Freedom Scribe Blogging on issues of Constitutional freedom.

Our grandchildren will look back on this past Sunday and realize it was the day when Americans sold the last shred of their freedom to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Sold? No, you’ve bought – bought the bill of goods that the pharmaceutical and insurance companies were selling to you and to Congress, bought it hook, line and sinker – and you didn’t even have the common street sense to dicker. The price? Slavery. And payment is due in full by 2014.

It doesn’t break my heart in the least that Obama and our Congress critters have just committed very messy political seppuku, but it won’t make any real difference to America either. The GOP is crying about the corruption involved in this health care bill – but that’s only because they are in a perfect position right now to blame it all on the Democrats. When they are in power again – January, I should think, after this fiasco – the rhetoric will certainly change a little and our guns might even be a little safer from confiscation for a couple more years, but the ulimate outcome will be precisely the same. Unless a politician starts out extremely wealthy indeed, no one makes it to DC these days without winding up beholden to these corporations. It just cannot be done. And if your career has made you that kind of wealth, why would you even be willing to trade it for heartache and stomach ulcers in DC? Ron Paul did it all on his own dime, he’s dead honest and not beholden to anyone but his constituents, and you’ve seen how much serious attention he is given by the pundits and the media.

If this bill becomes law and takes full effect, you will be required to purchase medical insurance from a private insurance company or pay a hefty fine. You will become (as you probably already are) part of a huge medical database – and medical privacy will be forever a thing of the past. What treatments you will be allowed to receive under this system will be mandated by pharmaceutical companies and accountants trying to “keep costs down,” and the costs of the program will still spiral out of control. Did you know that if you have terminal cancer, it is already illegal to seek alternative treatments in another country? A number of people who have gone to Mexico for Laetrile have actually been jailed upon their return. I have no opinion on whether Laetrile works or not, but I have a powerful belief that you have the absolute right to try to save your own life in any way that you see fit! You can expect that situation to become even worse. A cancer treatment that is cheap, doesn’t make you literally sicker – and actually works – will cost the companies controlling your healthcare millions of dollars. Naturally it is illegal, and it will remain illegal for as long as the corporations control Congress.

Some folks are relieved to see that multiple states are gearing up to challenge this legislation at the Supreme Court level, and even more states are working on legislation to mandate lawsuits against the federal government if this bill is enacted. One figure I read recently was 37 states – if that is actually true, this is unprecedented in the history of the United States. Unfortunately, it is also doomed to failure before it even begins. The judges who would hear such lawsuits were appointed by politicians – like George W. Bush – who are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Before you can bring suit against the federal government, you first have to be awarded “standing” by such a federal judge – meaning that you must be judged by a federal court to have the legal right to sue. These suits, if they are filed, won’t even get that far, I am sure. And if any challenges are filed at the Supreme Court level, all SCOTUS has to do is refuse to hear the case. This is all a distraction, meant to keep us passive until it is far too late to do anything about this bill.

Or so they believe.

There is a ray of hope, actually, although it does not come from an expected quarter. My parents survived the Great Depression. During those years, back alley medicine was practiced by a large number of healers. Some were licensed physicians offering services in secrecy and off the books – like abortions when they were illegal. Others were perfectly competent physicians who had lost their medical licenses for little or no reason at all. Some were what we would call naturopaths today. Some were indeed crooks and charlatans, but as with any tradesman, the successful were those who gave good value for a reasonable price – either cash or barter – and entirely off the books.

This sort of underground economy is called “agorism,” and it is the only way to fight a behemoth like our government. You can’t win politically, and going head to head or toe to toe with an out-of-control government is just suicidal. But a medical underground for those folks who don’t want or can’t afford insurance – or who just don’t want their medical records to become public property – would be a very good thing. I foresee several things about such a medical underground:

1. Common sense would rule. Your family doctor wouldn’t be sending you for $10,000-12,000 in unnecessary medical tests because he is afraid of being sued, all when he knows perfectly well that you have a kidney infection and just need a round of antibiotics. Your doctor can’t really piss you off without going to jail, and you can’t really report him without going to jail yourself – and you sure as hell can’t sue him in open court. So both of you would behave like rational human beings.

2. Most likely you could get in to see your doctor within an hour or two, rather than waiting a month until he feels like taking new patients.

3. Some doctors, in the interest of acquiring and keeping patients, might even offer house calls. It’s far safer, when you are doing something illegal, to move around and not have an office that can be targeted.

4. Doctors would learn to diagnose again. A good doctor can tell far more with his eyes, ears, fingers and nose than an expensive CT scan or MRI is likely to tell him.

5. Folks wouldn’t be going to hospitals unless they were actually in real danger of dying. “Take two aspirin, drink plenty of water, and call me in the morning,” was generally wise advice for 90 percent of health concerns, but doctors forgot it somewhere along the line under the ever present fear of lawsuits.

6. More babies will be born at home, under the care of underground doctors or midwives, and both mothers and children will be safe from hospital infections.

7. Such a system will fight unemployment and help the economy. The old country gal whose granny taught her to treat Brown Recluse bites with sugar water, treat bronchitis or even Tuberculosis with raw garlic and who makes that hellacious linament for a sore back really deserves to get paid for her knowledge. She will now get paid – cash under the table, or a couple of chickens or even a pig – all of which will certainly go to feed her family and no part of it will help to support foreign wars or other stupidities of empire.

I am actually finding this quite amusing. Congress has definitely given us real health care reform, just not quite in the way that they or Obama intended.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Politics, Uncategorized

Obama is Scared, He is on the Run . . .

I recently read the above headline in an email from Newsmax.  Yes, I do sometimes read that rag, although it leaves me needing to wash my hands every single time.  I actually get news from dozens of sources, domestic and foreign, leaning left, right and even toward the Twilight Zone.  I attempt to compare and contrast them and boil them down to something resembling truth, which is frequently found by noticing what is not even mentioned in the MSM (mainstream media, for the uninitiated).  Of course, I do have my most valuable news sources, the very best of which is the Wayne Madsen Report.  Mr. Madsen is one of the very last of a dying breed – an honest-to-goddess investigative journalist.  So is Greg Palast.  So what if both tend to lean a little left?  It doesn’t make the facts they turn up any less real or valid.  As John Galt said in Atlas Shrugged, “A equals A.”  Facts are still facts, even when we don’t like them.  I have been capable of distinguishing fact from opinion since I was ten years old.  These two journalists have excellent sources and excellent brains, and they dig up real facts with unrelenting excellence.  Their personal politics couldn’t interest me less.

Obama is indeed scared, as is the entire federal government, and they very definitely should be scared.  The level of rage I am sensing from my fellow Americans has reached new heights in the last few months, between Obama mortgaging our great grandchildren with the trillion dollar gift he delivered to the Federal Reserve and his attempts to federalize our health care system.  I caught a brilliant quote on the latter – and I am ashamed I cannot remember the source – but whoever it was said that this would result in “DMV service at Pentagon prices.”  I couldn’t have said it better myself, which is a shameful thing for any writer to admit.  While I freely admit that our health care system is badly broken, government meddling is NOT the answer!  On the contrary, government meddling caused the current problems, and more government meddling will only make matters worse than they already are.

Yes, our federal government is terrified, and the planning for countering “civil unrest” (media speak for shootin’ revolution) are becoming more and more transparent.  One of the ways our frightened federal government is trying to hit back is by lumping all dissatisfied and unhappy Americans into one big group – right wing fanatics, militias, domestic terrorists – many different names, all with negative connotations to the sane.  Negative connotations even to me, frankly, as I despise both racism and Christian fanaticism.

All media confusion aside, even at the most basic level, we are two different groups.

The first group – Group A, for convenience – are right wing conservatives.  Most are Christian fanatics, who would prefer that evolution not be taught in public schools (they’ve forgotten the A equals A lesson).  Many believe in conversion by the sword – i.e., those who are not Christians and who are unwilling to convert to the one true faith should all be killed.  Many truly believe in Armageddon and the Rapture and honestly do believe these things are almost upon us (yes, some of these folks need medication to cope with reality at all).  Many are very racist and are either KKK or would have been KKK in past decades.  They can be spotted fairly simply by pretty much any one of the following methods:

1.  Excessive Bible quoting (out of context, of course).
2.  “Praying about” everything from what car to buy to when to go to the bathroom.
3.  Serious discussion of creative design as if it were a scientific principle.
4.  An insistence that all of the U.S. founders were devout Christians (historically untrue).
5.  Racial hatred against both blacks and hispanics.
6.  Vocal defense of torture as an interrogation method and aggressively informing the rest of us that we should be grateful for the men and women who have and do use it, supposedly on our behalf.
7.  Loud and irrational defense of our Middle Eastern wars, stating that they are “keeping America safe for democracy” – as if America was a democracy, which it isn’t, and democracy was a desirable political form, which it isn’t (being two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner).
8.  Loud and irrational defense of the cruel behavior of INS in incarcerating and deporting illegal aliens, even when they are being deported to starvation or even far worse.

Despite calling themselves gentle and loving Christians, this right wing group can be characterized at the most basic level by a sociopathic lack of compassion or empathy for anyone outside their select group – and a fundamental desire to control others.  When these people talk about “freedom,” freedom is most definitely not what they mean.  “Freedom” is about doing what they believe you should be doing, and if you don’t agree with what they believe you should be doing, you become an outsider and therefore fair game.

By contrast, libertarians and other genuine freedom lovers – Group B, for convenience – are a homogeneous group of all races and all religions.  At the most fundamental level, their philosophy is to live and let live.  They don’t even want to mess with the right wing wackos beyond the extent necessary for self defense.  Everybody should be allowed to live and pursue happiness in their own way, without interference from others or from government – even nutcases, so long as they harm no one.  Some libertarians are certainly Christians, but they aren’t trying to cram their beliefs down anyone’s throat.  Some are Pagans.  Some are atheists.  All will defend to the death your right to believe anything you choose.

How these two groups can be confused is honestly beyond my understanding.  Libertarians are the political and philosophical descendants of Thomas Jefferson, and their most cherished ethic is never to initiate force to achieve political or social goals.  Initiation of force, however, is not the same thing as response to force.  Libertarians tend to be soft spoken pacifists carrying very large .45s – but they don’t start trouble, ever.  They are merely willing to finish trouble if someone else sends it to visit.

So if there is ever “civil unrest” started or led by libertarians, you can count on it being a real question of self defense.  Frankly, I’m not so sure about that other bunch.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice, Politics

Please note that my copyright notice is null and void for this post.  Anyone who wishes to borrow the text of this letter to use on behalf of Cele Castillo is welcome – and even urged – to do so.

The whole story, in Cele’s own words.

Please sign our petition here.

The Honorable Eric Holder

United States Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Re: Prosecutorial Misconduct

USA vs. Celerino Castillo, III

SA: 08-CR-00193 (1) – WRF

No. 08- 51144 USA vs. CASTILLO

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I have recently read in the news media about your unprecedented reversal of conviction in the corruption case concerning Senator Ted Stevens, and I applaud your action.  It was very apparent that there was prosecutorial misconduct that did indeed take place in that case.

However, I have recently become cognizant of a similar – and quite possibly even a far worse – example of prosecutorial misconduct, and as an American citizen, I am urgently requesting your assistance in getting to the bottom of this ugly situation.

Mr. Celerino “Cele” Castillo, III, a resident of my own state of Texas, is best remembered for being a whistleblower during the Iran-Contra investigation.  Mr. Castillo submitted his testimony to the House Select Committee for Intelligence and went before a federal grand jury in Washington D.C, to testify to CIA involvement in murder, torture, drug trafficking, and arms smuggling.

After his retirement from the DEA, Mr. Castillo became an educator and an activist for several civil rights organizations, such as People for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

On March 06, 2008, Mr. Castillo was arrested by ATF agents in San Antonio, Texas.  The charges were filed by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton for the Western District of Texas.  After eight months, Mr. Castillo’s charges were dismissed under Poke v. U.S.

However, prior to Mr. Castillo’s charges being dismissed, he was told that he was required to plead guilty to new charges of “Selling Guns without a License and Aiding and Abetting.”  ATF agents telephoned Mr. Castillo’s elderly mother on literally a daily basis, threatening this elderly lady with never seeing her son again, until Mr. Castillo pled guilty and was sentenced to 37 months of incarceration.  Such tactics on the parts of the ATF agents in question were at best, disgusting – and at worst, even criminal.  That is, said tactics certainly appear to be felony extortion in my personal view, and I cannot see any other interpretation at this time.

Mr. Castillo was initially ordered to surrender for his term of incarceration on March 05, 2009, but he discovered soon after his sentencing that his attorney, Robert “Eddie” de la Garza, had been under investigation by the state bar throughout his case – and Mr. de la Garza had failed to advise the court that he was in the process of being suspended.  There was a massive issue of conflict of interest on the part of Mr. de la Garza also, because the same agents involved in Mr. Castillo’s case were also involved with another case involving Mr. de la Garza’s son, Andrew de la Garza, who had been arrested by ATF a short time prior on quite similar charges to Mr. Castillo’s.

The judge in Mr. Castillo’s case has extended Mr. Castillo’s required surrender date until July 20, 2009, so that he may have ample time to prepare this case with his new public defender.

On April 10, 2009, Mr. Castillo and his new public defender filed nine counts of Prosecutorial Misconduct and Outrageous Government Conduct related to his case.  The complaints were filed with the Office of the Inspector General and the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, and therefore should be readily available for your review.

I do strongly believe that the prosecutorial misconduct involved in Mr. Castillo’s case was even more severe than that which was involved in Senator Ted Stevens’ case, as I do very strongly suspect that Mr. de la Garza’s son’s predicament was actually used by the ATF agents involved in both cases to blackmail Mr. de la Garza, Mr. Castillo’s defense attorney, into giving Mr. Castillo the worst possible legal advice – in other words, pressuring Mr. Castillo’s attorney to advise him in the strongest terms to plead guilty even though it was never in Mr. Castillo’s best interest to do so.  Put still another way, this situation certainly does make it appear that this was felony extortion again, which I am sure you will agree is never acceptable conduct for anyone, let alone someone in the legal or law enforcement professions.

In light of these facts, I am respectfully requesting an immediate, thorough and very urgent inquiry into the manner in which Mr. Castillo’s case was prosecuted, and I also feel that time is of extremely crucial importance in this matter.  Cele Castillo is one of the last surviving credible witnesses to the government agency abuses that took place during the Iran Contra years, and as a former deep cover DEA agent, the very unfortunate reality is that he will be placed in extremely grave personal danger from the moment he enters the U.S. prison system on July 20th, 2009.

I hope to hear from you concerning this matter at your very earliest convenience.

Respectfully yours,

Kathryn A. Graham

Hooks, Texas

Please sign our petition here.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice, Politics, Uncategorized

If you are like most Americans, you’ve been scratching your head over the last decade or two asking yourself what the hell has happened to your country.  After reading about the recent poll numbers showing that churchgoers approve far more often of torture than do their non-church-going friends, I started doing a little bit of serious research into this matter.

I stumbled into an absolute cess pool of “Dominionism” and “Christian Nationalism” that still has me wanting to bow down before the porcelain god and lose my supper.  If you can stomach it, do some reading.  You will discover that a group of Christian fanatics has deliberately hijacked your country and attempted (and is still attempting) to turn it into the most repressive of theocracies.

Said idiots have even tried to rewrite history, claiming that our founding fathers were exclusively Christian.  Off the top of my head, I can name three who weren’t.  Two were Deists, and Ben Franklin, the old goat, was a member of the naughty Hellfire Club.  Jefferson converted a time or two to a relatively mild brand of Episcopalianism, but he always came back to Deism.  I think his flirtation with Christianity was probably just good for business.  So the very idea that we were founded as an exclusively Christian nation is just ridiculous.

Personally, I have a difficult time believing that any woman buys into this Dominionist garbage.  Submit to your husband?  Sorry, gents, but I’ve yet to meet a male that could run his own life efficiently, let alone mine.  These groups supposedly aren’t opposed to birth control – not like the Catholics are – but they don’t want to talk about it either, not even in countries where the birth rate is actually killing folks left and right.  It certainly seems that keeping the little lady barefoot and pregnant is the only way they know to keep her under control.  And spreading disease in poor countries is one way to keep them from ever becoming a “problem” for you.

Unfortunately, I’ve studied enough psychology to recognize a massive male inferiority complex when I see one.  And that tracks on the torture issue as well – apart from clinical sadists, the only folks who would derive satisfaction from torturing a helpless prisoner would be those who were feeling awfully helpless themselves at the time.  Torture must have been very empowering for a certain type of crippled personality.

Incidentally, John Ashcroft was an Assembly of God type, which means he was definitely a Dominionist.  Assembly of God and Pentecostal churches were among the first to accept Dominionist philosophy right after the turn of the last century, and they were followed by most of the evangelical and charismatic churches.  Personally, I am not surprised.  Any group that calls falling down in the floor, foaming at the mouth and making unintelligible animal noises “speaking in tongues” is collectively fruitier than nutcakes in my admittedly biased view.

Back to Ashcroft, the poor SOB was so totally threatened by femininity that he spent $8,000 of taxpayer money to drape the bare breast of a classical statue of Lady Justice.  You’ve really got to feel sorry for a heterosexual guy that goes through life worried that he might catch a glimpse of female skin.

Kind of reminds you of some Muslim fanatics you’ve read about, doesn’t it.  Brand just doesn’t matter – a nut is a nut is a nut . . .

Fanatics have always been the most dangerous of human beings.  Fanatics account for Muslim extremists blowing themselves up with disturbing regularity and trying to take a lot of folks with them.  Fanatics recently bombed Gaza back into the stone age, creating even more Muslim extremists just itching to don high explosive fashion.  Fanatics are the reason Steve Rosen, caught red-handed in espionage against the United States of America, has just walked free to do it again – by fanatics in this case, I refer to the “Amen” corner of Congress and the White House, those folks who believe that Israel can do no wrong at all, no matter what, not ever – it makes one wonder what sort of guilt is behind this blindness.

Fact:  Of all our so-called allies, Israel has the most active and damaging espionage program against the United States.  Fact, not fiction, and incontrovertible.  But Israel can still do no wrong.

I don’t hate Jews at all.  I don’t hate anybody at all these days, and Jews least of all.  Hell, I literally grew up around the entertainment and apparel industries – kind of hard indeed to hate those folks when they helped raise you.  But I never met a single individual who could do no wrong – and as for a whole nation, let’s not even go there.

The fanatics few want to talk about in this country are actually part and parcel of the “Amen” corner problem, because right along with Pat Robertson, those Dominionists and Christian Nationalists think we just have to prevent one single acre of the Holy Land from falling into Muslim hands, and they are cheerfully willing to shed many gallons of American blood to prevent it.  Of course, they find it easy to ignore several million Palestinians who absolutely have to live somewhere, and given the xenophobia endemic to this sort of Christian, it is likely they have some sort of “final solution” in mind for those poor unfortunates even if the Israelis don’t.

How ironic, and how tragic.

And it is ironic indeed that this very hard right wing crew has just handed over western civilization to some of the most rabid socialists imaginable.  Genuine conservatives and small government folks can’t stomach these religious wingnuts at all, and so the GOP has self-destructed messily from the inside – and it has done it almost overnight in historical terms.  As a political party, the GOP is completely washed up.  Finished.  John McCain’s choice of fruitcake Sarah Palin for a running mate only drove a stake through the heart of an already rotting corpse.

No doubt the GOP is hoping that Obama’s socialist programs will worsen things economically in the United States to the point that the populace will accept anything else.  Hell, Rush Limbaugh suicidally stated on national radio that he actually wanted Obama to fail.  On the other hand, I do think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for advocates of genuine freedom to fill a power vacuum at the very top of American politics, and I hope Ron Paul is listening.

If we libertarians can get our act together – and getting libertarians to work together has been compared to herding cats – but if we can get our act together in the next four years, we have a real chance now to change the landscape of American politics forever.

I, for one, simply will not live in a Christian theocracy.  I am a practicing Pagan, and my life wouldn’t be worth two cents in such a regime, so I will fight these idiots to my dying breath – with words if I can, and with blood if necessary – and I absolutely guarantee I won’t die alone.  Not all Pagans are pacifists.  Not all Pagans are liberals.  I might add that gentle martyrdom is just about the brain dead dumbest idea the Christians ever came up with – right up there with “turn the other cheek.”

Perhaps it is time for the worst domestic enemies of our Constitution that have crawled out from under slimy rocks at any time in the past two centuries to find that out.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Politics

A recent article I spied on the CNN news site made me start thinking, very hard, about the state of religion in the United States.  According to a recent poll:

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Even though I am not personally a Christian, and I have not been since I was a child, I found those figures extremely shocking – until I began to think about my own experiences with American Protestant Christianity, especially during a recent and particularly difficult year I spent in southeastern Kansas.

Like anyone who lives in the United States, I cannot avoid having some friends who are of the Protestant Christian persuasion, and of those friends that I know very well, there are several that I do respect highly on the grounds of morality, kindness, compassion and charity – including, but not limited to, a specific couple living in southeastern Kansas and at least one man living and caring for his mother in Kansas City, Missouri – right in the heart of the American Midwest.  However, in my experience, such individuals are sadly the exception and not at all the rule for Christians, and this does seem especially true of a particular type of self-styled Christian living in the American Midwest.

The overwhelmingly vocal majority of American Protestant Christians seem to be xenophobic to an absurd degree.  In case you don’t speak English very well, xenophobic is a term that encompasses, among other traits, racism.  If it doesn’t look like you, and if it doesn’t talk like you, it really isn’t fully human and doesn’t deserve the compassion or kindness we would show to one of “our own.”

The term xenophobic doesn’t only refer to race, however.  It literally translates more or less as fear of difference, fear of outsiders or fear of that which is foreign or alien.  Xenophobes are the folks who would love to see illegal immigrants – most of them starving and desperately looking for work – very badly treated or even killed.  Sadly, they are mostly getting their wish these days.

My own personal experience has mostly been with those self-styled Christians who honestly believe that Pagans and/or Witches are devil-worshippers and would like to see all of us dead.  My life and property have been threatened by this sort of Christian on numerous occasions over the last 35 years – and even the lives of my innocent pets.  Knowing what I do know of the purported teachings of Jesus of Nazareth – and my childhood education certainly did not neglect Sunday School – it is more than clear to me that these self-styled Christians have absolutely no idea at all what their faith is even about.

In fact, the only sane response to their behavior toward me over the years can be summed up very succinctly in three one-syllable words, “Lock and load.”

Christianity, because it teaches that life is just a temporary phase on the way to eternal reward or punishment, has always been a faith that lends itself all too easily to cults.  Christians take up monetary collections during their services – shaming even the very poor into giving what they cannot afford – and if you think that isn’t a lucrative practice, just visit your nearest Baptist church on Sunday morning and do the math.  Christian leaders have extremely lucrative reasons to try to control every facet of their followers’ lives from bank accounts to sex lives – and that is the very definition of a cult.  Yet because they call themselves Christian, we dare not say so.

The unfortunate truth is that Christian fanatics have been committing crimes (on this continent) in the name of their faith since the murdered women of Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 17th Century, and even before – they like to call these murdered Salem women Witches, and that somehow makes it all right.  The women involved could not possibly have been modern Witches, as what we called Wicca or Witchcraft today did not even exist at the time.  The play/movie, The Crucible, appears to show that a jealous wife used a slave’s Caribbean Voodoo and the town’s witchcraft hysteria to bring about the multiple murders of her perceived rivals – all in the name of devout Christianity.  I don’t know how accurate the story is, but it certainly rings true.

Today, the Christian cults’ modus operandi seems to be more along the lines of blowing up abortion clinics and threatening President Obama because he is black and – oh, horrors – has the middle name of “Hussein.”

I don’t happen to think Obama is the new messiah as some American folks seem to think.  In fact, I have some very serious issues with the man.  My issues with our current president, however, are political in nature and have zero to do with Obama personally or with his race.

When a religion forfeits its moral compass – as any advocate of torture has surely done, whether the victim of torture is to be Muslim or not, even terrorist or not – and when said religion teaches fear and cruelty instead of faith and love, it no longer deserves the label – or the constitutional protections – of religion.

The Taliban do not deserve the label of Muslim, and neither do the hate-mongers of Al Qaeda.  Why should these sick sects of Christians infesting our Midwest be any different?  I have no more desire to live under a Christian Taliban than under a Muslim one, and in either case, I will defend my life and freedom with my blood.  Nor will I ever allow torture to be done in my name.  If it takes the rest of my life, I will not cease from advocating the trial and punishment of those who ordered, those who justified, and those who carried out torture in the last administration.  If we do not punish them, it may happen again, and that is unthinkable.

I suspect that most Americans would still agree with me.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice, Politics

I, as promised, have kept silent during the first days of our new President’s administration.  I hoped, along with most of the rest of America, that we would see substantive change, even though I knew it would be far more socialist change that I personally would be able to stomach.  Nevertheless, there were even deeper American issues that I really believed that President Obama would wish to address.

Of course, looting the American treasury and mortgaging the future of our grandchildren was not exactly a good start, but I still hoped that our new president would want to address issues in blatant violation of our Constitution and our national values – issues like torture and warrantless wiretapping.

Instead, President Obama chose to keep and expand the warrantless wiretapping program, which has led to my recent work on a book soon to be released, intended to teach the average computer and cell phone user how to avoid said wiretapping.  Watch for Naked in the Cyber Winds: A Survival Guide for the Surveillance Age.

As reprehensible as I find said wiretapping, particularly after learning of the tap on Senator Harman (although I do believe the lady should be jailed for treason – as I am sure there is ample other evidence that could be found in more traditional and acceptable ways), I find torture even more morally repugnant, as I think would any sane human being.

I was all in favor of President Obama’s declassification and release of the torture memos, and I believe there are many more still to be released.  I was, however, stunned and disgusted by his initial stance that there would be no torture prosecutions, even though torture clearly violates both U.S. and international law.  After considerable pressure from Congress, he seems to have modified his stance to the extent that those at the top who may have ordered torture might be prosecuted if his Attorney General chooses to move forward.  After all, it isn’t up to him.  He is only the President of the United States.  This is actually quite true, but most presidents seem to honor it only when it serves their purposes.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney is trying to twist the debate by calling for the release of still classified material that supposedly proves what incredibly valuable information was gained from torture.  This disgusting and creepy excuse for a human being just won’t go away.

To begin with, I believe that no information of value is ever gained from torture, as the victim will simply admit to anything whatsoever to get the torture to stop.  You would, and I would, and any ordinary human being would.  The only persons throughout history who have even attempted to resist torture were extreme idealogues, both good and bad – and guess what our so-called “high value” detainees were?

Second, in several of these “high value” cases, torture was the desperate attempt of a madman to justify an illegal war.  According to reports this very morning, enormous pressure was put on interrogators to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.  Can you spell obsession?

Furthermore, in trying to shield the foot soldiers who actually carried out such interrogations, President Obama has aligned himself with every disgusting tyrant throughout history.  “Just following orders” is not an excuse for torture.  It never has been, and it never will be.  I would be interested in seeing an actual count of how many times that defense was used during the Nazi trials at Nuremberg.

So let me be very clear here.  Dick Cheney says the point was the high value information obtained, but that is missing the point altogether.  These men and women may well have believed that they were using torture to protect me, the American citizen, from death at the hands of terrorists, but I vehemently reject that relationship.  Not in my name!  Not ever!

I believe that I am an average citizen of my country, perfectly normal in every way, not unusually brave at all, but let me put this in words of one syllable so that I cannot possibly be misunderstood:  I would rather die horribly at the hands of terrorists than have torture and abuse committed in my name! How hard is that to understand?

How can anyone tolerate this type of moral degenerate?  How can their wives share their beds?  How can husbands even look at their wives?  How can their children ever respect them?  How can their neighbors live near them?  Frankly, I’d rather have Jeffrey Dahmer for a neighbor than anyone who has committed this sort of crime.  And I don’t give a tinker’s damn who ordered it in the first place.  All are equally guilty.

Those who committed, and those who ordered, the crime of torture should be unemployable, even to scrub toilets and clean sewers.  They should be shunned by every decent human being on the planet.  By their actions, they have seceded from the human race.  They are not welcome in my home, my city, my state or in my country.  They should be tried at once for the nastiest and ugliest crime one human being can ever commit against another, and if convicted in a court of law, they should be imprisoned for the rest of their miserable lives – not in Club Fed type prisons, but in maximum security prisons that have guards with nasty attitudes.  They should immediately be assigned large and sexually active cellmates.

And when, as will inevitably happen, they find their new circumstances too horrible to endure, we should be more merciful than they were to their victims – and allow them to take their own lives.

You can call me naive.  I will wear that badge with pride.  But I do believe that nothing less will cleanse this stain upon the honor and the decency of the American people.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice, Politics

The last 24 hours have truly been historic, and for many reasons.

To begin with, the idea that you can judge a person based on the melanin content of their skin is, hands down, the brain dead dumbest idea ever spawned by the human race.  To go from Jim Crow to an African-American in the White House in fifty years – actually within a single human lifetime – is an achievement we can all be proud of.

Is Barack Obama, this brilliant and highly educated man with the calm and discipline to run such an incredible campaign, qualified to be president?  Of course he is!  The last two years have tested him in countless ways and demonstrated that he not only has the smarts and the cool to be president, but he has considerable steel in his spine as well.  He is altogether an admirable man.

Unfortunately, Democrats historically have been promoters of the nanny state and protectionism.  Democrats are not the champions of the Constitution they would have us believe either.  They did bring us Waco, after all.

I am afraid this morning for free trade – real free trade, not the farce of NAFTA.

I am afraid this morning for our economic future.

I am afraid this morning for my civil rights, including my right to own and carry firearms.

Still, this is a new day, and until our new president has had time to get his feet on the ground in the Oval Office and make some policy decisions we can evaluate, it is time to get behind him and encourage him in every way that we can.

Maybe he will be the voice of change that we need.

Maybe.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Politics

Is this the same country that I grew up in?

When I was twelve years old, my father gave me a battered paperback copy of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and told me to read it.  Please don’t confuse Heinlein’s original book with the dreadful movie made from it decades later – there is simply no comparison, and apart from a character name or two, almost no resemblance.  When I returned the book to my father, I told him I was going to enlist in the U.S. military on my 18th birthday.  Dad, who was a lifelong patriot and the Major who had been in charge of all the A/V material sent back to the U.S. from the European theater in World War II, laughed very heartily at the daughter he loved – but he was not at all displeased.

I had the last laugh.  The only change in my plan was from the U.S. Army to the U.S. Air Force.  I raised my right hand and took the enlistment oath on my 18th birthday.  It might be a good idea to review that oath once in awhile:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

I was proud to serve my country, and I humbly submit that I understood one portion of that oath as completely as any adolescent can only because I was well taught during Basic Training.  “…according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice” is not in the least ambiguous.  No military member has an obligation to obey an unlawful order, and no military member should ever do so.  Many classroom and lecture hours were spent on teaching us what to do about an unlawful order, and sure enough, I had reason to exercise that training in my first year of service when my NCOIC gave me an instruction that clearly stepped over that very intangible line between appropriate military leadership and fraternizing with a subordinate.  A simple and civil request for said instruction to be presented in writing resulted in an instant about-face – and in the long term, a much better relationship with said supervisor, a professional one based upon respect.  It was an important lesson.

That nightmare moment, several years ago now, when I first saw the disgusting torture and abuse photographs released from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, I knew that the training I had received was no longer a part of basic military training.  I believed, and still believe, that the decision to remove that training was dangerous, and I predict that in the long term, it will do far more harm to this country than good.

The problem is that this segment of our training did not produce the sort of little robots that our Decider-in-Chief has decided we need in this modern world.

I am sorry to say that I did not fully understand that portion of that oath where I swore to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” until many years after I took the oath.  Nor could I have imagined in September of 1972 that the worst domestic enemies our Constitution would ever face would one day inhabit Capitol Hill and the White House, not even with the example of Richard Nixon staring me right in the face.

I do understand it now, with absolutely chilling clarity.  And like many of my contemporaries who also served their country, I do know that my discharge did not absolve me of that oath.  Nothing this side of death can do that.  I am no longer in the United States military, but I took that oath freely and without coercion, and I remain obligated to its terms until I take up residence six feet below ground.

This morning, I woke up to read in the Washington Post that the CIA, after receiving orders to torture suspects soon after September 11, 2001, had some very understandable concerns about the legality of these orders.  It isn’t my intention to disparage the service of the few remaining decent men and women in the intelligence services, but I do want to stress how weird and unusual it is for the CIA to have concerns about anything at all short of what would gag any self-respecting maggot.

There were several meetings held at the White House over these concerns.  Please imagine this, if you can.  The Director of Central Intelligence – George Tenet, by the way, at the time – is concerned about the torture of suspects.  Condi Rice is there, and I am sure that Dick Cheney and President Bush were there.  Who was it that actually said it was okay?

And how could anyone in the room agree with them?

What shocks me is not that the United States has used torture.  We’ve done that for years.  We taught half of South America how to do it even better at a certain infamous school in Georgia.

What stuns me is that we are no longer ashamed of it.  In the past, any time even a hint of this found the light of day, we backpedaled like crazy.

Not this time.  This time, when George Tenet asked for a memo to cover his patootie . . .

Someone actually wrote the memo.  Someone actually said that torture was okay, and put it into writing.  35 years ago, my first NCOIC wouldn’t even commit to writing his mildly excessive pressure in asking me for a date.  But waterboarding is okay, and that’s in black and white on a piece of White House stationery.

John McCain, the man who publicly fought against torture, later quietly voted for it.  He is one of the two nominees for President we must vote on in about three weeks.  How could this have happened?

Can we come back from this?  Can we ever again be the country that I loved and served with pride and honor?

I don’t know.  You tell me.

I am sick at heart tonight.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice

Most commonly, the period of history that we call the Dark Ages refers to the years between 476 AD (when the Roman Empire fell) and the year 1000 AD, or about 95 years before The First Crusade. Some writers, including myself, prefer to carry the “Dark Ages” forward to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 14th Century, viewing the Crusades and the various witch hunts of the intervening centuries as an extension of the Dark Ages. Although there were certainly witch hunts after the Renaissance began, there is no doubt that the beginning of the Renaissance marks the beginning of a return to reason.

The one overwelming characteristic of the Dark Ages was intolerance. The Roman church and Protestantism were intolerant of each other and later of Islam. Most of all, they were extremely intolerant of science – particularly where it appeared to conflict with their narrowly religious view of the Universe – and therefore progress was brought almost completely to a standstill for hundreds of years. Oddly, during its earliest centuries, Islam was very tolerant of science. Later, that pendulum would swing the other way. Now, it is swinging back again – just listen to the creationism / evolution debate if you doubt that. Nothing is forever.

Of course, for an extremely religious person, perhaps the historical (or coming) Dark Ages do not seem so dark after all, but most of us would have found such a life, or will find it – in the words Thomas Hobbes originally used to describe anarchy – nasty, brutish and short. This is because no religious fanatic ever meets anyone appearing to them to be as perfectly religious as said fanatic knows he/she is, and it is unfortunately true that fanatical religious groups often teach conversion by the sword. Which, if you think about it, leads to a lot of swordplay – and also a lot of blood.

Religion – all religion, and I am not an atheist myself – is rooted in fear, usually fear of the unknown. We are conscious, self-aware creatures, and we simply cannot imagine an eternity of nothing after this life. Answering that question of what comes after death has been a preoccupation of human beings since the dawn of thought and spoken language.

But how can you tell the difference between genuine belief and an ugly – and dangerous – cult? It really isn’t all that difficult. A person with genuine faith is no longer afraid. True or not, their religion is working for them as it was meant to work, and it has taken away their fear. Such individuals can face life, and even death, with happy serenity, and they feel no baseless ill will toward anyone.

On the other hand, the hate-filled fanatics that are coming out of the woodwork everywhere we look today, even in politics, are all afraid. They are terrified. That is why they are desperate to at least appear more religious than their neighbors. Somehow they have to claw and fight their way into this Heaven that folks talk about, because the alternative is not even to be contemplated. This drives them to hate. They hate Obama because he’s black and has an Arabic middle name. Meanwhile, the Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the Apocalyptic cults hate both, and everybody hates the Muslims – and let’s don’t even mention Pagans and Witches and those dreadful, dreadful folk. It seems like that is all we are hearing out of everybody these days. Hate, hate, hate. This isn’t religion at all. It’s mental illness, exacerbated by the need to find a scapegoat you can blame for difficult times.

Fear of death is natural and human. It is man’s earliest fear, even if not a thinking man’s deepest fear. However, any reasoning being knows that fear of death does us no good at all. We are all dying from the moment of our individual births, and nothing and no one can ever change that in even the smallest way. Only when we can finally accept the fact that death is natural and comes to all of us without preference can we begin to grow spiritually and find a belief system that actually works for us. That’s all it takes – just that tiny bit of courage needed to say that death is unavoidable, and therefore wasting fear on it is pointless. On the day you can say that – and believe it – life changes forever. Until then, however, every moment of every day is filled with fear. And fear breeds hatred.

The crowds surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin lately have been vicious in their hatred – which means they are truly terrified. Real leaders, ready and able to lead our nation, would calm the fears of those who follow them – and in fairness to Senator McCain, he has recently begun to try. Unfortunately, he cannot get past his own fears, and the stink of his fear infects the crowds that surround him.

Sarah Palin, who frequently accuses Obama of terrorism, and who loves to refer to his multi-racial heritage and name, is a daughter of an Apocalyptic cult that makes David Koresh look like a mainstream Baptist. The hilarious irony is that Palin recently allowed a Kenyan witch hunter to bless her in a way that was designed to protect her from witches. The video is all over YouTube, so I’ll paste it here.

Since Obama is half Kenyan himself – a heritage that Palin herself says makes him unfit to lead – the video afforded me some much needed laughter. Poor Sarah! If you only knew, honey – we Witches, the real thing, always were the least of your worries.

Sarah is a soldier in Joel’s Army – and I’ve been reading about them a lot recently. These folks don’t just hate. They intend to fight for their God in a real and physical sense, driving those of us who don’t believe “rightly” either into their twisted idea of righteous faith or into our graves. Well, at least they plan to give us that much of a choice. Joel’s Army are taught from childhood that every time they stop praying for even a few moments, they are subject to demonic possession. Charming bunch of folks, without a doubt. I suspect that most of them need medication to function in the real world.

What triggered the early medieval period known as the Dark Ages? The fall of Rome. Are we headed into another Dark Ages triggered by the fall of another empire? I don’t know, although I am growing uneasy about the possibility. I do know, however, that I don’t want frightened people for leaders, and especially not now.

McCain and Palin need psychiatric help, not votes.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice, Politics

There are times when a look at history can teach us something.

Islamism and neo-conservatism were both born at approximately the same time in history, and both were responses to a perceived flaw in American society.  Sayeed Qutb came to the United States in the late 1940s to study the American educational system for the purpose of improving Egyptian schools.  At exactly the same time, an obscure college professor in Chicago, Dr. Leo Strauss, was teaching the political philosophy that would later become known as neo-conservatism to a handful of students who are household names today because they are the movers and shakers behind our current government – and they have been for several decades now.

Both saw individual freedom and the honest pursuit of wealth as the enemy of “right” and of “progress.”

Qutb returned to Egypt and set out to change the face of his country. He helped to assassinate Anwar Sadat and put Nasser in power, but when he felt betrayed by Nasser’s determination to establish a modern secular country, his subsequent efforts to bring Nasser down led to his imprisonment and torture by CIA-trained jailers – and the date of Qutb’s execution in 1966 led to a student activist’s awakening.  The young Egyptian student’s name was Ayman Zawahiri, friend and mentor to Osama bin Laden.

None of this is important to Americans.  Even if bin Laden helped to finance the attacks on the WTC and the USS Cole, among others – and I am far from convinced of that! – the simple truth is that “Al Qaeda” is largely a myth and can do no truly serious harm to America.  I am not insensitive to the families and loved ones of the 3,000 that died on that horrific Tuesday morning, but the simple truth is that there are 280 million Americans spread out over 3.5 million square miles.  Al Qaeda, even if it were the actual perpetrator of 9/11 – something all too many of us know cannot be true – cannot be the threat that the neo-conservatives would have you believe.  They cannot destroy my country.

On the other hand, the neo-conservatives themselves have done a very good job of destroying it – and the final nail in the coffin was this trillion dollar theft that Congress just passed – and that your great grandchildren will still be paying for.  It was the last act in the destruction of the America that I have loved and tried to serve all of my adult life, but the roots go back more than sixty years.  Americans hate a fraud, but it often takes a long time for a good con man to get caught.  Sixty years, though, is pretty epic in the annals of fraud.

Neo-conservatism teaches some very ugly things.  It teaches that individualism is dangerous.  It teaches that a great unifying “myth” is needed to unite our country – and the neo-conservatives are using the Christian religion today to do just that.  Oh, they don’t believe it themselves, any more than the Soviets did, but they have to talk the talk well enough to deceive the masses.  Neo-conservatism also requires a terrible enemy of comic book proportions.  For many years, the Soviet Union fulfilled that role, until it collapsed and Americans learned what a “paper tiger” really was.  Today, it is Al Qaeda, which was originally born as a concocted CIA “study” to convince Ronald Reagan (whose administration was full of neo-conservatives, although he was often uncooperative himself) that the Soviet Union had to be utterly destroyed (because they were backing this truly epic and horrid terrorism network).  The myth of Al Qaeda was trotted out again in response to the bombing of the USS Cole, and was waiting for the WTC destruction to make it a household word in America.

Why would your government propogate and maintain such a myth?  There is a simple, one-word answer.  Power.  Disgusting legislation has passed since 9/11 that makes a complete mockery of your Constitution, and it never could have passed without the blind terror of Congress and the American people.  Even more importantly, the neoconservatives have now obtained total, dictatorial control over your financial system.  Freedom, as you knew it, is a thing of the past right now, even as I write this, and the only reason I will not be jailed for saying this is that I am too small and have too few readers to matter.

The lies of politicians are proverbial, but the politicians no longer care if you notice.

I am reminded of Gimli’s words concerning Saruman in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  “The words of this wizard stand on their heads!”

When our president says freedom, he is really talking about tyranny.  When he speaks of democracy (no bed of roses itself – but I don’t think he can spell constitutional republic), he is really speaking of dictatorship.  When he says safety, he is really talking about fear.  Make those substitutions in any speech of his since 9/11, and you will see his real intentions toward you and toward the rest of the world.  Actually, in fairness, it may not be Bush himself at all.  He is nowhere near bright enough for this, and he certainly doesn’t write his own speeches.  Just look to Cheney and Rove.  Bush is just their front man, after all, and McCain is next in line.

I can hear Americans wailing now, “But what if he’s right?”

So use your brains.  What if he is right?

What have Bush and your government done to protect you?  Nothing more than a colossal hand job.  Three years ago, four years after 9/11, Homeland Security proved they couldn’t even respond effectively to a hurricane, let alone a nuclear attack on American soil.  Bush has invaded two countries, one of which didn’t have connection one to bin Laden prior to our invasion, and overextended our military to the point that we could not defend our homes if we were invaded by the tiniest little pissant country in the world.  Airport security feels up little old ladies with underwire bras and seizes Medals of Honor from heroic senators, but couldn’t catch five Uzis at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. DHS tracks your library books, but has yet to charge and convict one real perpetrator of a terrorist act on American soil.

I don’t know what has happened to American courage, but if we don’t soon find it again, we are looking at an era that will make the Dark Ages look pleasant.  It is time to draw a line in the sand.  Enough is enough.

As the holiday season approaches, I have been asked by several friends what I want for Christmas, or in my case, Yule.  I have only one answer.  Freedom!

Look to your priming.

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Politics

The Screwing of an American Hero

In these troubled times, in one of our southern states, there lives a man.  Male human beings are common.  Men are not.  Wherever we find testosterone undiluted by cowardice or dishonor, we should value that for the rare and incredibly precious treasure that it is.

Celerino Castillo III is such a man. Descendant of Emiliano Zapata, he comes from a tradition of heroic and quixotic idealism.  His father was a disabled veteran of World War II.  Celerino himself served in Viet Nam, earning the Bronze Star – although decades later, at a more enlightened age, he returned it in opposition to that failed and utterly stupid war.

While in Viet Nam, Celerino watched many friends and comrades destroyed by that scourge of the Far East, heroin, and he learned to despise the drug trade.  After his return to the United States, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from Pan American University (now the University of Texas at Pan Am), and went on to become an investigator for a Texas police department.

In 1979, he went to work for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

I have always believed strongly that the Drug War was the first crucial step in destroying the freedom of American citizens.  Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that Celerino Castillo was not busting kids with a joint or two and trying to destroy their lives – he was going after the Central and South American cartels, which should rightly be called “Murder, Inc.”  It was also the most difficult, dangerous and lonely job that any of us could possibly imagine.  Most of us, no matter how courageous or tough we believe ourselves to be, would not last a week in such a profession, let alone a decade.

Celerino did have one terrible disadvantage down there, one not shared by most of his associates.  He was – and remains – an honest and honorable man.  So when he learned, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Central Intelligence Agency was importing drugs into the United States, he did not and has not remained silent, up to and including testifying before Congress.

Contracts have been issued on his life.  He has lost his family, everything he owned, and very nearly his sanity in the years since he was forced out of the DEA – expressed as “early” retirement.  He has appeared in numerous documentaries and books that covered this very touchy subject, and he has been brutalized and threatened as a result.  Nothing has shut him up.  In words taken directly from his web site, he says that “a long time ago he took an oath to protect The Constitution of the United States and its citizens. He has thought about quitting but there was no time limit on that oath.”

For these reasons and others, I do not believe it is a coincidence that Celerino was targeted on April 8th of this year by agents of BATF.  He stands accused of doing what he does not even deny he has done, buying and selling guns at gun shows as a hobby and to supplement his very meager income as a teacher.

Excuse me?  Isn’t that what gun shows are for??? Since when has buying or selling a gun at a gun show become illegal?

Cele has a hearing next week, his arraignment.  He has fired his public defender because said slimy “defender” would consider nothing but a plea bargain arrangement.  He cannot afford a private attorney.  If Cele does not get some help, and very quickly too, he is going to go to prison – which amounts to a death sentence for anyone ever involved in law enforcement.

Please help this man.  Go to his web site at Powderburns.  Read about his current situation at Tekgnosis.  Please send money for his legal defense fund, but don’t let it stop there!  Spread the word about this far and wide.  If this sort of thing can be done to someone as public as Celerino Castillo, you had better believe that it can be done to any one of us! This isn’t only about a hero who does not deserve what is happening to him.  This is about each and every one of us – and our continued survival in this increasingly fascist state.

Besides, there is a moral question here.  Doing this to a warrior and a hero, a brave and honorable man who has worked for his country all of his life, is and should always remain . . .

Unacceptable!

Posted under Civil Rights, Freedom, Injustice