MJ

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sh...shows/binladen/

U.S. Firm Clones Human Embryo for Cells By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. company said on Sunday it had cloned a human embryo for the first time ever in a breakthrough aimed not at creating a human being but at mining the embryo for stem cells used to treat diseases. Biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (ACT), based in Worcester, Massachusetts, said it hopes the experiment will lead to tailored treatments for diseases ranging from Parkinson's to juvenile diabetes. It also coaxed a woman's egg cell into becoming an early embryo on its own, without any kind of fertilization. Although animals have been cloned repeatedly since Dolly the sheep made her appearance in 1997, and although there were no real technical barriers to making a cloned human embryo, the research crosses a line that may leave many around the world uneasy and even hostile. The company was at pains to stress that it did not intend to create ranks of genetically identical babies. ``Our intention is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions, including diabetes, strokes, cancer, AIDS, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease,'' Dr. Robert Lanza, a vice president at ACT, said in a statement. The goal is to take a piece of skin and grow a new heart for a heart patient, or some brain tissue for an Alzheimer's patient, or vital pancreatic cells for a diabetes patient. But the announcement quickly drew criticism from those fearing the step would lead to the cloning of a human being. The U.S. Congress has moved to outlaw all human cloning. A proposed new law is under consideration by the Senate, where lawmakers expressed some alarm at Sunday's news. Michael West, chief executive officer of ACT, hinted that moves in Congress were why the company moved so quickly to report its findings. Federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer money for experimenting on human embryos but ACT is a privately funded company and can do as it pleases -- for now. The House has already backed a broad ban on this type of research, and President Bush has praised the bill. The Senate has not yet taken up companion legislation, and several senators said they did not want to rush into legislation without fully understanding the scientific implications. SOURCE OF STEM CELLS Advanced Cell Technology said it had used cloning technology to grow a tiny ball of cells that could then be used as a source of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are a kind of master cell that can grow into any kind of cell in the body. ``Scientifically, biologically, the entities we are creating are not an individual. They're only cellular life,'' West told NBC's Meet the Press. ACT Vice President Joe Cibelli, who led the research, said his team had used classic cloning technology using a human egg and a human skin cell. They removed the DNA from the egg cell and replaced it with DNA from the nucleus of the adult cell. The egg began dividing as if it had been fertilized by a sperm, but was stopped from becoming a baby -- at the stage at which it was still a ball of cells. The same technology has been used to clone sheep, cattle and monkeys. The company did not say whether it had successfully removed embryonic stem cells from the cloned embryo. The company also reported a second breakthrough in its paper, published in the online journal E-biomed: Journal of Regenerative Medicine. Researchers took a human egg cell and got it to progress to the embryo stage without any kind of fertilization, either by sperm or outside genetic material. The process is known as parthenogenesis, and occurs in insects and microbes but not naturally in higher animals. SECOND BREAKTHROUGH -- 'VIRGIN' CONCEPTION ``You hesitate to describe it as a virgin birth, but it is sort of in that vein,'' John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine, which publishes an article by ACT scientists in its January issue and whose reporter watched some of ACT's work in progress, said in a phone interview. ``That is an amazing accomplishment in its own right and, like cloning, something that people once thought was impossible in mammals.'' Both cloning and stem cell technology are highly controversial areas of research in the United States. Stem cells are valued by scientists because they could be used to treat many diseases, including cancer and AIDS. They can come from adults but the most flexible sources so far seem to be very early embryos -- so small they are only a ball of a few cells. Such embryos, usually left over from attempts to make test-tube babies, are destroyed in the process, so many people oppose it. President Bush decided earlier this year that federal funds could be used for research on embryonic stem cells, but only on those that had been created before August, found at 11 different academic and private laboratories. When combined with cloning technology, the hope is that patients could be the source of their own tissue or organs, a technology known as therapeutic cloning. ``Human therapeutic cloning could be used for a host of age-related diseases,'' said West. REPRODUCTION NOW IN HANDS OF MEN Groups that have traditionally opposed abortion and embryo experimentation were quick to condemn the research. ``Some may call it a medical breakthrough. I believe it is a moral breakdown,'' Raymond Flynn, president of the National Catholic Alliance and a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, said in a statement. ``Human reproduction is now in the hands of men, when it rightfully belongs in the hands of God.'' But the Biotechnology Industry Organization supported the research. ``Those of us who have testified before Congress on BIO's behalf regarding this issue have stated repeatedly that reproductive cloning is untested, unsafe, and morally repugnant,'' BIO president Carl Feldbaum said in a statement. ``BIO does however, support therapeutic applications of cloning of cells and tissues -- techniques that would not result in cloned children, but could produce treatments and cures for some of humanity's most vexing diseases and disabilities, especially and most immediately diabetes and Parkinson's.'' The company said it had grown only a single embryo as far as the six-cell stage. But West said that had the embryo been placed in a woman's womb, it could possibly have grown into a human being. ``We took extreme measures to ensure that a cloned human could not result from this technology,'' he said. In August, three researchers considered mavericks in the scientific community said they planned to clone people to help infertile couples, but experts told a meeting of the National Academy of Scientists the three lacked the needed skills. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011125/t...e_clone_dc.html

OK, Thorny. How about vacation for two in a tropical resort? But it requires identification of 100 falsifications (I had missed one zero - it was typo! ). This should notbe hard, based on my reading of only the first page of the material and finding three.

MosJan, This doesn’t look good. Promise something, otherwise they don't want to take on without a stimulus.

quote:Originally posted by aurguplu: mj, a point about the above posting re armenian history: "For instance, the most ancient Greek historians speak of striking similarities between the inhabitants of Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Armenia, in their language and customs, so much so that the Armenians and Phrygians were sometimes said to be the same people. So the Armenians were spoken of by some ancient writers as a colony of the Phrygians; and the Cappadocians as a colony of the Armenians. The different languages of the three, on account of their striking resemblance, have been called different dialects of a common language." we (the cappadocians) spoke dialects of hittite and luwian, both of which are very close to one another. the languages of lycia, lydia, and adanawa (present-day adana) were also very close. phrygian was spoken further north, and was written as a liturgical dead language until the third century a.d. you find phrygian tomb inscriptions in many places in central anatolia but not to the best of my knowledge in cappadocia (cappadocia is a very clearly defined area, and quite easily defended thanks to the fairy chimneys). we never got on quite well with the greeks of the western shores, and preserved our language and culture well into the christian era. we turned christian early on, but developed heretic sects, which the byzantines tried (unsuccessfully) to crush. byzantine authors knew that various non-greek languages were spoken in central and eastern anatolia that were the same as those of the "white syrians" of that country: neo-hittite. to the best of my knowledge they spoke of the survival of our language in the mountains of isauria (northeast of antalya) in the sixth century a.d. later on, when the turks came and the byzantine empire was gone, the christian population (some of us had converted to islam, and there also were the karaman, a clan of the afshar, who settled there and intermarried with the locals) was called the "greeks of karaman", but this was originally a designation of the orthodox religious community rather than ethnicity. despite the best efforts of contemporary greek historians, the "greeks of karaman" have never been proven to have spoken greek in everyday language. in fact, they spoke a divergent form of turkish from probably the eleventh century, but always with many mistakes in it; so their native tongue was something else. we still have many hittite words in the turkish spoken in cappadocia, and our material culture differs from that of the other neighbouring regions very sharply (we have our distinctive pottery style, with a characteristic sheen, which you find in hittite works and nowhere else: no other region of anatolia produces pots like ours). and we are still very different from everyone else, even the people of kayseri, who are not reliable merchants. cheers Dear Ali, I just noticed that you had addressed the material above to me. Sorry for the late reply. However, I couldn't quite follow your point. Part of it is that perhaps it has to be seen in the context of the previous materials of the thread, and I have already forgotten what was the discussion about, and part of it is perhaps in my lack of solid knowledge in the non-political and ancient dimensions of history of Asia Minor.

Armenian leader says de jure Artsax independence draws closer each year Arminfo 23 Nov 01 YEREVAN Each year of Nagornyy Artsax's independence brings the NKR [Nagornyy Artsax Republic] closer to recognition as a subject of international law. This was stated today by Armenian President Robert Kocharyan at a meeting with students in the Yerevan state architectural and construction university. According to the head of state, definitive recognition of the Nagornyy Artsax Republic as a subject of international law should be stipulated in the package of conditions for settling the Nagornyy Artsax conflict. Nevertheless, every year which the NKR exists on its own is another step towards recognition of Nagornyy Artsax by the world community, Robert Kocharyan added.

quote:Originally posted by Harut: how did Shiraz write it? i hope he didn't become insane afterwards. or he did? No! First he became insane, then he wrote it. [ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

There are several obvious falsifications/misrepresentations in the materials. Let's play a game of finding 10 such falsifications/misrepresentations. The one who accurately finds the first 10 will get a prize from MosJan. Let's alos keep good track of who finds what. For example: MJ1-Before the conquest of the Seljuks, there were princedoms attached to Byzantium which were called Ardzuruni located around Ani, Bagrat and Van in East Anatolia. However, Byzantium abolished these princedoms and deported the people here to Anatolia. Those who were deported to Cilicia established the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia by taking advantage of the Crusades. As it is known, the Mamelukes gave an end to this kingdom in 1375. http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/arm_book/foreword.html The paragraph above makes an impression of the authors deliberately mixing things up, so that to arrive to their desired conclusions in the result. Clearly it is directed at unaware audiences – primarily the internal ones. The fact of the matter is that Ardzruni Kingdom has had nothing to do with Ani or its surroundings. Ardzruni Kingdom has been established on the territories adjecant to the lake Van. The Kingdom that has been established in and around Ani has been the Bagratuni Kingdom. The bottom line is that between the two Kingdoms, with majority of Armenian population, Armenians have resided on the Entire Eastern Anatolian Territory. MJ2-With the conquest of Sultan Yavuz Selim and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, these regions came under Ottoman administration. When the Ottomans conquered this territory, there had not been any Armenian state for 470 years in the east and for 150 years in the south. http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/arm_book/foreword.html An obvious falsification. It seems that the Bagratuni Kingdom is totally “absent” from the entire Turkish archivography. OK. Let me make a pause and allow you to catch up. MJ3-In fact, the Armenians were not the native people of Anatolia, they had probably come to Anatolia from Thrace towards the end of the VI th century BC. and had settled in Urartu as a mixture of the Thracic and Phrygian clans. The Armenians appearing as a Nordic-Alphin mixture have arisen as a result of the fusion of native and migrant Indo-Europeans. In other words, it is not a homogenous race. They started to use an alphabet after the acceptance of Christianity. http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/arm_book/foreword.html There is no such fact alluded in the sources of history. What some ancient Greek historians claim is that the tribe of Armens has migrated to (let’s call it) Anatolia from the Balkans. However, Armens are not the core of the Armenian nation. They are just one of the three tribes, the mingling of which has resulted in the Armenian nation. The other two tribes have been Nairis and the Hayases. What is attributed to the end of the VI the century is the end of the synthesis of these three tribes. One thing is correct – Armenians are not a homogenous race, which would dismiss on its own the allegation of Armenians not being native to Anatolia. However, Armenians have used native alphabet prior to Christianity, which allegedly has gotten lost. In fact, the reason Mesrob Mashdots was sent to Alexandria to create the Armenian Alphabet was the rumor at the time that the ancient Armenian alphabet had been preserved in the Library of Alexandria. [ November 24, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

It appears to me that the Republic of Turkey is making some adjustments in its approach to the Armenian Question. Interesting timing. Despite all the misrepresentations, I think this is an interesting material. http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/arm_book/arm_book.html

Turkey and Europe Norman Stone, Turkish Daily News, Nov 16, 2001 - Back in 1995, Turkey and Europe were joined in a Customs Union. There had been a certain opposition from the Greek lobby, which was quite influential in the British Labour Party -- quite regularly books appeared blaming the United States for the current division of Cyprus, and this anti-Americanism used to be fairly strong in the Labour left. When Turkey's customs privileges were being discussed, the American ambassador in London, Adm. Crowe telephoned Labour leader Tony Blair and got him to drop his opposition. This was a characteristic episode. The Europeans, left to their own devices would probably have made greater difficulties about the customs unions. Yes, Turkey is an important market, and her trade with Europe has grown considerably since the days not so long ago when the principal export was nuts. European exports to Turkey amount to over $30 trillion and the main Turkish roads are often clogged with huge lorries, heading back and forth from Germany especially. German industry, especially, has been resettling in Kocaeli and Izmir to take advantage of Turkey's lower wage-cost. However, economic co-operation is one thing; politics is different. Again and again, we find the Americans (and to an extent the British) taking a lead to make Turkey's relations with Europe less uneasy than they usually are. The Americans have, especially since Sept. 11, an immediate understanding of Turkey's role in the world. If she becomes destabilized or is somehow marginalized then the Middle East could all too easily blow up. When the American Diaspora tried two years ago to get Congress to condemn Turkey for the ancient business of the Armenian alleged massacres, the Israelis and the American military were very quick to put an end to the affair: Why disturb relations with an important country over a century-old affair, the historical background to which was in any case dubious? The Europeans do not take quite the same line. To some extent this has to do with the way in which the European Union operates. It can be manipulated quite easily by small determined lobbies, using what appears to be impeccably objective language to advance their interests. Thus, for instance, a "directive" from Brussels decrees what levels of noise are permissible for lawn-mowers in the union. Very good you might think, until you reflect that Brussels has absolutely no business telling householders in Naples what noise they are allowed to make. Behind this "directive" was a perfectly straightforward piece of commercial manipulation: British lawn-mowers, rather more expensive than German ones, are also less noisy, and the "directive" was an excellent way of excluding the German competitors or making life difficult for them. A small matter, but the same kind of manipulation happens in matters of greater concern. Cyprus is an obvious case. To the neutral observer it is simply absurd that North Cyprus has not been recognized as an independent state. There are many smaller ones in the world and the place has survived nearly a generation of nonrecognition, and even for its exports of trade sanctions. Left to itself, North Cyprus would probably flourish, not least because its coasts have not been ruined by the boom of mass-tourism which has done such harm in the south. Since 1974 it has existed as a Turkish Republic, and there is now no chance at all that its people could form a united state with the Greek Cypriots to the south: contact was broken off a generation ago, and in a sensible world we should simply have amicable cross-border co-operation as to travel, electricity etc. as happens between the Dutch and French parts of, say, Saint-Eustache in the Caribbean. The Turkish position is quite well-founded in international law. The London treaties of 1959-60 allowed Turkey a say, if necessary military, in the affairs of the island, and they also stated that Cyprus should not join any other state or groups of states without the consent of all interested parties. And now, what do we find? The Europeans considering the application of Cyprus to join the European Union. The application has been made by the south with support from Greece. If the application goes ahead then we have the likelihood of endless clashes between the Europeans and Turkey, whose soldiers protect the north. Already there are foretastes. A Strasbourg court stated that Turkey should compensate a Greek Cypriot woman for the loss of her property a generation ago. How absurd this is in a European context! In 1945, millions of Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland. This was a very harsh business, as the Germans were told, in the same implacable language as had been used for Nazi deportations of Czechs and Poles, that they could take only a suitcase. They were dumped in makeshift camps in Germany and many died. It was a very sad business. However, the background must be understood: Hitler's attempt to create a Greater Germany, using these local Germans to undermine neighboring peoples -- the Poles especially having suffered enormously. Much to their credit, the West Germans came to terms with this and 25 years after the end of the war they formally accepted what had happened. The result has been entirely for the good. Czech-German and Polish-German relations are very good, and Germans, with economic, environmental experience, play a positive part. Why cannot the Greeks have a similar understanding of Cyprus, and why do they not just recognize the accomplished fact of the existence of Northern Cyprus? It would do only good for the Greeks' own position vis-a-vis Turkey -- trade, investment, and protection -- but unfortunately the European Union does not encourage realism of this kind. Greek nationalists can force their government to pursue a fantasy and do damage to Europe's relations with Turkey -- even now, apparently when a private yacht puts into a Greek harbor it is welcomed by officials who have been taught to say, "welcome to Europe," as if the Turkish ports (generally better places in every way than the townships of the barren Aegean islands) were somehow just "Asia." But it is not just Greek nationalism that makes Turco-European relations rather difficult. For Turkey to become a member of the union, she would really have to be a different country. For instance, since 1960 an exceptionally complicated set of rules has governed European agriculture, called the Common Agricultural Policy. It cost about $100 billion. Originally, it was meant to protect the lives of millions of peasants. Nowadays, the rural proportion of the western European population has sunk below 5 percent. In Turkey, the proportion is around 40 percent. In other words, a Common Agricultural policy, applied to Turkey, would become fabulously expensive. There is of course more to it. Since 1991, there has been free movement of labor within Western Europe. Usually what this means is that educated people move. Great numbers of French people have shifted to London, attracted by its freedom from the tight regulations that govern life at home, and great numbers of British people have shifted to France, where life, in terms of traffic, restaurants and house prices, is much easier. If Turkey now joined she would no doubt be sending millions of workers. This would not be a particular problem for the Italians, French or British, in whose countries Turks are much-respected, but there would be an inevitable problem in Germany. Already, there are 3 million Turks in Germany, and though many have assimilated, a great number have not and have no intention of doing so. It is certainly astounding to see in Cologne young Turks of the fourth generation, talking to each other in the Language of rural Anatolia of two generations ago. It is also true that you will hear mutterings -- very seldom in public -- that Turkey, a Muslim country, cannot belong in a European Union of states with Christian values. On this, European propaganda can sound quite false, even absurd. A claim goes that Europeans regard minority rights as sacrosanct. But, within living memory, ethnic cleansing was the European rule, and in France it was actually stated in the Constitution that non-French local languages, for instance Breton or Provencal, were not to be used in public. In Brittany, for instance, when school children went out into the playground, they took with them a shoe which was handed to any child who spoke Breton. The last child to have to carry the shoe was beaten by the headmaster when playtime ended. In Wales, under Gladstone's Liberal government of a century ago, children were also beaten if they used Welsh, simply because in those days teachers took the view that education required proper knowledge of English. In Sweden in the 1930s they even sterilized the Lapps. Now Europeans talk a different language and try to encourage and even subsidize these dialects; a considerable bureaucracy has grown out of this, and its demands just grow and grow (as can be seen in the present French problem over Corsica, where linguistic separatism, in all ways grotesque, has emerged complete with outbreaks of urban terror). British politician Norman Tebbit immortally observed such things: it is like Jurassic Park -- you take a fossil, spend hundreds of millions on it and create a monster. Europeans, preaching minority rights, might do a great deal of damage in countries, the cohesive of which is still quite fragile. More generally, there is no doubt something of a problem with the image of Turkey in the West. Midnight Express, that brilliant but unfortunate film (its director later said that he wished he had not gone so far), is regularly shown on western television; there are, again and again, clips about the archaeological site at Hasankeyf in which Turks are accused of damaging an old Roman city of great interest because they wish to go ahead with dams that will in effect monopolize water-supplies for Turkey at her neighbors' expense. To the foreigners who actually live and work in Turkey -- there are hundreds of thousands of us -- this negative image is incomprehensible. Perhaps the Turkish government should apply itself to improving the image, but an image-problem, unquestionably, there is. One consequence is that foreign investment here is astonishingly low. Hungary, the economy of which could almost fit into the Eminonu quarter of Istanbul, gets twelve times as much as Turkey. Having lived here for nearly seven years, and seen the economy at work -- and how Turks work -- I just do not understand this, and think that an image problem is responsible. Educated Turks quite often see Europe as the savior, the creator of the economic miracle. Yes, in the 50s for Germany, and in the 60s for France, Europe was indeed associated with economic miracles. But now Europe grows very slowly; hers is a very rich market, but much of it stems from pension money rather than economic creation, and there is an enormous problem of unemployment. The present moment for Turkey is indeed very difficult indeed. But there is hope. http://www.ataa.org/spotlight/op_stone_nov19.html [ November 24, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

Turkey's Historic Role Wall Street Journal, Europe, November 7, 2001 Last week Turkey became the only Muslim country to send soldiers to Afghanistan -- and only the second NATO ally to do so. Turkey is sending 90 troops to northern Afghanistan to help train anti-Taliban fighters and administer aid. The ennui that greeted this pledge in some Western quarters utterly misses the significance of Turkey's potential role both in the current campaign to unseat the Taliban and destroy the al Qaeda network and in the broader postwar geopolitical order that must be constructed from the present chaos. The benefit of having the Turkish army on the ground is a no-brainer. Turkey's soldiers are battle-hardened, having fought Kurdish guerrillas in southeast Turkey for a decade. They are used to mountain terrain. Should Turkey be open to broader participation, it fields NATO's second largest army after the U.S. and would be no small resource for the U.S.-led effort. Nor does it take great imagination to see the PR value of Turkey's support. The willingness of a Muslim nation to send its soldiers into war in Afghanistan -- and on the eve of Ramadan -- demonstrates to the Muslim world that the West is not at war with a religion but with radical ideologues who use religion as a cover for terrorism. And yet as useful as Turkey may be for winning the war, it is indispensable in the creation of a semi-stable postwar order in that country and a saner political environment in the Muslim world. To understand why this is so, it helps to review a bit of history. Afghanistan was the first government to recognize the Turkish nationalist movement led by Kemal Mustafa Ataturk in 1921 when a second, Ottoman, government still sat in Istanbul. Ataturk rejected the revanchism and expansionism of other 20th-century ideologies. He was not an empire builder, but an adapter who recognized the Western international order and set out to make Turkey a part of it. His revolution was cultural, political and economic. It required the wholesale change of Islamic institutions, the adoption of Western legal codes and the Latin alphabet, Western clothing and formal surnames. It was Ataturk who personally opened the first Afghan embassy in Ankara in 1921. Soon afterwards, Ataturk sent a delegation of diplomats and military personnel to Kabul. When the Turkish Republic was established in 1923, one of its first foreign-policy missions was a far-reaching assistance program for Afghanistan that lasted until the late 1960s. Doctors, nurses, cartographers, engineers, architects and military personnel were sent to Afghanistan to train the local population. The war college in Kabul, the conservatory, musical institutes, medical and engineering schools were founded by Turkish advisers. The Afghan monarch, King Amanullah Khan, took secular, liberal, democratic Turkey as a model for Afghanistan. In the late 1920s, the King paid an official visit to Turkey and signed a number of friendship treaties. In the 1930s, Afghanistan became a member of the Saadabad Pact, together with Turkey and Iran -- essentially a political show of force and independence with a nervous glance toward Hitler's German juggernaut. Afghan society, however, was not quite ready for Kemalism and the king was overthrown in a fundamentalist rebellion. That was followed by a brief spasm of fundamentalism before the monarchy was restored and the Afghan trend toward modernization continued, albeit more slowly. From the mid-1960s onwards, Soviet influence in Afghanistan grew. Turkey's professionals in Afghanistan were gradually withdrawn as the Soviets moved in. Afghan military officers began to be sent to Moscow to be re-educated. A generation of education along Turkish-Western lines was replaced by a new generation of Soviet-influenced Afghans. This history is worth recalling today. Turkey can still serve as a model for Afghanistan and a partner in its civil and political rehabilitation. A post-Taliban role for Turkey might include both a humanitarian element -- ferrying aid to Afghans -- and a peacekeeping role in the prevention of civil disturbances. Turkey would also act as a gatekeeper of sorts, helping to keep outside influences at bay. In the meantime, however, Turkey can serve as a valued adviser for Washington in the war on terrorism, in which Turkey has plenty of experience. During the Oslo accords, Turkish officials worried privately that, as one Turkish official put it, "there would be a political solution but no terrorist solution." Turkey's concern was that any political framework that just assumes the terrorists would go along was a deception. Turkey was right. In its own decade-long battle with Kurdish separatism, Turkey used a different model. In September 1998 Ankara issued an ultimatum to Syria, which had been supporting the PKK terrorists. Either Syria gave up PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and ceased its support for the PKK or Turkey would use its military option. Turkey's parliament wrote the government a blank check and Turkish troops were amassed on the Syrian border. The result was unequivocal: Syria relented and Turkey got its agreement. It will not be easy for Turkey to sign up as a U.S. ally in Afghanistan with any enthusiasm. Turkey's experience following the Gulf War was not salutary. An unchastened Saddam Hussein was left in power and Turkey was saddled with a refugee crisis and a serious loss of trade. It claims that it lost some $40 billion from the Gulf War, adding to the woes of an already troubled economy. A large part of the Turkish population now looks unfavorably on the war on Afghanistan. Turkish officials also warn against a war to unseat Saddam Hussein that might leave Iraq split in three parts and with Baghdad in even more hostile hands. These are legitimate concerns and Turkey has wise counsel to offer in what is treacherous if necessary business. But Turkey can also be emboldened to play a role that it seems history has ordained. To do that, Turkey needs the assurance of Western support. The European Union could make no greater contribution to the war on Islamic radicalism than to regard Turkey's languishing membership bid as a historic imperative. The U.S. should return Turkey's loyalty -- and encourage Turkey to take up another challenge of the type Ataturk recognized early last century.

quote:Originally posted by ara baliozian: We have no idea how many writers she denounced but we will on the day the Armenian KGB files are returned to Yerevan from Kiev, where they have been transferred I think. / ara I think they are taken to Stavropol, along with many former KGB officers, who have had direct participation in the repressions and arrests of some prominant Armenians.

This is what I found for now, Raffi. If I come across other materials, will make them available. St. Nersess Shnorhali "Filled with Grace" (1102-1173) Nersess Shnorhali is, alongside Gregory of Narek, one of the towering figures of Armenian theology, liturgics, and music. Like his name-sake Nersess the Great, Shnorhali was a distinguished catholicos and builder of the church. He was ordained a celibate priest vartabed at the age of 18. At the age of thirty he was consecrated bishop by his brother Catholicos Grigor Pahlavouni, who, due to the foreign occupation of Etchmiadzin, moved the Catholical See from Etchmiadzin to Hromkla (later Sis) in Cilicia, where it remained from 1147 to 1441. He became his brother's advisor, conducting ecumenical discussions with the Roman, Greek and Syrian Churches. On April 17, 1166, Nersess became Catholicos, when his brother stepped down due to illness. As Catholicos he continued the administrative work of establishing the new Holy See in Cilicia and the ecumenical work begun by his brother. St. Nersess was a charismatic teacher, leader and writer, whence his epithet, Filled with Grace. His legacy of theological works, hymns and chants of the Armenian Church and its services include the Divine Liturgy and the daily offices of matins and vespers and many feast day services. The Armenian Church remembers St. Nersess Shnorhali during the Feast of the Holy Translators in early October. http://www.etchmiadzin.com/aboutch/calenda...ar/ners_shn.htm

Dear Boghos, Contrary to you, I don’t enjoy a nice Saturday. Here we have the first rain of the season since yesterday. I am not familiar with the nature of the current tax cuts. My understanding is that the bill is still under scrutiny, and has not reached the President’s desk, yet. Don’t know about the political issues. I just know that the [permanent] tax cuts accompanied with strict spending caps are good for the economy. As far as the details are concerned, with my traveling schedule, accompanied with my part-time job at the Hye Forum, haven’t been able to follow what’s going on beyond the war efforts. [ November 24, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

Alpha, that was good. Now I know how to get you out of your hidout. Just kidding. I think the available tax cut would lead to investments by corporations, since with the low interest rates three is no incentive to store the cash. If the corporations don’t invest directly, they will pay the cash to their shareholders through dividend payments and their shareholders will invest somewhere. On an unrelated note, Xerox has already sold several divisions. Their problems started not from the glut of inventory, but an idiotic marketing system their new (at the time) CEO introduced, which took the company apart – from one of the most successful companies to a company at the verge of bankruptcy. As a result of their new marketing system, they lost the track of billions of dollars of inventory sold for credit to their counterparties, and cannot identify where is their sold equipment. I know this from my brother, who still works for Xerox but is currently looking for job since their division got sold. Know any good jobs for electrical engineers in your area? I would put your statement about consumer confidence a little differently – the consumer debt may increase when the consumer confidence is on the rise. Clearly, the consumer confidence is negatively correlated to the unemployment rate. Additionally, the unemployment rate is correlated to the major equity indices, which are driven by stock prices of companies like IBM. So in this sense, I think the high stock prices drive high consumer confidence at least for the “grandma” investor types. I think the money “given” to corporations one or another way, ends up in peoples' pockets – a very vast segments of people – even those who don’t own stock. But I would like to make a correction again that the issue here is not giving money to corporations, but allegedly letting them to keep their money. I think there is a major difference here. Otherwise, I feel we both (actually all three of us) are in agreement. [ November 24, 2001: Message edited by: MJ ]

Thanks, Harut, Why don't you post the rest of it? Do you have it?

Interview With Turkish-Armenian Commission Member Van Krikorian Below is the text of an RFE/RL interview with Van Krikorian, chairman of the Armenian Assembly of America and a member of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission. Harry Tamrazian: From the initial media reports on the latest meeting of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission in Istanbul one can assume that the meeting had some concrete results. Can you share with us the results of the Istanbul meeting? Van Krikorian: After the announcement of the formation of the commission, people said some things in the media, which were problematic and inconsistent with the understandings that we had regarding our work. The first thing that we did, just in a very gentlemanly way, was to go over them, talk about them and clarify what people had actually said and what there were quoted as saying. We tried to get to know one another better in that regard. Second, we spent most of our time talking to people in Turkey from different parts of society, from media. I think probably there wasn't that much media coverage, because we specifically talked to a lot of journalists off the record. It was not our goal to negotiate in the media or discuss things in the media, but to meet with them as journalists and get their opinions. We met with academics, we met with diplomats and political figures and we discussed their different perceptions on a variety of questions ranging from the obvious genocide issue to other issues and there are lot of other issues actually, dividing Armenians and Turks. We started to get a range of opinions from people about what should be done to promote reconciliation between Armenians and Turks and what they think the issues are that divide us. Third, we discussed the proposal from the International Center for Transitional Justice to provide a seminar and to assist us in the work that we have undertaken. Forth, we spent some time talking about physiological issues that exist just for Armenians, just for Turks and for others that are neither Armenians nor Turks and the interactions of those three different points. We decided to have some people, put some time and effort into examining those issues defining what they are and also see if we can come up with some proposals on how to deal with them. We also began to discuss how we would go about making our recommendations or prepare our recommendations to the concerned governments, which is another important part of what we are going to be doing as a commission. Q: But despite the positive developments that you have cited, the Turkish government did not ease its policy on the issue of genocide. For example on October 2 the Turkish government summoned the Vatican's ambassador to Ankara, Luigi Conti, to the foreign ministry and orally conveyed its disappointment over the Pope's remarks, made in a joint statement with the head of the Armenian Church during a visit to Armenia last month. A: I explain it in at least two ways. First, we are not dealing with the Turkish government and the same way that Turkish government reacted to the Vatican, I can say the organization of which I am the chairman, the Armenian Assembly hasn't reacted in any other way except to commend the Pope, commend the Armenian Church for having the Pope make that statement, for inviting the Pope to Armenia and at the same time continuing all of our work internationally and especially in the United States to have the Armenian Genocide reaffirmed and recognized and the consequences of it dealt with. The commission is something separate than that. What we are doing is, while we agree that none of us are constrained in our other capacities from doing whatever we want, we are working on the areas where things might make a difference. Second, I would expect the progress that we make would be incremental. I would note that we are glad to speak in private meetings with prominent Turks about the Armenian Genocide. I would expect that that trend will continue, and the more we can get discussion of that issue to be uncensored, to be open, to be something that Turks and their society understand has to be dealt with, the better. Do I expect the Turkish government to change its policy about the Armenian genocide and all of a sudden acknowledge it on account of our commission after a couple of months work? No, absolutely not. Am I pleased that the Turkish government is allowing this process of mutually searching for answers on how to deal with the issues that divide us to go ahead? Yes. Am I pleased that we are able to talk with elite members of civil society in Turkey about these issues directly? Yes. I am very pleased about that and I think I know that represents progress, because some time ago that would have been impossible, it would have been absolutely impossible to do at the level at which we are doing it. The last point I will make is that among the people we met there were those who would say yes we should acknowledge, Turks who would say yes we should acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. There were also people who fervently believed the opposite- fervently- and those are people that we have to deal with as well not just the liberals in their society. Q: There were some concerns in the Armenian media that the commission could be an effective tool for Turkey to prevent further recognition of the Armenian Genocide in Western parliaments. In fact one of the Turkish members of TARC has made a statement in the Azeri press that the main goal of the commission is to prevent the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the European and US legislatures. A: That was the kind of statement that we dealt with quite directly in private. In public we made a statement about the different quotations that have come out after the first meeting some of which were not helpful clearly to our shared goal. Q: So did you discuss this issue in your second meeting in Istanbul and was there an agreement or some kind of consensus on how you would deal with these issues in the future? A: Absolutely, absolutely. With regard to what people say as commission members we are very clear and we adopted some media principles. We agreed to the ground rules on what people should and should not be saying about the commission's work. That is in their individual capacities as commissioners. In their non-commission capacities there were no restraints on what people say. Q: There was also some criticism in the Armenian media, in Diaspora media, that the mission of the commission was rather vague. It seems to me that your second meeting was more specific on the mission of this commission. Am I right? And also did you discuss the possibility of reopening the Turkish-Armenian border? A: Yes you are right. With regard to specific goals we are getting there. The first thing that needs to be done is to identify the issues that divide us. What do Armenians want from Turks and what do Turks want from Armenians? How can we deal with these issues? The deeper we go the more complicated a lot of the issues become. One of the things that our commission is trying to do is to promote diplomatic relations between the two countries. So that the kinds of issues that we are discussing and trying to come up with creative solutions can also be discussed on a government to government level; issues of treatment of the Armenian presence in Turkey, historically, cultural issues, business issues. The consequences of the Genocide are critical to deal with. We do talk about the consequences of the genocide. The issues of lack of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey are obviously an issue we have to deal with. The issue of border closing is an issue that we have to deal with. The issue of visas, Turkey imposed a different visa regime on Armenians from Armenia going to Turkey, is one that we have to talk about and we do talk about. Those fall within the categories of issues that divide Armenians and Turks and there are more. There are lots of opportunities and also problems in those areas that need to be explored. What this commission will accomplish if it is successful is to open up those issues to structural discussions, not polemical, not propagandistic, but serious discussion and to have some recommendations. Q: When you say the commission is discussing the consequences of genocide does it mean that the issues related to compensating genocide victims are also being discussed? A: We can say all issues [are being discussed], all issues of the Armenian Genocide, all issues of removing Armenians from their homeland, - which is not just a psychological problem it is also a legal problem. It is a deep problem. Andranik's [Mihranian] father came from Mush his mother came from Kars. My father's family came from Chimiskese my mother's family came from Shapinkarahisar. For us, that's our homeland. We love Armenia, but for us that is our homeland too. We need to explore that with our Turkish colleagues, we need to explore that with the Turkish society, we need to explore that with the Turkish decision-makers. Q: There were some concerns that the Armenian side had no adequate representation in the commission. There were suggestions to broaden the level of representation, including political parties in TARC. The commission was criticized for heavily relying on members of former ruling elite. Were these issues addressed during the Istanbul meeting? A: The ground rules for establishing the membership was the following: Each side was responsible to choose its own members. We have no control over whom they choose they have no control over whom we choose. I want to be very clear that there was no agreement that the initial ratio would be 6 to 4. They came with six people and we were working fine with four people. But we do want to increase our number - that is not something that we have to agree on with them. They were even more sensitive to the fact that people might misunderstand the six to four ratio. In [the upcoming meeting in] New York we will participate with an increased number. We also talked very much about how to broaden the base and if we need to bring other Armenians within our framework and other Turks within our framework how we could do that. We also spent a fare amount of time talking about how to encourage other Armenians and other Turks independent of us to start talking directly to one another. It is something that we want to encourage. We don't want people to think as though this commission is the exclusive means of forwarding Armenian-Turkish relations. Our intention is to encourage other people also to do that. Q: Can we say that in New York there will be more Armenian members and that the new Armenian members of the commission will represent some parliamentary party in Armenia or a Diaspora party? Can you be more specific? Today no. We have a lot of people who wanted to be on this commission from different parts of the world, from different backgrounds. We made a ranking and discussed who would fit where. I am quite sure that in New York we will have increased by one or two but at the same time I can't say who they are going to be, because we are still having the discussion with the people. Q: I am not asking you to reveal the names. My question is whether these people will represent major parliamentary parties? A: I think the answer to that is no. I can say no definitively because nobody is representing a party. Alik Arzumanian is not representing any party. I will say that we consider people from major political parties represented in the parliament but as individuals not as party members. We made some rankings and I don't want to embarrass anyone. We will not exclude any Armenian. We don't draw differences between any Armenians. I think that virtually everyone who expressed an interest could contribute. I really believe that there is no such thing as somebody being better Armenian or better candidate. Q: What is the reason for changing the venue of the next meeting. As we know now TARC has decided to move the next meeting from Yerevan to New York? A: We agreed that we will meet in Yerevan but we didn't agree that the next meeting would be in Yerevan. We are looking forward to going to Yerevan. The proposal from the International Center for Transitional Justice which is based in New York, was so important to our work that we decided that our next meeting should be in New York to start the work with that group. In Armenia, in Yerevan we are going to be engaging in the same type of activity that we engaged in Turkey that is to meet with a broad base of people who have comments positive or negative about our goal and about us. I have no question that we will hear from supporters and critics alike. But I can say definitively that we had not agreed as a commission to hold the next meeting in Yerevan. We have a significant Armenian Diaspora in New York and we also have Turkish-Americans in New York and they have a role to play in all of this as well. One of the other thing that we agreed to is that on November 2 in Washington both Mr. Samberk and I will be addressing the annual meeting of the Assembly of Turkish-American associations which I think is a great opportunity for both of us and especially for me because it is an opportunity for an Armenian to go and talk about the Armenian prospective on the issues that divide us, to talk about the Armenian Genocide and the need to deal with it and to engage with what has become a significant voice in this debate that is Turkish-Americans. Q: We know now that the commission will soon have its secretariat and TARC website. It seems to me that you are going to have a permanent functioning structure? Tell us more about that. A: I think your assumption is correct. We will probably have a permanent functioning structure. We had substantial discussions about where the secretariat should be and we have received different proposals on it, whether we should have secretariat in Yerevan and Istanbul, whether we should have a secretariat in North America, whether we should have a secretariat in Europe. I think I probably just violated one of our rules in terms of discussing in public things that are discussed in private and have not been decided on and I hope that my fellow commissioners will forgive me for that. We are still having the discussion on where the secretariat ought to be. http://www.armenialiberty.org/ar-report/20...11011112612.asp

CONGRESSMAN CROWLEY'S AMENDMENT URGES ARMENIA'S INCLUSION IN BAKU-CEYHAN PIPELINE Amendment Not Approved, House Legislation Not Affected WASHINGTON - During a House Financial Services Committee meeting today, Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and several colleagues offered an amendment to prohibit Export-Import Bank funding for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline if it does not transit Armenia. The Crowley amendment, which was co-sponsored by Michael Capuano (D-MA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Michael Rogers (R-MI) and Brad Sherman (D-CA), reads: "The Bank shall not guarantee, insure, or extend credit, or participate in an extension of credit in connection with the export of any good or service that is to be used in the planning, development, construction, or maintenance of a pipeline from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, Turkey, that will not pass through Armenia." While the amendment had strong support, it lost by a vote of 20 (yes) - 24 (no). The amendment has no impact on separate legislation - H. Con. Res. 162 - introduced earlier this session by Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues Co-Chairs Congressmen Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and fellow Caucus members Congressmen Crowley and John Sweeney (R-NY). H. Con. Res. 162, which has over 40 co-sponsors, discourages the use of American taxpayers' funds for energy transportation projects in the Caucasus if they exclude consideration of trans-Armenia routes. The resolution also recommends that the Trade Development Agency fund a feasibility study to determine the cost savings of a trans-Armenia Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. During today's hearing, it was estimated that a trans-Armenia pipeline would save some $600 million. "We commend Congressman Crowley for his strong initiative and thank his colleagues that co-sponsored the amendment and those who voted for it," said Bryan Ardouny, Armenian Assembly Director of Government Relations. "Although Armenia has successfully implemented economic reform measures, as long as it remains blockaded on its eastern and western borders and is isolated from regional development projects at Azerbaijan's insistence, Armenia will not be able to reach its full economic potential. Winners and losers in the Caucasus will not promote regional stability and is not in the long-term interests of the United States," he added. In the Assembly's letter to Committee members in support of the amendment, which Congresswoman Barbara Lee asked to be included in the record, the Assembly noted that "The U.S. should make it clear that Armenia must be included in regional and trans-regional economic development projects." Assembly staff and several New York activists met with Congressman Crowley in his Queens district office in late August to thank him for his initiatives and continued support. The Export-Import Bank helps American exporters meet government-supported financing competition from other countries, so that U.S. exports can compete for overseas business on the basis of price, performance and service. http://www.aaainc.org/press/10-31-01.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Joan Ablett November 14, 2001 (202) 393-3434 PROTECTION FOR ARMENIANS UNDERSCORED IN TEMPORARY SECTION 907CHANGES Conference Committee Approves $90 Million in Aid to Armenia Washington, DC - The Armenian Assembly today praised the action of the joint Conference Committee, in particular, the leadership of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), approving limited changes to Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Those changes ensure protection for Armenians and include $90 million in aid to Armenia plus an additional $4 million in Foreign Military Financing. The final agreement includes strong language emphasizing that any assistance to Azerbaijan cannot be used for aggressive purposes against Armenian communities in the Southern Caucasus. Congress also reserves the right to review the conditional waiver to Section 907 in the Fiscal Year 2003 bill. The general bill includes language on confidence-building measures and report language on prompt disbursement of aid to Nagorno Karabagh. This action comes after the Senate-approved version of the bill late last month which followed President George W. Bush's request for more flexibility in the Caucasus region to conduct the war on terrorism. The changes spelled out in amendments introduced by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) prevent a proposed total waiver of Section 907 but protect both America's and Armenia's security interests. "The Assembly's goal is to assist and protect all Armenians and this Conference Committee result achieved exactly that. The final language makes it clear that Congress reserves the right to review changes to Section 907 next year, in the FY 2003 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. It also states in no uncertain terms that any assistance to Azerbaijan cannot be used for aggressive purposes against Armenian communities in the Southern Caucasus. Finally, assistance is maintained at $90 million and an additional $4 million is added for Foreign Military Financing," said Assembly Government Relations Director Bryan Ardouny. "We commend Senator McConnell for his leadership in assuring that the interests of all Armenians and all Americans are maintained in this legislation. We also thank the other three principals who worked to achieve this result - Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) as well as Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues Co-Chairs Congressmen Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and all those who supported this final agreement." The report language also includes "not less than $300,000 for International Military Education Training." It emphasizes the importance of progress in the peace process and indicates that any congressional review of Section 907 will take into account Azerbaijan's behavior in the peace talks. The conference report also recommended that $5 million be used for an education initiative and calls for the timely completion of the investigation of the November 30, 2000 murder of John Alvis, the resident director of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in Azerbaijan. The Conference Committee's bill language confirms the Assembly's view that Section 907 was amended to protect American and Armenian security interests, is balanced and supports the U.S.-led coalition forces as they conduct the war against terrorism in the region. In an earlier statement, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) emphasized the protection provided by his amendment to Section 907. He said, "Counter-terrorism assistance to Azerbaijan will not be forthcoming unless the President determines and certifies to Congress that the assistance will not undermine or hamper ongoing efforts to negotiate a peaceful settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan or be used for offensive purposes against Armenians. The Administration has assured us that they support peaceful negotiations and that none of our counter-terrorism efforts will disrupt these talks." Senator McConnell also thanked the Armenian-American community, saying, "I also want to recognize the invaluable input and encouragement of patriotic Armenian-Americans who understand the importance of supporting America's efforts to fight terrorism on every front." The Assembly successfully opposed both repeal and blanket waiver of this important legislation. However, congressional friends advised the Assembly and others that given the current international crisis, presidential waiver authority would be granted, in some form. Section 907 restricts U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan until it removes its blockades of Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh. The blockades have severely hindered economic development in the region, causing high unemployment and unprecedented economic crisis. It was adopted in 1992 by Congress to address Azerbaijan's aggressions against Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh. Each year since 1992, both bodies of Congress have repeatedly affirmed the need for Section 907. http://www.aaainc.org/press/11-14-01.htm

quote:Originally posted by hagarag: RJR was nothing but a bloodthirsty pseudo-Christian savage who had my mother's blood on his hands. He was no better than the henchmen of Talaat, Jemal and Enver. MJ, take your fundamentalist crap somewhere else. You know nothing of the essence of Jesus and everything of the essence of Saul of Tarsus. Khodja, I am getting tired of your crap. Is there limit to your idiocy?

St. Nerses the Gracious (1102-1172) Morning Song O Day-spring, Sun of righteousness, shine forth with light for me! Treasure of mercy, let my soul thy hidden riches see! Thou before whom the thoughts of men lie open in thy sight, Unto my soul, now dark and dim, grant thoughts that shine with light! O Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Almighty One in Three, Care-taker of all creatures, have pity upon me! Awake O Lord, awake to help, with grace and power divine; Awaken those who slumber now, like heaven's host to shine! O Lord and Saviour, life-giver, unto the dead give life, And raise up those that have grown weak and stumbled in the strife! O skilful Pilot! Lamp of light, that burnest bright and clear! Strength and assurance grant to me, now hid away in fear! O thou that makest old things new, renew me and adorn; Rejoice me with salvation, Lord, for which I inly mourn. Giver of good, unto my sins be thy forgiveness given! Lead thy disciples, heavenly King, unto the flocks of heaven! Defeat the evil husbandman that soweth tares and weeds; Wither and kill in me the fruits of all his evil seeds! O Lord, grant water to my eyes, that they may shed warm tears To cleanse and wash away the sin that in my soul appears! On me now hid in shadow deep, shine forth, O glory bright! Sweet juice, quench thou my soul's keen thirst! Show me the path of light! Jesus, whose name is love, with love crush thou my stony heart; Bedew my spirit with thy blood, and bid my griefs depart! O thou that even in fancy art so sweet, Lord Jesus Christ, Grant that with thy reality my soul may be sufficed! When thou shalt come again on earth, and all thy glory see, Upon that dread and awful day, O Christ, remember me! Thou that redeemest men from sin, O Saviour, I implore, Redeem him who now praises thee, to praise thee evermore! (The above rendering is incomplete; there are in fact thirty-six stanzas, each consisting of three verses, all the verses of each stanza starting with one letter of the Armenian alphabet - which in those times still consisted of only thirty-six letters. There exist at least half a dozen different musical settings of this rather popular, early-morning hymn.) http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/ArmPoet.html

http://www.freebooks.commentary.net/freebo...face/18pref.pdf

Contra Mundum No. 13 Fall 1994 Interview With R.J. Rushdoony -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rousas J. Rushdoony spoke at the Appalachian Conference to Rebuild America Conference (ACTRA) in Johnson City, Tennessee in September, 1994. Contra Mundum conducted this interview at the conference, the theme of which was "God's Law and the New Political Order". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CM: How did you first became interested in 'theonomy' and the application of God's law to society? Rushdoony: First of all, in our part of Armenia, God's law was taken for granted. You were a Christian and you went by the Bible. If you were a Moslem, as the Turks were, you went by the Koran. There was a clear-cut choice, two ways of life. The dietary laws in the old country were maintained. In fact, when the Armenians adopted Christianity, they took the law so seriously that the royal family agreed to provide voluntarily an order of Levi for the church. Out of their own pocket, they would finance a clergy - leaving room of course for others. The only distinction was that those priests which came from the old nobility and the old royal line - of which the Rushdoonys were one - were called "lord father". The others were simply called "father". They had a married clergy. Our family provided a priest for the church from somewhere around the year 315 to the present. And up through my grandfather's day, it was at the family's expense. This was not always father and son; it was sometimes father and brother, or father and nephew. In my case, I am the eigth generation of father and son. Tomorrow when I preach here, my son Mark will be preaching in Vallecito. The belief was that this was a moral duty. Since the government of Armenia by various royal families ended during the Medieval period, it meant that various families provided the government. Thus the old royal families provided the priests without any cost to the church. Other families provided the judge, the mayor, and the police. These were regarded as hereditary duties, which they had to perform and were honored to perform. That's how they survived these many centuries. They were not the only people to do this, but it worked especially well in Armenia. CM: Is it true that both of your grandfathers were martyred by the Turks? Rushdoony: A number in the family were killed. My maternal grandfather knew that he was trapped, so he sang a hymn, and went ahead and was killed. CM: Why do you think so little is said of the ethnic purging of the Armenians under the Turks? We hear so much of genocide in the 20th century but very rarely is the case of the Armenians mentioned. Is there a reason for that? Rushdoony: Yes. The figures are constantly revised downward, from two million to a million to a few thousand. There is a reason for that. A great deal of history is being rewritten. It is my belief that a man teaching in a smaller school is more likely to be a good historian and a superior historian than a man teaching in a major university. Increasingly the chairs of history in major universities are endowed by various foreign governments. This is to control history-writing in a particular area. One of the most bitter controversies in southern California in recent years was when certain Arab states were going to create a Middle Eastern Studies Center - at the University of Southern California, I think it was. Immediately there was a massive Jewish protest. The whole project was cancelled. This doesn't mean that Arabs aren't funding things - just as Jews are funding things. The Turks are funding a great deal, on the condition that certain subjects are avoided or are twisted as they are dealt with. Recently, one scholar found in the National Archives material that showed how extensive the Armenian massacres were in one out-of-the-way province where it was not normally believed that much had taken place. Her book, published under the title Slaughterhouse Province, was quite revelatory and a surprise to many reviewers. The interesting thing she reported was that even while she was working on this project she found that the Turks were allowed access to the National Archives and were destroying material derogatory to them regarding the massacres. This is the pattern. One major scholar who was an authority on Medieval Armenian architecture was forbidden to give a lecture in which he was going to discuss the architecture and the destruction of some of the great monuments by the Turks. So, the censorship is extreme, the destruction of original source documents is extreme. That is why some of the most stimulating work of late in general history have come out of schools that many people have never heard of. It is because independent scholarship can function in the smaller colleges in a way it can not in the major universities. CM: I suspect that scholarship is also driven and controlled by federal programs and initiatives. Scholars who are in competition for research grants - say NEH grants - are careful to follow what is in vogue in modern scholarship. Do you see that? Rushdoony: That is an indirect way of controlling knowledge, or pseudo-knowledge. There are many indirect ways, so that today we know very little about what was going on. For example, I did not know, except for a sentence in one British periodical, that there is a major railroad strike in Great Britain which has cost billions of pounds to be lost from the economy. But has our media carried anything about it? It is sinking Britain to the level of Portugal, one person told me, yet what has our media reported? It is a major world event. CM: Let me ask another question on the Armenian connection. Christianity Today did an article some years back on Christian Reconstruction. They emphasized the Armenian background of the Monophysite-Chalcedonian controversy and suggested that that might have influenced your own interests in the Council of Chalcedon. Rushdoony: The church of Armenia was and still is monophysite. There are strands within the church that take that very seriously. In recent years a book was published by one Armenian scholar, who is very strongly monophysite and anti-Chalcedonian. Others regard it as a consequence of the fact that in 451 no one could attend the Counsel of Chalcedon because they were in a life and death struggle with the Persian Zoroastrians, and the struggle lasted about 75 years. They were, for a time, totally out of touch with the West. Afterwards, Byzantium was a persecuting factor, so it gave them a hostility to the Eastern Orthodox churches. And later to Rome also, for other reasons. So, they associated Chalcedon with two persecuting groups. The Church of Armenia was closer to what Anglicanism was at its best - in its years before modernism and deism infected it. So my interest in Chalcedon came from independent studies. George Huntston Williams was influential. So too, later, was Dr. Cornelius Van Til. I saw it as basic to our world today, because Chalcedon was a block in the way of the redivinization, Roman-style, of the state. We are in the process of redivinizing the state. CM: Why has there been so much hostility to theonomy and your critique of statism? The evangelical community has reacted very sharply to the application of God's law to the whole of society. Is that a pietistic influence? Rushdoony: Whenever you have had a clear-cut statement of the Reformed faith, you have had hostility. Consider the hostility that Athanasius encountered - venomous to the nth degree. He was charged with raping a virgin. The so-called virgin was a prostitute who had never seen Athanasius. In the courtroom - since he came in at the same time as the prosecutor - Athanasius was pointed out but she mistook the prosecutor for him. She identified the prosecutor as her rapist which blew the trial. He was framed on a murder charge. Anything they could think of they did - but it did not work. The hostility that Calvin created - I have a reproduction in my library of a picture of Calvin, from his own time. His entire head is made up of reptiles. The nose, the eyebrows, the ears, everything, was made of reptiles coiled in every way. The hatred he engendered was such that they were shooting guns off under his window to keep him from sleeping and sicking their dogs on him. Or consider Cyril Lucarus the patriarch in Constantinople. His influence is still not appreciated - it went throughout Central Europe and into the Turkish empire and Armenia. He was thrice jailed. The Jesuits were behind it because they had influence with the Turkish government. And each time he came back he revived everything he had started, so the last time they had him killed. Or the hatred that Van Til engendered, which was so phenomenal. I was newly ordained at the Indian reservation, but even in that out-of-the-way area I knew that somehow this man was regarded as some kind of demonic terror who had come to destroy the Church of Christ. It was venom of an unprecedented character. It almost killed the man. It gave him serious heart trouble and Dr. Gilbert den Dulk was responsible for restoring him to health. When it has been clearly and sharply presented, the faith has always engendered hostilities, no matter how sweetly it has been presented. When so much of the church is made up of compromisers, who try to keep a foot in both camps, then anyone who unequivocally presents the faith is going to be hated. So, its just to be expected. CM: Can you describe the importance of common law? Rushdoony: As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy said, English common law is simply Biblical law. It has some additions, but it is basically Biblical law. The common law tradition still exists in almost all the states. In some that have an Hispanic or French origin for their laws, it is virtually nonexistent. But elsewhere it prevails, most notably in New York and California. This is why both states can have extremely liberal and extremely conservative decisions in law, because the judge is capable of overruling the statute law in terms of common law and common equity. Common law is no longer taught in law schools. It has very strong limitations on the powers of attorney and their fees, and so it is not popular. Many lawyers are not too knowledgable where common law is concerned. Herbert Titus, a professor of law, has pointed out that common law calls for prosecution where abortion exists. He has said that if there were a crusading and dedicated district attorney anywhere, he could prosecute these people because of the common law. The common law has not been repealed. CM: What do you think of the treatment of America's Christian history by the neo-evangelical historians - Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, George Marsden. They are professing Christians and usually claim to be Calvinistic and Reformed, yet are revisionist in their understanding of America's Christian heritage. Rushdoony: Such men are traditional Calvinists. Their affiliation is ostensibly Calvinistic, but in reality they are hostile to it. They insist on an impossible standard as constituting Christianity. In terms of their definition - which is similar to Nietzsche and others - there have been no Christians since Christ. As a result, they have imposed perfectionist standards on the definition of a Christian. Well, some of these people have clearly liberal ideas to begin with. Their views on Genesis are usually suspect. And their position is often neo-Thomistic, and they are strong adherents of natural law. As Christians we cannot believe in natural law, because we believe that nature is fallen. We have to see supernatural law as normative; nature is non-normative. Incidentally, the medieval usage of the term "natural law" really means the "law over nature", because it is defined by the medieval scholars as the word of God - because they identify it with God's law. CM: Usually these historians have collectivist notions and they typically draw their ideas about society and history from Niebuhr and other neo-orthodox theologians. Have you noticed that, too? Rushdoony: Yes, very definitely. That is emphatically true. In his day, Fred Nymeyer certainly incurred the wrath of those people. Have you ever heard Niebuhr speak? He was a very dynamic lecturer of the old school. When he got worked up he was like Billy Sunday. He was diametrically opposed to the modern idea of a liberal scholar. My father knew him years ago in the 1920s in Detroit, when he was a pastor there. Niebuhr was usually quite agitated. He did make a good remark in his first book, Leaves from the Diary of a Tamed Cynic, when he said that churches too often are comparable to the Red Cross - not in the battle, but on the sidelines to nurse the wounded. CM: Can you comment on Doug Kelly's book, The Emergence of the Idea of Liberty in the Modern World. Rushdoony: Doug Kelly used to work with us at Chalcedon. Its a good study. The best work on that topic is by Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, who sees western culture and law as grounded on the doctrine of the atonement. Justice is basic to the being of God. The word righteousness means justice. Because justice is so basic to the nature of God, his law governs us. There must be the fulfillment of his requirement, that wrongs be righted. This means that there is freedom under law. By grounding it in the atonement, we have the heart of the matter most clearly. CM: Are there other books and scholars that you found influential as a young man as you were developing a world view? Rushdoony: I had the privilege of studying under George Hunston Williams, later the Harvard Divinity School church historian and one of the greatest medievalists. Also under Ernst Kantorowicz, author of The King's Two Bodies and Frederick II. Kantorowicz, though not a believer, and apparently at the other end of the spectrum as far as faith and morality were concerned, was remarkable in that he saw theology as the key to history. His works make this clear. And in his marvelous lectures on Byzantine history, his emphasis was on the theology of the politics of each era. For example, he and Gerhard Ladner pointed out that in the iconoclastic controversy the issue was not merely icons but the meaning of the icons. Whose image represents God incarnate - the image of the emperor, or the image of Christ? The images of Christ and the saints were finally permitted, but only on a one-dimensional level, so that the primacy belonged to the emperor. In the iconoclastic controversy in Eastern Orthodoxy, the state took priority over the church. Williams and Kantorowicz were exhilarating because they opened up the meaning of history. I had the privilege of reading and coming to know by correspondence Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, whose Out of Revolution is a marvelous study. Harold Berman acknowledges his debt to those three men in his Law and Revolution - which interested me since my debt to those men is so great. I came to those three men with a Calvinistic faith; everything they had to say was a major support for my belief. CM: Some of the more honest historians of the past, even the liberal ones, have appreciated the culture of the west and have understood that concepts of liberty, justice, and freedom were rooted in Christian theology. Yet in the late 20th century there has been a reaction against that, and the western heritage has been seen as an evil legacy. Can you comment? Rushdoony: I would say that nine-tenths of the hostility to me has come from within the church. Even when it has come from without, it has relied upon church sources. Christianity Today, because of its importance to the secular media, set the temper. Nine-tenths of what they use against me comes from Christianity Today. CM: Of your thirty some books, which do you think are the best? Rushdoony: The next ones. CM: Do you have any favorites, or ones that you think have been particularly influential? Rushdoony: A number have been quite influential. Back in the 1950s when I was writing The Messianic Character of American Education, Dorothy thought it was interesting, but wondered why I was so intensely involved in a seemingly hopeless subject since public schools were totally in command. But a great deal has happened since then. So that has been gratifying. The interesting thing is that almost on publication a number of state boards of education asked someone to review the book for them since they were concerned. (The churches paid almost no attention.) In Virginia, the attorney who reviewed it sent me a copy of his report in which he strongly approved of the book, having been converted to Christian education through it. The Politics of Guilt and Pity surprised me. It had a powerful impact on many. Steve Schlissel became Reformed through it, and went to visit Dr. Van Til, together with his elders. The Myth of Overpopulation - even the Wall Street Journal recommended it. It was the beginning of Otto Scott's conversion. Of course The Institutes of Biblical Law had an impact. In some ways I regard volume two as even more important, but a lot of people stop when they finish the first volume. A great deal of what I had to say today is really a development of what I had to say about the meaning of communion in the second volume. I feel very strongly about my systematic theology. And of course the commentaries, Genesis through Deuteronomy, Romans and Galations - which are not yet published because of a lack of funds - I feel are very important because I try to relate my commentary to the real world around us. In other words, what does God have to say, and how does it apply? To illustrate, one of the saddest facts is that we have had generations of commentators dealing with, say, I Cor. 6, where Paul says that they should not go to ungodly judges. Commentary after commentary deals with that, defining the Greek words and explaining the meaning, but never telling you what happened and what it was about. What it was about was that they were going to ungodly judges against one another and getting decisions that were evil, in some instances. What did he tell them to do? To create your own courts. And for centuries after the fall of Rome those were the only courts of Europe. That is a tremendously important fact. There are so many things like that, which created new institutions and created shifts in civilizations, which are in the texts of Scripture. What commentator has touched on that? They are brilliant in some ways, and I don't hesitate to rely on commentaries. But it is as though they don't live in the same world that you and I live in. And that's terrible. It makes me think of a scholar in the Netherlands named Wulf, I think, who wanted to write something definitive. He wanted a great scholarly work in the field and he decided on angelology, in every religion and cult. He did nothing but study angels. He acquired vast linguistic knowledge in order to study the documents in the original. Having tenure, he refused to teach anything other than angelology. Finally, he had no students, which made him glad, since now he could spend all his time and his salary on angelology. Finally his wife left him, which made it easier for him to work. There was nobody there to nag him or bother him. So finally he finished the seventh and last volume of his manuscript, and went to bed happily that night because he had written a work that could not be rivaled. That night God spoke - a fire burned down his house and destroyed his life's work. We don't have scholars quite that abstracted from the world, but too often in their writings and their commentaries they are withdrawn from reality. It's like the scholar who told me that I had done a very fine work in The Institutes, volume one, but that it was a sad and tragic work because it was aimed at laymen when it should have been written for scholars to set up a dialogue. There was no sense of the real world. Scholarly interchange is the goal of scholarship. But that is barren and impotent. CM: What do you consider your worst work? Are there any that have been flops, or that you wish you could have done differently? Rushdoony: No, I have been content with them. Of course, every time I finish a work and proofread it, I wish I could start over again. But I have said what I wanted to say and what God wanted me to say, and I move on. The two semi-failures, although I like them both, are the tithing book, because people are not interested in tithing and don't want to be told to do it, and The Roots of Inflation, because people are not interested in practical subjects. So they don't know what is coming or what is happening right now to their money. CM: There are different nuances in the Reconstructionist movement. Many of these reconstructionist leaders were at one time or another associated with Chalcedon. What has caused all these different theonomic camps? Rushdoony: I would rather not be specific. I helped a number of young scholars through Chalcedon, sometimes when I didn't have enough for my own salary. I made sure that they had something to help them through seminary or graduate school, as the case may be. They rewarded me with hatred, when I disagreed with what I felt were untenable directions. They have been very hostile. I had the feeling that some of them thought that Reconstruction was something that was going to sweep the church and it was a good bandwagon to get on. When troubles came, they turned on me as though somehow I had caused it. Very often it was their personalities. And they have not in some instances truly been Reconstructionists. They have simply used it, and are stuck with it, and that's the problem. Let me say, they are but two or three individuals. We have a staff well into the twenties, and there are independent movements in many countries that are associated with us, but which we don't control. So really, except on the American scene where they make some kind of impact in some quarters, they are not important as far as the movement. CM: You spent a lot of time and energy "in the trenches" in the 1960s defending Christian education. It must be rewarding to see the blossoming of Church schools and home schools. It is easy, today, to see Christian education as a major instrument in Christian Reconstruction. But what did the future look like twenty or thirty years ago when you were doing that initial groundwork? Rushdoony: It has been very gratifying to see what has happened since I wrote Messianic Character, when Christian education was almost nonexistent. The trials were very intense matters. Chalcedon paid my way to these trials. Maybe twice somebody made a contribution to Chalcedon for my services. Mostly these were churches, home-schoolers, and Christian schools which could not afford the money. The authorities would look for a new school which was meeting in a church basement which looked as primitive as a Christian school could, to make an example of it, and to say that this is the crude sort of thing that passes as Christian education. The defendants very often had no money. In one instance, in Alabama, they had chosen two brothers and their wives - very devout, rural people, the kind that were openly being described as "rednecks". They had implied that they were incapable of giving their children a good education since they themselves didn't have one. The trial was interesting, because when a professional educator tested the children from these two families, they were far ahead of the public school children. The families had been very crudely treated by the state. The contempt for them as rednecks was apparent throughout the trial. The judge, a marvelous man, said that "I will give an oral decision now, in favor of the defendants", and went on to express his contempt for the prosecutor and the educators who were involved. It was a marvelous thing to witness. I never encountered a judge the equal of that man. I think it was in Georgia, maybe Alabama. CM: What advice do you have for Christian parents who want to send their children on college? Rushdoony: I think the closer to home the better. Keep them at home, even if they go to a secular college. Most Christian colleges are church-related, rather than Christ-related. In many instances, even in very fundamentalist groups, the faculties are evil. I've been astounded at some ostensibly Christian colleges, of ultra-fundamentalist groups, at what appears on their faculties. CM: H.L. Mencken once said that the best way to reform American higher education was to strangle all the professors and burn down all the colleges. He may have had a point. Rushdoony: I feel sorry for the Christians in the colleges and universities. There are a great many good men, but what they buck in the way of administrative policy and faculty jealousy is very, very sad. You wonder if someday we shouldn't start designating as Christian martyrs people in such contexts. CM: A young man wants to go into the ministry and is looking for a good place to study. What would you recommend? Rushdoony: The denominations are increasingly saying "go to our schools, or else". Some are taking the solution of taking two years where they can trust the teaching, and then go to the denominational school. Whitefield Seminary at Lakefield, Florida is a correspondence school. While I am not agreement with their position on apologetics, it is a very superior school. Its an excellent place for a man who already has a job and a family and cannot afford to drop out and go to a conventional seminary. There are a number of alternatives, and I am only familiar with a limited number. CM: Is Whitefield Seminary similar in its methods and goals to Valley Christian University, which you were involved with some years ago? Rushdoony: Yes, in that Valley Christian was trying to help men who, somewhat later in life, decided that they needed a degree for professional reasons, or for academic reasons needed an advanced degree to get a promotion. Because of that fact, its students were of a remarkably high caliber. Ironically, the state of California shut it down because the curriculum director, who had been at the University of California, Berkeley, had refused to employ one scholar who then got a job with the state accreditation committee. He gained his revenge by wiping out Valley University without examining a single record. CM: Is it true that Morton Downey was a Valley Christian graduate? Rushdoony: Yes, a very sad case. He was a brilliant man. He was called Sean, because his father was also Morton Downey, and was the great Irish tenor of the twenties. Morton, or Sean, was Catholic, and was very intense and idealistic. His intensity had gotten him into trouble a time or two. He had become intensely involved in the pro-life movement. He was, at that time, on television and radio, and was doing all he could to promote the pro-life movement. But in bitterness he broke with the whole movement when he came to realize that they were more interested in protecting their own turf than in succeeding. For example, there was an antiabortion bill that was going to pass in the Florida legislature. A majority of the men in the legislature favored it, but it was killed by the pro-life people, because it made two exceptions - in cases of incest or rape. The promoters of the bill said that they could only get it through with those exceptions. The pro-life people dropped it. They made clear that if anything against abortion passed, they had to originate it and they had to get credit for it. That kind of thing so embittered Sean Downey that he was almost in a murderous rage - so he broke with them. His attitude was that these so-called Christian groups were only interested in having power and protecting their turf. They want a lifelong job fighting abortion - they don't want to eliminate it. And he was not far wrong in some cases. So he went into a bitter cynicism. It was very sad to see. CM: Do you anticipate continuing global fragmentation? Some suggest that regionalism and the breakdown of countries, as we have seen recently in the old USSR and Yugoslavia, will be the wave of the future. Do you have any feelings about this? Rushdoony: One scholar has said that the United States may well break up into nine regions, or states. I am not ready to see that yet, but his arguments made some sense. Certainly you are seeing major steps towards trying to break federal power. The states rights rebellion of a few years ago has revived in another form, in Nevada and other states as well. They are fighting the limitations and abolition in some cases of grazing permits. We have seen devastating forest fires in our area and throughout the west. There have always been forest fires, but more now than ever before. Granted that a high percentage of these have been arson. But federal policy have made arson more viable. It used to be that ranchers were given grazing permits to take their herds into federal forests. This served a very good purpose. First, it meant that the grass on the forest floor was eaten. Now the dead grass piles up, year after year, and when there is a fire it is almost unstoppable. Then, the cows broke down the greasewood-type of brush, but at the same time they didn't eat the young trees. So, they furthered growth on the forest floor and helped eliminate the threat of fires. The new policy is that this creates an unnatural condition. So fires are also seen as natural. It has reached the point that, as one scholar put it, it is all right for Australian aborigines to set fires, but not for white men. Somehow the white man is unnatural, and the aborigine is. So we have all kinds of absurdities. The hostility to policy out of Washington is intense. My son Mark has a position in the volunteer fire crew. He loves the work and will often be called to emergency duty on the forest line. One of the crazy things, is that the state of California has said that one way of preventing trees - such as pines and cedars - from exploding into flames is to cut all the lower branches up to twenty feet. Then a grass fire on the surface won't set the trees on fire. (The bull pine that catches fires explodes because it has so much pitch in it and it can hurl burning branches a hundred feet.) But the federal government says that you cannot do this to trees. This means that the possibilities of fires of a major scale increase. CM: What do you expect in the future - twenty or fifty years? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Rushdoony: In the short term - say the next ten, fifteen, twenty years - its going to be grim. Long-term, very good, because I believe the Word of God. It tells us that the wages of sin are always death. And all they that hate me, God says, love death. It is ridiculous for Christians to believe that the opposition can win. They have been destroying - through state education - the Christian character of this country, and therefore have been destroying themselves. As long as they left that Christian character untouched, they were successful. But they are suicidal. They are kicking the sleeping Christian in the teeth. And he is waking up slowly - so they are going to lose. They are going to die. We are going to see grim days ahead; we are going to see the economy collapse; we are going to see disasters all over the world - which we are already seeing; we are going to see nations collapse. It's going to be a time of trouble. Its also going to be a great opportunity. A great many historians saw the era after the fall of Rome as the Dark Ages. They saw it as such because they were statists, and Rome and Greece were their ideals. They were times of political instability but not as bad as the horrors under Rome. The Roman tax collectors had the power to torture, and they did torture, because they wanted every last penny they could get out of you. The so-called Dark Ages, as William Carroll Bark described in his The Origins of the Medieval World, were a time of the frontier thinkers - the church fathers - who laid down the foundations of western freedom. He saw it as a tremendously stimulating period. Incidentally, he told me in the sixties, that the history department at Stanford now began with the Renaissance, and that medieval and Roman history was banished to the classics department. I think that people will soon feel that they are in a new Dark Age. But it will be the death of humanistic statism, and the throes of birth for Christian freedom. So I am hopeful in long run and know that ours is the victory. "This is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith". CM http://www.visi.com/~contra_m//cm/intervie..._interview.html

Don't I like shaking this forum a little bit. You shake it, and all the balls fall into the the appropriate holes.

Dear Boghos, I have two types of comments: 1. As far as the Washington Post Editorial is concerned, I think its last sentence characterizes the article very well. Here it is: “The Democrats have an alternative that would expand unemployment insurance and help the unemployed maintain their health insurance. That's what this bill ought to do. If they can't do that, they should just go home.” While I have no objections to the premise of his expectation, and I think there are serious problems with the US Health Insurance system (as a self-employed person I bear its consequences), and while I think the US unemployment insurance system by in large is adequate, I would like to notice that this had nothing to do with the economy or its stimulation. In the traditional spirit of the left, I think this sentence, more precisely its positioning against the tax cuts is indicative of a commonly shared by the left feeling paraphrased as “I hate you for having money. Give it to me.” 2. I would definitely be much more welcoming of a discussion, even if it is non-compromising, on the principles of the economy and the differing underlying conceptual paradigms. In this context, I’d like to say that I didn’t mean that the tax cut is directly leading to consumer confidence. But let’s have a little geek-conversation. Company’s stock is a long call option on the assets of the company struck at the level of its liabilities. Reduced Taxes lead to reduced liabilities, therefore to lower strike prices, thus making the option more in the money, therefore more valuable. This is one of the components pushing the stock prices high. (I base my arguments on Robert Merton’s implementation of option’s theory in corporate finance). The second component is the increased earnings expectation. Earnings of the company do depend on the consumers’ confidence to spend. Clearly, more confident the consumers, more they are open to spending. Therefore, the consumer confidence also leads to higher stock prices. However, one may argue, as you do, I think, that high stock prices are not necessarily indicative of actual future earnings, and they may be based on much rosier expectations and lead to over-investments, as it has happened in the last six years or so. No doubt about it. If the consumer confidence anticipates too much a risk premium, sooner or later the market is going to take them (as it has happened last couple of years) to a correction cycle. However, the lack of consumer confidence would definitely lead to decreased expected earnings. Furthermore, if one can argue that the consumer confidence may be “inflated” and not necessarily lead the market towards growth over the long-run, Tax Cuts are an assured way of boosting the markets up with a potential of triggering consumer confidence, which in turn may trigger better expected earnings, since I would conjecture that the consumer confidence is positively correlated to the indices referenced above. But as I mentioned previously, and as you indicate in your note in a slightly different way, this goes on for a while till we reach another cycle of saturation of the market, leading to a correction cycle. In the context of sending IBM a check… I don’t see the Tax Cut as sending IBM a check. I rather see it allowing IBM to keep its money, thus increasing its actual earnings while reducing the liabilities – a win-win situation in terms of boosting their stock prices, which would take a long the S&P500 and NASDAQ indices up for ride. I am aware of high levels of individual debt around. But I think it is not (at least directly) tied to the tax cuts, but it is related to the borrowing cost, which is artificially being brought down. In this sense, I welcome the tax cut, but I oppose the artificial lowering of the short-term interest rates, because it is at the expense of the long-term national debt. Obviously, there is a threshold that one has to be able to carefully calculate so that not to overplay the “hand.” But this is the harder thing to do than to conceptualize the issue. This is where, I believe the opinions may differ. As far as Freedman is concerned, I do think highly of him and accept his authority. But from your comment I understand that his is opposing the “stimulus packages.” Is it about the tax cuts or is it about the bail-outs? As far as the interests of governments and professionals are concerned, I think governments are interested in upward markets (even the leftist ones) and the professionals are interested in maximizing shareholder value, according to the given risk tolerance appetites. This is good, I think. So much of a geek-talk for now.