That same head of cabbage, by the way, if served in a restaurant, requires absolutely no irradiation labeling. All restaurant foods are excused from any irradiation labeling requirement. As stated at the FDA's own website (1):

Irradiation labeling requirements apply only to foods sold in stores. For example, irradiated spices or fresh strawberries should be labeled. When used as ingredients in other foods, however, the label of the other food does not need to describe these ingredients as irradiated. Irradiation labeling also does not apply to restaurant foods.

How the FDA plans to deceive consumers and further hide the fact that foods are being irradiated

As stated above, the FDA does not want consumers to realize their foods are being irradiated. Consumer awareness is considered undesirable by the FDA; an agency that also works hard to censor truthful statements about nutritional supplements and functional foods. Accordingly, the FDA pursues a policy of enforced ignorance of consumers regarding irradiated foods, nutritional supplements, medicinal herbs and all sorts of natural substances. It is currently illegal in the United States to state that cherries help ease arthritis inflammation if you are selling cherries.

On the food irradiation issue, the FDA is now proposing two things that are nothing short of astonishing in their degree of deceit:

FDA proposal #1: Irradiated foods shouldn't be labeled as irradiated unless consumers can visibly tell they're irradiated.

This ridiculous proposal by the FDA suggests that foods shouldn't be labeled as irradiated unless there is some obvious material damage to the foods (like their leaves are wilting). Thus, foods that don't appear to be irradiated should not have to be labeled as irradiated.

Imagine if this same ridiculous logic were used to regulate heavy metals content in foods: If consumers can't SEE the heavy metals, then they should be declared free of heavy metals!

FDA proposal #2: Irradiated foods should be labeled as "pasteurized," not "irradiated."

This FDA proposal is so bizarre that it makes you wonder whether the people working at the FDA are smoking crystal meth. They literally want irradiated foods to be labeled as "pasteurized." And why? Because the word "pasteurized" sounds a lot more palatable to consumers, of course. Never mind the fact that it's a lie. Irradiated foods are not pasteurized, and pasteurized foods are not irradiated. These two words mean two different things, which is precisely why they each have their own entries in the dictionary. When you look up "irradiated," it does not say, "See pasteurized."

But the FDA is now playing the game of thought police by manipulating the public with screwy word replacement games that bear a strange resemblance to the kind of language used in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. And it is, indeed, an Orwellian kind of mind game that the FDA wants to play with the food supply: After unleashing Weapons of Mass Destruction (radiation) onto the foods, the FDA wants to label them all as simply being "pasteurized," keeping consumers ignorant and uninformed.

How do I know the FDA wants to do this? The agency said so itself in an April 4, 2007 document filed in the Federal Register (Volume 72, Number 64). As published in the document (2):

FDA is also proposing to allow a firm to petition FDA for use of an alternate term to "irradiation'' (other than "pasteurized''). In addition, FDA is proposing to permit a firm to use the term "pasteurized'' in lieu of "irradiated,'' provided it notifies the agency that the irradiation process being used meets the criteria specified for use of the term "pasteurized'' in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the act) and the agency does not object to the notification.

Did you follow all that mind-warping logic? The FDA is essentially begging a company to petition it to use the term "pasteurized" instead of "irradiated" as long as they both result in the food being killed. Once it receives such a petition, it will approve it, claiming it is meeting "the needs of industry."

The FDA already allows lots of word substitutions in the areas of health and medicine. The phrase "Toxic Poison" has been replaced with "Chemotherapy," for example. "Over-medicated with dangerous psychiatric drugs" has been replaced with the term, "Treatment." And the phrase, "Regulated with life-threatening synthetic chemicals" has been replaced with the word "managed," as in "her diabetes has been managed."

So why not introduce all sorts of other word substitutions that might continue the Orwellian "Ministry of Language" propaganda put forth by the FDA?

I say we substitute the word "medicated" with "treated" and "treated" with "rewarded." That way, when a patient describes what drugs she's on, she can say, "I've been rewarded with ten different prescriptions!"

Better yet, let's replace the word "surgery" with "enhancement." So anybody who undergoes heart bypass surgery, for example, can say they've really just had "Heart bypass enhancement!"

It sounds a lot easier to swallow, doesn't it? And that's what it's all about, folks, when it comes to irradiating the food supply: Making it all sounds a lot less treacherous than it really is. Control the words and you control people's ideas, and if there's one thing the tyrannical FDA is really, really good at, it's controlling words!

What the FDA really wants to accomplish.

Let's get down to some blunt truth about the FDA's real genocidal agenda. What the FDA wants here is two things:

1) The destruction of the food supply (genocide)
2) The complete ignorance of the consuming public (nutritional illiteracy)

Genocide and illiteracy. Ignorance and fear. Tyranny, radiation and chemicals... These are the things the FDA truly stands for.

That pretty much sums up the FDA's intent on this whole food irradiation issue. Destroy the food and mislead the People. And then wait for the windfall of profits at Big Pharma as the People degenerate into a mass of diseased, disoriented and desperate health patients. It's business as usual at the FDA.

That's why Dr. James Duke, creator of the world's largest phytochemical database, had this to say about the FDA's food irradiation policy:

"Perhaps the FDA should call up a billion dollar team to consider irradiating another health hazard - the FDA itself, which is almost as dangerous to our health as the pharmaceutical industry."

Why I call this the unleashing of "Weapons of Mass Destruction"

In my previous article on this issue, I've called this food irradiation agenda a "Weapon of Mass Destruction" against the food supply. A couple of readers questioned me about that. Why, they asked, do I consider food irradiation to be a WMD?

WMDs include weapons that indiscriminately cause damage to people and infrastructure that serves the People. Dumping a radioactive substance into the water supply that serves a major city, for example, would be considered using a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Interestingly, the use of Depleted Uranium by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan is also an example of Weapons of Mass Destruction, making the U.S. guilty of yet more crimes against humanity. (A previous example is the dropping of nuclear weapons on Japan's civilian population in World War II.)

Irradiating the food supply is also an application of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and here's a thought experiment that will clearly demonstrate it:

Suppose you wanted to irradiate your own garden vegetables. The minute you start trying to buy a machine that produces radiation, you would be quickly considered a terrorist and investigated by the FBI. They would visit your home and ask, "Why do you need a radiation machine?" And if you said you needed to irradiate your garden vegetables, they would look at you like you were completely nuts and probably haul you into the local FBI field office for yet more questioning, all while considering you a possible terrorist and likely adding your name to the no-fly list so you could never travel on commercial airlines.

If you don't believe me, try to acquire a high-powered radiation emitting device and see what happens...

So why is it considered bizarre and possibly criminal when an individual buys a radiation machine to irradiate their own foods, but when the FDA pushes the same agenda on a larger scale, they call it "safety?"

Irradiated food isn't altered, claims the FDA.

Of course, the FDA says the irradiated food isn't altered by the radiation. This statement is an insult to the intelligence of anyone with a pulse. Why? Because if the radiation doesn't alter anything, then how can it kill e.coli and salmonella?

The whole point of the radiation is to kill living organisms. And it works by causing fatal damage to the tissues and DNA of those microorganisms. So guess what it does to the plants? Since radiation isn't selective, it also irradiates the plant fibers and tissues, causing DNA damage and the destruction of enzymes and phytochemicals.

Amazingly, the FDA claims this does not count as "altering" the food because these changes aren't visible.

If it weren't such a nutritional atrocity, it would be downright hilarious. DNA changes are not visible to the human eye, but they can result in serious health consequences. Just ask anyone born with two Y chromosomes.

Eat up, guinea pigs!

Of course, the radiation pushers will claim that nobody really knows whether irradiating the food kills just 1% of the phytochemicals or 99% (or something in between). And they don't know what the long-term effect is on human health, either. This is exactly my point: The irradiation of fresh produce is a dangerous experiment, and we've all been involuntarily recruited as guinea pigs.

I will be curious to see a serious scientific inquiry into the nutritional damage caused to fresh produce by irradiation. I also find it simply astonishing that this decision by the FDA has been made in the absence of such scientific studies. Much like it does with the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA prefers to poison the people first, and then figure out later just how much damage might have been caused.

I say when you're dealing with the food supply, you should err on the side of caution. We are talking about the health of the nation here. This is not a small matter. It should be treated with extreme caution, skepticism and scientific scrutiny. Instead, it is being addressed with a gung-ho attitude framed in mind games and enforced ignorance.

In other words, rather than figuring out whether food irradiation is actually safe, the FDA would rather simply pretend it is.

Welcome to Make Believe Land, where all your food is now safe and nutritious, courtesy of the FDA!

Sources:

By Chris Floyd

John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin seems to have thrown the media-political-blogospherical establishments into a tizzy. It's hard to see why. Sure, Cleese would have been better than Palin -- more gravitas, louder voice. And of course, the late, lamented Graham Chapman would make a better president than any of the four ticket-toppers of the two major parties. I mean, even now he would be better, despite being dead and British and all.

But I must say that I strongly disagree with the argument that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president of the United States. Such a stance betrays a lamentable misperception of the true function of the office in these modern times. It also ignores the craven nature of our political and media establishments, which has been on such brazen display for lo these many years.

First of all, what do you think would happen in the not-unlikely-event that an aged, ailing President McCain either died or became incapacitated? The very instant that Palin assumed the presidency, the aforesaid establishments would surround her with an aura of substance, seriousness, and respect. She would become..."The President"...her title invoked with the same frisson of pleasurable self-abnegation that accompanied every utterance of the holy phrase on "The West Wing." The media would find hidden reservoirs of charisma and command suddenly coming to light. We would hear stories of her folksy charm, her steely resolve, her self-deprecating wit, her surprising grasp of complex issues.

It doesn't matter what kind of poltroon parks his or her butt in the Oval Office, or how they get in there; they will be presented to the people as a figure of moral authority and gravitas -- and be accepted as such by large swathes of the public. How can anyone have lived through the presidency of an utter non-entity like George W. Bush -- not to mention the presidencies of the fourth-rate aristo George H.W. Bush or the literally brain-corroded Ronald Reagan -- and not know this? As Shakespeare told us long ago in King Lear:

"Behold the great image of authority; a dog's obeyed in office."

And haven't the past eight years been a painfully glaring demonstration of the undeniable fact that the office of the presidency is -- or certainly can be -- the emptiest of empty shams, a front behind which powerful elite factions shelter as they push their self-serving and undemocratic agendas? Yes, yes, yes, there are tussles and disagreements, even blood feuds, among the elite, there are narrow areas in which marginal differences in policy approaches might come into play. But no one -- no one -- becomes president or vice-president who has not already bought into the basic package: militarism, empire and continual state intervention in the economy on behalf of the rich and powerful. (For a brilliant exposition of the latter point, see this analysis at A Tiny Revolution, which uses the administration of the "Big Dog" himself as a perfect example of how, with every president, "You're dancin' with whom they tell you to/Or you don't dance at all," in the words of another national bard.)

So one might say that Sarah Palin is in fact uniquely qualified to be a modern-day president of the United States. The Republic and its citizens would be no less safe -- or rather, no less highly endangered -- in her hands than in those of the other three main contestants in the Great Gonzo Gameshow of 2008.

II.

But while the Palin brouhaha provides a measure of comic relief, in the end it is just another ludicrous distraction from the main issue, the one issue that is never discussed openly in the campaign (except, as Arthur Silber notes below, inadvertently): the fact that both major parties and their candidates are co-conspirators in the most savage and extensive war crime of the 21st century: the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Silber zeroes in on the astonishing speech given by Al Gore at the Democratic Convention, in which the man who was actually elected president in 2000 (then meekly gave up the fight -- and the Republic -- long before all of his constitutional recourses against the coup were exhausted) did something almost unheard-of at such a gathering: he spoke the truth. First Silber quotes Gore:

After [the Bush Administration] abandoned the search for the terrorists who attacked us and redeployed the troops to invade a nation that did not attack us, it's time for a change.

Then Silber notes:

As I heard that phrase this evening -- "and redeployed the troops to invade a nation that did not attack us" -- I froze for several seconds. I couldn't believe Gore had said it, or that I had heard it...Consider the line again: "and redeployed the troops to invade a nation that did not attack us."

Iraq did not attack us. Therefore, the United States was not acting in self-defense. The invasion of Iraq was an act of aggression. Thus, the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq constitute an ongoing war crime, indeed a huge, horrifying series of ongoing war crimes. The war crimes continue today, and will continue tomorrow...But the U.S. government and our subservient media deny it to this day. If they go so far as to admit that the war was a mistake (which many still will not), they insist it was an "honest mistake," one based on "bad intelligence" ... At worst, politicians and most of those in the media will say only that the invasion of Iraq was a "blunder," perhaps a terrible one, but still only a "blunder."

But Al Gore said we invaded "a nation that did not attack us." The United States committed a monstrous war crime. That's what Gore's statement means. Do not expect anyone to acknowledge that is what it means.

Silber then details the various Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal which the United States has violated -- and continues to violate -- in the Iraq War, and notes:

The crimes of those Republicans who supported these actions are unspeakable and eternally unforgivable. Yet the crimes of the Democrats who supported the same actions are still worse. The Democrats insist that they think the invasion and occupation of Iraq were wrong, yet they have continued to fund it, even though it has been within their power to defund it entirely for over a year and a half -- and, of equal and even greater significance in one sense, the Democrats absolutely refuse to hold even one person responsible.

I have hammered at this theme of complicity in war crime and atrocity time and again; such as here, from October 2007:

The only possible way to stop these criminal depredations is to remove Bush and Cheney from office. Nothing else will do it. And any national political figure or presidential candidate who does not have this removal at the top of their agenda, who is not beating this drum day after day and using all their power and influence and position to help bring it about is, as we have noted here before, nothing but an accomplice to torture and murder. -- such as here and here and here and here.)

And here, from another October 2007 piece:

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. -- Henry David Thoreau

Every day it becomes clearer that Thoreau's answer is the only basis for a genuinely effective resistance to the accelerating depredations of the Bush-Cheney regime. Disassociation, boycott, filibuster, strike -- call it what you will, but the Gandhian tag might be the best: "non-cooperation with evil." The corruption and authoritarian tyranny that the regime has imposed on the nation are evil. The war of aggression it has launched against Iraq is evil. The war of aggression it is fomenting against Iran is evil. If you would not be complicit in evil, then you must not cooperate with it, and you must not acknowledge its power as rightful or legitimate (however powerless you may be to resist its application by brute force).

If there is to be any way out of the nation's death spiral into darkness, ruin and dishonor, this noncooperation must begin at the top. There is not enough time left now for a broad movement from the general public to rise up and force the ouster of these criminals. Naturally, any and all efforts to raise consciousness of the dire situation and mobilize the public against the regime are welcome and should continue. But even putting aside the mass lethargy and media-addled distraction and indifference that have characterized public reaction to the filth heaped upon them by the regime year after year, it is simply a logistical and organizational impossibility to put together the kind of unprecedented outpouring of street protest and civil disobedience it would require for a grass-roots effort to dislodge the regime in its remaining time in office. Yet in that time, the regime will have mired the nation so much more deeply in intractable evil that even the most well-intentioned successor will be left with nothing but monstrous choices between atrocious and somewhat less atrocious outcomes, with each decision drenched in innocent blood.

So while we can all hope and work to see such noncooperation and dissent spread throughout the general public -- a long-term cultivation looking toward the harvest of a better, more honorable society down the line -- the immediate evil embodied in the crooked Bush-Cheney regime can only be thwarted by action on the institutional level. As I've noted elsewhere, Thoreau's answer should be taken up by every person in public life, beginning with the senators and representatives in Congress. There should be noncompliance, nonrecognition of this illegitimate authority, disassociation from taking part in its workings. No Bush appointees should be approved; indeed, they have already shown their unfitness for office by agreeing to work under the criminal regime in the first place. All legislation offered by the regime should be rejected outright; it is dishonorable to treat with a faction whose unprovoked, unnecessary "war of choice" in Iraq has now killed more Americans than were murdered on 9/11. The only "negotiation" acceptable with such bloodstained wretches is settling the terms of their exit from power.

But as Silber notes, none of these things happened. Rather the reverse, as I noted in April 2008:

[Obama] tied his thinking on torture, illegal wiretapping, aggressive war and all the other depredations of the Bush Regime to his stance on impeachment:

"I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings. And I've often said, I do not think that would be something that would be fruitful to pursue. I think impeachment should be reserved for exceptional circumstances."

In other words, very strong, credible, evidence-based charges of launching a criminal war of aggression based on deception is not an "exceptional circumstance" worthy of the investigative and prosecutorial process of impeachment. It might just be a "very dumb policy." Very strong, credible, evidence-based charges of knowingly, deliberately creating a regimen of systematic torture is not an "exceptional circumstance" worthy of impeachment; it might not even be worth further investigation by the Justice Department. It too could just be a "dumb policy" that we should forget about - especially if Republicans are going to make a fuss about it.

In any case, it is obvious that to Obama, "what we already know" does not constitute "exceptional circumstances" - otherwise he would already be pressing for criminal investigation, via the impeachment process or by calling for a special prosecutor... He has pointedly not done so, because he doesn't think it would be "fruitful to pursue" credible (in fact overwhelming) evidence of aggressive war and crimes against humanity committed by American leaders.

As Silber notes, neither Obama nor any other Democrat said a single word at the Convention about holding anyone in government accountable for their high crimes. (Although Joe Biden did manage to sputter a threat about holding Russia accountable for its crimes. Ever hear of that old gospel saw about motes and beams, Joe?) Not even Al Gore brought up the subject, despite his open admission that the United States had committed a flagrant war crime -- by standards which the United States itself promulgated to prosecute war crimes.

Silber then delivers a brutal truth:

If you vote for the candidate of one of the two major parties, this is your choice: John McCain, war criminal -- or Barack Obama, war criminal.

Where is Graham Chapman when you need him?

So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the 44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th?

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper's scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.

As many people have noted, placing Palin on the ticket has made these final months of the already overlong 2008 campaign much more interesting. Is Palin remotely qualified to be president of the United States? No. But that's precisely what is so interesting. McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don't look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.

McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.

And it might. Palin's nomination has clearly excited Christian conservatives, and it may entice a few million gender-obsessed fans of Hillary Clinton to vote entirely on the basis of chromosomes. Throw in a few million more average Americans who will just love how the nice lady smiles, and 2009 could be a very interesting year.

Tune in next week and watch cousin Sarah fuss with our nuclear arsenal ... .
(c) 2008 Sam Harris is the author of "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation."

Good morning America, your King of Simple News is on the air. I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend and taking the downtime to consider where your chosen path in life is taking you.

As a final thought to the end of a short series on the subject of paradigm shifts, I want to be clear that regardless of your current situation, a shift in perception can be instantly rewarding.

I began to worry that many readers may take my past articles as having only value to those who are monetarily in a position to take heed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who are cash stressed and see our current economic times as their darkest days could benefit the most from a major paradigm shift.

Let's dig into paradigms one last time and the affect that these beliefs have on our lives. Paradigms are described as "A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline."

Looking at the description of paradigms in the language of Mikeronomics reads; "A set of rules, assumptions, values and practices that the intellectual community made up to best benefit their own personal interests by convincing you that adopting the daily practice of endless labor and assuming huge ongoing interest bearing debt was in fact a sane and reasonable exchange for your life."

Let me give you some examples that concrete my Mikeronomics description. If I were to ask the average man and woman on the street how many hours are in work day, the answer that I would receive would be "eight." How old should one be to retire? "65." How many weeks of vacation should one expect? "Two, maybe three." Is a large luxurious high taxed home on a thirty year payment plan a good investment? "Absolutely." Is the 30 day new car smell worth seven years of payments? "What are you nuts; of course it is."

I could go on and on and on, but you get the picture; and it's one ugly image. Yet none of the answers above are cast in stone. Most in fact are false and are believed to be true due to our never questioning convention or accepted paradigms.

Here are the correct answers. How many hours should we work each day? What ever amount it takes to provide for a comfortable and happy life. What is the age for retirement? What ever age we are financially able to do so. How many weeks vacation should one expect? Fifty-two if we can get them.

Ya see, someone made up all the rules and they made them up for their benefit, not yours. The good news is that Christmas is coming early this year because you can start disobeying all of these rules tomorrow and the cops won't come and haul you off.

It's unusual to be fiscally smart and a bit of a maverick; but it's not illegal.

Let's go on with the effect of paradigms. Is a large luxurious high taxed home on a thirty year payment plan, along with a two SUVs in the garage (that have lost their new smell but not their seven year payments) a good investment? The answer to this question is directly linked to the questions, "How many hours a day should you work and how old should you be when you retire?"

I'm thinkin' that if you answered yes to the home and car investment questions, that eight hours work per day and age 65 for retirement may be a highly optimistic opinion.

Townsend Whelen wrote more than fifty years ago, "The cost of a thing is the amount of life required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."

I applaud John McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice president nominee. In many ways this choice was far more impressive than Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden. Better yet, the McCain selection will make the general election campaign far more interesting and competitive.

I say this on the basis of looking at contradictions that the choices raised. Here we have Obama proclaiming endlessly that he was running against the politics of the past, but then he picks an extremely long term senator that is clearly a member of the status quo establishment. Moreover, Obama has kept boasting that he does not take money from lobbyists, but Biden has taken plenty. And then there is the claim of great judgment by Obama for his opposition to the Iraq war, but Biden played an important role as a Democrat in supporting the Bush war.

Palin is a much, much better match with McCain. One relatively small contradiction is that she favors more drilling for oil in Alaska's pristine areas, while McCain has opposed that But beyond that Palin brings something to the game that none of the other three principals does: She is the only one with real executive experience. And in comparison to the other three she has far more solid accomplishments fighting political corruption. Indeed, while Obama talks a good game, Palin is the only one that showed the courage to personally go after high level corrupt politicians - even better, she did this against office holders in her own party. I am impressed. Finally, the whole narrative about the Obamas pulling themselves up from nothing to achieve great things is matched by the Palin story.

During the Democratic convention there was endless talk by the bloviating pundits about their sadness that women have not made it to the top of the political pyramid, even as they kept blabbering about how terrific Hillary Clinton performed. Now McCain puts a woman in exactly the position that so many Democrats wanted Hillary to be in, with a chance to make it to the White House - a very good chance if all the talk about McCain serving just one term (or dying in office) has any chance of happening.

In sum, the selection of Biden was a betrayal to some very important positions and claims of Obama. In contrast, except for one relatively minor position, the selection of Palin was in sync with McCain's political philosophy and positions. The more leftist, progressive side of the Democratic Party has no reason to be thrilled with Biden (who voted for a bankruptcy law that screwed middle class people). But the most conservative wing of the Republican Party has plenty of reason to be thrilled with the Palin selection.

When a tool is used for the wrong purpose, it may break. NATO has now been broken because it was used by the United States and the European NATO members as a tool for expanding Western power into the Russian "near abroad," and after that, to make an inexplicably rash and dangerous effort to break into and split off portions of the Russian empire as it existed in the 19th century-long before the Soviet Union existed.

This is dangerous, because Russia had to be expected to react, and violently so, to an intrusion into the territorial integrity of the historical Russia. Furthermore, with its assurances of eventual membership, NATO gave implied guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia that it did not intend to honor, or could not honor except at the risk of a war it had no intention of fighting. The outcome of the Georgian affair provides the proof. NATO has been conducting this policy toward Russia on the assumption that Russia is too intimidated by Western military power to resist. Now it has done so, in Georgia. The bluff has been called. The sham of the NATO guarantee has collapsed. Nobody in the West seems willing to admit it.

The Polish and Baltic state governments, the American neoconservatives and acolytes of a "New American Century" of expanding global domination, Vice President Dick Cheney and his friends in the armaments, energy and government services industries, all act as if they do not understand what has happened.

All of these people, and all those in Western Europe who are now demanding immediate admission of Georgia and Ukraine into full NATO membership, are unwittingly doubling the stakes, enlarging their commitment to go to war if Mikheil Saakashvili should make another assault on South Ossetia or Abkhazia in order to re-annex them to Georgia and if Russia again "overreacted."

Of course, they don't mean it, or even understand what they are doing. Or most of them don't; there may be some in Washington today who believe a short and sharp little pre-emptive nuclear attack to disarm Russia might be just the thing, before Russia becomes any stronger. But I don't think there are many people in NATO Europe, or in the United States, prepared to give a nuclear guarantee to Georgian irredentism, or to an attempt to split Ukraine, or intensify its internal divisions.

NATO was founded on Canadian initiative in 1949 as a security alliance of the North American nations with the European military union formed the year before by France, the U.K. and the Benelux countries, to defend against a "resurgent Germany."

The new organization's purpose was to keep the Germans down but also to keep the Russians out. The Cold War had broken out in earnest in 1948, with the Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia. Other European countries joined NATO, and in 1955 a rearmed and rehabilitated Germany became a member of the alliance, which needed its troops.

The organization ultimately saw the Berlin Wall come down and the Soviet Union fatally shaken, and the Soviets' agreeing to the unification of Germany, and of Europe.

This was in 1989, during the administration of the first President George Bush, who convinced his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, that a free Eastern Europe and a united Germany would benefit the long-term interests of Russia. Gorbachev accepted Germany's unification when he was assured that NATO would not be extended to the East. "Not one inch!" were the exact words of the reply made by Secretary of State James Baker.

That promise was then broken, first by the Clinton administration, then by George W. Bush. Today, the American-led military alliance has been built up to the entire western frontier of Russia, from the Gulf of Finland in the north to the Black Sea. The new members joined NATO for the perfectly good reason that they were afraid (this time) of a "resurgent Russia." They believed that NATO would go to war to defend them, should Russia again become a threat to Europe. However, they did not join in order to take part in an aggressive policy meant to encircle and dismantle Russia. Yet that is what has happened, and Russia has called the bluff.

It is time for the European members of NATO to take a serious hand in this. The question must be asked and answered as to whether the NATO countries wish to continue to pursue an aggressively hostile policy toward Russia. If so, why? To what useful and attainable objective? What is to be gained by supporting Georgia's revanchist demands to control the Ossetian and Abkhazian enclaves, the majority of whose people do not wish to be ruled by Georgia?

Dear Justizvollzugsbeamte Fletcher,

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, Ralph Nader, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Anthony (Fat Tony) Kennedy.

Without your lock-step calling for the repeal of the Constitution, your support of our two coup d'etats, your willingness to commit acts of treason for the Junta by ending the 1st and fourth amendments to that damned piece of paper, Iraq and these many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Junta Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross 1st class with sapphire clusters presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Bush at a gala celebration at "der Wolf's Lair," formally "Rancho de Bimbo," on 10-31-2008. We salute you Herr Fletcher, Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Vice Fuhrer Cheney