be a pretty worthwhile endeavor, in fact nothing new. Only the medium of the internet is relatively new, so back off!

Misc

This category is meant for all the little things that piss me off or insult my intelligence.

Geocities! hahah, thought I forgot you didn't you! The "Cookie Monsters" of the internet! I will no longer go to any internet site having a Geocities address. I don't care how much I may want the stuff that may be on it, I am so sick of the "cookie" question from Geocities that I could puke. I don't know if you're compiling stats on hosted sites or if you're grabbing my address to sell to spammers, you will never hear my little IP address pinging on your doorbell again. Take your cookies, an average of one PER page, and go far far away. And to all you people who's sites are hosted there - time to move, your host sucks. (12/22/97) - And now they have gone even further with their unabashed insult to recreational internet use. Now they start a whole new browser window with advertisements! Now we get fucking commercials every time we visit a Geocities site! I think it's about time to start an 'anti geocities' campaign! Who's with me? yaaaaaaaaa....

National Rifle Association
Who's Watching Who?
Free Republic
Impeach Clinton and Gore
Col. David Hackworth - Soldier, Author, Columnist
Federation of American Scientists
The G. Gordon Liddy Page
HCI Tactics and Nazi Tactics
Covert Ops.com
Eagle Net
US Intelligence and Security Agencies
Special Operations.com
Soldier of Fortune
Spirit of Truth?

Philosophy/Religious Opinion Sites

Zen Stories
Sun Angel
Descartes Meditations
Nietzsche

Societal Opinion Sites

Business Opinion Sites

Miscellaneous Opinion Sites

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