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| Sulgrave Manor, home of the Washington family |
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
GENEALOGY ~ In the beginning were the Stotesbury/Leesons
This post shall be the first of several concerning the American Gleason family.
Our Ancestry site called "Gleason Footprints" was challenged by the son, Will, of Margaret Stotesbury-Leeson of Canada to show that we American Gleasons were at all related to the ancient Leeson family of Sulgrave, England. The results of DNA testing proved a direct connection to a common ancestor between the Stotesbury-Leesons and three of our documented lines of English Gleasons.... not to be confused with Irish lines using the same name.
Thus we became computer friends which resulted in Margaret providing us with valuable information concerning our family. Note that more recently I found information in Bond which shows that our patriarch, Thomas Gleason, b.1607 in Sulgrave (including wife Susannah and two children) was still known under the name Leeson. So the Gleason name was taken while living here in the Massachusetts colony.
What follows is a letter from Margaret commenting on a document I had found about Sulgrave.
Dear Allan
Will just told me today that on Sept. 6, you had sent him the "Sulgrave Document". I didn't do any of the things you suggested; rather, I clicked on it and printed it out, and it raised some questions. Before I try to deal with some of them, Willard isn't Will's first name; he's William-not after King Billie on his white horse (he was supposed to be born on July 12, but procrastinated until July 21!), but after Sir William Leeson, the last Papal Knight in my late husband's family in a collateral branch.
The Nottingham Leesons are ours as are the Yorkshire ones (from the latter comes the late Bishop of Peterborough, Spencer etc.) but I am not quite sure how. The wife of the (probably late) Bishop Hughes of Trinidad and Tobago in the 1960's-?1970's was also a Yorkshire Leeson. My husband always referred to Spencer etc. Peterborough as his cousin. Many thanks for the info from Bridges, edited by Whalley. It's nearly 40 years since I read him last.
As to Sulgrave, my husband said there were 5 manors there, not 3, and that before Thomas Leeson sold Sulgrave to his cousin, Lawrence Washington, for a short time all 5, for the first and last time in their history, belonged to one family, namely us. But perhaps by 'us', he meant 'Leesons and their relations' which would include the Pargiters and the Washingtons. By the way, my e-mail address is "mslasgaard@sympatico.ca". I'll talk to you later when I've had a chance to go over the material in detail.
"THE STORY OF STUCHBURY
Compiled by Allenby Stuchbery.
Stuchbury, village of a thousand years, is situated between Sulgrave, Helmdon and Greatworth in the county of Northamptonshire.
Its antiquity certainly dates back to the time of William the Conqueror, for when he ordered a census of peoples and properties to assess his possessions, it was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 that Stuchbury or Stoteberri had ten inhabitants.
It should perhaps be pointed out that the name Stuchbury has gone through many stages and generally was spelt phonetically until well into the nineteenth century. So one finds that Stuchbury had many spellings such as:
Stoteberri Domesday Book, 1086
Stutsbiria 1155-1158
Stotesbury 1230
Stuttebyri Episcopal Registers
Stuksburg ????
Stuttesbury Ordnance Survey
Stuchbury Present time
Small wonder that the Stuchbery family name has many spellings. Indeed, in one register the same vicar gave different spellings to the surname of brother and sister.
The Lordship of Stuchbury, now in the Hundreds of Kings Sutton, contains about 1023 acres. Nowadays it is largely arabIe and pastural land which has a small wood or fox covert and a permanent stream in its midst. There are three large stone homes set at a distance from each other whilst the Cottages, Stuchbury, stand at the entrance. Elms,oak, beech, ash and the occasional chestnut tree dot the countryside which is divided into hedge lined fields extending through Stuchbury, which seems to run from Sulgrave to Helmdon, a distance of three miles.
Part of Stuchbury was occupied for many centuries by an order of the Cluniac Monastery of St. Andrew. This was made possible by the Earl of Huntingdon, who, as Simon de Liz, married Maud, greatniece of William the Conqueror. To celebrate this event he gave two hides of land (about 120 acres) to the Cluniac Order, who replenished it with monks from the Abbey of St. Mary de Caritate upon the Loire in France.
Although in Bridges' "Histories and Antiquities of Northamptonshire", reference is made to Adam de Stutesbirie (1232), William de Stutesbury (1334), John de Stutesbury (1396) and Henry de Stutesbury in 1457, it appears that their association with the Stuchbury family was that of being ecclesiastical neighbours. For part of that period the Stuchbery family owned land adjacent to the Priory.
Around about 1350 John Stotesbury purchased from Henry de Elington the manor, which he had established as Elington Manor of Sulgrave. During his ownership, John Stotesbury encroached upon the land of the Priory for firewood and received a court action from the Prior for his trouble.The court action, whether successful or not, certainly did not cause the Stotesbury family to lose either their heads or their land, as the male line continued in unbroken succession for two hundred years with the following family tree:
John Stotesbury - 1359
Thomas Stotesbury
John Stotesbury - 1413
John Stotesbury
John Stuttesbury
John Edward Thomas
It was Thomas Stuttesbury who was the last male Stuttesbury or Stuchbery to own a considerable part of Stuchbury. He is recorded as having a thousand sheep on Stuchbury Pastures in 1547.
Of interest is Thomas Stuttesbury's association with Laurence Washington who established(purchased from Henry VIII in 1537ish) Sulgrave Manor. Together they bought from churchwardens, John Humfrey and John Mayo, the Sanctus Bell of Sulgrave Church for the sum of 16 pounds. As a labourer received about 3d. per day, this was indeed a considerable sum of money which was used for repairing "highewayes and fordes.". The bell still hangs in Sulgrave Church, as they never had it removed, nor, probably, was it even intended. It was, perhaps. a subtle way of making a donation. (ref. Sulgrave Manor and the Washingtons)
Laurence Washington was the great-grandfather to the great-grandfather of George Washington of American Independence fame. Today, Sulgrave Manor is owned conjointly by the British and American Governments, and is a place of pilgrimage for American tourists.
Sulgrave Manor went from Laurence to Robert Washington, whilst Thomas Stuttesbury left his estate to Susan, who married Robert Leeson de Whitfield, with whose other property it remained for several generations.
It would appear that Thomas Stuttesbury's brothers, John and Edward, had no claim as there is no further information about them excepting John's marriage to Bridget of Ashwell, three miles to the east of Stuchbury.
There were other Stuchberys in the StuchburylSulgrave area, as in the reign following Henry VII, the Manor of Evenle was in the hands of William Stuttesbury. His successor was Thomas Stuttesbury, who left it to William Stuttesbury in the fifth year of Edward VI. From this gentleman it descended in the fourth year of Queen Mary's reign. to Michael Stuttesbury, his son, who was "certified to hold it with two messuages, two cottages, three hundred acres of pasture, forty acres of meadow, two acres of wood and rent. from tenancies for the service of part of a knights fee, and the yearly payment of nine shillings".
It would appear that when Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and priories throughout the land, the Church of St. John and its rectory were pulled down. It is said that some of the stone was used for the construction of Stuchbury Hall. The circular stones, certainly not grinding stones, incorporated into the garden area at the rear, lend much to that opinion. So about the same time, in the mid 16th century, both residents for several hundred years, Monks of the Cluniac Order and the Stuchberys left Stuchbury.
The next we hear of the Stuchbery family is around Buckingham where sufficient information is available for its own story.
Meanwhile, the village of Stuchbury, which, at different times throughout the centuries, was quite substantial, judging by the mounds left by wattle and daub cottages, settled down to a style of work associated with the four stone dwellings named Stuchbury Hall, Stuchbury Lodge, Stuchbury Manor Farm and Stuchbury House.
Stuchbury House was lived in until 40 years ago but is exceedingly difficult to find now, as it is overgrown with vines and blackberries in its return to the earth. However, beneath all this are the granite foundations set above a continuously running stream, and although hidden, they will be there for years to come.
Stuchbury Hall has been farmed by the Tims family for some generations, with Mr. & Mrs. Michael Tims being in residence there now. Stuchbury Lodge is farmed by Mr. & Mrs. David Thame, whilst at Stuchbury Manor Farm, Mr. & Mrs. Les Fange are in retirement after farming there for thirty years.
There are brief notations of Stuchbury set out in a book called Deserted Villages of Northamptonshire. References are made to populations throughout the centuries since the number of 10 in 1086 and generally are between twenty and thirty, although at one time, before the 13th and 14th centuries, there were considerably more. In 1977 the population is twenty-five, and judging by the type of farming pursued at Stuchbury, this figure is not likely to be exceeded in the years to come."
When I visited Stuchbury in October 1996, we were only able to see a small portion of the manor, three houses on the road (really a driveway or farm road)down from the Helmdon Road and Sulgrave. There are some meadows with cattle, but that's about all. I took a few pictures, I may upload a couple next week when I get my cable modem.
Reply: Read what others had to say:
Howard Gleason - Sep 19, 1999
Well done Bob.
Margaret Stotesbury-Leeson - Sep 22, 1999
Hi, Bob Gleason
It's Margaret Stotesbury-Leeson of the Leesons of Whitfield and Sulgrave.
I'll try again to reply to your interesting info on Stutchbury Manor. I hope this time I won't loose my reply as I did before (my Robert said to hit something on the computer and it wasn't the right something.)
Our family has always spelled the name with an "o"- not a "u". It is also spelled "Stottisbury" as in one of my late husband's Christian names, and in that of his cousin, Spencer Gwatkin Stottisbury Leeson, the late Bishop of Peterborough.
My late husband, Lawrence, was descended from Thomas Stotesbury (the 1547 one), whose granddaughter, Susan, married Robert Leeson. As she was her grandfather's heraldic heir, Robert, on the marriage got both the Stotesbury Arms and Name to accompany them-an early form of women's lib? My elder children are Susan Jane Elizabeth, and Robert Edward Cromwell. Will is my youngest. Nothing like sticking to family names.
All the Stotesburys/Stuchburys around Stuchbury were descended from Thomas's brothers or other younger and/or cadet lines.
Not only the Stotesburys but the contemporary Leesons sued/were sued by the Prior of St. Andrews; it seemed to be a family hobby-they were a right litigenous lot (as was my husband-he came by it honestly!)
I think that is all for now. I'll try to send this.
Best wishes, Margaret.
- Sep 26, 1999
Hi Margaret(Cuz?):
You're not the only one hitting the wrong gizmos. I've been offline since Wednesday trying to get my cable modem setup sorted out, so this reply is mainly to get the word out to "family" that I'm off E-mail and somewhat limited in communication. That said, I hope you honest-to-God Leesons are enjoying the contacts as much as we pretenders are. We were pretty much convinced that there were none of you left. Hope we can show some connection somewhere and make it official.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Just Googling Around
I woke up much too early this morning thinking about sperm, eggs, superegos, and the loneliness of the human mind lodged in the lee of its senses. I couldn't go back to sleep so I got up, completed a ridiculously easy Sudoku, chewed on a Metamucil, and fell asleep in my chair.
The thoughts that woke me up this morning induced me to fire up my desktop and Google some of the stuff I'd been thinking about. I was well rewarded, finding most of the questions I couldn't answer without my personal digital memory machine! Naturally, I ended up in learning a few things I'd always wanted to know but hadn't bothered to find out.... about my brain.... yours too.
However, an example of my first Google tidbit was the following: "“Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate,” goes the song from Monty Python’s movie The Meaning of Life. If the lyrics strike you as funny, it’s most likely because calling a sperm cell “sacred” sounds ridiculous when men can produce so many of them."
Maybe I'll discuss that nonsense at sometime and put it in some perspective... which, believe it or not, can be done even without using the Pauli exclusion principle.
But I really did run across some stuff about human perception and thinking which came as a pleasant surprise because I have long thought of myself as a "picture thinker"! Not that I can't manipulate symbolic logic, but I've never been very good at it. Yet I've heard for years that without language, man (animal) really can't think! Well, I found that Steven Pinker once observed that babies are not born with language, yet they learn to think quite early on. And, at another site, that "Researchers have demonstrated that the awareness of ourselves begins to emerge at around one year of age and becomes much more developed by around 18 months of age. I think language is pretty primitive at those ages.
At this point I'll stop trying to be clever and simply post excerpts of what I found interesting in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_thinking
Visual thinking has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures. It is common in approximately 60%–65% of the general population.[1]
"Real picture thinkers", those persons who use visual thinking almost to the exclusion of other kinds of thinking, make up a smaller percentage of the population. Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words. According to Kreger Silverman, of the 30% of the general population who use visual/spatial thinking, only a small percentage would use this style over and above all other forms of thinking, and can be said to be 'true' "picture thinkers".
Spatial-temporal reasoning (right brain) is prominent among visual thinkers as well as among kinesthetic learners (those who learn through movement, physical patterning and doing) and logical thinkers (mathematical thinkers who think in patterns and systems) who may not be strong visual thinkers at all.
Visual-spatial symptoms (dyslexia, Developmental coordination disorder, Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and the like) arise in non-visual and non-spatial environments and situations; hence, visual/spatial learning is aggravated by an education system based upon information presented in written text instead of presented via multimedia and hands-on experience.
This is a good argument for technical and trade schools. We really don't need any more businessmen and lawyers!
I generally I translate printed words into what I'd call quick crude pictograms unless they actually represent an object.... and of course, I don't have to move my lips because they are no longer words. It does raise hell with my ability to remember prose and poetry, however.
The big surprise to me is that 25% of folks think exclusively in words! That really explains a lot about some of my fellow man who are not capable of seeing our world as beautiful. And perhaps why our world is in such trouble.
Of course all answers breed new questions. Such as, Is Obama a visual thinker and is Hillary not? I'll bet that even Google doesn't know that!
The thoughts that woke me up this morning induced me to fire up my desktop and Google some of the stuff I'd been thinking about. I was well rewarded, finding most of the questions I couldn't answer without my personal digital memory machine! Naturally, I ended up in learning a few things I'd always wanted to know but hadn't bothered to find out.... about my brain.... yours too.
However, an example of my first Google tidbit was the following: "“Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate,” goes the song from Monty Python’s movie The Meaning of Life. If the lyrics strike you as funny, it’s most likely because calling a sperm cell “sacred” sounds ridiculous when men can produce so many of them."
Maybe I'll discuss that nonsense at sometime and put it in some perspective... which, believe it or not, can be done even without using the Pauli exclusion principle.
But I really did run across some stuff about human perception and thinking which came as a pleasant surprise because I have long thought of myself as a "picture thinker"! Not that I can't manipulate symbolic logic, but I've never been very good at it. Yet I've heard for years that without language, man (animal) really can't think! Well, I found that Steven Pinker once observed that babies are not born with language, yet they learn to think quite early on. And, at another site, that "Researchers have demonstrated that the awareness of ourselves begins to emerge at around one year of age and becomes much more developed by around 18 months of age. I think language is pretty primitive at those ages.
At this point I'll stop trying to be clever and simply post excerpts of what I found interesting in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_thinking
Visual thinking has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures. It is common in approximately 60%–65% of the general population.[1]
"Real picture thinkers", those persons who use visual thinking almost to the exclusion of other kinds of thinking, make up a smaller percentage of the population. Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words. According to Kreger Silverman, of the 30% of the general population who use visual/spatial thinking, only a small percentage would use this style over and above all other forms of thinking, and can be said to be 'true' "picture thinkers".
Spatial-temporal reasoning (right brain) is prominent among visual thinkers as well as among kinesthetic learners (those who learn through movement, physical patterning and doing) and logical thinkers (mathematical thinkers who think in patterns and systems) who may not be strong visual thinkers at all.
Visual-spatial symptoms (dyslexia, Developmental coordination disorder, Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and the like) arise in non-visual and non-spatial environments and situations; hence, visual/spatial learning is aggravated by an education system based upon information presented in written text instead of presented via multimedia and hands-on experience.
This is a good argument for technical and trade schools. We really don't need any more businessmen and lawyers!
I generally I translate printed words into what I'd call quick crude pictograms unless they actually represent an object.... and of course, I don't have to move my lips because they are no longer words. It does raise hell with my ability to remember prose and poetry, however.
The big surprise to me is that 25% of folks think exclusively in words! That really explains a lot about some of my fellow man who are not capable of seeing our world as beautiful. And perhaps why our world is in such trouble.
Of course all answers breed new questions. Such as, Is Obama a visual thinker and is Hillary not? I'll bet that even Google doesn't know that!
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Thoughts on Barbara Brown Taylor
For those of you Christians who are "too religious for the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd and are too Pantheist, witchy for the religious crowd, You might be interested in learning about and reading books by Barbara Brown Taylor who is a Baptist born Episcopalian priest of Clarksville, GA.
She was the subject of the cover and lead in the April 28 issue of Time. The article is entitled "Finding God in the Dark" by Elizabeth Dias. If you Google her name the first of many listings about her will be: BarbaraBrownTaylor.com.
I found the discussion of her interesting because she has a 'thing' for darkness. I, too, enjoy the darkness and quiet of night. I've long felt that my own thinking is best during the night... not just because it is quiet, but my brain lives in a dark world.
True, I can see, but only through my sense of sight. My 'mentality', lives in total darkness, silence and without feeling... completely alone. It is only capable of awareness of the external world through the senses, which are heavily censored by my brain to avoid total sensory overload. Thus communications between me and other folks requires very complex effort between the two brains, not the least in even being aware of one another. So, at night when alone, my mentality is able to look inward without distraction and coordinate thoughts much more efficiently without needing to timeshare with daily survival in the real world.
Years ago when I dabbled in poetry, for example, I found it much easier to compose my various concepts and translate them into the language of poetry. Not that I was a great poet by any measure, but my nocturnal muses were far superior to those concocted during the day. I'm still proud of my poem about the Indian ruin "Wupatki" where, I think, I come closest to Barbara Brown Taylor.... maybe.
She was the subject of the cover and lead in the April 28 issue of Time. The article is entitled "Finding God in the Dark" by Elizabeth Dias. If you Google her name the first of many listings about her will be: BarbaraBrownTaylor.com.
I found the discussion of her interesting because she has a 'thing' for darkness. I, too, enjoy the darkness and quiet of night. I've long felt that my own thinking is best during the night... not just because it is quiet, but my brain lives in a dark world.
True, I can see, but only through my sense of sight. My 'mentality', lives in total darkness, silence and without feeling... completely alone. It is only capable of awareness of the external world through the senses, which are heavily censored by my brain to avoid total sensory overload. Thus communications between me and other folks requires very complex effort between the two brains, not the least in even being aware of one another. So, at night when alone, my mentality is able to look inward without distraction and coordinate thoughts much more efficiently without needing to timeshare with daily survival in the real world.
Years ago when I dabbled in poetry, for example, I found it much easier to compose my various concepts and translate them into the language of poetry. Not that I was a great poet by any measure, but my nocturnal muses were far superior to those concocted during the day. I'm still proud of my poem about the Indian ruin "Wupatki" where, I think, I come closest to Barbara Brown Taylor.... maybe.
Monday, September 09, 2013
Charlie Rose interview with President Bashar Assad
In the American judicial system a person is presumed to be innocent until proved to be guilty. This interview was about as close to a jury trial of an accused giving testimony to a prosecution lawyer as we will ever get in the furor over Syria's revolution and the use of chemical weapons.
As one who admires Charlie Rose's intellect, along with admiration of President Obama and the enmity I've accumulated about Syria as an evil force against Jews and other peoples of peace, I assumed that the eye doctor transformed by circumstance into a dictator would appear true to form and reveal his ambitions to rule the world at any cost including the lives of his fellow countrymen.
Of course he may be a very clever maniacal liar despite the fact that the media portrays him to be not well groomed in political discourse, awkward and weak chinned, certainly no match for Charlie Rose who has interviewed the world's most brilliant people!
So why did our knight of the media seem so desperate to get answers to support his original premise when his subject provided almost reasonable alternatives which, at least so far, have not been dis-proven? Of course, the accused blamed terrorists, such as Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood for his problems and their possible use of chemical weapons in order to put blame on the Assad government. What proof did Charlie have to present about that? Certainly our own government has not put that possibility to rest, yet.
We westerners should always be aware of the evils of both Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Remember it is the Muslim Brotherhood which has caused so much turmoil in the revolution in Egypt and destroyed any semblance of democracy in that newly enlightened nation along with seriously damaging our relations with that nation who was once our ally.
In this sense, Syria is one of the few nations in the middle east which has a secular government in that it is not subject to or bound by religious rule. It is true that the people are primarily Muslims, but their government, like our own, does not favor one religion over another. To us, this should not be a fault, but a blessing!
So, as a member of the jury, I can not say that Bashar Assad is guilty or innocent of the crimes he is being tried for. All I can say is that there are many interests who want to find him and his government guilty in my country. But without further proof, I must let him off the hook.
As an epilogue, let me say that I hope our Obama, Putin and Assad all agree to put Syrian biological weapons under the security of the United Nations and avoid any further escalation of the war.
I should also note that the Syrian civil war has cost an estimated 100,000 lives. Our own Civil War in 1861-1865 cost over 600,000 American lives!
Saturday, August 03, 2013
Shades of Grey - The Koch Brothers
My knowledge of the brothers Charles and David Koch stem from my left-sided fellow progressives. So, of course, the Koch boys are universally known as evil, power hungry monsters who single-handedly finance the entire fascist right wing of our national bird.
However, recently my bro-in-law 'borrowed' from his laundromat the December 24, 2012 issue of Forbes which featured "Inside the Koch Empire". He passed it on to me and, I confess, ....I read it.
Turns out that there are four Koch brothers. Fred, the eldest who is 79, a graduate from Yale drama school and with no particular interest in business, lives in Monaco collecting rare books, fine art and opera manuscripts.
Charles, whose photo is on the cover of the magazine, was next oldest at 77. He is our vilified MIT graduate with a masters in chemical and nuclear engineering and is also chairman of Koch industries. KI is an empire which "....boasts 60,000 employees, 4000 miles of pipeline and enough refinery capacity to supply 5% of the U.S. daily fuel demand. KI makes Lycra and Stainmaster carpet, Brawney paper towels and AngelSoft toilet paper [Georgia Pacific]."
And then there are the 72 year old twins, David and Bill who also graduated from MIT with the same degrees as Charles. David is a co-owner of Koch Industries with brother Charles but is less involved with running the business. Rather, his interests are focused upon politics and philanthropy. Bill (and Fred) was forcefully bought out of the business and started his own energy company called Oxbow Carbon. This reminds me of Ernest, Julio and Joseph Gallo in California where Ernest and Julio focused upon wine and Joseph made cheese.
The article is quite long and in much greater depth than I can produce here, but the part I found most interesting was the strong libertarian beliefs learned from their father resulting in the 'greying' of their business oriented conservatism!
For example; Charles co-founded the libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, and later they funded George Mason University's Mercatus Center. They also have financed much of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation and several other conservative groups.
Yet, surprisingly David Koch is a supporter of gay marriage and opposes the war on drugs! The brothers are now actively fighting federal corporate welfare! Why? ....because they don't want to be invested in any industry "dependent on unpredictable federal largesse"! Their only business involvement with that was the federal subsidy on ethanol where they reluctantly(?) profited (quoth the raven, "Nevermore"). They suggest that the only way to get rid of lobbyists is to "...get government out of the business of giving goodies." Of course, the definition of "goodies" is the real question!
Everyone on both sides are well aware that both the 'left' and the 'right' are controlled by extremists and thus our nation is at a legislative impasse. I find that more and more often, I don't agree with a particular progressive position.... yet, I don't think that I'm moving to the right!
Perhaps this article about the Koch brothers can show us that 3 second sound bites (bytes?) are not the answer to solving our problems. Whether you agree with the the Koch philosophy.... or not, it is obvious that there are areas of agreement which can be pursued. Perhaps you can't turn an elephant's trunk into a donkey tail, but maybe we can start with some of those things we agree upon. [AlG]
However, recently my bro-in-law 'borrowed' from his laundromat the December 24, 2012 issue of Forbes which featured "Inside the Koch Empire". He passed it on to me and, I confess, ....I read it.
Turns out that there are four Koch brothers. Fred, the eldest who is 79, a graduate from Yale drama school and with no particular interest in business, lives in Monaco collecting rare books, fine art and opera manuscripts.
Charles, whose photo is on the cover of the magazine, was next oldest at 77. He is our vilified MIT graduate with a masters in chemical and nuclear engineering and is also chairman of Koch industries. KI is an empire which "....boasts 60,000 employees, 4000 miles of pipeline and enough refinery capacity to supply 5% of the U.S. daily fuel demand. KI makes Lycra and Stainmaster carpet, Brawney paper towels and AngelSoft toilet paper [Georgia Pacific]."
And then there are the 72 year old twins, David and Bill who also graduated from MIT with the same degrees as Charles. David is a co-owner of Koch Industries with brother Charles but is less involved with running the business. Rather, his interests are focused upon politics and philanthropy. Bill (and Fred) was forcefully bought out of the business and started his own energy company called Oxbow Carbon. This reminds me of Ernest, Julio and Joseph Gallo in California where Ernest and Julio focused upon wine and Joseph made cheese.
The article is quite long and in much greater depth than I can produce here, but the part I found most interesting was the strong libertarian beliefs learned from their father resulting in the 'greying' of their business oriented conservatism!
For example; Charles co-founded the libertarian think tank, the CATO Institute, and later they funded George Mason University's Mercatus Center. They also have financed much of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation and several other conservative groups.
Yet, surprisingly David Koch is a supporter of gay marriage and opposes the war on drugs! The brothers are now actively fighting federal corporate welfare! Why? ....because they don't want to be invested in any industry "dependent on unpredictable federal largesse"! Their only business involvement with that was the federal subsidy on ethanol where they reluctantly(?) profited (quoth the raven, "Nevermore"). They suggest that the only way to get rid of lobbyists is to "...get government out of the business of giving goodies." Of course, the definition of "goodies" is the real question!
Everyone on both sides are well aware that both the 'left' and the 'right' are controlled by extremists and thus our nation is at a legislative impasse. I find that more and more often, I don't agree with a particular progressive position.... yet, I don't think that I'm moving to the right!
Perhaps this article about the Koch brothers can show us that 3 second sound bites (bytes?) are not the answer to solving our problems. Whether you agree with the the Koch philosophy.... or not, it is obvious that there are areas of agreement which can be pursued. Perhaps you can't turn an elephant's trunk into a donkey tail, but maybe we can start with some of those things we agree upon. [AlG]
Thursday, November 08, 2012
The North LOST the Civil War... it seems
I received this recycled email from a friend of mine in California which compares various aspects of the "RED" and "BLUE" States.
It occurred to me that had President Lincoln with the help of most of my grandfathers, lost the Civil War and we had become two separate nations, i.e.: The Confederate States of America, and The United States of America, we wouldn't be having the political problems we are facing today.
The winning of that war has perpetuated the clash between the two very different cultures which through necessity established our nation -- those fundamentalist Anglican Puritans in Massachusetts now controlled by the 1st Amendment in our Constitution, and the class conscious English manor-driven elite who settled in the Virginia colony giving rise to plantations and slavery.
Unfortunately, there is no way we could have established our independence from England in 1776 as divided colonies. The Civil War in 1861 should have resulted in the separation of those cultures rather than the mass killing of many thousands of Americans on both sides. However, that is, as they say, "Water over the damn"!
Those of us who share "Blue" politics will enjoy reading the following with a little tongue-cheek tossed in for spice:
Dear Red States:
We're ticked off at your Neanderthal attitudes and politics, and we decided we're leaving.
We in New York intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.
In case you aren't aware that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the rest of the Northeast.
We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A).
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. You get Bobby Jindal and Todd Akin.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.
With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes [?], nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes [?], 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of
Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
We're taking the good weed too. You can have that crap they grow in Mexico.
Sincerely,
Citizen of the Enlightened States of America
It occurred to me that had President Lincoln with the help of most of my grandfathers, lost the Civil War and we had become two separate nations, i.e.: The Confederate States of America, and The United States of America, we wouldn't be having the political problems we are facing today.
The winning of that war has perpetuated the clash between the two very different cultures which through necessity established our nation -- those fundamentalist Anglican Puritans in Massachusetts now controlled by the 1st Amendment in our Constitution, and the class conscious English manor-driven elite who settled in the Virginia colony giving rise to plantations and slavery.
Unfortunately, there is no way we could have established our independence from England in 1776 as divided colonies. The Civil War in 1861 should have resulted in the separation of those cultures rather than the mass killing of many thousands of Americans on both sides. However, that is, as they say, "Water over the damn"!
Those of us who share "Blue" politics will enjoy reading the following with a little tongue-cheek tossed in for spice:
Dear Red States:
We're ticked off at your Neanderthal attitudes and politics, and we decided we're leaving.
We in New York intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.
In case you aren't aware that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the rest of the Northeast.
We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A).
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. You get Bobby Jindal and Todd Akin.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.
With the Blue States in hand we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90% of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the US low sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans and their projected health care costs, 92% of all US mosquitoes [?], nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes [?], 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of
Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
We're taking the good weed too. You can have that crap they grow in Mexico.
Sincerely,
Citizen of the Enlightened States of America
Friday, October 26, 2012
Obama > Harvard Law Review, 1990 NYT
This post is not a total waste of time because I've often wondered what law reviews are, and how and why Mr. Obama was elected to be Harvard Law's first black editor who coincidentally followed their first oriental editor!
With all of the obfuscation about President Obama's birth and education and despite protests to the contrary including Obama's own two books, 'Dreams from My Father' - Crown, 1995 - and 'The Audacity of Hope' - Crown, 2005, the silliness of grand-stander, Donald Trump seems unrelenting so I've decided to post this article from the February 6, 1990 issue of The New York Times. At least Mr. Trump should not doubt the existence of this publisher!
First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review
By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The
New York Times, Published: February 06, 1990
Correction Appended
The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.
The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.
''The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress,'' Mr. Obama said today in an interview. ''It's encouraging.
''But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance,'' he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment.
What a Law Review Does
Law reviews, which are edited by students, play a double role at law schools, providing a chance for students to improve their legal research and writing, and at the same time offering judges and scholars a forum for new legal arguments. The Harvard Law Review is generally considered the most widely cited of the student law reviews.
On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: ''I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I'm fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.''
Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a ''forum for debate,'' bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.
A President's Future
The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.
Professors and students at the law school reacted cautiously to Mr. Obama's selection. ''For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,'' said Prof. Randall Kennedy, who teaches contracts and race relations law. ''But I hope it won't overwhelm this individual student's achievement.''
Change in Selection System
Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.
Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.
Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.
Blacks at Harvard: New High
Black enrollment at Harvard Law School, after a dip in the mid-1980's, has reached a record high this year, said Joyce Curll, the director of admissions. Of the 1,620 students in the three-year school, 12.5 percent this year are blacks, she said, and 14 percent of the first-year class are black. Nationwide enrollment by blacks in undergraduate colleges has dropped in recent years.
Mr. Obama succeeds Peter Yu, a first-generation Chinese-American, as president of The Law Review. After graduation, Mr. Yu plans to serve as a clerk for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on the of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Mr. Yu said Mr. Obama's election ''was a choice on the merits, but others may read something into it.''
The first female editor of The Harvard Law Review was Susan Estrich, in 1977, who recently resigned as a professor at Harvard Law School to take a similar post at the University of Southern California. Ms. Estrich was campaign manager for Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts in his campaign for the Presidency in 1988.
Correction: February 7, 1990, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the election of Barack Obama as president of the Harvard Law Review misidentified the United States court on which Patricia M. Wald is Chief Judge. It is the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, not for the Federal Circuit.
Friday, July 06, 2012
A friend from Lockheed emailed this to me....
They built them strong at Boeing.
A mid-air collision on February 1, 1943, between a B-17 and a German fighter over the Tunis dock area, became the subject of one of the most famous photographs of World War II. An enemy fighter attacking a 97th Bomb Group formation went out of control, probably with a wounded pilot then continued its crashing descent into the rear of the fuselage of a Fortress named All American, piloted by Lt. Kendrick R. Bragg, of the 414th Bomb Squadron. When it struck, the fighter broke apart, but left some pieces in the B-17. The left horizontal stabilizer of the Fortress and left elevator were completely torn away. The two right engines were out and one on the left had a serious oil pump leak. The vertical fin and the rudder had been damaged, the fuselage had been cut almost completely through connected only at two small parts of the frame and the radios, electrical and oxygen systems were damaged. There was also a hole in the top that was over 16 feet long and 4 feet wide at its widest and the split in the fuselage went all the way to the top gunners turret.
Although the tail actually bounced and swayed in the wind and twisted when the plane turned and all the control cables were severed, except one single elevator cable still worked, and the aircraft still flew - miraculously! The tail gunner was trapped because there was no floor connecting the tail to the rest of the plane. The waist and tail gunners used parts of the German fighter and their own parachute harnesses in an attempt to keep the tail from ripping off and the two sides of the fuselage from splitting apart. While the crew was trying to keep the bomber from coming apart, the pilot continued on his bomb run and released his bombs over the target.When the bomb bay doors were opened, the wind turbulence was so great that it blew one of the waist gunners into the broken tail section. It took several minutes and four crew members to pass him ropes from parachutes and haul him back into the forward part of the plane. When they tried to do the same for the tail gunner, the tail began flapping so hard that it began to break off. The weight of the gunner was adding some stability to the tail section, so he went back to his position.
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
No Moderate Party
I recently received a newspaper editorial submitted by a Mary Ross of Cambria, California. It is brief, so well written and matches my own convictions, that I'm posting it here:
"Today's moderate Republican is facing an unfortunate truth: Their party is gone. Their party has been surrounded by an unreasonable fringe that has worked its way to the center.
If you are a middle-class American, to vote Republican today is to vote against your own best interests. You will vote for lower taxes on the obscenely wealthy while you will pay more for less. You will opt for destruction of programs which keep people in your income bracket afloat: Medicare, support for education, affordable health care for everyone, women's rights, to name just a few.
You will admit to believing the propaganda fed to you by those politicians, commentators, lawmakers and lobbyists bought and paid for by the rich who wish to remain so. You will respond to the waving flags, the patriotic oratory and the religious hyperbole without ever seeing the hypocrisy behind it all.
And sadly, you will consider yourself a good citizen in support of your country."
---- Mary Ross, Cambria, CA
Also, let me interject that Mary's thoughts probably apply to many who consider themselves to be "independent" voters, but who lack the analytical skills to separate fact from fiction and dogma.
AlG
"Today's moderate Republican is facing an unfortunate truth: Their party is gone. Their party has been surrounded by an unreasonable fringe that has worked its way to the center.
If you are a middle-class American, to vote Republican today is to vote against your own best interests. You will vote for lower taxes on the obscenely wealthy while you will pay more for less. You will opt for destruction of programs which keep people in your income bracket afloat: Medicare, support for education, affordable health care for everyone, women's rights, to name just a few.
You will admit to believing the propaganda fed to you by those politicians, commentators, lawmakers and lobbyists bought and paid for by the rich who wish to remain so. You will respond to the waving flags, the patriotic oratory and the religious hyperbole without ever seeing the hypocrisy behind it all.
And sadly, you will consider yourself a good citizen in support of your country."
---- Mary Ross, Cambria, CA
Also, let me interject that Mary's thoughts probably apply to many who consider themselves to be "independent" voters, but who lack the analytical skills to separate fact from fiction and dogma.
AlG
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Home this spring
Scarcely a breath of wind with the giant mills in the distance facing west and slowly revolving. It is almost 100, 98 to be exact... but it is a dry heat!... only 4% humidity, a hell of a lot cooler than Phoenix... and kinda nice if you don't move around too much... there is a breeze of soft fluffy air about you.
A cottontail bunny, braving the lowering sun has ventured out to help mow our contrived lawn which we installed several years ago to combat the idea living exclusively in a desert. ...and a mourning dove has just lit upon the plastic frog in the center of the K-mart special ceramic bird bath at the edge of the lawn. It hops down to the rim and repeatedly dunks its head into the warm water, only slightly disturbed by the red breasted house finch who decides a sip of water would be good and dips his head into the same honey bee infested waters. Neither seem concerned by the caws of a nearby crow.
It has been a beautiful spring here in the desert with the smaller cacti blossoming first with their red flowers while myriads of well-documented and listed flowers of desert weeds show off their blue, yellow, white, and orange dainty flowers to be pollinated by anything interested in their bounty. They all seem to take turns as we find the big guys like the joshuas with their large white conical clusters, and the smaller bright red clusters at the tips of the “coachwhip” ocatillo, and, of course, the white flowers which blossom much later in clusters about the top of the giant sugarros. We have only one of those who is too young to have an arm, yet.
By now, the hummingbirds have returned from South America flying up the Colorado River to visit the southwestern desert for the season. They especially love the ocatillos while they await the blooming of the Mexican birds of paradise bushes which regrow from their roots in this climate. They grow aggressively from the ground to about six feet high into large bushes which are abundantly flowered with beautiful blossoms throughout the summer season. Quite often a hummer will hover before our faces while it quizzically decides why we’re there watching it. Finally it feeds on the obviously wonderful nectar of the “BOP” and pays us no mind.
Not to forego our foreign interests, we have planted on our acre, five pine trees of different persuasions, a desert willow with its purple flowers, a weeping willow and two catalpas which are small bushy trees which thrive in arid locations and are covered with delicate whitish/purple flowers all season long.
All in all, we have a paradise which relies on the native wonders of the desert with its many critters and birds and yet introduced a broader spectrum of plants which seem to thrive with just a bit of water.
When you add to our local splendor, the view at the base of our eight thousand foot high Hualapai mountains and can view the city of Kingman below along with the Cerbats across the valley... What better can it get?
A cottontail bunny, braving the lowering sun has ventured out to help mow our contrived lawn which we installed several years ago to combat the idea living exclusively in a desert. ...and a mourning dove has just lit upon the plastic frog in the center of the K-mart special ceramic bird bath at the edge of the lawn. It hops down to the rim and repeatedly dunks its head into the warm water, only slightly disturbed by the red breasted house finch who decides a sip of water would be good and dips his head into the same honey bee infested waters. Neither seem concerned by the caws of a nearby crow.
It has been a beautiful spring here in the desert with the smaller cacti blossoming first with their red flowers while myriads of well-documented and listed flowers of desert weeds show off their blue, yellow, white, and orange dainty flowers to be pollinated by anything interested in their bounty. They all seem to take turns as we find the big guys like the joshuas with their large white conical clusters, and the smaller bright red clusters at the tips of the “coachwhip” ocatillo, and, of course, the white flowers which blossom much later in clusters about the top of the giant sugarros. We have only one of those who is too young to have an arm, yet.
By now, the hummingbirds have returned from South America flying up the Colorado River to visit the southwestern desert for the season. They especially love the ocatillos while they await the blooming of the Mexican birds of paradise bushes which regrow from their roots in this climate. They grow aggressively from the ground to about six feet high into large bushes which are abundantly flowered with beautiful blossoms throughout the summer season. Quite often a hummer will hover before our faces while it quizzically decides why we’re there watching it. Finally it feeds on the obviously wonderful nectar of the “BOP” and pays us no mind.
Not to forego our foreign interests, we have planted on our acre, five pine trees of different persuasions, a desert willow with its purple flowers, a weeping willow and two catalpas which are small bushy trees which thrive in arid locations and are covered with delicate whitish/purple flowers all season long.
All in all, we have a paradise which relies on the native wonders of the desert with its many critters and birds and yet introduced a broader spectrum of plants which seem to thrive with just a bit of water.
When you add to our local splendor, the view at the base of our eight thousand foot high Hualapai mountains and can view the city of Kingman below along with the Cerbats across the valley... What better can it get?
Monday, March 12, 2012
Attrocities by American troops in Afghanistan
The latest in a series of atrocities committed by our military really has to be the end of our engagement with terrorists in Afghanistan. Far too often innocent Afghan civilians have become 'collateral victims' in our war against terrorists which is now centered on the Taliban who are Islamic fundamentalists since we effectively removed the a-qaida from Afghanistan. I might add that if we really wish to bring religious fundamentalism into this century, it might be wiser for us to start in our own country!
Our military behavior over the past ten years is certainly NOT the way to introduce a primitive peoples to the 21st century! We must stop our habitual attempts to 'nation-build' the 3rd world! This is just another time when our military has been totally wrong in how we should defend our nation from its enemies, Vietnam being a prime example. Therefore it is time for my President and commander-in-chief, Obama, to quickly negotiate and accelerate the removal of our military from that nation. As long as we stay there, things will get worse because we have burned our bridges and have no hope, no matter how socially justified, to have any future success with that nation.
I understand that there are many social adjustments we would have liked to have performed, especially for women and girls, such as education and equality, but under the circumstances we will never be able to 'free' those people. We blew it! We need to leave that country as soon as possible.
Hopefully we'll be wiser next time when we decide to change the world into our image.
Our military behavior over the past ten years is certainly NOT the way to introduce a primitive peoples to the 21st century! We must stop our habitual attempts to 'nation-build' the 3rd world! This is just another time when our military has been totally wrong in how we should defend our nation from its enemies, Vietnam being a prime example. Therefore it is time for my President and commander-in-chief, Obama, to quickly negotiate and accelerate the removal of our military from that nation. As long as we stay there, things will get worse because we have burned our bridges and have no hope, no matter how socially justified, to have any future success with that nation.
I understand that there are many social adjustments we would have liked to have performed, especially for women and girls, such as education and equality, but under the circumstances we will never be able to 'free' those people. We blew it! We need to leave that country as soon as possible.
Hopefully we'll be wiser next time when we decide to change the world into our image.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Bring the Troops Home
It’s time to stop the madness in Afghanistan
US News and World Report
By Michael Shank and Raúl Grijalva
(Shank is U.S. vice president at the Institute for Economics and Peace. Grijalva is a Democratic U.S.representative from Arizona.)
That the U.S. military is burning Korans and urinating on dead bodies is, without question, bad diplomacy—really bad, in fact—but it does not constitute bad military strategy, nor does it necessarily warrant a call for a more immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. We had plenty of reasons already to withdraw. This is why nearly two dozen U.S. senators and nearly 90 members of the House of Representatives are calling for an expedited withdrawal ahead of NATO’s May meeting in Chicago. This is also why a majority of Americans, according to the latest Pew poll, want troops out as soon as possible.Entering our 11th year of engagement in Afghanistan, the latest diplomatic unrest has reached a new low and has inspired thousands of Afghan employees on the U.S. payroll, working at Bagram Airfield, to protest. This is significant and unprecedented. Yet the Koran burning was only a tipping point, allowing an increasingly hot pot of frustration to finally boil over.What’s the real issue then? Simple: U.S. strategy failed in the past, is failing now, and will likely fail in the future. Consider the ways: On strategy, cost, accountability, and perception, we continue to miss the mark.
On strategy, the Pentagon has pursued new policies in two-to-three-year spurts, each time under different,equally optimistic leadership. First, immediately after the invasion, they aided and abetted warlords and corrupt officials in Afghanistan—essentially anyone who would help the U.S. agenda, no matter how much blood was on their hands. Then they tried bolstering Kabul and the central state, figuring that legal and licit state-building was wiser. Now, they’ve given that up and are experimenting with pilot projects like propping up locals with munitions and monies and calling them the Afghan Local Police, a nonofficial title. This latest strategy comes with incredible risk. Flooding villages with financial bribes and bombs is likely to backfire and create more civil war.Those arms will eventually be used against us (see similar strategy in Iraq). That attacks on U.S. troops rose substantially in recent years is a reflection of how NATO and the United States have focused their efforts.By primarily pursuing military options for the last 10 years, furthermore, we failed to assist Afghanistan’s socioeconomic security, be it better trade, more jobs, functional markets, schools with teachers, or hospitals with doctors and medicine. For a lot less money, we could have helped Afghanistan fix problems, like the fact that only27 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water and 5 percent to adequate sanitation, and that only 30percent of Afghans have access to electricity. These are devastating realities in light of the hundreds of billions of dollars America has already spent on the country.
Speaking of cost, the over $325 million we still spend every single day we remain in Afghanistan, or $120 billion yearly, makes this aforementioned socioeconomic security oversight even more appalling. Keep in mind these are monies that America does not actually have; we have to borrow it. In fact, this war is entirely debt-funded. Politicos in Washington, who are concerned about our burgeoning deficit or our rising debt ceiling, would be wise to trim here first.
On accountability, Afghanistan has become a sea of untraceable taxpayer dollars. As an example of the corruption involved and the U.S. officials getting rich off this war, take a scan of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s latest quarterly report from January: One U.S. Army sergeant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and theft of approximately $210,000 in government property, while a captain in the Army National Guard was sentenced to 15 months in prison for receiving bribes from military contractors in return for the award of Defense Department contracts during his deployment to Bagram Airfield. These are just two samples from a long report detailing U.S. fraud, waste, and abuse. No wonder the Afghan employees at Bagram are protesting. They see the U.S. corruption all around them.
On perception, the United States is about as far from winning Afghan hearts and minds as we have ever been. The U.S. military continues the night house raids and drone and air strikes, which Afghans at all levels of society vehemently protest. The only thing strategic about these raids and strikes is their ability to spark furor in the hearts and minds of Afghans. It has now led to a nationwide culture of fear: A majority of Afghans, according to the Asia Foundation’s latest poll, fear for their personal safety, hardly something for the Pentagon to write home about after a decade of war.
Going forward, what should America do besides promptly reducing its military footprint? Herein lies the answer: In the Asia Foundation’s poll, an overwhelming majority of Afghans, at 82 percent, support the government’s attempts to address the security situation through negotiation and reconciliation with the armed opposition. America’s recent support for this must continue, as it’s the only hope for political stability. If some U.S. policymakers do not want to leave Afghanistan in shambles while drawing down our military, then we suggest allocating at least one month’s worth of existing funding, or $10 billion, for one of the few national development programs that has been effective in rebuilding Afghanistan these last 10 years. This $10
billion would not only fund the National Solidarity Program and its Community Development Councils for the next decade, but also allow them to significantly scale up their laudable reconstruction and stabilization efforts.
Washington must countenance the fact that one or two or 10 more years at war won’t bring success. We’ve been at it nearly 11 years and to no avail. It is time to stop this madness and bring the troops home.
US News and World Report
By Michael Shank and Raúl Grijalva
(Shank is U.S. vice president at the Institute for Economics and Peace. Grijalva is a Democratic U.S.representative from Arizona.)
That the U.S. military is burning Korans and urinating on dead bodies is, without question, bad diplomacy—really bad, in fact—but it does not constitute bad military strategy, nor does it necessarily warrant a call for a more immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. We had plenty of reasons already to withdraw. This is why nearly two dozen U.S. senators and nearly 90 members of the House of Representatives are calling for an expedited withdrawal ahead of NATO’s May meeting in Chicago. This is also why a majority of Americans, according to the latest Pew poll, want troops out as soon as possible.Entering our 11th year of engagement in Afghanistan, the latest diplomatic unrest has reached a new low and has inspired thousands of Afghan employees on the U.S. payroll, working at Bagram Airfield, to protest. This is significant and unprecedented. Yet the Koran burning was only a tipping point, allowing an increasingly hot pot of frustration to finally boil over.What’s the real issue then? Simple: U.S. strategy failed in the past, is failing now, and will likely fail in the future. Consider the ways: On strategy, cost, accountability, and perception, we continue to miss the mark.
On strategy, the Pentagon has pursued new policies in two-to-three-year spurts, each time under different,equally optimistic leadership. First, immediately after the invasion, they aided and abetted warlords and corrupt officials in Afghanistan—essentially anyone who would help the U.S. agenda, no matter how much blood was on their hands. Then they tried bolstering Kabul and the central state, figuring that legal and licit state-building was wiser. Now, they’ve given that up and are experimenting with pilot projects like propping up locals with munitions and monies and calling them the Afghan Local Police, a nonofficial title. This latest strategy comes with incredible risk. Flooding villages with financial bribes and bombs is likely to backfire and create more civil war.Those arms will eventually be used against us (see similar strategy in Iraq). That attacks on U.S. troops rose substantially in recent years is a reflection of how NATO and the United States have focused their efforts.By primarily pursuing military options for the last 10 years, furthermore, we failed to assist Afghanistan’s socioeconomic security, be it better trade, more jobs, functional markets, schools with teachers, or hospitals with doctors and medicine. For a lot less money, we could have helped Afghanistan fix problems, like the fact that only27 percent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water and 5 percent to adequate sanitation, and that only 30percent of Afghans have access to electricity. These are devastating realities in light of the hundreds of billions of dollars America has already spent on the country.
Speaking of cost, the over $325 million we still spend every single day we remain in Afghanistan, or $120 billion yearly, makes this aforementioned socioeconomic security oversight even more appalling. Keep in mind these are monies that America does not actually have; we have to borrow it. In fact, this war is entirely debt-funded. Politicos in Washington, who are concerned about our burgeoning deficit or our rising debt ceiling, would be wise to trim here first.
On accountability, Afghanistan has become a sea of untraceable taxpayer dollars. As an example of the corruption involved and the U.S. officials getting rich off this war, take a scan of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s latest quarterly report from January: One U.S. Army sergeant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and theft of approximately $210,000 in government property, while a captain in the Army National Guard was sentenced to 15 months in prison for receiving bribes from military contractors in return for the award of Defense Department contracts during his deployment to Bagram Airfield. These are just two samples from a long report detailing U.S. fraud, waste, and abuse. No wonder the Afghan employees at Bagram are protesting. They see the U.S. corruption all around them.
On perception, the United States is about as far from winning Afghan hearts and minds as we have ever been. The U.S. military continues the night house raids and drone and air strikes, which Afghans at all levels of society vehemently protest. The only thing strategic about these raids and strikes is their ability to spark furor in the hearts and minds of Afghans. It has now led to a nationwide culture of fear: A majority of Afghans, according to the Asia Foundation’s latest poll, fear for their personal safety, hardly something for the Pentagon to write home about after a decade of war.
Going forward, what should America do besides promptly reducing its military footprint? Herein lies the answer: In the Asia Foundation’s poll, an overwhelming majority of Afghans, at 82 percent, support the government’s attempts to address the security situation through negotiation and reconciliation with the armed opposition. America’s recent support for this must continue, as it’s the only hope for political stability. If some U.S. policymakers do not want to leave Afghanistan in shambles while drawing down our military, then we suggest allocating at least one month’s worth of existing funding, or $10 billion, for one of the few national development programs that has been effective in rebuilding Afghanistan these last 10 years. This $10
billion would not only fund the National Solidarity Program and its Community Development Councils for the next decade, but also allow them to significantly scale up their laudable reconstruction and stabilization efforts.
Washington must countenance the fact that one or two or 10 more years at war won’t bring success. We’ve been at it nearly 11 years and to no avail. It is time to stop this madness and bring the troops home.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Have a Heart Warming Valentine's Day!
Special Report
The Brain Chemistry of Love
Your heart is racing and nothing else matters? Blame the storm in your head
By Courtney Rubin
Never mind that the song contends you can’t hurry love—science says you don’t actually need to. It takes all of a fifth of a second for that truly, madly, deeply feeling to register, says a report published in the October 2010 Journal of Sexual Medicine. That’s faster than your average resting heartbeat.
Given the heart’s popular role in romance, it may be a surprise that falling and being in love are actually more of a cerebral upheaval. Research into the wonders of passion has found that a concert of chemicals act on about a dozen parts of the brain all told (not to mention countless other body parts) to create that intense rush experienced as love. In fact, those neurotransmitters flood the system so fast that it appears “your brain knows before you do that you are in love,” says Stephanie Ortigue, the Syracuse University assistant psychology professor who led the study of how fast the brains of people passionately in love lighted up when presented with the names or pictures of their significant others.
The physiological process all begins with a face. “Constituting only 5 percent of your bodily surface, it carries 95 percent of your allure,” writes anthropologist David Givens in his book Love Signals. When the eyes fall upon an engaging countenance, sensory neurons fire up in the temporal lobes, located about ear level on either side of the brain. They send signals to the thalamus, bulb-shaped masses about 2½ inches long in the lower brain where sensations like sight and touch are processed. The thalamus then sends arousal and pleasure messages to the frontal lobe, the area of the brain that helps people decide on the best course of action. Testosterone and dopamine (the neurotransmitter that’s involved in making you happy) work together to cause the lovesick person to become aroused. Palms get sweaty, the heart beats faster, a blush arises as these chemicals work on various parts of the body, including the sweat glands and genitals, and blood flow increases, explains Maryanne Fisher, a psychology professor at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and author of The Chemistry of Love.
A pea-sized clump of cells located at the base of the brain lights up, too, researchers revealed in a 2005 brain-scanning study of people newly in love. That cell clump, the ventral tegmental area, is part of the brain’s reward and motivation systems, and, as the central refinery for dopamine, sends the powerful neurotransmitter “to higher regions, creating craving, motivation, goal-oriented behavior, and ecstasy,” says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University who conducted the MRI scans of people in early-stage romantic love. It’s a bit harder to suss out “why Jack as opposed to Joe,” she adds. “That’s a metaphysical question.” Meanwhile, surging norepinephrine and dopamine induce euphoria. Norepinephrine is a stimulant, which explains “why you might notice that the sky looks brighter, or music is louder, or basically that the world seems more alive,” says Fisher.
The whole love cocktail, which also includes oxytocin, adrenaline, and vasopressin, essentially triggers several of the same systems that are activated when a person takes cocaine, says Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University in New York, who has studied love. (Indeed, a 2000 study using functional magnetic resonance imaging at University College London showed that love activates the same areas of the brain as drug abuse.) Oxytocin, the cuddling chemical, is love’s superglue (it bonds mothers to their infants), adrenaline is responsible for racing hearts and restlessness, and vasopressin raises blood pressure. Vasopressin also might encourage bonding tendencies in men. In male voles, at least, it created urges for bonding and nesting when injected and when naturally activated by sex.
One key structure operating during this initial thrill of love is the nucleus accumbens, a knot of neurons in the forebrain that is part of the body’s reward system. Sex, a good dose of chocolate, and a hit of cocaine are all the sort of pleasurable trigger linked with an increase in dopamine in this region (and it’s been studied for its role in addictions). Next, the love signals jolt the two shrimp-sized caudate nuclei near the center of the brain that house 80 percent of all brain receptors for dopamine. When the caudate is flooded with dopamine, it sends signals calling out for more. “The more dopamine you get, the more of a high you feel,”says Lucy Brown, a professor in the department of neurology and neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. As the reward system of the brain kicks into high gear, “anything that the object of one’s lust does, like their touch, or even a thought of them,” causes that intense reaction, says Fisher. Signs that this is happening include a focused attention, tons of energy, mania, elation, and “needing, craving more,” she says. At the same time, the dopamine deluge lowers serotonin levels by up to 40 percent. It’s serotonin that’s in the driver’s seat when it comes to regulating impulses, unruly passions, and obsessive behavior, and a reduction can enhance the feeling of being out of control. Lowered serotonin levels, which also occur in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, “may explain why we concentrate on little other than our partner during the early stages of a relationship,” says Domeena Renshaw, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
While all this neuronal firing is going on, the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex—the worry and caution centers—practically go into hibernation. So negative emotion is dulled, as is critical judgment. Says Brown: “When you’re in a relationship, you’re aware of the other person’s flaws, but your brain is telling you it’s OK to ignore them.” In other words, science is now revealing that centuries of poets have had it right: Love is blind.
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