Freedom Scribe Blogging on issues of Constitutional freedom.

What happens when a law enforcement officer – especially a good one – goes to prison?

According to one anonymous prison nurse in Texas, the guards may not like everything that happens, but for the sake of peace, they will all look the other way.  There is an unwritten rule in all prisons that any cop is fair game.

How about a top DEA agent who put a lot of drug lords away and who subsequently has to spend some time at Club Fed?  Especially one who is not so young anymore and is in physically poor health?  How long will he live?  Five minutes?  Maybe ten minutes, if he’s very, very lucky?

Make no mistake – whatever they may call Cele Castillo’s sentence for buying and selling guns without a license at a Texas gun show (which, folks, happens to be completely legal), any prison sentence at all for this man is a sentence of death just as surely as if the judge had sentenced Castillo to the needle.

So what is Castillo’s real crime?  He has the goods – documentary evidence – to put the sitting president’s father away for a long, long time for his illegal smuggling activities during Iran Contra.  Unfortunately, Castillo also has a sense of honor – he just won’t keep his mouth shut.

Wow, some hardened criminal, huh?  Our streets surely will be safer when this guy is gone.

Worse, his aging mother is afraid he will go away for long enough that she won’t see him again before she passes on.  Clearly, she does not even understand that if Castillo even enters Club Fed, he is highly unlikely to be coming out at all.  It might be worthwhile to pull that sweet lady’s phone records.  Has she been getting pushy and scary phone calls lately?  She’d never tell her son, of course, but I surely wouldn’t bet against it.

Once Castillo chose to plead this case out, he was discredited in the eyes of the public.  Joe Q. Six-Pack and Jane Q. Soccer-Mom are so damned scared of firearms they won’t even bother to check the law.  The information Castillo has no longer has any value at all, unfortunately, but any of us with mothers are forced to understand why he has done this.

Who is Cele Castillo?  His full name is Celerino Castillo III, and he is an American hero and the descendant of other heroes from other wars.  Cele fought in Viet Nam.  He was on the front lines during the Drug War of the 1980s.  And as his web site says, his third and final war is proving to be the most dangerous – his war against his own government.

During the 1980s, Castillo was involved in DEA operations in Central and South America.  During this time, he became especially interested in the activities at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador.  Drugs were moving one way, to the United States, and money and guns were moving the other way, to the Nicaraguan Contras, all under the direct supervision of Lt. Col. Oliver North.  When Castillo tried to press his investigation, he was ordered to back off, as this was a black operation emanating from the White House.

Castillo became interested in Poppy Bush, then Reagan’s Vice President, after meeting him at a function in Guatemala and trying to tell him what he had seen – and Bush just walked away from him, looking for another hand to shake.  Castillo may have been barred from pressing the case further, but he could observe happenings at the airport, and he kept a daily journal of those years.  Do you understand the significance of this?  Who is the one man, probably the man who was ultimately most responsible for Iran Contra, who was never prosecuted?  I’ll give you a huge hint.  On the night of Barry Seal’s murder near New Orleans, whose top secret phone number was found in Seals’ wallet?

None other than that of George H. W. Bush.  And there is only one way Seals could have acquired that number – and that is if Bush himself gave it to him.

Barry Seals was the most prolific and the most successful drug smuggler in all of history.  And he was about to testify about Iran Contra when he met his death.

Cele Castillo is certainly talented when it comes to choosing his enemies, but maybe that’s why I admire him so much.

It’s too late to try to get Cele Castillo off completely.  For his mother’s sake, he has already been forced to admit his utterly non-existent guilt, and a judge will pass sentence on him this very afternoon.  If Castillo is to survive this experience, however, we must make his plight so public that he will become toxic to touch.

Please spread this article far and wide.  Visit his web site at Powderburns. Let your friends and lawmakers know that if harm comes to Cele Castillo, you will know beyond the slightest doubt who is responsible.

I am waiting to learn Castillo’s sentence as I write this.  Maybe this judge will be smart enough to give him only probation.  Somehow, though, I doubt it.  Compassion in a police state?  Who are we kidding?

Posted under Uncategorized

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

Or what is the matter with me?

A few days ago, I was having a brainstorming session with a young neighbor of mine (from my perspective, 40s is young) about how to survive this coming economic depression and exit better off than we are as we enter it.  He asked me if there was something terribly wrong with him, because despite the fact that he genuinely felt terrible for those people who were losing everything, he was actually enjoying himself.

I didn’t hesitate to tell him that he was perfectly sane.  It seemed totally obvious and self-evident to me.  We are facing a huge challenge, yes.  We are also watching history in the making.  Those of us who always felt just a little bit cheated that we missed World War II or Viet Nam or fill-in-the-blank are finally getting our chance at the big adventure.  Depressions do not ruin everyone.  Those who can keep their heads on straight, avoid panic and develop a plan can actually find enormous opportunities in an economic downturn.

Reading the news today, I am seeing suicides on every hand.  Now, despite what the shrinks want you to believe, nobody can get to my age without entertaining a few final thoughts now and then.  The cause, however, is usually loneliness or sheer boredom, not an outside challenge such as this.  Why would economic depression translate into clinical depression so easily?

The only answer I can find is that an awful lot of people really believed they could retire and do nothing at 65 years of age – and now they’ve lost their savings.  That is very sad, but that sort of retirement is usually a fast track to six feet under anyway.  Now we have something real to live for!!  There is a fight looming that is actually worthy of our brains and our experience.  I have never, ever – not in my entire life – been farther from suicide than I am right now.

So what kind of American are you?  Are you going to fold and whine and off yourself because things didn’t work out so well for your 401K?  Or are you the kind of American who is going to beat this thing and go from zero to rich before this so-called “Depression” is over with?

If you are the latter, I want to meet you.  You are my kind of people.

If you are the former, go away.  I haven’t got time to listen to a whiner.

Posted under Freedom, Politics

I owe Mike Ruppert of From The Wilderness and Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari everything for my understanding of what follows.  Both are geniuses.  Many years ago, Fitts began to use something she called the Solari Index to measure the health of our society.  Put simply, the Solari Index is the percentage of ordinary people in our cities who actually believe that a child can walk from his/her home to the nearest place to buy a popsicle and come home alone, unharmed and unmolested.  When Fitts first started using the Solari Index, the Dow Jones was at about 500 and the Solari was 100.  Before this current economic crisis occurred, the Dow was at 14,000+ and the Solari was effectively zero.  They have an obvious inverse relationship.

If you think about it, this doesn’t really make sense.  Wouldn’t you expect that the more prosperous a society becomes, the lower the crime rate falls?   Shouldn’t the Dow Jones and the Solari Index be friends?  Indeed, yes!

We all know that it hasn’t happened that way, but most of us do not fully understand why.

We’ve read for years about the Central Intelligence Agency importing drugs into the United States, everything from heroin at the time of the Viet Nam war to cocaine, crack and meth in subsequent years.  Mike Ruppert has been telling us about this since the 1970s.  Most Americans do not believe the stories they have heard because they have – as I once did – a small problem with motive.  Profit is always a good motive, but when you are talking about a significant portion of a major governmental entity, most of us feel we need just a little more motive than straight profit.

How about misguided patriotism?  How about concern for the value of your 401K and those of millions of other Americans?  Is that motive enough?  Regardless of their actual motive, the CIA is importing illegal drugs into the United States of America – at least a portion of the Agency is – and there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind about that  today.

Let’s say you are a South American drug lord and you have $1 billion in drug money.  You earned this money in a fairly traditional way – by producing a scarce and dangerous commodity and selling it on the open market.  Of course, this commodity is only worth so much because it is illegal and the rest of the world is paying you a premium for the risks you took.  Now you need to look at another risk.  You can’t let anyone know you have this money.  You can’t just put it in a bank, not without the U.S. Army special forces using you for target practice and the U.S. Government seizing your funds.  If you try to hide the money, there is always the chance that it will be found – $1 billion in cash takes up a lot of space, too, so forget burying it in mason jars.  Besides, you need the funds – the liquidity – to keep operating your agricultural, processing and smuggling businesses.

Please make no mistake, no matter what you think of their morals, these drug lords are – first, last and always – very clever businessmen.  And as Mike Ruppert told us years ago – and proved beyond question if anyone was smart enough to check – 90 percent of the CIA leadership over the last 50 years has been drawn from Wall Street lawyers and bankers.  That is the final piece of the puzzle.

So if you are that drug lord, what you must do to gain access to your $1 billion is launder it.  In other words, you need to provide the rest of the world with an innocent explanation for how you acquired this money.  So what do you do?

You can do any one of countless things.  You can contact an auto manufacturer, order several thousand cars and open the newest answer to CarMax in Bogota.  You can contact a computer manufacturer and buy thousands of computers to open Lima’s newest answer to Comp USA.  And so on.  The profit that you earn on the sale of the products you purchase becomes clean money.  You can tell anyone where this money came from.  The same is true for a stock or a derivatives purchase that becomes profitable.  Once you have that innocent explanation to give the rest of the world, and it’s good enough to fly, you have access to your money and your murderous business can go on.  Murderous?  Yes, indeed!  If a street thug is willing to kill for the $20 bill in someone’s wallet, what will these men do to protect their billions?

Current estimates run anywhere from $500 billion to $1.5 trillion in drug money laundered through Wall Street each year.  I believe the larger estimate is the more accurate one, and it may be even larger.  Remember that the whole intent behind this enterprise is to keep the source of the money a secret.  There is no doubt at all that Wall Street, and our current banking system, are utterly addicted to drug profits.

Horrible?  Yes, it most certainly is.  Unfortunately, millions of 401K savings plans losing 3/4 of their value overnight is also a nightmare scenario, which is literally what would have happened if we had really decided to get serious about the drug trade and shut it down.

The result is where we have been sitting since the early 1980s and Reagan’s escalation of The Drug War.  Billions of dollars spent on drug enforcement through the DEA, and those few DEA agents who are good enough to figure out what is really happening find themselves investigating the CIA – and soon thereafter, they either find themselves dead, or ruined like Celerino Castillo.  Despite all of this money and sacrifice, the only things our streets have less of are safety and freedom.  Nobody, but nobody, wants to admit that the only way to take the cartels down once and for always is to legalize their product – which will also flush the life savings of millions of Americans.  After all, what is the real value of a few plants?  It certainly isn’t what the streets are paying for these products today!  That is the only way you can end the drug trade.  You never need to spend another dime on enforcement – just remove the profit from the transaction.  It is all about the money.  A few kids might still get stupid, but nobody will be pushing the stuff at your local Junior High.  Why would they do that if there were no real profit in it?

Now we come back to the basic problem.  Years ago, Catherine Austin Fitts asked an audience what they would do if there was a big red button, and pressing it would end the drug trade (and cause Wall Street to collapse).  She asked for anyone willing to press that button to raise their hands.  No one did.

We now have a golden opportunity.  Our financial system is already collapsing, and that nightmare 401K scenario I talked about earlier is already taking place.  The painful part has already happened, or most of it has.  This is a once in a lifetime priceless opportunity to rebuild our system in such a way that the Dow Jones and Solari indices can actually be friends.  We’re past the worst pain of breaking an addiction – now the only question is will we go back to the drug profits?  Or will we end those profits forever?

A few hundred points of recovery on the Dow at this point will only mean more of the same. You might get some of your retirement savings back in the short term, but it means we have learned nothing at all, and this stupidly criminal system will continue just as before.  The only change will be that the federal government will assist even more than before in laundering these drug funds because the government will own large chunks of the banks that do it.

Is that what you really want, America?

Posted under Freedom, Injustice, Politics

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

Many centuries ago, when my British ancestors were facing regular and bloody incursions by Vikings looking for bloody fun, non-consentual sex and profit (sometimes expressed as rape and pillage), some Vikings offered to leave particular villages or areas alone for that particular raiding season – for a price.  This price came to be known as Dane-geld, or I suppose it could be expressed alternatively as pillage without the rape.

There is a problem with Dane-geld, however, and it was beautifully expressed by Rudyard Kipling centuries later, when he pointed out in verse that once you pay Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.

In modern usage, Dane-geld has come to mean any form of blackmail from kidnap and ransom to terrorist threats, and Kipling is most often correct.  When you pay blackmail money, the blackmailer just asks for more.

The United States has suffered a coup, every bit as real as a third world coup accomplished at the point of a gun.  To be entirely honest, we cannot even be absolutely certain that guns were not involved.  One of the necessary prerequisites for a successful coup is the control of information, which means that you and I are unlikely to be in possession of the whole story.  I am not saying this was a violent coup – I am inclined to believe that it was not – but there is no way for me, or any other average citizen, to be certain.

Things have just gotten exponentially worse.  We have just paid Dane-geld, and that means we are going to have an incredibly difficult time getting rid of the Dane.  Most of our Congress-critters, and even our two major presidential candidates, are owned by their corporate masters – corporate masters who trade on Wall Street.  That is why they have betrayed us.  Now that they have managed to loot almost a trillion dollars from the U.S. Treasury – meaning from your kids and grandkids – you can be dead certain they are going to ask for more.  And more.

We must find a way to get rid of the Dane!

I am often asked why I am opposed to NAFTA and FTAA, when I am a libertarian free market capitalist.  I am opposed to them because they have nothing whatsoever to do with free markets.  So where did we go wrong?

Let’s get back to the roots of objectivism.  The roots of objectivism say that all group rights are individual rights.  Groups of people, and even governments, do not have more rights than individuals.  If you follow this idea to its logical conclusion, it also means that corporations are not people, and should not have the rights of individuals, let alone the right to pillage without consequence.

Theft is a crime, whether it is committed by an individual, a corporation, or a government.  See?  Dead simple and dead easy to understand.

In the last few decades, we have allowed corporations to amass enough power that they are now running our government.  They are free to pillage our treasury – and our individual futures – absolutely without consequence.  There is a word for this sort of corporatism.  It is called fascism, and it is not a pretty way to live.

We must change this!  We do not have a choice.  Believe me, the last thing in the world I want to see is civil strife in my country, but peacefully or not, we must change what has happened to us.  Corporations must return to what they were always meant to be – a group of individual business partners.  We must restore the checks and balances – and the civil liberties – embodied in our Constitution.  We must restore the accountability in government.

We do not have a lot of time to do this.  We are up against perhaps 5,000 folks with trillions of dollars they can spend to stop us.  Our one advantage is that there are 280 million of us, and we are becoming annoyed.  That is a juggernaut I hope they cannot stop, but only time will tell.

We became complacent.  We assumed that freedom and stability were ours by right.  Now we must pay the price for that stupidity.

Are you ready to stand up and be counted?

Posted under Uncategorized

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

Is it just me, or are the choices this election year the worst in living memory?

Both the major candidates support the grand theft of almost $1,000,000,000,000 from the American taxpayer to buy assets that are already known to be worthless – but the purchases will prop up the value of the stocks that line the pockets of this administration. It’s the worst robbery in living memory.

Both the major candidates support endless war in the Middle East – the very wars that have bankrupted us already. Obama at least wants a “phased” withdrawal from Iraq – only to send those same troops to Afghanistan, where the British ambassador was recently quoted as saying that the war against the resurgent Taliban is not only unwinnable, but that western troops are definitely the biggest part of the problem. This came from our closest ally on the planet.

The Libertarian Party’s Bob Barr is an outright religious fascist. Even if he had a chance, I surely wouldn’t want to go there. My philosophy is most definitely libertarian in nature, but Barr’s isn’t and never has been – and that’s the problem. The LP certainly has a short memory.

Cynthia McKinney, the candidate for the Green Party, is honest. No doubt whatsoever about that, and I like her very much personally, but she is way too socialist for my tastes – and so, by the way, is Obama. So is McCain for that matter! He is out there beating the drum for a government bailout of Wall Street too!

McCain, bless his heart, is semi-senile, and puts his foot in his mouth on a regular basis. He has to get his cancer retreated every few months, and it is a well known fact that many forms of chemotherapy affect emotional stability and cognition. Apart from the fact that McCain personally was responsible for our leaving hundreds of POWs in Southeast Asia (and I am forced to wonder what he did not want us to hear about), his health is shaky enough that he is unlikely to live out his first term. His temper is such that I don’t want him anywhere near the nuclear button either.

So we’ve got to look at Sarah Palin, and every time I do that, I cringe. I am a feminist. It would make my day to see the right woman in the White House. Palin isn’t it. She is known for religious fanaticism and personal vendettas that are frightening in their intensity. Just ask any Alaskan.

I supported Ron Paul with my whole heart. He campaigned for a return to Consitutional government. Unfortunately, he had to abandon his White House run to keep his House of Representatives seat, but he started a movement that – if it grows quickly enough – might be the only thing that can save America.

Dr. Paul was marginalized because of his opposition to the Drug War. It was bandied about that he likes drugs, and that’s an outright lie. As most folks know, Dr. Paul is a physician! I guarantee he doesn’t enjoy seeing what recreational drugs do to his patients – and their babies he has delivered. All the same, any brain dead moron can see clearly that after almost three decades of Drug War, and trillions of dollars spent, the only thing our streets have less of is freedom. The sad truth is that the only way people get off of drugs is to want to get off them. Period.

There is simply no one I can vote for in November. Sadly, a vote for Obama is a vote against McCain (and therefore Palin), so I guess that’s where I’ll have to go.

Immortal Technique had it right:

“The place that I’m from doesn’t exist anymore.”

Posted under Freedom, Politics

For many years, in the less fortunate countries around the world, a distinct leadership pattern has emerged. First the leader steals the elections and assumes dictatorial powers. As the word gets out about the elections being stolen and unrest appears in the streets, the leader declares martial law. Finally, when the leader can’t steal any more elections, he robs the Treasury blind and flees the country.

Point 1: It has been obvious to the American people for several years now that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, and our Executive Branch has been assuming dictatorial powers piecemeal since it took office in 2001. Congress is too spineless to stop it, especially since the 9/11 Executive Orders that effectively declared martial law, and the anthrax letters mysteriously sent to those few who opposed the Executive Branch’s power grabs.

Point 2: The First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division, a unit that has seen some of the worst house-to-house combat of the Iraq War, has been recalled and placed under the authority of the Pentagon’s Northern Command. The public has been told they are here to assist in the event of terrorist attack. The Army Times, however, says that they are here to deal with civil unrest and crowd control. Interesting. Is this an early step in the preparation for martial law? It certainly looks that way. A few thousand soldiers, of course, will not be nearly enough, but they do form a nice training cadre for future recalls. It’s pretty much an open secret that martial law was already a part of the emergency order declared immediately subsequent to 9/11. It already exists – it just isn’t visible yet. This is partly why Congress is too frightened to do very much about an administration that has literally run amok. The other reason, of course, is that the last time someone seriously opposed the administration, they were sent anthrax letters that came from one of our own bioweapons labs.

Point 3: The bailout plan is a plan clearly designed to loot the U.S. Treasury. And President Bush owns a very nice ranch in Paraguay.

The picture here is now complete. We now join the ranks of third world countries. We can stop it, however, right here and now. We only need to understand a few simple principles.

Each of our two major political parties is stating that the other is the cause of the current crisis. The Democrats are claiming that the Republican lack of regulation caused this mess. The Republicans are claiming that too much regulation caused it, and that more will only deepen the crisis. They are both half right. It was indeed lack of regulation that allowed our banks to institute some pretty awful practices. However, the bailout now would protect those same banks from the consequences of their actions, and it would send entirely the wrong message for the future to Wall Street. Capitalism is working as it should, even as I write this. You just have to have enough knowledge to see it happening. We must not protect criminals.

The cause of our crisis is simple. To increase their bottom lines, a number of mortgage banks enticed millions of American citizens to take on sliding interest scale mortgages they would not be able to afford within a very few years. Make no mistake, the banks knew what they were doing, and the people who signed onto the mortgages certainly should have known. As the interest rates – and the payments – went up on these homes, Americans found themselves owing far more than their homes were worth and started going into default. Meanwhile, the banks in question cooked their books – and those who bought up the mortgage debt cooked their books also – to reflect value in these notes that they knew all along were never going to be paid.

This is not rocket science. It’s a painful lesson, but these banks committed immoral, if not actually illegal, acts, and they definitely should go down. I am deeply sorry for the citizens who lost and are now losing their homes, but they are somewhat at fault, too. They should have researched what they could afford far more carefully.

The only way in which the government could step in and improve the situation at all for the individual American is to possibly mandate the forgiveness of these individual mortgage debts. Mind you, the actual homes are still forfeit – they can and must be sold to recoup what can be recouped from all this bad debt – but if the default can merely be wiped off the individuals’ credit ratings, they can buy again – and perhaps they will be wise enough to buy something they can actually afford this time.

To steal taxpayers’ money and use it to prop up institutions that have deliberately defrauded Americans – and then cooked their books in order to survive the consequences of their actions – is so totally unacceptable as to be laughable, and we absolutely should not do it. Any Congress critter that even considers voting “yea” on such a proposition should know, in their heart of hearts, that come their next election day, they will be unemployed, unemployable, and living under a bridge – which is right where they belong.

You see, among its other noxious provisions, this bill proposes actually printing the money to pay for the bailout, which will immediately devalue the dollar by about twenty percent. The cost of an imported vehicle – at present the only vehicles that don’t kill you at the gas pump – will go up by 20-30 percent. In addition, this reduces the actual buying power of your income right here at home. It takes gas right out of your car, and food right off of your table. Furthermore, the federal government will then have the power, as well as the perceived right, to regulate the small business completely out of existence, leaving businesses large enough to be traded on Wall Street the only businesses to survive. Millions of jobs will be lost. This is economic treason, and folks sophisticated enough to be in Congress in the first place should already know this.

Don’t be fooled by provisions added to “help the taxpayer to profit” from the bad debt that the federal government will purchase on your behalf. That debt is already gone, written down, and it will never be collected. This is merely smoke and mirrors to convince you that the bailout will be a good thing. Our leaders are attempting to cynically play on individual greed to get their way and save their own Wall Street investments. Well, anyone who watches the news about the financial crisis should realize that greed has very real eventual consequences. We should allow those consequences to happen, and send the right message to Wall Street instead of the wrong one. The message that should be sent is that an honest profit is a good thing – but a dishonest profit will bring you down.

The failure of the initial bailout bill was brought about by the thousands and thousands of angry phone calls made by countless thousands of Americans to Congress. It is reported in several places that the feelings were running 300 to 1 anti-bailout and actively enraged. This is the only language that Congress understands, and we absolutely must keep up the pressure, even in the face of the Administration using blatant scare tactics to convince us that government intervention is necessary. It is not. A bunch of banks will collapse, yes – but they will be the ones who participated in creating this crisis. We can rebuild our economy literally tomorrow.

It is certain, however, even to a brain dead moron, that propping up a failing economy with your money will prolong the misery for each and every one of us for ten years or more.

It might help if you remember that Henry Paulson himself owns $700 million in Goldman Sachs stock. All of our leaders are heavily invested in Wall Street. To protect that kind of money, will they lie to us to get us to support a handout to criminals? You tell me! It might be smart to check the level of Wall Street investments owned by anyone who publically supports this bill.

Necktie parties have a long and distinguished history in this country, but I do not advocate violence. Instead, the prospect of these men and women living cold and hungry under a bridge somewhere – exactly where they tried to put the rest of us – is more than good enough for me.

Posted under 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

The secret has been out for decades now.  A few very wealthy and powerful men want to impose a way of life on us they like to call a New World Order.  Many people throughout the world, in fact most of those who know and understand this NWO agenda, are deeply and utterly opposed to the idea – yet we are closer to the New World Order today than we have ever been at any point in history.  Why are we so ineffective in fighting this?

We are ineffective because we have been cleverly maneuvered into fighting the wrong things.

Even the phrase “new world order” is innocuous in itself.  It could mean many, many things, and not all of them are bad.  Many people have used the phrase in public speaking, and not all of them are even a part of the conspiracy.  Hell, I would have to search my early writings to learn if I myself ever used it before I understood the sinister connotations.  “New” means simply – well, new.  New is not necessarily bad.  And world order could mean anything from the elimination of national sovereignty (bad) to a worldwide cultural change (not necessarily bad at all).

Put simply, like most huge and complicated ideas, the New World Order is not entirely bad.  Parts of it are certainly very, very bad, but perhaps we should take a logical look at the overall agenda before we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Elimination of racial divisions, for example, is most certainly not a bad thing.  Judging someone based on the melanin content of their skin is admittedly one of the brain-dead dumbest ideas that mankind has ever spawned.

Elimination of the glass ceiling, which made women somehow less than human, isn’t a bad thing at all either.  Limiting 52 percent of your population to menial jobs is amazingly stupid.

Greater international cooperation, leading eventually to worldwide peace, certainly sounds pretty good to this writer – and I think to most of my readers.  Some of the colder folks out there might remind me that humans do our Darwinian species culling as adults, but instead of culling via bloody warfare (which with modern weapons often culls our best and brightest), it might be wiser and more humane to do it in some other great endeavor – such as the exploration and colonization of other planets, which becomes a real possibility once we stop wasting our wealth on warfare.

Needless to say, when we publish our rants against the New World Order, we are immediately accused of speaking out against cooperation and peace, which is not even remotely true – but it identifies us firmly in the category of wingnuts and eliminates our effectiveness in this war of ideas.

What we are fighting, in a nutshell, is the loss of our national sovereignty, and the inevitable loss of individual freedom and prosperity that would follow.

Above all, we need to stay on topic with our arguments – and we need to offer real and workable alternatives to a New World Order.  Promoting a system that will actually work is far more effective than merely ranting against a system that cannot work, now or ever.

One of the favorite arguments that NWO advocates love to put forth is that national sovereignty causes wars.  On the face of it, this does appear to be the case, but upon examination, it really isn’t true.  The root cause of warfare is far more basic than national sovereignty.  The root cause of warfare is the idea, planted deep in our psyches from birth, that a group somehow has more rights than an individual.  There is a word for this – socialism.  No one argues that it is wrong for an individual to steal or murder. The issue somehow becomes more vague when our nation invades another country, steals its resources, and kills the people in great big, bleeding batches.  There is a warped view of patriotism that says that we are supposed to support our country, right or wrong, in all such cases.  That isn’t patriotism, any more than it is parental love to teach a child to kill his or her playmates.  True patriotism lies in building a country we can support with pride.

Another thing we must avoid is hysteria.  Anyone who has ever been in a life threatening situation knows that hysteria will get you killed faster than any other single thing.  When your mind shuts down and you start emoting at those levels, you cannot be effective at all in countering any threat.  Well, whatever you may believe, you are right now in the most life threatening situation in the history of man, if “life threatening” means a threat to your happiness and your way of life.  It’s time to coldly plan your way out of this mess.  You don’t have the time or energy to spare for emotion.

Fortunately, the hard work has already been done for you.  The concept of individualism is not a new one.  I hesitate to use the word “libertarian” because it has become so identified with the failed political party of the same name, so let’s go back to the real roots of the philosophy and call it “objectivism.”

Put simply, objectivism comes down to this.  Human beings have a moral code that states that it is wrong for us to harm one another.  Put another way, it is wrong to initiate force against another human being to achieve personal, political or social goals.  If you apply this moral code to your government as well, you have achieved a system that will work.  If it is wrong for you to put a gun to your neighbor’s head and demand his possessions, it’s just as wrong for your government to do it.  It’s really a very simple concept.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.  Remember, also, that we speak here of the initiation of force, not the response to force.  If your neighbor does the initiating by putting his gun to your head, you have the right and the duty to send him home in a body bag.  Pretty soon, those willing to initiate force will either have a change of heart or be quite dead – and hopefully before they have a chance to pass on their warped morals to another generation.  Problem solved, and without harming the innocent.

And what about religion?  Well, what about it?  Religion is, and should remain, a private matter.  Once it enters into the realm of politics, all common sense flies out the window.  Every single problem with religion surfaces when religion tries to invade the realm of the secular.  What should the state of another man’s soul matter to you?  As Thomas Jefferson once said, ” . . . it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”  Your freedom to believe – or not believe – should be absolute.  To keep that freedom, you must grant the same freedom to others.  When you forget that, our rulers gain one hell of a weapon to use against you.  Are our rulers Luciferian?  Or are they Christian?  I seriously doubt they are religious at all – they just like to talk about it to manipulate us.  But what difference does it really make?  The problems have not changed.  What you must fight against has not changed.  And ranting about it just makes you look like an idiot, which kills your effectiveness in this war of ideas faster than anything else possibly could.  Your allies in the struggle for freedom belong to many religions.  Some are Christian, some are Muslim, some are Buddhist, some are outright atheists and some are neo-Pagan.  Some may just choose not to talk about their beliefs.  Are you going to spurn their help because they don’t share your religious beliefs?  If so, you deserve to lose your freedom.

If our government and our people had adhered to these principles, America wouldn’t have seen a single war since the war of 1812, and we would probably be roaming the stars by now.  We sure as hell wouldn’t have an income tax – or a Federal Reserve system to destroy our currency.  Slavery would have ended with the founding of this country, and a woman’s future would only be limited by her willingness to work.  You and I would certainly live in a far better world.

So how can we bring this about now?  It’s never too late, but it won’t be easy.  Perhaps a thousand people right now control our destiny, and the fact that the gun at our collective heads isn’t always a physical one does not make the force exercised against us on a daily basis any less real.  The wealth and power these men and women can bring to bear against us is vast.  No one person can hope to fight back alone.

Millions of us can, though, if we act as individuals.  No force should be used, and none should be needed.  We just don’t play their game.  We live free, as individuals, and totally ignore the New World Order crowd.  We don’t acknowledge their authority, and we don’t play along in the slightest way.

It’s kind of like a sixties song, if you think about it.  What if they gave a war, and nobody came?

Posted under Freedom, Politics