ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Are We Worse Than Saddam?

I seem to recall a statistic I read in ETS that showed the US was killing more Iraqi civilians per day than during Saddam's regime. Now as I search through all the back issues I have, I can't seem to find that particular article.

Does anybody at ETS! remember this fact/article, and what issue it was in?

Thanks for your time.

PS. I love ETS! Keep up the excellent work.

--Guy Cournoyer, via e-mail

G.P. replies. I don't recall seeing that stat in ETS! or anywhere else; perhaps some reader has. It would be very, very hard to verify, since it's unclear how many people the US has killed and doubly unclear how many people Saddam killed.

And such a comparison misses a more important point: we helped put Saddam in power, and for the first 20 years of his rule we helped keep him there. (And then we betrayed the uprisings against him after the 1991 Gulf War.) Either way you count it, the US has a lot of blood on its hands.

Report From Spain

I've just read your article 'Liberals, bare your teeth!' and it is the same voice that came out of me a month ago in one of my columns.

Then we were facing a Aznar, a very powerful and mean Aznar. Full in war, fully engaged in militarism. No more government, just the typical walls of buildings who start to bite you if you dare to look.

When I wrote the column I even went further and tried to make people have a look at bipartisan democratic behaviour. A critical look. I invited them also to start with a 'parallel' vote and other hints to make them think.

I would never have believed any information from future, telling me that Aznar has been kicked out of business totally. A this point I was praying for simple majority.

Before the elections one of the sites that publishes my articles was attacked three times in a row that ended shortly before the terrorist attack on 11-M. Severe attacks, that nearly left the site without visits.

All in all, some 25.000 visitors had read the column before election day. The same day I received information about intents of the bleeding government to declare 'State of Exception' and stop the democratic elections process.

Now, after the elections things are completely different in my life, Geov. I feel better, a lot. Work is becoming very interesting again, it's easier to undergo and I believe a lot more in peace and future than some days ago.

Since years I haven't felt better.

After the elections I received phone calls from many newspapers, interested in working for them. Nice offers.

You can see that this column they tried so hard to stop from being on air has done a lot. This is only the second year I'm writing in the internet but now I definitely know that I've found my place in life.

So, when I read your voice... I thought you should know about my feelings and experience. I hope this will comfort you and may help you to undertake your work with knowledge. Knowledge of changings, in this case.

I believe that knowledge and information is the best energy mankind can find on our search for peace.

Neocons still use weapons to make peace. Maybe they also try to make ice-cream in a microwave.

Somebody should tell them how to use their brain, heart and rest of body.

And I'm sure that you are doing this educational job perfectly.

Greetings from Spain... touristy again!

--Miguel Furlock, via e-mail

In Defense of Nader

I have read your stuff on line for at least 2 years, and like most of it.

Then I got to all the most recent Nader-bashing pieces. "Megalomania" etc. Well, you have the right to say it. But I have the right to think less of you for your views. The Democratic Party is never going to change anything anymore, and you're not going to bring change by zeroing in blasting at Nader with all your misplaced guns and bombs and inflated rhetoric.

The Nation mag is declining. So are a number of previously responsible left writers. So ets. Well, so be it. Have a good life.

--David Shove, St. Paul

G.P. responds: David, we've had several different views of Nader's candidacy, pro and con, in our pages. But more to the point, I'd be worried any time a reader agrees with 100% of what we print; our ideal is readers who think for themselves, including disagreeing with some of our views. If any of us who want a better world start walking away when we encounter views we don't like from a source we usually disagree with--or launching a bitter campaign against the source (a sort of fratricide the Left has a long history of), we'll have a multitude of one-person movements in no time. We're going to have differences, as we often do even within ETS!; live with it.

History of the Pledge

Does every pledge of allegiance establish a religion--the worship of government? As a Libertarian, and an attorney too, I am fascinated by the Pledge of Allegiance case to be argued on March 24th before the US Supreme Court. As a pro bono service, I help educate the public about the court case.

Few people know that if they pledge allegiance to the flag then they recite a pledge written by a self-proclaimed socialist in the US nationalist movement, to promote socialism in the most socialistic institution--government schools.

Few people know that the original salute to the flag was like the National Socialist German Workers' Party salute and predated it. (photos at http://members.ij.net/rex/pledge1.html)

The pledge was authored in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, first cousin and follower of the socialist author Edward Bellamy. Edward Bellamy's futuristic novel, "Looking Backward," (1888) described life in the year 2000. It described a totalitarian society where private trade is outlawed, where all men are in an "industrial army," and where the monolithic government school is part of the "industrial army" system. Bellamy saw it as utopia.

As strange as it may seem, the totalitarian ideas that inspired the pledge's author resulted in mass atrocities worldwide.

--Rex Curry, Attorney At Law, Tampa, FL