On Spying on American Citizens

I find this issue just dumbfounding. I heard a snip of President Bush's speech on the radio recently. He was encouraging House Democrats to set aside partisanship and to vote pass the Senate version of the FISA bill that gives immunity to telecommunication companies for their part in electronic monitoring of Americans. The President as much as admits this act of spying is illegal for which the telecommunications companies could be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars. All this is, of course, necessary to "protect" America.

Partisanship is no excuse to give the President authority to direct any organization, public or private to violate the law? This is not a "partisan" issue that only the Democrats see has being a problem. Republicans should also know when the President is trying to violate fundamental civil liberties. This is spying on scale previously unheard of in the United States, and a gross violation of the Fifth Amendment. Is this really the precedent we want to have set (or even can set) in direct violation of the constitution? If the President asks you to do something, no matter how illegal, that you can do it and you will be protected against all consequences? What citizen can not see how the President and Congress are trying to over-ride the Constitution? Once this prescient is established, private corporations would have no grounds to object to governmental use of their resources in any way - as long as it was for so-called "national security".

The government, the American government, or any other government of free people should not have the power to secretly listen to anyone's conversation. The intelligence agencies have an easy way to get a warrant. Why should they be allowed uncontrolled spying on the American people - it is against everything our country was founded upon. Congress is the peoples’ representatives in Washington. They must not forsake the fundamental freedoms upon which the US was founded.

American cannot stop terrorism with Military

Think about the philosophy and theory about how we might win a war on terrorism. Anyone who has studied history knows that the American military cannot win the hearts and minds of the people in whose country they are fighting. In Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the general population suffers tremendously under the heavy weapons of war brought in by the US military. Henry Kissinger recently estimated that approximately 1 million Iraqis have died after almost 6 years of fighting. There are something like 4 million Iraqi refugees who have lost their homes or have fled for another country for safety…all this out of a country of 27 million people. This country, indeed the entire Muslim world is war weary, and the target of their unhappiness is the US from whence come the bullets and big bombs.

Now you say, “what about the terrorists?” The official estimate is al Qaeda has approximately 3000 troops in Iraq. An National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has clearly stated that the war on Iraq has created more terrorists than we have killed. You have to be a blind fool to think that we are doing great things in Iraq and Afghanistan – we are making enemies of people who used to like us! And while you hold up the holy grail of “bringing democracy to the Middle East” as our greatest mission of the war, most of the people in these countries war-torn would be happy with a powerful dictator that could bring peace to their nation. When bullets are killing your family, the last thing you think about is who you will vote for in the next election.

But things are not hopeless. There is more than one way to stop a terrorist. For example, look at the situation in a few other Muslim countries. Since the series of serious bombings in Indonesia and Malaysia, the governments in these countries have tracked down and cleaned up the terrorist cells associated with al Qaeda. Saudi Arabia also has clamped down on terrorists operating in that country. Europe, particularly Britain has used internal security personnel to stop terrorist actions before they can happen… so has the US for that matter. Pakistan is trying hard to get rid of the terrorists operating in their country, despite a very unstable government.

So what is the lesson here? To me the answer cries out because it is so obvious: Muslim countries do not want terrorists in their countries – and they know best where rebels are hiding and how to chase them down. If the US had a policy of helping the local government of these Muslim countries get rid of terrorists, the locals would be happy to eliminate a great deal of the global terrorist threat in a short time.

Can you imagine what it must be like living in Iraq? The US comes charging in to save them from Saddam Hussein, which we do. Then the Iraqi asks, “What else do you want now?” And we say we want to form a stable government who is friendly to the US and sell us oil. Then the Iraqi asks, “What else do you want now?” We want that government to be a democracy, because that is what you Muslims will really like it best. Then the frustrated Iraqi asks, “Ok, what else do you want now?” We want US government bases all over Iraq so that we can battle people like your dangerous neighbors… and by the way, that war might last 100 years!!

And anyone wonders why anyone thinks maybe it is time to bring home the troops?

6 billion -> 10 billion: Population's the Big Environmental Problem

Let me say that I was trained and practiced as an environmental engineer my entire life. I am now retired and spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia (specifically Indonesia) where I can see clearly environmental problems things like the reduction of rain forests and the effects that an ever growing human population is having upon the earth.

From what I can see, the root of all environmental problems in the future is a rapid growing world population. Obviously, as the population grows, it also expands into areas that formerly were largely unpopulated. In addition, as the world population becomes more “civilized”, each individual consumes more and more resources. So we get a multiplying effect: more people are born and each new person consumes more during their lifetime resources. This in essence quadruples the problem.

Right now we are starting to see evidence of this rapid population growth. Society is trying to treat the symptoms the problems that crop up…. Trying to recycle wastes, put pollution controls on factories and cars, improve our efficiency growing food, etc. But these efforts are like taking an aspirin when you have a cold. Treating the symptoms by never curing the virus which causes the cold and perhaps pneumonia. What good does it do to cut automobile emissions by half when twice as many people are driving cars?

As long as we turn a blind eye toward population control and reduction, then all our efforts to
1) stop the consumption of non-renewable resources,
2) halt the destruction forested and populated open space,
3) reducing carbon footprint, and
4) maintain food supply to the world are all impossible goals.

So what is the solution to population control. The worst imaginable, but yet most likely to happen, is either a catastrophic disaster such as worldwide feminine or a major nuclear war. A more humane and logical answer would be to impose a 50-year moratorium, which would allow one couple to have only one child. Of course, this could only be accomplished by the implant of some birth control capsule that would prevent both men and women form having additional children.

Another measure that needs to be taken is to simply not allow extraordinary medical measures to be taken to save a human life after age 60. If a person over age 60 cannot survive without artificial life support, complex surgery, or implants, etc, then he/she would be provided with drugs to stop the pain, but allowed to die a natural death. [Note. I am 61 years old as I write this – so don’t think I take the proposal lightly].

Most people who have not considered the consequences of overpopulation would reel in shock at the mere mention of such draconian measures. Personally, I put the idea right up there with rules like “Thou shalt not murder”. “Thou shalt not overpopulate the earth” – commandment #11. What is the price you are willing to pay to provide future generations a bright future? I consider it a crime against humanity to allow anyone to pump out multiple children and live artificially long lives, thereby destroying the quality of life for my yet unborn grandchild.

That’s my solution and it is the only one that will work. So the next time you see or hear people telling to drive smaller cars and recycling garbage, remember it is all a vain attack on the symptoms caused by the disease of overpopulation and is all for naught.