Money, Propaganda and Fanaticism

Bertrand Russell: Power

Ideology and Fanaticism

To understand Marx psychologically, one should use the following dictionary:

Yahweh	Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah	Marx
The Elect	The Proletariat
The Church	The Communist Party
The Second Coming	The Revolution
Hell	Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium	The Communist Commonwealth

(p 361)

In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings. …
The habit of careful veracity acquired in the practice of this philosophical method can be extended to the whole sphere of human activity, producing, wherever it exists, a lessening of fanaticism with an increasing capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding.
In abandoning a part of its dogmatic pretensions, philosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way of life.

(A History of Western Philosophy, 1961, p 789)


Would you like to know more?

Propaganda

Belief, when it is not simply traditional, is a product of several factors:

• desire,
• evidence, and
• iteration. …

[When] there is no outside assertion, belief will only arise in exceptional characters, such as founders of religions, scientific discoverers, and lunatics. …
More propaganda is necessary to cause acceptance of a belief for which there is little evidence than of one for which the evidence is strong …

One of the advantages of democracy, from the governmental point of view, is that it makes the average citizen easier to deceive, since he regards the government as his government.
(p 96)

In the totalitarian countries, the State is virtually the sole propagandist.
(p 97)

The effect of organisation and unification, in the matter of propaganda as in other matters, is to delay revolution, but to make it more violent when it comes.
When only one doctrine is officially allowed, men get no practice in thinking or in weighing alternatives …
[Consequently,] only a great wave of passionate revolt can dethrone orthodoxy …
[Therefore] revolution in a totalitarian State is not necessarily a ground for rejoicing.
What is more to be desired is a gradual increase in the sense of security, leading to a lessening of zeal, and giving an opening for laziness — the greatest of all virtues in the ruler of a totalitarian State, with the sole exception of non-existence.
(p 98)

World Bank: Four Degree World

Green Army: Research and Development

World Bank

Foreword

Scientists agree countries’ current … emission pledges and commitments would most likely result in 3.5 to 4°C warming. …
(p ix)

Executive Summary

A world in which warming reaches 4°C above preindustrial levels … would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems, and associated services.
(p xiii)

Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is likely to occur in a 4°C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth´s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience.
(p xvi)

[Given the uncertainty] about the full nature and scale of impacts, there is … no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world [would even be] possible.
A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation …
It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured and unequal …
The projected 4°C warming … must not be allowed to occur …
[And only] early, cooperative, international actions can [prevent it.]
(p xviii)

Introduction

Current scientific evidence suggests that even with the current commitments and pledges fully implemented, there is roughly

• a 20% likelihood of exceeding 4°C by 2100, and
• a 10% chance of 4°C being exceeded as early as the 2070s. …

(p 1, italics added)

(Turn Down the Heat, World Bank, 2013)

Four Degrees and Beyond

Clive Hamilton: Professor of Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University

[In] late September 2009 [140 climate scientists gathered at Oxford University] to discuss the end of the world as we know it. …

IF

[Developed-country] emissions peak in 2015 and decline by 3% a year thereafter …

AND

[Developing-country] emissions peak in 2030 and decline 3% per year thereafter …

THEN

[The] world has a 50:50 chance of limiting warming to four degrees. …

{[And, since] the oceans warm more slowly, this means five to six degrees hotter on land.}
The biggest influences will be

• the rate of growth of the world economy, driven disproportionately by growth rates in China, India and Brazil, and
• the extent of efforts by governments in the major economies to restrain emissions. …

A planet four degrees warmer would be hotter than at any time since the Miocene era some 25 million years ago.
The world was virtually ice-free then. …
[During] the last interglacial or warm period 122,000 years ago [when temperatures were 1.5-2 degrees warmer] sea levels were ten metres higher than today. …
The record indicates that once the ice begins to melt it cannot be stopped …
[Beyond] two degrees the probability of the Greenland icesheet disintegrating is 50% or more, which would mean an additional rise of seven metres in sea levels over the next 300-1000 years [over an above that due to thermal expansion.]
Above two or three degrees the West Antarctic icesheet is also likely to disintegrate, adding another five metres to sea levels on top of this. …
[There are] 136 port cities with populations of a million or more [— most located in Asia. …]

It's expected that, overall, a warmer world will be more humid, with rainfall increasing by perhaps 25%. …
[However, the higher] rainfall will be concentrated in northerly latitudes, with large parts of the world nearer the tropics suffering a severe decline. …
[For example, projections for] Australia, southern Europe, western and central-southern United States … indicate precipitation declines of 10-30% in a four-degree world.
[Worse still,] rainfall declines of 40-50% [are expected in Africa and] across the north of Latin America, including the Amazon.

Run-off will decline by more than precipitation because of higher rates of evaporation before the water reaches streams and rivers.
[As a result] around 1 billion people … will be exposed to increased water-resource stress.
[Around] 15% of land currently suitable for cultivation will become unsuitable, while in cold regions the area suitable for cultivation increases by 20%. …
[The] poor and vulnerable will be hardest hit by climate change, even though they are not responsible for causing it and [are least able] to defend themselves against it.
[In] sub-Saharan Africa … rain-fed agriculture in many areas would cease to be viable by the end of the century [displacing about 200 million people.]
(pp 195-201)

[Once] the dramatic implications of the climate crisis are recognised by the powerful as a threat to themselves and their children they will, unless resisted, impose their own solutions on the rest of us, ones that will protect their interests and exacerbate unequal access to the means of survival, leaving the weak to fend for themselves.
This is how it has always been. …
Reclaiming democracy for the citizenry is the only way to … ensure that the wealthy and powerful cannot protect their own interests at the expense of the rest.
(pp 223-224)

(Requiem for a Species, 2005)

Ministry of Peace

Live Long and Prosper

The Causes of Perpetual War (Thomas Hobbes)
Competition	Diffidence	Glory
Gain	Safety	Reputation
Predation	Preemption	Deterrence

The Causes of Perpetual Peace (Immanuel Kant)
Democracy	Trade	Intergovernmental Organizations

RN Breakfast

ABC Radio National

Ephesians 5:22-33:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church …
(King James Bible, 1611)

Julia Beard:
It was … a bishop in Queensland who [drew my attention to the] cultural issues surrounding the teaching of headship — which is an emphasis in some particularly conservative evangelical parts of the church on women submitting to their husbands and on men being the 'heads'. …
[In] Australia, 1 in 5 perpetrators of domestic violence go to church.
[And, according to American researchers,] the men most likely, whether religious or non-religious, to assault their wives are evangelical men who go to church sporadically. …

It is extremely common for abusers to use words of the bible to tell them that they must obey …
That if they disobey the husband, they are disobeying God. …
I found that marital rape was very common in these situations … and that the church had a very inadequate … response to it.
The women were not believed.
If they were pastor's wives, the pastor would be believed or moved to another parish.
And … a lot of [the women] had to leave the church while the men remained within it.
(Church enabling and concealing domestic violence: Advocates, 18 July 2017)

Joe Hockey (1965) [Federal Treasurer, 2013-5]:
… I find those wind turbines around Lake George to be utterly offensive. …
I think they are just a blight on the landscape. …
[Unfortunately, we] can't knock those ones off … because there's a certain contractual obligation — I'm told.
('Ideology' driving energy policy: Australian Solar Council, 8 May 2014)

Erwin Jackson [Deputy CEO, Climate Institute]:
Over the next 15 years [the Chinese have committed to building] a power sector the size of the United States completely powered by renewable energy.
(Australia to support UN Green Climate Fund, 11 December 2014)

Who Speaks for the Dead?

Fran Kelly:
We have heard a number of comments from Iraqis … saying that their lives are better today — free of Saddam Hussein.

Peter Kilfoyle [Former Defence Minister under Tony Blair]:
Many thousands of people would agree with that.
But there's many thousands who are dead, who are not in a position to agree or disagree. …

It's wholly specious of people to say, somehow 10 years ago, the evidence was not there to suggest that they were wrong.
What's more important is the evidence was not there to show that they were right.
They should have erred on the side of caution … and they never did.

(Ten years in Iraq, 20 March 2013)

John Kennedy

PBS American Experience

One Small Step

(Saturn V, Episode 1)













(Emily Calandrelli, Lunar Module, Engineering Space, Episode 2, 2016)

John Kennedy (1917 — 63):
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
(Special Message, Joint Session of Congress, 25 May 1961)

We choose to go to the Moon.
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. …
We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding. …
And [so,] as we set sail, we ask God's blessing, on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
(Rice University Address on the Nation's Space Effort, Houston, Texas, 2 September 1962)

(The Kennedys, PBS American Experience, 1992)




(Peter Schnall, Secrets of the White House, Episode 2, Partisan Pictures, PBS, 2016)







(Peter Schnall, Secrets of the White House, Episode 1, Partisan Pictures, PBS, 2016)

Robert Kennedy (1925 – 68):
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he shall make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Scene 2, Act 3, 1595)

Aeschylus (c 525/524 – c 456/455 BCE):
[He] who learns must suffer.
And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despite, against our will,
comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
(Agamemnon, Oresteia, 458 BCE)

(Barak Goodman, Clinton, 2012)

John Kennedy (1917 – 63):
The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not

• the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but
• the myth — persistent, persuasive, and and unrealistic.

Belief in myth allows

• the comfort of opinion, without
• the discomfort of thought.

Robert Kennedy (1925 – 68):
Each time a man

• stands up for an ideal, or
• acts to improve the lot of others, or
• strikes out against injustice,

he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
(Day of Affirmation Address, 1966)

The question is, whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

• We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others.
• We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others.
• We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let [the spirit of division to] flourish any longer in our land.

Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time,

• that those who live with us are our brothers,
• that they share with us the same short moment of life,
• that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

(On The Mindless Menace Of Violence, City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, 5 April 1968)

What I think is quite clear, is that we can work together in the last analysis.
[That] what has been going on in the United States over the period of the last three years: the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society …
The divisions, whether it's

• between Blacks and Whites,
• between the poor and the more affluent, or
• between age groups, or
• on the war in Vietnam …

That we can start to work together.
We are a great country … and a compassionate country. …
(Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, 5 June 1968)

Frank Mankeiwsicz [Kennedy Press Aide]:
Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1.44 am today, June 6 1968. …

Edward Kennedy:
[Robert] need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life …
[To] be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who

• saw wrong and tried to right it,
• saw suffering and tried to heal it,
• saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him.
And who take him to his rest today.
Pray that, what he was to us, and what he wished for others, will someday come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times …

Some men see things as they are and say why?
I dream things that never were, and say, why not?

(Eulogy)

Wikipedia:
[The shooter] Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian … said that he felt betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War, which had begun exactly one year before the assassination.
(4 April, 2013)

Chris Matthews:
[Joseph Kennedy Sr opposed the Marshall Plan] for the economic reconstruction of war-torn Europe …
A shrewder plan, he calculated, would be to let the Communists grab Europe, creating economic chaos that would lead to greater opportunities for businessmen like him down the road.
(Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, Simon & Schuster, 2011, Reader's Digest, 2013, p 55)

The Common Enemies Of Mankind

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans:

• born in this century,
• tempered by war,
• disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,
• proud of our ancient heritage, and
• unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights
  • to which this nation has always been committed, and
  • to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall:

• pay any price,
• bear any burden,
• meet any hardship,
• support any friend, [and]
• oppose any foe;

to assure the survival and the success of liberty. …

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends.

• United: there is little we cannot do, in a host of cooperative ventures.
• Divided: there is little we can do, for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder. …

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge:
[To] assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty [in a new alliance for progress.] …

[To] the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support

• to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective
• to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and
• to enlarge the area in which its writ may run. …

[Remembering always] that

• civility is not a sign of weakness, and
• sincerity is always subject to proof. …

[Let all nations join us] in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where:

• the strong are just …
• the weak [are] secure and
• the peace [is] preserved.

[This task] will not be finished in the first one hundred days.
Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.
But let us begin. …

Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. …
Now the trumpet [sounds] again:

• not as a call to bear arms — though arms we need,
• not as a call to battle — though embattled we are,
• but a call to bear the burden of [the] long twilight struggle … against the common enemies of [mankind:]
  • tyranny,
  • poverty,
  • disease, and
  • war …

My fellow citizens of the world:

• ask not what America will do for you,
• but what together, we can do for the freedom of man.

(Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961)


World peace … does not require that each man love his neighbor …
[It] requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.
[History] teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever.
However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors. …

• Peace need not be impracticable, and
• war need not be inevitable. …

[Let us] direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which [our] differences can be resolved.
And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. …

[We] do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. …
We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people …

What kind of peace do we seek?
Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.
Not the peace of the grave …

{No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.}
Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. …
It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn. …

Too many of us think [peace] is impossible. …
But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief.
It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable — that mankind is doomed — that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view.
Our problems are manmade — therefore, they can be solved by man. …

Let us focus [on a peace based] on a gradual evolution in human institutions …
Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.
It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.
For peace is a process — a way of solving problems. …

[It is imperative that the American people not] fall into the same trap as the Soviets …
[Not] to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side …
[Not] to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats. …

[No] nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War.
At least twenty million lost their lives.
Countless millions of homes and farms … burned or sacked.
A third of the nation's territory [turned to wasteland.]

[Should] total war ever break out again — [all] we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first twenty-four hours. …
[We] are both devoting to weapons massive sums of money that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. …

Above all … nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. …

[We] do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. …
We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people …

[We] seek to strengthen the United Nations …
[To] make it a more effective instrument for peace …
[To] develop it into … a system capable

• of resolving disputes on the basis of law,
• of insuring the security of the large and the small and
• of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. …

[There] can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured. …
Our primary long-range interest … is general and complete disarmament — designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. …

[Is] not peace … basically a matter of human rights

• the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation
• the right to breathe air as nature provided it
• the right of future generations to a healthy existence? …

The United States … will never start a war. …
This generation of Americans has already had [more than enough] of war and hate and oppression. …
[We shall] do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just.

(Commencement Address, American University, Washington, 10 June 1963)

The Dream

On November 7th 1979, in Boston, Rose Kennedy, 89 years old, was ready to campaign once again.
The last of her son's was planning to declare his candidacy for President. …
When [Edward] Kennedy announced, he led 2 to 1 in the polls, but he quickly fell behind President Carter and never regained the lead. …
Times had changed.
The country was moving away from his kind of Liberalism. …

In the end, he lost 24 of the 34 primaries he entered. …
But in his hour of defeat, he spoke with an eloquence that banished, for a moment, all the shadows on the Kennedy legend. …

Edward Kennedy (1932 – 2009):
[May] it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

I am a part of all that I have met …
Tho' much is taken, much abides; [and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven,] that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
[Made weak by time and fate, but] strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. …
(Ulysses, 1842)

For all those whose cares have been our concern:

• the Work goes on,
• the Cause endures,
• the Hope still lives, and
• the Dream shall never die.

(Concession Speech, Democratic National Convention, New York, 12 August 1980)

[The] quest for the Presidency, had finally come to and end for sons of Joseph P Kennedy.
Their father had once been willing to pay any price for power.
He could never have imagined how high that price would be.

Ministry of Love

Live Long and Prosper

The Myth of Pure Evil

Fear begets Anger
Anger begets Hatred
Hatred begets Cruelty
Cruelty begets Suffering

— peaceandlonglife

(Victim of the Rwandan genocide)

Roy Baumeister (1953)

Social Psychologist, Queensland University

[The myth of pure evil posits a] force, or person, that seeks relentlessly to inflict harm, with no positive or comprehensible motive, deriving enjoyment from the suffering of others …
It maliciously and gratuitously seeks out unsuspecting, innocent victims from among the good people of the world.
It is

• the eternal other,
• the enemy,
• the outsider,

who despises the orderly and peaceful world of the good and seeks to throw it into chaos.
(pp 74-5)

[In reality there] are four major root causes of evil, or reasons that people act in ways that others will perceive as evil.
Ordinary, well-intentioned people may perform evil acts when under the influence of these factors, singly or in combination. …

• The first root cause of evil is the simple desire for material gain, such as money or power. …
• The second root of evil is threatened egotism. …
• The third root of evil is idealism. …
• The fourth root of evil is the pursuit of sadistic pleasure.
  [However,] only about 5-6% of perpetrators actually get enjoyment out of inflicting harm. …

[These] root causes of evil are pervasive, which leads one to wonder why violence and oppression are not even more common than they are.
The answer is that violent impulses are typically restrained by inner inhibitions; people exercise self-control to avoid lashing out at others every time they might feel like it.
The four root causes of evil must therefore be augmented by an understanding of the proximal cause, which is the breakdown of these internal restraints.
(pp 376-7)

A common and important cause of evil is the quest to avenge blows to one's pride.
Dangerous people, from playground bullies to warmongering dictators, consist mainly of those who have highly favorable views about themselves.
They strike out at others who question or dispute those favorable views.
(p 135)

[Most] violent people have high opinions of themselves, but most people with high opinions of themselves are not violent.
Violent people are an important but distinct, atypical minority of people with high self-esteem.
The most potent recipe for violence is a favorable view of oneself that is disputed or undermined by someone else—in short, threatened egotism.
(p 341)

The individualism of modern American society leads directly to worship of self-esteem and contempt for guilt. …
Self-esteem is better for the individual and worse for the community, and so Americans prize self-esteem.
Guilt is better for the community and worse for the individual, and so they detest guilt.
The American attitude that values the rights of the individual above the community's best interest apparently contributes to high levels of happiness contributes to individual freedom, and deters tyranny.
But it also promotes violence, along with oppression and individual forms of evil.
(p 313)

Egotism is … on the rise, especially now that modern morality has abandoned its religious commitment to humility and the condemnation of selfishness.
At the international level, one has to worry about Russia, whose rapid loss of global prominence and prestige is reminiscent of the humiliations that pushed Germany toward World War II. …
In the United States, the [national trend is] toward pursuing self-esteem and relaxing self-control.
As long as this trend predominates, it seems safe to expect that individual crime and violence in the United States will be high. …

Idealistic violence is difficult to forecast.
Christianity no longer seems to have the force to set off holy wars, but Islam does.
(p 384)

[All] over the world, regardless of culture or background, the same biological group is responsible for the bulk of the violence: young males from puberty through the prime age of reproductive potency.
(p 381)

The tendency to align with one's fellows and feel hostile toward potential opponents and rivals seems almost ineradicable. …
Yet culture can exert a great deal of influence in teaching people how to express and control their aggressive impulses. …

Equalizing opportunity can perhaps reduce the tendency to resort to violent means as a way of achieving material gain, although there is no very convincing proof of this.
Decreasing the emphasis on pride, self-esteem, and public respect, or providing multiple and clear criteria for proving oneself, may work against the tendency to use violence to maintain one's face.
A strong cultural belief in the rights of individuals and in the inability of noble ends to justify violent means can help prevent idealism from fostering brutality.
(p 382)

Future generations are likely to look back on people living now as evil, because of the profligate use of the planet's limited and dwindling resources. …
[But, unlike] the slave traders or warmongers of past eras [it will be future populations who] will be our victims …
The future will have its own version of Satan, and it is likely to be you and me (and our governments).
But, like most perpetrators, we do not see ourselves as doing evil.
(p 385, emphasis added)

[While the] victim's perspective [needs to be temporarily] suppressed for the sake of [understanding] the perpetrator, [it] is essential for making a moral judgment of the perpetrator.
It is a mistake to let moral condemnation interfere with trying to understand — but it would be a bigger mistake to let that understanding, once it has been attained, interfere with moral condemnation.
(p 387)

(Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, W H Freeman / Holt, 1997 / 2001)

Scientific American: 2012

Scientific American

Todd Akin (1947) [US Representative (R) for Missouri (2001-2013); Member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology]:
[If] it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
(Shawn Otto, Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize US Democracy, 1 November 2012)

Michael Mann (1965):
[On the prospects for action on climate change.]
If we look to history, in the end, science and honesty won out …
We acted later than we should have with tobacco [and ozone depletion.]
We presumably suffered far greater damage and loss of life because we delayed action.
But we did take action.
(March, p 70)

Board of Editors [1862]:
[Abraham Lincoln] proposes to inaugurate the great jubilee with the year 1900, by payment of the owners of slaves as a mutual concession on both sides, and as a matter of justice to those who are owners of this species of property.
It being quite evident that the war between slavery and freedom will continue to waged with increased vigor the President hopes to modify its intensity, by fixing upon a certain period, when the institution shall forever cease.
He thinks this policy will shorten the war, and secure justice to all concerned; while, at the same, the country will be saved from the effects of violent and sudden changes in its domestic arrangements.

This view of the case strikes us as humane, and if the more radical portion of the two sections would but accept it, as a ground for settlement, peace would again bless us …
[But] so intensely bitter have these contending elements become, that we fear no such compromise would be acceptable or satisfactory.
(December, p 71)

Euan Nisbet [Professor of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London]:
What we're doing at the moment is [a climate] experiment comparable on a geological scale to the big events of the past, so we would expect the inputs to have consequences similar to those in the past …
(p 41)

Ken Caldeira:
Global warming may not decrease overall food supply, but it may give more to the rich and less to the poor.
(September, p 81)

Harry Truman

PBS American Experience

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered:

• even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped,
• even if Russia had not entered the war, and
• even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

— Paul Nitze (1907 – 2004), United States Strategic Bombing Survey, July 1946.


Harry Truman (1884 – 1972):
I think one man is as good as another so long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a chinaman.
Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman!
(Oliver Stone, The Bomb, The Untold History of the United States, 2012)

Douglas MacArthur (1880 – 1964):
[If] we lose the war to communism in Asia, the fall of Europe is inevitable …
[We] must win.
There is no substitute for victory.
(Clayton James, Triumph and Disaster 1945–1964, The Years of MacArthur, Volume 3, Houghton Mifflin, 1985)

… I shall make of [the Chinese,] the greatest slaughter in the history of warfare.

David Grubin:
[Douglas MacArthur] urged the President to wage all out war.
He wanted to blockade the Chinese coast and bomb the Chinese mainland.
Truman … feared provoking a third world war. …
[After being relieved of command by Truman,] MacArthur came home to a hero's welcome.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans attacked Truman.
(Truman, PBS American Experience, WGBH, October 1997)

No Quarter

[By August 1945, the] bulk of Japan's army was no threat to American forces …
[It] was sequestered up in China, with American submarines keeping it from crossing to the home islands, and the great weight of Russia's army looming above, able to destroy it once a sufficient buildup had occurred.
Japan's industry had largely been burned out.
[US] strategic bombers had … burned out fifty-eight of [the largest sixty Japanese cities.]

Douglas MacArthur … didn't expect an invasion would be needed …
Admiral Leahy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was later adamant that there had been no need for an atomic bomb [and] Curtis LeMay, the head of the strategic bombing force, agreed.
(p 160)

Dwight Eisenhower (1890 – 1969):
… I was against [using the atomic bomb] on two counts:

• First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.
• Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon. …

Truman's most forceful adviser was Jimmy Byrnes …
The ethos Byrnes had been brought up with was that when you fought, you fought with everything you had.
He'd been raised in South Carolina in the 1880s, with no father and not a great deal of schooling.
Visitors to his state during earlier times reported their amazement that it was rare on a jury to find twelve men who had all their eyes and ears …
South Carolina still had the ethos of a frontier society, and gouging, biting, and knife slashes were the way fights were settled.
It was Byrnes who ensured that the clause protecting the emperor — which might mollify Japanese opponents of a settlement — was taken out.
There would be no [quarter.]
(p 161)

Presidential "Interim Committee":
Mr Byrnes recommended, and the Committee agreed,

• that … the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible;
• that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers' homes; and
• that it be used without prior warning.

(1 June 1945)

(p 162)

From the ground the B-29 was just visible as a silvery outline, but the bomb — a bare ten feet long, two and a half feet wide — would have been too small a speck to see.
Weak radio signals were being pumped down from the bomb to the Shina Hospital directly below.
Some of those radio signals were absorbed in the hospital's walls, but most were bounced back skyward.
Sticking out of the bomb's back, near the spinning fins, were a number of whiplike thin radio antennae.
Those collected the returning radio signals, and used the time lag each took to return as a way of measuring the height remaining to the ground.
At 1,900 feet the last rebounded radio signal arrived.
(pp 163-4)

(David Bodanis, E=mc^2, Walker Books, 2000)

Firestorm

[On March 9, 1945 — five weeks before Harry Truman took office as President — 325 American B29s] dropped 2,000 tons of napalm on Tokyo, burning 16 square miles of the city to the ground.
In a single day, 100,000 Japanese were killed. …

Robert Rodenhouse [B29 Pilot]:
When we got over the target it was like a thousand Christmas trees lit up all over.
And you could feel the heat when you're there.
And you could smell the smoke and the stench of human and animal flesh as that city is being consumed by millions of fires all over.

Francis Coppola (1939):
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. …
The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill.
Smelled like … victory.
(Apocalypse Now, 1979)

Yoshiko Hashimoto [Survivor]:
My mother took off her protective hood from her head, put it on my head, and looked into my eyes. …
Without a protective hood, mother's hair must have caught on fire after I jumped into the river.
She must have died in agony.
I cannot hold back my tears whenever I think about it, and cannot forget her sad face looking into my eyes.

Curtis LeMay (1906 – 90) [General, United States Air Force]:
We don't pause to shed any tears for uncounted hordes of Japanese who lie charred in that acrid-smelling rubble.
The smell of Pearl Harbor fires is too persistent in our nostrils. …
[All] war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier. …
[If] I had lost the war I [suppose I] would have been tried as a war criminal.

To find the numbers we present in The Costs of War, we collected data from over a dozen published sources.
Events are listed chronologically, with their casualties indicated in red.
Cumulative numbers of casualties are indicated in gray.

(Austin Hoyt, Victory in the Pacific, PBS American Experience, 2005)

Barton Bernstein (1936) [Historian]:
What has changed in the war is a redefinition of what is a legitimate target.
A legitimate target is not simply a city, but people in the city who are primarily noncombatants in what is a redefined virtually total war.
So that everybody becomes a target.

The bombing destroyed nearly all of Japan's biggest cities and killed more than [500,000] civilians.
[But, still] the Japanese fought on. …

Harry Truman (1884 – 1972):
What a pity the human animal is not able to put his moral thinking into practice.
I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries.

(Truman, PBS American Experience, WGBH, October 1997)

Would you like to know more?

A War Against Evil

[On July 16, 1945] the first atomic bomb was exploded over the deserts of New Mexico.
[The detonation of 13 pounds of explosives:]

• [vaporized] a steel tower 60 feet high,
• left a crater … more than two miles wide,
• knocked down men 10,000 yards away, and
• was visible for more than 200 miles.

(Truman, PBS American Experience, WGBH, October 1997)




(Rushmore DeNooyer, The Bomb, 2015)

[Truman,] like all other Americans, saw this as a war against evil. …
In that sense, he [believed that using] the bomb [was] justified …
[That this,] the greatest weapon ever developed [had] a place in overcoming or combating evil. …

Two atomic bombs were nearly ready.
Seven more were on the way.

On July 25th Truman gave control of the bombs to the military and ordered that they be used as soon as the Potsdam conference was over.
The next day, the Japanese were given one last chance to surrender. …

Potsdam Declaration:
We call upon the Government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces …
The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction. …
(26 July 1945)

[August 6,] 8:15 AM …
The atomic bomb dropped clear of the Enola Gay.
43 seconds later, it exploded over Hiroshima.

That afternoon, Truman issued [another] warning to the Japanese government.

Harry Truman (1884 – 1972):
If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a reign of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

[The] atomic bomb had killed more than 80,000 men, women, and children …

August 9, 11:00 AM …
[A] second atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese seaport of Nagasaki.
In 1/10 of one-millionth of a second [another] 40,000 people were killed.

The day after Nagasaki was destroyed, Truman took the authority to use the atomic bomb back from the military and placed it once again in his own hands. …

(Truman, PBS American Experience, WGBH, October 1997)

Cold War

Not long after Truman had become President, Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into two hostile parts — a Soviet supported North and an American backed South.
[In June 1950] the North had attacked the South [seeking] to unify Korea under communist rule. …

Korean War (1950-53) (Wikipedia, 21 August 2019)
Combatants (Killed)	North Korea (215,000–406,000) China (183,108) Soviet Union (299)	South Korea (137,899) United States (36,574) Other (3932): United Kingdom Turkey Australia Canada France Greece Colombia Thailand Ethiopia Netherlands Phillipines Belgium South Africa New Zealand Norway Luxembourg
Killed	398,000–589,000	178,405
Missing	145,000+	32,925
Wounded	686,500	566,434
Non-combatants	North Korea	South Korea
Killed, missing, wounded or abducted	1,550,000	990,968

Peace is Hell

On September 6, 1945, Truman proposed

• an increase in the minimum wage,
• aid for housing, and
• a bill for the first pre-paid medical insurance in the nation's history.

But a coalition of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats refused him everything. …

[In the lead-up to the 1948 election all] the polls made him a sure loser. …

Harry Truman (1884 – 1972):
If you give the Republicans complete control of this government, you might just as well turn it over to the special interests and we'll start on a boom and bust cycle and try to go through just what we did in the 20s. …

On election night, to escape reporters, Truman checked into a hotel in Excelsior Springs, just outside of Independence.
He had a ham and cheese sandwich, a glass of buttermilk and went to sleep.

When he woke up, he learned he had pulled off the greatest upset in the history of American politics.
Not one pollster or radio commentator or newspaper columnist had got it right.
No one had dared predict a Truman victory. …

[He then] asked Congress to support what he now called "the Fair Deal" —

• a higher minimum wage,
• civil rights,
• aid to education[and]
• health insurance for all Americans.

Congress refused.

(Truman, PBS American Experience, WGBH, October 1997)

Tobacco

Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt

Secretary of Health and Human Services [George H W Bush Administration]:
The question of whether or not tobacco smoke is carcinogenic … was conclusively resolved more than 20 years ago …
Involuntary smoking is a cause of disease, including lung cancer, in healthy nonsmokers. …
Ambient tobacco smoke also caused respiratory illness and decreased lung function in infants and young children and increased the risk of asthma.
As a physician … I believe that parents should refrain from smoking.
(Covering Letter)

Robert Windom [Physician nominated by President Ronald Reagan]:
Actions to protect nonsmokers from ETS [Environmental Tobacco Smoke] exposure not only are warranted, but are essential to protect public health. …
(Executive Summary, The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking, US Department of Health and Human Services, 1986)

Sylvester Stallone was paid $500,000 to use Brown and Williamson products in … five feature films to link smoking with power and strength, rather than sickness and death.
(p 139)

The industry promoted the idea of “sick building syndrome" to suggest that headaches and other problems suffered by workers in smoky atmospheres were caused by the buildings, not smoke. …

In December 1992, the EPA released Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking.
The report attributed 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year to secondhand smoke, as well as 150,000 to 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in infants and young children.
Another 200,000 to 1,000,000 children had their asthma aggravated, and ETS also increased the risk of asthma in children who did not already have it.
(p 140)

Environmental tobacco smoke [is] a class A — a known human - carcinogen. …

[There is clear evidence] that ETS [increases] the risk of SIDS.

[In thirty studies of] high spousal exposure [seventeen] showed increased risk, nine at the 95% confidence level, and [eight] at the 90% level.
[Among] women who smoked, the lung cancer rate was even higher if their husbands also smoked.
This showed that ETS added extra risk on top of that carried by smoking itself.
(p 141)

S Fred Singer [Science and Environment Policy Project]:
Of the 30 studies reviewed by EPA, 24 showed no statistically significant correlation between secondary smoke and cancer, and the remaining 6 showed a correlation too small for researchers to rule out other factors than can affect the incidence of cancer, such as diet, outdoor air pollution, genetics or prior lung disease.

Unable to maneuver this issue through a barrier of long-held statistical standards, the EPA simply reduced the confidence interval for these studies from 95 to 90% — thereby doubling the margin for error and forcing the conclusion of increased risk.
If secondary smoke is so serious a problem, why did the EPA have to rig the numbers?
(Junk Science at the EPA, Draft Op-Ed, commissioned by APCO Associates on behalf of Philip Morris, 12 May, 1993, p 2)

US Department of Health and Human Services:
[There] is no risk-free level of exposure to second-hand smoke: even small amounts … can be harmful to people's health.
(The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 27, 2006)

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber:
Originally dubbed the “Restoring Integrity to Science Coalition,” the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was later renamed to resemble the venerable American Association for the Advancement of Science.
[Unfortunately,] the resulting acronym was not terribly flattering — ASSC, or worse, the ASS Coalition — [so they capitalized the definite] article “the” at the beginning of the name, and TASSC was born …
(How Big Tobacco Helped Create “the Junkman”, PR Watch, Vol 7, No 3, 2000, p 6)

Philip Morris: Cost / Benefit Analysis of Smoking in the Czech Republic (Michael Sandel, Justice: Putting A Price Tag On Life, February, 2011)
Benefits	Tax revenue from cigarette sales Savings from early deaths ($1227 per person): Health care Pensions Housing costs
Costs	Increased health care costs
Net gain from smoking	$147 million

On The Benefits of Smoking

Nick Minchin (1953)

Liberal Senator for South Australia (1993 ‒ 2011)

Senator Nick Minchin has criticised the Federal Government's plan to increase the tax on cigarettes [on ABC television last night] as he told smokers to:

Go for it!
They die early, they actually save us money …

(Australian Associated Press, Senator Nick Minchin praises smokers 'dying early', news.com.au, 4 May, 2010)


In 1995, a Senate committee report recorded Minchin as expressing a minority view.

Senator Minchin wishes to record his dissent from the committee's statements:

• that it believes cigarettes are addictive, and
• that passive smoking causes a number of adverse health effects for non-smokers.

[And, on] ABC1's Q&A:

… I defend the right of smokers in a liberal, free, democratic country to smoke …
If people choose to die of something, as a Liberal I think:

That's your problem.

(Mike Skeketee, Some sceptics make it a habit to be wrong, The Australian, 20 November, 2010)

Corrupting Science

Brown and Williamson Tobacco

• [Our] product is doubt,
• our message is truth — well stated, and
• our competition is the body of anti-cigarette fact that exists in the public mind. …

We have chosen the mass public as our consumer [because:]

• The Congress and federal agencies are already being dealt with … by the Tobacco Institute.
• It is a group with little exposure to the positive side of smoking and health
• It is the prime force in influencing [government policy, since] without public support little effort would be given to a crusade against cigarettes.

Doubt … is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public.
It is also the means of establishing a controversy.
If we are successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, then there is an opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health.

(Memo to R A Pittman, 21 August 1969)

Philip Morris USA

Key Messages

• Science [should never] be corrupted to achieve political ends.
• Economic growth cannot afford to be held hostage to paternalistic, overregulation.
• Improving indoor air quality is a laudable goal that will never be accomplished as long as tobacco smoke is the sole focus of regulators.
• Unfounded fear — whether it be from dioxin, Alar, tobacco smoke, cellular telephones — only benefits plaintiff lawyers who are always trying to win a fast buck.

Strategies

• To form local coalitions to help us educate the local media, legislators and the public at large about the dangers of “junk science' and to caution them from taking regulatory steps before fully understanding the costs in both economic and human terms. …
• To implement our communications objective of identifying members of the media who might write supportive articles …
• [To] train and identify credible spokespeople …

Objectives

Our overriding objective is to discredit the EPA report [on Environmental Tobacco Smoke.]
[It] is our objective to prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans.
[Where] possible we will proactively seek to pass accommodation legislation with preemption. …

• Associate EPA study with broader questions about agency research and government regulations.
• Link issue with other more "politically correct" products.
• Have non-industry messengers provide reasons for legislators, business executives and media to view EPA study with extreme caution. …

Assumptions

• No matter how strong the arguments, industry spokespeople are, in and of themselves, are not always credible or appropriate messengers.
• Non-industry spokespeople will challenge EPA study if issue is broadened beyond the scope of this individual report. …
• The right spokespeople will produce the right popular media response which will produce the right public response.
• A coalition building and grassroots strategy should be inter-woven with a communications strategy. …
• A single messenger speaking out on multiple messages will not have nearly as much impact as several messengers promoting one or two messages each.

Strategy One

Restoring Integrity to Science Coalition (RISC)

• A national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of "junk science."
  Coalition will address credibility of government's scientific studies, risk assessment techniques and misuse of tax dollars.
• Coalition is composed of a board that includes scientists, business executives from "targeted" industries and other spokespeople seeking to improve quality of EPA research.

Strategy Three

Increase broad-based support for "holistic" approach to indoor air quality legislation.

• Ensure that in targeted states there is a comprehensive indoor air quality measure introduced in legislature.
• Mobilize grassroots support, particularly among labor and members of hospitality industry, in favor of "holistic" approach.

(Memo from Ellen Merlo [VP Corporate Affairs] to William Campbell [President and CEO], 17 February 1993)