Hank Roth

The highest form of patriotism is not making WAR and to seek peace and justice. The highest virtues are causing no harm and speaking truth to power.

War is the greatest indiscriminate injustice and the only justification for any war is self-defense. There are always reasons of national interest for war but concern for human life has not been one of them.

We are greedy and selfish and we must have our big gas guzzling cars. We use more than we need of everything. We are only 6% of the world's population but consume 40% of the world's resources. We are living proof that Homo sapiens are not the top of the evolutionary ladder. If we are fortunate, or not, for being able to reason, why don't we?

And that doesn't even begin to cover the damage we're doing to the planet, which really is our lifeboat. This piece of rock has already experienced major catastrophes and all of life on earth has gone extinct at least three times in the past and species have ceased to exist and now it is as-if we are trying to hasten the next big extinction.

The Ugly and the Profane Her stomach hard and disgorged of content She is hungry. Her scalp is sore with sun Days of unwashed grime. She is sitting in Her wheelchair, sitting because that's all she Can do without legs or arms, with only Her cup on her lap for coins. She is On the boardwalk at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. You stare at her only When she looks away, not wanting to see Her eyes because it embarrasses you. You just want to shout silently at her: Go away cripple, just disappear gimp. You don't want to see her because she Doesn't exist in your world. Hank Roth

George W. Bush, during his first term was the worse environmental president in this nation's history. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, (Robert's son) writes: "In a ferocious three-year attack, his administration has launched over 300 major rollbacks of U.S. environmental laws, rollbacks that are weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands, and wildlife." And he says that these rollbacks during his first term were orchestrated "almost entirely outside the public scrutiny." Ask someone if they knew and it is likely all they will think of is Kyoto. People are not informed and when are they feel helpless anyway so they don't bother staying informed. Bush masked his agenda with "Orwellian doublespeak" and the public just goes along.

As for wars of aggression and taking the world's oil, this is what Dr. Federico Fasano Mertens, editor of "La República del Uruguay" wrote on March 30th, 2003, "For Bush, the oil is on a plate. All he has to do is take it. It's just that he just doesn't know how easily he could choke on it."

Americanism has long been based on an idealized not so virtuous version of the history. The fact of the matter is, we have a shameful history. Modern Americanism needs to recognize the past for what it really was and to learn from our mistakes. But I am not hopeful that will happen. Are you?

"Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. `Patriotism' is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by `patriotism' I mean that attitude which puts the [one's] own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice..." Erich Fromm, "The Sane Society"

"...I think when Americans say that America is the greatest country in the world, they mean only that it is the richest and most powerful, that their country meets all the bigness tests, that Americans have more stuff than anybody else, and that they can just flat shoot everybody else's lights out. This is what they must mean. I don't think they can mean that Americans are the happiest people in the world, or the most well-adjusted people in the world, or the most moral, or anything like that." Randall Robinson, "Quiting America" (2004)

"The Truth may not always win, but it is always right." Eli Hertz

We are all the products of social engineering and biological evolution. Determining our own destiny requires a transcendence from the mythology of social conditioning. This requires breaking free of cultural, biological and social programming and establishing our own culture. That is a necessary prerequisite for being free - as much as we can also be free of our genetically coded predispositions. What can be said about this is, everyone has choices.

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of the buffalo in wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." Crowfoot - 1890

What is our purpose in life? And how can being concerned about our universe do anything positive for us? I believe that is an essentially question to which I would answer that question with the question:

"Why would we; that is, anyone who is human not want to know these things?"

If there is a time of enlightenment in biological sciences it must be now; when the fossil record and sequencing the genome has informed us so much about ourselves not known even a few years ago. There has been an exponential leap forward in our understanding.

According to a recent PEW Research Center survey in this country 42% of those polled believe in creationism. AND those same people believe that all living things alive today were that way since the beginning of time. That is a frightening thought. Even an equal number, 42%, who believe in evolution many believe that evolution is also guided by a supreme _supernatural_ being. Now that is also a frightening thought. --- AND 64% accepted the suggestion that creation be taught with evolution in schools. And you would have guessed right if you guessed that George W. Bush (who claims have been told by god to go to war in Iraq) favored teaching creationism in school.

There is no scientific controversy about evolution though many are often confused because it is called a theory; it just happens to be one which has been proven to the point of being infalible though there are some aspects of it which are still also evolving and some intermediate records not yet available to us and perhaps never will be. Life evolved through random mutation and non-random natural selection. There is no real scientific controversy about evolution. That is a fact I would be willing to bet my life on.

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What does it mean to be human?

I grapple with that question, not sure if it is a great benefit or a curse to be human. I don't want to give in to self-absorption nor do I wish to be self-indulgent, but I do want to tell a little bit about my feelings and my journey to get here. Everything I write here is not from an alter ego, it is all me. I've been on the InterNUT longer and my work and reputation speak to my veracity. I also worked for the last great American president.
http://pnews.org/

My name is Hank Roth and until I was seven years old I lived in Pennsgrove, New Jersey, where my parents owned a small "mom and pop" grocery store (from 1938-45 - during the war years). Dad first started in the grocery business in Phildadelphia as a butcher and then later as a trouble shooter for a major grocery chain until opening his own grocery store in N.J. Dad would occasionally also be able to buy extra meat from the slaughter houses which he was able to sell on the black market, a common practice of those who could improve otherwise difficult circumstances caused by the war and the economy. It was afterall the "American way" to do what was necessary and some did more than others - while many were making the ultimate sacrifice and leaving their families behind and some were sacrificing their lives in Europe and the Pacific. Dad missed the war because he was too old for WWII and too young for WWI. I don't judge him. Dad had a hard childhood. He was orhaned along with 9 of his siblings and life had never been easy.

So when I was at the White House in the late 50s, as a response to the humiliation the entire nation felt because the Soviets launched Sputnik, President Eisenhower launched a the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency which would become DARPA and ultimately lead us to the Internet. It was quite a ride for me. I came to the White House when the president still traveled on trains and gave stump speeches from the caboose. I was on some of those trips with him. We used ham radio to communicate with base, which was the White House and the alternative White House (Camp Crystal). I often worked in Camp Crystal, also known as Mt Weather in the mountains of Virginia. And when I say in, I mean deep inside the mountain. It was the alternative just like AJCS was the alternative Pentagon, where I also worked for a time, deep down in a mountain in Maryland.

Corporations Giving Us The Finger

All life are variations on the same theme.

"Evolution" refers to the scientific fact that biological organisms have changed through time, and that all life, including humanity, has descended with modification from common ancestors. Evolution is as well documented as are other currently accepted scientific facts..." - http://www.evolutionsociety.org/

Muse - Mt Weather - White House - DSA - Humanity - POTUS
Re-up - Coevolution - France - War Room - Ike - Hackers - ENIAC
Teddy - Patriot - Ana-Mae - Ancestors - Hotel - Military School
Army - Special - FBI - Jane - South - Luca - Link - Reason - Shop
Up-Hill - Capitalism - Family - Down-Hill - Struggle - Vagabonds - Left
Children - TN - Liberal - Angst - Faith - Extinction - Curse - Blast #1
Blast #2 - DARPA - Worm Hole - Crypt - Super Blogroll
Golem - Pyramid - Epilogue - Epilogue to the Epilogue
No Coherence - Nature of Nature - Epsilon Weblog
LINKS - E N D (notes)

Stated over a quarter of a century ago by phychologist Daniel Kahneman: "The increase in man's power over his environment has not been accompanied by a concomitant improvement of his ability to make rational use of that power."

I have been on the InterNUT longer than most and I know you meet all kinds of wierdos on this medium and they may think they are out of reach, but they're not. I know who they are, just as I know who you are. Remember, I've been doing this longer than you have. Fuck with me and you are dead meat....and for retards over at Chatmag and el_cid at the Malloy message board; neither one says they believe I am who I say I am - and that is because they never had a life of their own (nor the guts to come out of the closet) - so fuck them. If either one had a life they wouldn't have to worry about mine nor need to be jealous of a real man - but obviously they have never done anything with their own lives. I invite those pussys to come on down and I'll show them who I am. I live in Morriston, Florida. I'm not difficult to find. Hank Roth a/k/a/ Theg0lem//-