New Civilization News: The Good News    
 The Good News5 comments
22 Aug 2005 @ 20:55, by Vaxen Var

This past week, the lead "national news" story on AM radio seemed to be the forced evacuation of Gaza. Cindy Sheehan was a close second.

Every half hour, heartbreaking stories of crying Israeli soldiers and screaming American and Israeli protestors led the national news in the American heartland. Radio interviews with protestors in Gaza revealed one reason for the apparent U.S. media interest – several protesters spoke English with a clearly American accent.

But the second aspect of this story is cause for libertarian celebration. The Israeli settlers live courtesy of the state. Their assigned land, homes, security, transportation, and employment in the occupied territories are entirely subsidized by the Israeli government, and those countries who subsidize Israel. No doubt, another reason for Americans to care.

The Good News on Talk Radio

by Karen Kwiatkowski


The settlers in Gaza and the West Bank are the poster children of a white collar, faith-based security/welfare system. We Americans have a similar example of political welfare, but it lacks a compelling media image. Our own heavily subsidized big oil, pharmaceutical and military weapons and construction company executive suites are characterized by glassy highrises and anonymous well-dressed executives. There are no emotional human faces and hot physical interaction that can be captured in an award-winning photograph.

In Gaza, the faith-based welfare recipients now hate their government. They now resent the rule of the very state that created them. They hate the state. The Likud government, a key designer of both the welfare/security strategy and its reversal, has betrayed them. The settlers are angry. We understand.

The state that gave them land is now taking that land away. The soldiers who provided their security are now forcibly collecting them and placing them in temporary housing, via cages and armored vehicles. The state that built their homes will now bulldoze them.

As a lesson in government and capitalism and property rights, one couldn’t ask for a better illustration. Does the state produce anything of value – or only redistribute it? If the state has gun-backed power over all property, all security, all humanity, can the individual have comparable rights, or indeed, any rights?

Libertarians, anarchocapitalists, and other pragmatists already know the answer to these questions. But much of the world still does not – the Gaza evacuation of Israeli settlers provides a needed object lesson to the rest of the world. It is, "Beware the state."

The Gaza settlers will not see it this way immediately – but you can be sure that the next handout they accept from Tel Aviv will be taken with some apprehension. Their lawyers will creatively seek new mechanisms for ensuring private property rights. Trust in their government and in the Likud has been permanently broken.

The other news on the radio was the vigil in Crawford. One woman of principle is standing up to an unprincipled American president who took a gullible and worried nation to war without a truthful rationale, without a legal justification, and perhaps most importantly – without either a plan or an objective.

Of course we wanted new military bases and some prime military real estate in the heart of the Middle East. Of course we wanted an ability to emplace American companies securely into a post-sanctions oil-producing, cash-rich Iraq. Of course we wanted Iraqi oil to be sold on the dollar, not the euro as Saddam had been doing since 2000. But these are not discrete military objectives, nor were they ever articulated publicly to the American taxpayer.

Today, the president and his neoconservative advisors face an angry public and a tentatively brave U.S. Congress that would pull all troops back, and leave Iraq to her own nationalities, a free country to fight with whom it chooses, trade with whom it will, and to host the military forces of others only because it wants to, and not because it must. Not exactly how academician Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the "beautiful minds" in War Party expected it to roll out.

Radio news this week, as every week, was cushioned on both sides by non-news talk – in the form of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Reagan, Neal Boortz, and Laura Ingraham. When not encouraging the listeners to purchase more of this product or that, these announcers encourage listeners to close their eyes, ears and minds to reality, so as not to be dismayed.

The Limbaugh crowd is unhappy with Cindy Sheehan’s example and her solid and growing support throughout the country. Rush is disappointed with the Main Stream Media and its sudden "liberal" bias. He and the rest of the war party cheerleaders are having a tough time picking on Cindy, with her being a mother who lost her son in a war for which they personally and incessantly lobbied, happily repeating government lies and half-truths over and over. With all her pain, she – unlike AM radio’s political puppets – has not resorted to illegal painkillers or broad brush smearing of people who disagree with her. It is a tough game these days for the neo-nasties on talk radio.

Incidentally, you can also hear Air America in Virginia. Much of it seems to be modeled on the Limbaugh/Hannity/Ingraham style, and as such is painful to hear. These days, you have to resort to National Public Radio and Alex Jones for polite conversation on the radio.

Lessons in the terrible power of the state juxtaposed with lessons in the unassailable power of individuals with integrity and courage. Good conversation and intellectual curiosity found in staid publicly funded radio and radical privately funded radio – strangely united in their curiosity and their lack of faith in the current government.

For lovers of liberty, it is hard to believe that there is much good on the national AM airwaves. But there is. Perhaps, like a lot of things, the key is to listen with your heart.

August 22, 2005

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., [send her mail mailto:ksusiek@shentel.net ] is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and among other things, writes a bi-weekly column on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek [link] .

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com

Karen Kwiatkowski Archives [link]



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5 comments

22 Aug 2005 @ 23:12 by astrid : GREAT,GREAT Article!!!!
Thanks, Vax, for bringing it to my/our attention! "There is Healing, when the Radiance of LOVE is starting to replace all our fears, don't you agree?... and that's the Door that's opening for us "every-day-people", right now, I believe... with all the Today's "Joan(s) of Arc" like Cindy Sheehan, ONE of the MILLIONS of Mom's who was forced to let her child get murdered by the BigBoys wrapped in their various RELIGIOUS &/or national (oh, yes ,thank you amen for all those different) Holy Cows! ...-or was it Flags- to protect their Cow-ardy asses, and to secure their corporate "Nation" Flags, eh??!!... Watch you cows; this "ONE" will soon become a Million Mom March and TEN Million MomMearch -and in no time at all might even grow to HUNDREDS of Millions of both Moms & Dads -March (and who knows where the limitless expression of millenias of injustice will lead all "Moms & Dads" to!... ) for Human GOD GIVEN RIGHTS and even the "mom" of this very article; Karen Kwiatkowski! As for the Settlers and their Plight... I hope they will feel welcome to join the crowd of --once again-- THINKING /FEELING people!... by starting to use their own GOD GIVEN DISCERNMENT /Judgement and right to say "NO more BigBoys thinking FOR me. No more BigBoys deciding FOR me, thank you very much. But from now on I'll do it for me!"  

23 Aug 2005 @ 03:01 by vaxen : Yeah...
A-d. Karen is very special. I do have an article by Cindy, which is very special also, that I will post over the next several days. I love the way Karen writes. Bold, honest, and educated in the ways of military deceit and subterfuge as well as political backstabbing and chicanery.

I don't know about love but I do know that Cindy is aware of the blood on her hands. All this needless 'sacrifice to Moloch' going on all over the world so that a few can fatten and engorge themselves on the blood of the murdered and enslaved many...

Time for the many ''Moms'' to re-read Lysistrata. Maybe even to remember Hypatia and who it was that ripped her limb from limb. The same religious bigots, Christians then, but they come in all colors, and all shapes, and sizes, and in all 'religions.'

I have no hope that this all is not just another ''Hegelian moment.'' I've read the writing on the wall. Molochs minions require much more blood and that's just how it is.

"A retreat is an advance in the opposite direction."-- Chou Yi

That is a realisation attained only by uncommon men. The likes of the puppets in the Whitehouse are so outclassed by the real puppet masters that to even think of 'following' their insane and outlandish orders is to side with a sinking ship of fools. Goes for Demopubs as well. The whole damned bunch needs to go and go quickly!

I've always thought the Whitehouse and the whole Washington ''set'' to be very ostentatious and done with extremely ''poor'' taste.

Technology came before science. The technology of evil lives on the light of the good...they both end up in the same quagmire and that-- endlessly.

Thanks for your comment, A-d, and thanks for appreciating Karens work. BFN  

23 Aug 2005 @ 09:51 by koravya : Also
From “A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal” by Asne Seierstad.
c. 2003. Translated by Ingrid Christophersen. 2004. First published in the United States in 2005 by Basic Books.

(Jacket) “For one hundred and one days – from January until April 2003 – Asne Seierstad worked as a reporter in Baghdad for Scandinavian , German, and Dutch media. Through her articles and live television coverage she reported on the events in Iraq before, during, and after the attacks by the American and British forces.”
http://www.americamagazine.org/BookReview.cfm?articletypeid=31&textID=4268&issueID=536
***--/_*

(Preface) “The truth about the war in Iraq does not exist. Or rather, there are millions of true accounts and maybe just as many lies. . . . No story contains the whole story. This is just one of many and it gives a fragment of the whole, not more. Read the reports of the Egyptian, the American, or the Frenchman. But above all, try to find the Iraqi version of the war, and the time before and after the war. Together they will give us a basis for understanding what is happening. . .”

(page 46) “Try to imagine the opposite situation. Great Britain is expecting a major attack from Iraq. It is feared that bombs will rain down over London. Rumours abound that Iraqis are planning wholesale takeover of many of England’s larger industrial plants, oil companies and shipping. Should Iraq win the war, it is expected that its leaders will maintain power for a considerable period, until a friendly regime is in place, a regime which serves Arab interests. Right in the middle of this rumour-flood Iraqi journalists flock to London. They check in at the best hotels, rent extra rooms to house their equipment, splash money about, demand to follow their own customs and drinking habits. They have brought with them gasmasks and bulletproof vests, and buy up bottled water and tinned food which those who live there cannot afford. In the evening, they gather round the restaurant tables and await one thing: that their president will give the go-ahead for the destruction of London.
How would they have been received by the inhabitants of London? By restaurant staff? By the British Ministry of Information?”  

23 Aug 2005 @ 12:44 by jstarrs : Good article, thanks, Vax-san...
...  

23 Aug 2005 @ 16:02 by astrid : Dear Vax,
what you say here in your comment rings so very true (to me! )

John,I really like your comment; the turned-around scenario! .... and this time, let's make sure that the City of London and the Palace will not get spared by some Divine "WHATEVER"!!! hahahahahahaaaaaa.... ALL we all need is DIVINE JUSTICE!!!! how could anybody have anything to object to THAT???... could they, huh????.... ( Anybody around here who "knows" The Answer to that one, eh?? ???......) Consequently: Let it be so! Let it be so! Let it be so!.... OK, A-d, enough of that shit! let the ones who pooped out the shit in the first place enjoy eating it! Alright, alright. No problem...(when) knowing that Divine Justice WILL prevail!
 

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