Depleted Uranium

Information compiled by Hei Hu Quan

1) What is D.U. or Depleted Uranium?
Depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process.

Depleted Uranium, or DU, is a waste material left over from the nuclear industry. A vast amount of this waste DU is produced when natural uranium is enriched for use in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Only the uranium isotope U-235 can be used in nuclear processes, such as reactors and weapons. As most of this isotope is removed from naturally occurring uranium, the remaining uranium product comprises U-238 and smaller amounts of the more highly radioactive U-235 and U-234. DU is both chemically toxic and radioactive. It is this latter product, the left over uranium, comprising mainly U-238, which has been used to make ‘depleted’ uranium weapons. It is used for weapons because this heavy, dense metal is judged by the army to be an excellent penetrator of enemy armour, tanks, and even buildings.

The term “depleted uranium” is a misnomer. DU is “depleted” only in the isotopes U234 and U235 which constitute less that 1% of the total uranium. The fact is that both “depleted” uranium and “natural” Uranium are over 99% composed of uranium-238. Depleted uranium is almost as highly concentrated as pure uranium and may contain plutonium in trace amounts.

A large amount of DU in the stockpiles held in the United States has been contaminated with recycled spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors. For example trace amounts of U-236 and highly radioactive substances such as plutonium, neptunium and technetium were found in a DU anti-tank shell used in Kosovo. Hundreds of thousands of tons of this contaminated stock was exported to the UK, France and other countries in the 1990s. The extent to which this DU has been contaminated with recycled spent fuel is still unknown and undisclosed.

Depleted uranium is a risk to health both as a toxic heavy metal and as a radioactive substance. The UK and US Governments have long sought to play down these risks.

2) What is it used for and why?
DU is used in a variety of military applications. It is attractive to the military, governments and the nuclear industry for three main reasons. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, it is in cheap and plentiful supply and solves the problem of storage and monitoring. Secondly, it is a very effective battlefield weapon because its high density and self-sharpening qualities enable it to penetrate hard targets with ease. Thirdly, DU is pyrophoric, which means it burns on impact, enhancing its ability to destroy enemy targets.

The US military uses DU mainly for its Abrahams tanks and A10 warplanes, although it is also used in its Bradley fighting vehicles, AV-8B Harrier aircraft, Super Cobra helicopter and its Navy Phalanx system. It is also used by the US military for a variety of other applications including bombshells, tank armour plating, aircraft ballast and anti-personnel mines. Although the US and UK militaries are the only countries who have been properly documented as using DU weapons, they are known to be held by at least seventeen other countries including: Australia, Bahrain, France, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Modern warfare since the Gulf War in 1991 has employed weapons which make use of DU for its properties:

1. It is cheap and available to arms manufacturers free of charge.
2. It has a very high-density which makes it a superior armour piercing material.
3. It burns upon impact producing intense heat and easily cuts through steel.
4. It acts as a self-sharpening penetrator.

The 1991 Gulf War saw the first verified use of DU weapons. Around 320 tonnes of DU in weapons were used in the war, of which about 1 tonne was used by the UK military. According to data from the US Department of Defense, tens or hundreds of thousands of US military personnel could have been exposed to DU. Both the US and UK Governments refused any responsibility for decontamination and both refused to study the exposure rates or after-effects of this DU use. After a few years, evidence began to emerge from Iraq about the increasing incidence of cancer and birth deformities in the south of the country. After heavy US lobbying in November 2001 the UN General Assembly voted down an Iraqi proposal that the UN study the effects of the DU used there.

In the 2003 attack on Iraq, the US and UK militaries used DU again despite the lack of reliable data on the effects of using it in Iraq 12 years previously. The British Government has admitted using 1.9 tonnes of DU. Even though this is only a tiny proportion of all DU used in Iraq, it is double the amount used in 1991. The US authorities have still not said how much has been used, although an initial Pentagon source revealed 75 tons of DU may remain in Iraq from A-10 planes alone.

The implications for Iraqi civilians are very alarming. Unlike the first Gulf War, which was largely confined to desert areas, much of the DU use has been in built-up, heavily populated areas. The US Government has refused any cleanup of DU in Iraq, clinging to the statement that it has no link with ill health, while the British Government has for the first time admitted it does have a responsibility but says it is low on their list of priorities.

3) Are there international laws against its use?
No, there are none.

4) What countries are using D.U. currently?
The United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Bahrain, France, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

5) What are the specific health threats?
Uranium is most dangerous when it burns and is aerosolized as happens when it is used in weapons. Inhaled uranium can remain in the lungs and bones for years where it continues to emit alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Each alpha particle can traverse up to several hundred cells causing somatic and genetic alterations. Soldiers inside a tank or armoured vehicle can inhale tens of milligrams of DU after the shell goes through the tank. Compare this to the maximum allowable yearly dose in the U.S. for inhaled uranium is 1.2 milligrams per year.

Serious long-term effects include: Compromised immune system, metabolic, respiratory and renal diseases, tumours, leukemia, and cancer.

A 1998 study conducted by Dr. Livengood showed that DU contamination transforms normal bone cells into tumorous ones.

It is estimated that 300 – 800 metric tons of DU were deposited in the battlefield in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. Dr. Doug Rokke (DU expert and former US army physicist) estimated that 120 to 480 million grams of DU would be aerosolized if 40% of the DU were burnt up.

The smaller the particles of DU, the greater the danger. Particles less than 5 microns can be inhaled and deposited in the lungs where they can remain for years. A study found DU particles 42 km away from the source.

Compare these numbers to the allowable limits for radiation releases in the US. The National Lead Industry Plant in Colonie, NY was closed down for violating a New York state court order which limited the amount of radiation released to 387 gram of DU metal per month. The plant closed down in February of 1980 for exceeding this limit and closed permanently in 1983. The area has been decontaminated. The engineering report states that the soil from 53 of the 56 nearby properties was beyond the radiation limits and had to be removed to a low-level radiation storage site. The cost was over 100 million USD. The cleanup cost was 1000 USD per cubic meter.

It’s not just in terms of increased risk of cancer that DU DNA damage can affect health. It is also implicated in causing a depressed immune system, reproductive problems, and birth defects. For example, a study of US Gulf War veterans has found that they are up to three times as likely to have children with birth deformities than fathers who had not served; and that pregnancies result in significantly higher rates of miscarriage. A major 2004 Ministry of Defence-funded survey study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that babies whose fathers served in the first Gulf War are 50 per cent more likely to have physical abnormalities. They also found a 40 per cent increased risk of miscarriage among women whose partners served in the Gulf.

There are three main routes through which DU exposure on the battlefield takes place: inhalation, ingestion and wounding. As a DU penetrator hits its target some of the DU from the weapon reacts with the air in the ensuing fire and becomes a fine dust (often called an ‘aerosol’) that makes inhalation and ingestion a possibility for those in the area. Even after the dust has settled, the danger remains that it may be resuspended in the future by further activity or the wind, and again pose a threat to civilians and others for many years into the future. DU particles have been reported as travelling twenty-five miles on air currents. Open wounds also allow a gateway for DU into the body and some veterans have also been left with DU fragments in their bodies, remaining after combat.

Inhaled DU dust will settle in the nose, mouth, lung, airways and guts. As a DU penetrator hits its target, the high temperatures caused by the impact ensure the DU dust particles become ceramic and therefore water insoluble. This means that, unlike other more soluble forms of uranium, DU will stay in the body for much longer periods of time. This aspect of uranium toxicology has often been ignored in studies of the health effects of DU, which base their excretion rates on soluble uranium. DU dust can remain in the sticky tissues of the lung and other organs such as the kidneys for many years. It is also deposited in the bones where it can remain for up to 25 years. This helps explain why studies of Gulf War veterans have found that soldiers are still excreting DU in their urine over 12 years after the 1991 conflict. Ingested DU can be incorporated into bone and from there will irradiate the bone marrow, increasing the risk of leukaemia and an impaired immune system.

In Basra, in southern Iraq, there have been striking reports for a number of years about the rise in local childhood cancers and birth deformities seen there. The findings of a leading Iraqi epidemiologist, Dr Alim Yacoub, were presented in New York in June 2003 and suggest there has been a more than five fold increase in congenital malformations and a quadrupling of the incidence rates of malignant diseases in Basra.

The Dutch Journal of Medical Science reported the findings of the Flemish eye doctor, Edward De Sutter. He found 20 cases out of 4000 births in Iraq of babies with the phenomenon anophthalmos: babies who have been born with only one eye or who are missing both eyes. The very rare condition usually only affects 1 out of 50 million births.

6) Other Countries Contaminated by DU Include:

BOSNIA 1994-1995 – Around 10,800 DU rounds, or 3 tonnes, were used in Bosnia.

KOSOVO, YUGOSLAVIA 1999 – US A-10 aircraft fired around 31,300 rounds of DU, or 9 tons of DU in areas of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro during NATO action there in 1999.

AFGHANISTAN 2001- 2004 – There is some evidence that DU has been used in Afghanistan, although this has never been confirmed officially. For example, US A-10s and Harrier aircraft, which both use DU ammunition, are known to have been active in the region.

Geneva Convention Rules (to which US and UK are signees)

– The limitation of unnecessary human suffering [Art.35.2]
– The limitation of damage to the environment [Art. 35.3 and 55.1]
– It is prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering [Art. 35.3]
– It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment. [Art. 35.2]
– In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives. [Art. 48]
– Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective;
(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. [Art.51.4]
– Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage. This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population. [Art. 55.1]

Sources:
The Uranium Medical Research Centre – DU Facts and Fictions – http://www.umrc.net/facts_and_fictions.aspx

Viewzone – Depleted Uranium – The Truth – http://www.viewzone.com/du/du.html

Dinosaurs and Hamburgers

ConCen Blog
Friday, September 28th, 2007
By mothandrust

This piece was the appendix to my dissertation on International Relations Theory. It earned me a big fat zero! As far as I am aware, it’s the only dissertation ever to have been marked at 0% (without being disqualified for cheating).

 

Dinosaurs and Hamburgers

 

Do you know where the word Education comes from?

It comes from the Latin Verb, Educe – meaning, to bring out.

No, I would never have guessed either.

*

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote two treatises, Du Contract Social, on Man in society, and Émile, on how society’s future members should be encouraged to learn.

He breaks this into four stages and recommends that, children should learn firstly from nature and given freedom to explore and discover things for themselves – followed by the age of reason, then strength and finally wisdom – leading to the “age of happiness – all the rest of life.”[102] Further, he argues, learning should be interaction and understanding driven by imagination, within the primary political unit, the family. Education should be a guide not a master.

The state, Rousseau argues, can never be trusted to deliver an unbiased education. Indeed, he suggests, “any education aimed at producing the sort of citizen states wanted would be as bad as the states themselves.”[103]

*

What is the purpose of education? There are two distinct purposes, which ideally should be one. Namely, to educate, and to turn out productive members of society – those who will enhance and validate the structure, those who in time will become authority.

Learning cannot of course be removed from this picture, States cannot stand still, particularly as the pace of change accelerates. Ideally the education structure produces the tools to satisfactorily fuel national ambitions – so at this level, learning is of vital importance. However, this learning is potentially superficial in the extreme. The reason being, such learning will be built on the existing structures, which necessarily validate the system – that is, find sympathy within hegemonic thinking. This creates a situation where foundations and structures are barely ever questioned, except in the most superficial manner.

To Use International Relations (IR) as an example, let us examine how the suppositions of some of their favoured thinkers (remembering, all of whom are reliant upon the structure) are used to validate the structure, whilst scientific discoveries are overlooked for the sake of expediency.

*

Structuring the Debate

We need not I think rehash Hobbes’ view of the state of Nature, nor its inaccuracy in consideration of anthropological findings. It must be accepted (at least if one is not a creationist – and even then the Biblical account destroys Hobbes’ argument) the idea of humanity’s origins as war of each against all, belongs in the dustbin of history, along with his attempts to square the circle and the Flat Earth Society.

Hobbes is of course an easy target – the frightened ‘intellectual’, the ‘bourgeois’,[104] happy to renounce his freedom for state security and foundationally subservient to the structure – and eager to justify and enhance his position within it. One can hardly blame him for that, there’s (almost) no-one on academia’s reading lists and in their study packs that isn’t.

But, Hobbes is an excuse, convenient justification for the international order. The argument most likely posed in defence, is that Hobbes is instrumental in shaping behaviour. But, does he shape it? Or does he validate it? If Hobbes had never existed authority would have found another ‘philosopher’ to justify its behaviour – just as they support him with Thucydides, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas… through to modern day equivalents.

Such ‘thinking’ is endemic within academia, it structures all debate, framing the discourse in terms of such ‘extremes’ as Hobbes and Kant or Huntington and Fukuyama or Neo and Neo but always within the structure – and always validating violence and authority.

Occasionally, very occasionally, individuals appear who potentially challenge the structure – Christ being the archetypical example but also including the likes of Nietzsche, Einstein, Orwell and of course Rousseau. Such texts will generally be obscured, omitted, doctored, or misrepresented. Examples being Rousseau’s ‘the State of War’ – doctored to remove it’s most challenging accusations[105], the forty or so pages cut from Émile and ‘the Stag Hunt’, from his ‘Discourse on the Origin of Inequality’ – showing how Civilised Man behaves when confronted with short term self-interest, whereas the point should never be lost – natural man, hunting with tribe or family would never adopt such behaviour – yet IR appears oblivious.

*

As previously noted, the state, in its very broadest sense, has existed for no more than 10,000 years (http://corianderjax.tk/dissertation.htm) – the blink of an eye in terms of human evolution. Yet, nevertheless, in IR, it appears cast in stone. However, as we have also seen, whilst it maybe all powerful in the international arena, it is also an amorphous structure, ebbing and flowing, from the joining of Europe to the fragmentation of the Soviet Union. Further, as governments worldwide sell off infrastructure, whether willingly or forced, the state’s very nature appears in metamorphosis. Yet, this is another road virtually un-travelled in IR – as are, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ecology, genetics… and largely economics.

In effect, it is a discipline built around war, upon the notion that man is violent and cannot escape his nature – meaning, upon disagreement without authority, i.e. the state, violence is the only method of resolving the dispute.[106]

*

My International Relations (ir)

The trouble is, these opinions, used to justify world order, do not describe me in any form I can recognise (nor I would suggest, most people I know at a personal level). That is, in any dispute with another my first tactic is understanding, not violence. Therefore, the arguments of Hobbes & Co. must be flawed.

Having spent approaching three years developing My ir and watching how numerous others do likewise, I must report, although occasional dispute, I have seen no sign of violence whatsoever. In truth, the reality appears to be the opposite of what we are led to believe (supporting Rousseau’s argument, that it is the state itself that is the cause of war). From experience, I would say people by nature when unthreatened get on perfectly well. Indeed, as evidenced through our time at university, international relationships potentially blossom and flourish across borders and cultures, without the prejudice of authority to define the structured agenda.

*

Another thing I have noticed, is that at the start of year one, people arrived with anticipation and excitement, feeling that they could potentially change the world. Since then, they have been moulded and taught into ‘thinking’ and writing in the ‘correct’ manner and marked into conforming. Until, by the end of year three, when instead of feeling empowered and equipped to challenge and question, most have settled for something – a rung on the structure.

This is a consequence of the biasing inherent in all structures, none of which can be immune, which favours arguments and techniques sympathetic to the modus operandi and validation of said structure. This is further compromised by the ever increasing demands of expansion,[107] McDonaldization[108] and reliance on external finance.[109] Leading to what is in effect a sort of ‘flat-packed’ indoctrination, governed by vast reading lists which no one ever need go beyond and the potted texts of study packs to cement structural values in place. Effectively creating a body of workers all singing from (roughly) the same hymn sheet – which of course becomes a boon for throughput, when having to mark six months work in five minutes and in establishing values for said students – in relation to the structure.

*

Just a thought

I began this paper by discussing how life had developed: from the simplest organisms (http://corianderjax.tk/dissertation.htm), concerned only with feeding and breeding, through to the incomprehensible variety and sophistication of our World today. If you don’t believe me, watch a few nature programmes – nature, as well as being a cornucopia, is also a wonder.

Humanity’s part and path is perhaps one of the most astounding – we are after all continually telling ourselves how clever we are. And indeed, since man became ‘Enlightened’, it seems there is no end to his talents. But, at what cost?

Humanity’s social structures evolved over evolutionary time scales. It is perhaps the case that family unit has been under threat since the conceptualisation of good and evil and the birth of structured authority; but, in reality, it is in just two or three generations that we have seen its fragmentation – particularly since the arrival of the ‘science of the mind’ and ‘freedom’ in the form of ‘democracy’.

The science of the mind is the most powerful tool operating in our world today. It works, as discussed above (http://corianderjax.tk/dissertation.htm), by stimulating our genetic urges, fear and hunger, our primary drivers. What are of lesser use are the more sophisticated ‘higher’ animal instincts – perception and reasoning. What is of least use is human nature – evolving with the family, being content, when all one’s needs are filled – which is positively counter-productive in the incessant drive for expansion and power.

Indeed, by twisting and appealing to genetic drives and constantly bombarding humanity with ‘good and evil’ and violence as the solution, structured authority, obsessed with its inexorable expansion, is potentially returning us to, or projecting us towards, some sort of Hobbesian state of nature: a state without society, trust or common goals (excepting short term personal gain).

For Hobbes was not of course showing us humanity’s origin, he drew his conclusions from observing those around him, his world’s controllers and profiteers, “the bourgeois of London and Paris,”[110] those at the top of the food chain, the ‘Hawks’ and ‘Cheats’ (as Dawkins might call them) – those, that society, what’s left of it, is encouraged to envy and emulate. That has nothing to do with the past, except at a primordial level – but, in mistaking gratification for goodness, could Hobbes, rather than seeing our past, be depicting our future?

This prospect must have alarmed Kant, who thought humanity either to be progressing or regressing[111] – it is why he must reject Rousseau, his “Newton of moral order”,[112] in seeing ‘natural man’ as at one with itself – the prospect of such a future was just too terrifying to contemplate.

*

Rousseau, in qualifying his attestation, that “the good man orders everything with regard to the whole; the wicked orders everything with regard to himself”, and appreciating the irreversible rise of ‘Enlightened’ man, Rousseau recognises “ if there is no God, then the wicked man is right and the good man nothing but a fool.”[113]

However, he was not looking into the twenty-first century, with money as a belief structure, rampant consumerism, dwindling power resources, global pollution and ‘free’ market capitalism thrashing the donkey. He might however have pointed out, the binary opposition to enlightenment is delusion.

*

Ah well, who’s to say? We can only work within our own reason, judgement and understanding, and with the information accessible to us: which is what I have attempted to do.

I hope at least some of this makes sense.

Note

One final observation, contrary to popular opinion, the dinosaurs did not become extinct – they evolved – another testament to nature, it’s adaptability, ingenuity and mind boggling brilliance.

The dinosaurs became birds and as far as palaeontologists can ascertain they did not go via a state structure.

Whereas humanity’s, or, more specifically, its structures’, imagination can see no further than ‘universalisation’ and modularisation and the unending drive for expansion. Expansion – growth – not in terms of what we could be, but in terms of what we must do.

Instead of reaching for the skies, filled with potential, our structured authority, our state, our sovereign, our money, our interests, our fear, our hunger project us towards a primordial slime of feeding and breeding, satisfying nothing but our stomachs and our genitals, and creating an environment safe enough in which to do it.

An environment, governed by status and security and uniformity – where right thinking comes pre-packaged and modularised, and our eager progeny gobble it down, like caged pigs being pumped full of genetically enhanced growth hormone, before their eager leap into the maw of the structure.

Shiny brand new members of the human race, packed, processed and ready for shipment, with their cascaded 2:1s marketing them to the structure – processed meat patties ready to be consumed by the corporate world.

Would you like fries with that degree sir? Regular or Super-size Debt to kick-start adulthood and chain you to the structure?

 

 

But Eeyore wasn’t listening. He was taking the balloon out, and putting it back again, as happy as could be…

– A. A. Milne[114]

Radio ConCen Has a New Homepage!

http://radioconcen.wordpress.com/

Many thanks go out to Chris Carota for taking the time to put up a complete listing by month and by author of all the Radio ConCen shows, complete with direct download links.

Cheers!

Two Shows Recorded on Radio Concen

On Sunday, September 16th, Ognir interviewed Chronic, who has some interesting new information about Lee Harvey Oswald.

Download the MP3 audio file (35M 52S; 8.21MB)

Afterwards, Ognir hosted the weekly roundtable discussion, with guests Hei Hu Quan and Mifune.

Download the MP3 audio file (71M 36S; 16.38MB)

Johnny Gosch Is Alive – Part 1: Conspiracy of Silence

I first wrote this article for CR back in 2006 … It’s about what happened when I entered the words “conspiracy” into Google and started following the links. I was never the same again. I found a banned documentary called “Conspiracy of Silence“. The website said it was seized before it aired in 1994, and all copies were destroyed. All except one… a rough, unfinished cut dubbed onto VHS had somehow made it on to the net… the documentary was not 100% finished, but the story was there. The same could be said of my article; for the last year it was 90% finished, but the story was all there. Now I’ve put the panties on, and backup up my claims with verified links and media references. If you follow them, you will never be the same… I say that both as a warning, and as an invitation.

What it takes to go, it takes to know.

Ognir Rants on Radio ConCen

Ognir talks about State of Israel, Forums, WW2, Goodbye to Blove8 Welcome SE, the money system, bankers and lots more.

Download the MP3 audio file (69M 30S; 15.90MB)

Ognir interviews Eric Huffschmidt on Radio ConCen

On Sunday, September 9th, Ognir was joined by a very special guest, Eric Huffschmidt, on Radio ConCen

Download the MP3 audio file (75M 44S; 14.51MB)

Later on in the evening, Ognir hosted the weekly roundtable discussion, with guests Hei Hu Quan, Mifune, and RCS.

Download the MP3 audio file (63M 23S; 17.33MB)

Ognir interviews Timothy McVic on Radio ConCen

Timothy McVic, A Question of God and End Times, Interviewed by Ognir for Radio ConCen.

Download the MP3 audio file (111M 49S; 25.59MB)

Thomas Jefferson’s Vision of Independence

By Mifune
Conspiracy Central Blog
September 8, 2007

Thomas Jefferson’s Vision of Independence

Learning and thinking about the life of Thomas Jefferson, I have come into a greater appreciation of the influence of his philosophy upon America as well as the world. While I understand that Jefferson is by no means a perfect man, I still take him as a role model.

The year was 1826. Thomas Jefferson, designing his final will, wrote the following words for his Epitaph:

“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.”

It is important to note that while overlooking his eight years as President of the United States, Jefferson saw as his greatest achievement the most complete expression of John Locke’s concept of natural rights as any nation or people had yet undertaken: independence, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, religious freedom, and the value of education, allowing people the freedom and opportunity to author their own souls. The United States of America that exists today would not have existed but for the vision and guidance of Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was a very learned man; a scholar by all accounts. As a student, he would spend fifteen hours a day studying. Introduced early on to the writings and concepts of the British Empiricists John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Sir Isaac Newton, he regarded them as the “three greatest men the world had ever produced.”(Peterson, p. 1236) Jefferson often attended dinner parties at the mansion of the royal governor Francis Fauquier. Here Jefferson learned about the philosophy of the leading thinkers of the day; the Enlightenment philosophy of Rousseau and Voltaire. It was this exposure to the most learned minds of his day that led Jefferson to develop his own vision regarding independence.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote the Declaration of Independence, stating:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. …”

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” (Wikipedia.com, 2007)

Jefferson’s Republican vision for America was not always a certainty. While Jefferson was a prominent voice in favor of independence as early as 1774, when he wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America, and in 1776 when he penned the Declaration of Independence, his vision of a limited government clashed with that of the Federalists such as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr. Serving as the Secretary of State during George Washington’s first term, Jefferson fought with the Federalists over whether the United States should have a strong central government, or a government that reserves most of its power to the states. The Federalists eventually won Washington’s favor, moving Jefferson to resign and return to his estate at Monticello.

When John Adams won the Presidential Election of 1796, he immediately moved to levy new taxes, start a navy, build up the army, and enact the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 in response to an undeclared naval war with France. Adams used this act in large part to stifle dissent and criticism against his own policies.

Jefferson’s presidency, by contrast, was marked by his belief in agrarianism, states’ rights, and limited government. After winning the Presidential Election of 1800, Jefferson moved to repeal the new taxes, pardoned all political criminals, disbanded most of the Navy, decreased the size of the army, and shrunk the size of the government. These policies led to some problems, however. When British and French ships began impressing American sailors, Jefferson’s only response was to order an embargo, stopping all shipping from American ports. This policy led to terrible inflation, and was highly unpopular. Jefferson never admitted any error on his part. In 1803, Jefferson made a deal with France to buy French Louisiana for $15 million, doubling the size of the fledgling nation, despite controversy over whether the deal he had made was Constitutional. He sent an expedition led by Meriwether Louis and William Clark to explore and chart the new territory.

On political violence, Jefferson wrote, “What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”2

Religiously, Jefferson was a deist, as was common among many of the leading intellectuals of the time. According to Avery Cardinal Dulles, a leading Roman Catholic theologian,

“In summary, then, Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death; but did not believe in supernatural revelation. He was a Christian deist because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher. He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God. Jefferson’s religion is fairly typical of the American form of deism in his day.” (Dulles, 2005)

While publicly, Jefferson’s ideas had given the Americans moral justification to throw off their former government, his private life left a more mixed legacy. The man who had written so much about independence had owned many slaves, and had never freed them upon his death. According to Wikipedia.com,

“Jefferson owned many slaves over his lifetime. Some find it baffling that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves yet was outspoken in saying that slavery was immoral and it should be abolished. Biographers point out that Jefferson was deep in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he chose not to free them until he finally was debt-free, which he never was. Jefferson seems to have suffered pangs and trials of conscience as a result.”

In addition, at one time Jefferson had expressed views that blacks by nature were inferior to whites. He later recanted this view, in 1809.

“Sir,–I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind to send me on the “Literature of Negroes”. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunity for the development of their genius were not favorable and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making toward their re-establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; and to be assured of the sentiments of high and just esteem and consideration which I tender to yourself with all sincerity.”

While to many, Jefferson’s legacy may send mixed signals to those who value freedom and equality, upon closer examination, many of his faults were simply based on a lack of understanding, not any malicious desire to gain from the toil and suffering of others. Above all, Jefferson’s based his philosophy upon Enlightenment principles of independence and the power of the mind. Jefferson valued exploration and discovery above all else, which allows one to use to use the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to an end that serves one’s own intellectual and spiritual growth, while spreading education and knowledge among society at large.

Works Cited

1. Peterson, Merrill D. Thomas Jefferson: Writings. 1236.

2. “United States Declaration of Independence.” Wikipedia. 6 Sept. 2007. 6 Sept. 2007 <http://www.wikipedia.com&gt;.

3. “Thomas Jefferson.” Wikipedia. 6 Sept. 2007. 6 Sept. 2007 <http://www.wikipedia.com&gt;.

4. Jefferson, Thomas. “Letter to William Smith.” 13 Nov. 1787.

5. Dulles, Avery Cardinal. “The Deist Minimum.” First Things: a Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 149 (2005): 25.

Who Am I?

By Mifune
Conspiracy Central Blog
September 8, 2007

Who Am I?

One of the most important and fundamental questions a person might ask is, “Who am I?” The implications of the answer are so profound that they must affect every aspect of one’s life. In searching for the answer, one may also want to consider the difference between true free will – a choice that is driven by one’s essence – and actions that are pre-determined by any number of natural and environmental influences, such as DNA, psychological and social conditioning, traumatic events, physical stimuli, diet, and the like. By understanding the direct causes of influences upon ones thoughts and actions, one is able then to recognize the difference between pre-determined and free will choices.

Tabula rasa, or blank slate, is the idea that human beings are born without any innate mental content; that we come to our knowledge of the world through our experiences alone. It is this idea, founded in Eastern philosophy, mentioned by Aristotle, and more fully developed by John Locke, the Founding Fathers of America such as Thomas Jefferson and the American Transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson, that we derive many of our modern-day ideas about liberty and natural rights. Quoting Wikipedia.com,

“As understood by Locke, tabula rasa meant that the mind of the individual was born “blank”, and it also emphasized the individual’s freedom to author his or her own soul. Each individual was free to define the content of his or her character – but his or her basic identity as a member of the human species cannot be so altered. It is from this presumption of a free, self-authored mind combined with an immutable human nature that the Lockean doctrine of “natural” rights derives.”

Historically at odds with the concept of tabula rasa is Platonic Epistemology. According to Wikipedia.com,

“Platonic Epistemology holds that knowledge is innate, so that learning is the development of ideas buried deep in the soul, often under the mid-wife-like guidance of an interrogator. Plato believed that each soul existed before birth with “The Form of the Good” and a perfect knowledge of everything. Thus, when something is ‘learned’ it is actually just ‘recalled.’”

To approach the dichotomy of innate versus empirical from a different angle, many Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism hold that when a person dies, he or she is reincarnated as another human being according to the rules of karma. If one lived poorly and had bad karma in a past life, one will be reborn into a miserable life. If one lived well and had good karma, one will be reborn into a happy life. According to Wikipedia.com,

“Rebirth in Buddhism is the doctrine that the consciousness of a person (as conventionally regarded), upon the death or dissolution of the aggregates (skandhas) which make up that person, becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new group of skandhas which may again be conventionally considered a person or individual. The consciousness arising in the new person is neither identical to, nor different from, the old consciousness, but forms part of a causal continuum or stream with it. The basic cause for this persistent re-arising of personality is the abiding of consciousness in avidya (ignorance); when ignorance is uprooted, rebirth ceases.”

Hypothetically, if one were to take the doctrine of rebirth at face value, such a reality would lend credence to the idea that knowledge is innate. However, the idea of reincarnation would also tend to support the Lockean doctrine of natural rights, that each individual is free to author his or her own soul. If we do have absolute freedom, then we also have a responsibility to use that freedom wisely. Knowledge of oneself and of the world, of how to discern truth from falsehood and good from evil, is essential to the exercise of free will, rooting out ignorance, and escaping the cycle of rebirth. Therefore, the seeking of knowledge and objectivity takes on something of a moral imperative.

There are in fact many ancient traditions that refer to escaping the cycle of rebirth. Buddhism refers to it as Nirvana. Esoteric Christianity called it the Gnosis. Sufi Islam knew it as the Path of Knowledge. According to Cassiopedia.org, Georges I. Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armeniam mystic, insisted,

“… that nearly all people today live in a state of “waking sleep.” This assertion is applied to the entire moral gamut of modern society. Gurdjieff said, even specifically at times, that a pious, good, and moral man was no more “spiritually developed” (as he would define it) than a common criminal. The Gurdjieff teaching involves the development of what Gurdjieff and others would term “higher bodies,” and has very little, especially at the onset, to do with altering one’s actions in what most would call everyday, or normal, life. Gurdjieff denied the spiritual value, and indeed the existence altogether, of moral right and wrong, or of “good and evil” as we understand it, saying it was not the actions of a man that were of value (as Gurdjieff would say that man cannot lay claim to the commission of these acts, and that they were entirely automatic); the only thing of value was the extent to which a man may observe and understand his actions.”

Gurdjieff called his system of teaching the Fourth Way. Quoting Cassiopedia.org,

“Generally, the term [Fourth Way] refers to a body of teaching on the possible spiritual development of man, introduced to the Western culture by George Gurdjieff in the first half of the 20th century. P. D. Ouspensky, a contemporary and student of Gurdjieff, has brought many aspects of the teaching to a condensed form in the book ‘In Search of the Miraculous.’ Within the 4th Way teaching, the term 4th Way is a path of spiritual development set apart from the 3 traditional ways, these being the Way of the Fakir, emphasizing the mastery of the physical body, the Way of the Monk, emphasizing mastery of emotions, and the Way of the Yogi, which emphasizes discipline of the mind. These different ways or approaches to spiritual development generally correspond to the three types of man.”

“The 4th Way differs from these in that it seeks to simultaneously develop all three sides and to do so in the environment of ordinary life, whereas the three first ways all require from the beginning a complete abandoning of daily life and a seclusion into a monastic environment. The 4th Way is sometimes therefore called the way of the ‘sly man.’ All the 4 ways may lead to the same understandings and may bring their practitioner from the ‘outer circle’ of humanity to the ‘exoteric’ and later ‘mesoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ circles .”

The question “Who am I” is very difficult for anyone to answer. Some people may spend their whole lives in search of the answer to this question. Upon examination of ancient and esoteric traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism, Sufi Islam, Gnostic Christianity, and the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, one may find that real meaning in life lies in the pursuit of knowledge with the express purpose of attaining objectivity and self mastery. Because I am ultimately a soul in search of truth, and every part of “me” that is not my essence is not of me, then I must live my life searching for truth, and disregard everything else as mere distraction.

Works Cited

1. “Tabula Rasa.” Wikipedia. 1 Sept. 2007. 4 Sept. 2007 <http://www.wikipedia.com&gt;.

2. “Platonic Epistemology.” Wikipedia. 7 Aug. 2007. 4 Sept. 2007 <http://www.wikipedia.com&gt;.

3. “Rebirth (Buddhism).” Wikipedia. 25 Aug. 2007. 4 Sept. 2007 <http://www.wikipedia.com&gt;.

4. “Georges Ivanovich Gurdgieff” Cassiopedia. 23 Jan. 2007. 4 Sept. 2007 <http://www.cassiopedia.org&gt;.

5. “The Fourth Way” Cassiopedia. 1 Oct. 2006. 4 Sept. 2007 <http://www.cassiopedia.org&gt;.