Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are always bad men.
Lord Acton

Seldom has anyone uttered a truer phrase, and if you believe it, it actually helps you to navigate the maze of politics.

For example: health care. If my government is truly powerful (and it is), do I want this powerful government (i.e., these powerful men) to take over control of my health care?

Absolutely not! My health care decisions are personal decisions, and I would far rather be unable to afford a doctor at all than have any government dictate those decisions to me - or even know the full state of my health or lack of it. Bluntly, that’s nobody’s business but my own - and it never will be. Government health care would simply mean that I could never again visit a health care professional in this country without having my privacy violated. And my privacy is important enough to me that this means that I could never again receive health care within the borders of the United States.

Actually, that’s not such a large problem for me personally. After my last doctor tried to kill me a few years ago, I’ve stuck with nutritional supplements and haven’t seen another MD. I don’t think very highly of the profession. If those supplements that keep me healthy are banned by an out-of-control government, I’ll be moving to Mexico in short order where I can get anything I could ever want over the counter for cash with zero record of the transaction. Dead simple.

But power corrupts should be remembered in other ways, too. I recently read Seymour Hersh’s remarks about Cheney operating an assassination program out of the White House. This shouldn’t surprise any student of human nature who actually watched Cheney, as he is a walking advertisement for clinical sadism and power corrupts. My conservative friends (all two of them) tell me defensively that this program was just great. It “kept us safe” from Al Qaeda (a CIA invention, anyway). They should remember instead that because power corrupts, it is no stretch at all from offing a jihadist here and there to offing your political rivals. My friends need to remember that forgetting that universal principle is not a survival characteristic.

So now it appears that Obama is pursuing many of these programs himself. I have to admit that makes me smile a bit when I think about my conservative buddies. Anything that increases the power of government will be abused eventually. We see this in action every single day, and now it’s their turn to sweat about it.

Why is this so difficult for Americans to understand? Because, by comparison with the rest of the world, our government did seem reasonably benign for many generations - or at least, it managed to fool us into thinking so. But no government is ever truly benign. Ever. Some are just better at secrecy than others.

Power corrupts! If you give any organization, public or private, power over your life, that power will, sooner or later, be abused. There are no exceptions.

The only possible way to slow this process (and you cannot stop it until you abolish government altogether) is to hold government to as nearly universal human moral standards as possible. The Christians think they have the only morality that is valid, but they are deluded. Hell, they can’t even define “adultery,” let alone the difference between “kill” and “murder.”

We need to look for points of agreement among pretty much all of us. We do nearly all agree that murder is wrong, so why do we allow our government to do it?

Don’t look at me! I haven’t got a clue. I personally believe that anyone who gave the order for an assassination right down to the poor bastard that pulled the trigger should be subject to immediate trial, and if convicted of murder, subject to the death penalty also. War is a little different if it is unavoidable, but war in anything other than self defense is murder also. Make no mistake about that.

We pretty much all agree that torture is wrong. Not only is it wrong morally, it is just plain stupid, because the victim of torture will tell you all kinds of lies to get the torture to stop. Torture is only good for one thing - getting folks to tell you what you want or need to hear. Like maybe getting Al Qaeda folks to confess to 9/11 when it was an inside job? I have that dirty suspicion, yes. What about you? Cheney is certainly capable of it. I suspect he actually enjoyed ordering torture and watching it. So why is it difficult to imagine those as his underlying reasons?

Until we get over our national reluctance to talk about basic morality in anything other than the framework of fanatical religion - which many of us reject out of hand - we’re going to have a government that is immoral and dangerous to all of us.

It might do every one of us good to remember the last successful anarchist society - the American “Old West.” Contrary to history’s lies and Hollywood fiction, blood did not run in the streets. There were only a few dozen high noon type gunfights on this continent over a span of a hundred years, and collateral damage was slight. Most folks never came within 1,000 miles of such a fight in their lifetimes. But no one ever questioned the carriage of arms, openly or concealed, and a woman could walk the streets at night without fear of kidnap or rape.

It was also the most generally prosperous society in history.

Would that really be so awful?

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Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

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tags: freedom, injustice, politics

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

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.

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tags: atf misconduct, cele castillo, celerino castillo, freedom, government misconduct, injustice, politics, second amendment

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

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tags: christian nationalism, civil rights, constitution, domestic enemies, dominionist, freedom, politics, religion, torture

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

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tags: christian, christian cults, christians and torture, cults, freedom, injustice, midwest, politics, torture

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. You can comment here or there.

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.

tags: freedom, injustice, obama, politics, surveillance, torture, torture memos, treason, wiretapping

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

tags: barack obama, civil rights, democrat, election 2008, free trade, freedom, gun rights, nafta, obama, politics

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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?

tags: cele castillo, celerino castillo iii, central america, cia, drug war, george h. w. bush, injustice, iran contra, murder, south america, uncategorized

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

tags: civil rights, constitution, foreign and domestic, freedom, injustice, service oath, torture, waterboarding, white house

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

tags: 401k, bailout, economic meltdown, financial meltdown, freedom, opportunity, politics, suicide

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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?

tags: central intelligence agency, cia, drug war, drugs, economic disaster, economic meltdown, financial meltdown, freedom, injustice, politics, wall st., wall street

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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.

tags: cult, faith, freedom, hate, injustice, mccain, obama, palin, politics, religion

Originally published at Freedom Scribe. Please leave any comments there.

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?

tags: dane-geld, fascism, liberty, theft, 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.

mood: angry tags: al qaeda, bin laden, economic bailout, financial bailout, financial theft, freedom, islamism, liberty, neoconservatism, neoconservative, political lies

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."

mood: disgusted tags: candidates, election year, politics, voting

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.

Freedom Scribe

location: Hooks, Texas mood: enraged tags: bail out, depression, economic crisis, financial, recession

I was actually having as nice a day as is ever possible in a fascist police state when I happened to notice the headline:


That's just what we need, folks.

I'm done.  I've finally had enough.  I've been careful and cautious since I've been living in Kansas, which can otherwise be described as "Fundie Paradise."  Pagans don't have martyrs, just idiots who should have known better than to shoot off their mouths when they did.  But I am through now.  Bring on your burning crosses.  I am out of the closet.

I am an honest-to-Goddess Witch, a Wiccan.  I admit that I am not your typical fluffy bunny Pagan.  I dress like an ordinary human being, usually carry a Kimber .45 that I actually know how to use, and I am technically savvy.  The version of the Rede I was taught - and try to practice - has a specific exemption to the "harm none" statement:  "Lest in thy self defense it be . . ." - and I take that very much to heart.  I have no interest in Goth clothing or makeup.  I rarely see a reason to mention my religion in my mundane day-to-day life.  Politically, I describe myself as a libertarian and a rabid Second Amendment advocate.  So you would think I would be a member of the Libertarian Party, wouldn't you?

You would be wrong.

It is quite true that I once was a card carrying member of that party.  It is also true that I once believed that the Libertarian Party was the last, best hope for a troubled America.  It is true that I saw - and still see - a powerful parallel between the Wiccan "harm none" and the libertarian non-iniation of force.  However, since your typical LP member has difficulty organizing a search for his very own butt with both hands, a lensatic compass and a recent topographical map, I have given up on those folks in utter disgust.  And now, a savvy politician like Bob Barr actually believes he has a real shot at the LP nomination?  That's ominous indeed for my former party!

Barr has been out of the U.S. House of Representatives for a few years.  Does the average American even remember who he is, let alone what he stands for?  Whatever it is, it isn't libertarianism!  His home state is Georgia, and he became expert at pandering to the most ignorant and bigoted of his constituents.

Barr claims to be an advocate for civil rights and constitutional law.  He is anything but that!

Let me tell you about a couple of the honors that Representative Barr earned during his tenure in Washington.

People for the American Way awarded Bob Barr the Equinine Posterior Achievment Award in 1999.  Some of the remarks of their President, Carole Shields, are quoted below:

"The Equine Posterior Achievement Award is given to a 'leader' whose abilities to misrepresent an issue and pander to our baser instincts have reached ridiculous levels . . . A number of Washington politicians competed for the award, but Barr was flank and shoulders below the competition. He has tried to subvert the U.S. Constitution and the will of the American people. He has misused his political power to attack women, minorities and gays . . . He is, in other words, a genuine horse's patootie."

Also in 1999, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance awarded Representative Bob Barr the Burning Times award.  As Canadians, their decision could not have been made on the basis of political partisanship.  When asked for their reasoning, they gave the following reasons:

1. "Violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits the promotion of one religion over any other.

2. "Advocating the creation of a three-tiered system of religions in the Armed Forces: 
    a. A preferred status for Christianity, which he implies is the religion of George Washington;
    b. Presumably a lower class status for most other world religions, like Judaism and Islam,
    c. The active suppression of the religious rights of Wiccans.

3. "Lack of respect for religious diversity.

4. "Spreading misinformation and hatred about Wicca and Humanism by suggesting that they are responsible for youth violence in the U.S..

5. "Inability to separate his own personal religious beliefs from his political responsibility to represent all citizens, including Wiccans and other Neopagans.

6. "Relegation of Wiccans to second-class citizenship in the armed forces and in the rest of America, to be stripped of religious freedoms of speech, belief and assembly."

How can a man who clearly does not believe in the First Amendment possibly be an advocate of Constitutional freedoms? 

He can't.  Bob Barr is simply not a libertarian.  He is a conservative.

I apologize for bursting another bubble of misconception about my faith, but I am not a psychic.  Nevertheless, I would still like to make a handful of predictions if Rep. Barr should win the LP nomination, and against all odds, the Presidency - and I stand firmly by these predictions.

1.  If Barr wins the nomination alone, it will be the end of the Libertarian Party as we know it.  Former allies of the party, including myself, would actively turn against it.

2.  President Barr would not abolish the Federal Reserve or restore a precious metal standard to our currency.

3.  President Barr would not respect constitutional rights as he has promised.

4.  President Barr might possibly lower taxes, but he would not abolish the I.R.S. or the federal income tax.

5.  President Barr would actively work to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

6.  President Barr would not end the expensive and failed drug war.

7.  President Barr would not end the war on terror used to attack our civil rights here at home and destroy our way of life.

In other words, it would be more of the same, with only a slightly different flavor.  We are sliding into a dark age of religious intolerance and cruelty.  Barr in the White House would only accelerate that decline.

Tell the Libertarian Party how you feel about this!

mood: angry tags: freedom, libertarian, libertarian party, liberty, news, pagan, 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 his 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!

mood: pissed off tags: celerino castillo, cia, corruption, dea, news, politics, second amendment

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?

mood: tired tags: freedom, libertarian, liberty, new world order, objectivist, politics

As adults, we have all experienced that feeling of being overwhelmed by events. Successful people have long known that this can best be overcome by making lists. How?

Well, when looking at an overfull agenda of things that must be done, it is easy to experience a kind of attention deficit disorder. We keep getting pulled off each task by other tasks that need to be done until the net result at the end of the day is zero real progress. If we can break that overwhelming agenda down into small component parts, and make ourselves accomplish only one small thing at a time, we can whittle away the nightmare until it becomes manageable - and then completely handled - in reasonably short order.

The struggle for freedom is surprisingly similar. We are faced by a loss of our civil liberties, a selection process for political candidates that leaves us with a choice between bad and worse, endless wars abroad that we didn't want and a looming New World Order that will end freedom forever. Every morning, the march of headlines makes us ill as we drink our morning coffee. We know we have to make a living to make any difference at all, yet we also want to march for this or that, write articles, network with other freedom lovers, investigate this or that corruption, and very soon it becomes obvious that we haven't enough hours in the day.

Our oppressors count on this, actually. Our paralysis is essential to the success of their plans.

The key to survival is thinking small. I don't mean that our overall goals should go by the wayside, far from it! I do mean that we have to accept that no single person can fix everything wrong in this world of ours. Yes, that stinks, but it's reality. The first step is to accept that fact and make peace with it. The second step is to figure out what you actually can do - what niche you were born to occupy - and homestead the hell out of it.

If you are like me, you feel a considerable amount of rage toward those who have lied and trapped us into the situation where we now find ourselves. Just remember that your best revenge is to live well. What does that mean in this case? It means to live a personally free life. Do not allow fear to change your plans in even the smallest way. Do whatever it is you would have done if you were still free as a bird. Yes, this can lead to bad things happening to you, but you can't change that. If millions of Americans are doing the same, it will take the powers that be quite awhile to get around to you, so you have a chance to live out a good portion of your life - and perhaps your whole natural life if you are very lucky - in happiness and personal freedom. Lead by example, and your friends and neighbors will follow.

This leads me to another question I have been asked by my friends. How do you deal with the cold sweats in the middle of the night, when you just know they have to be coming for you soon? Well, I've experienced those cold sweats more than once in my life (although I was wrong every single time), and I've only found one thing that actually works for me. Folks who've read my novel, Flight From Eden, will recognize what I am about to say, because my heroine faced such a crisis in my fictional story and I applied my own experience to her solution.

First, you must figure out what it is that you fear, and you must make peace with the fact that feeling fear is not cowardice. Cowardice lies only in allowing our fears to control us. Fear is a natural and healthy emotion. It sharpens the senses and speeds the reactions - and it can keep you alive in very interesting places and circumstances. Unfortunately, our bodies are not perfect, and sometimes the imagination short circuits this process by keeping us afraid even when we are not immediately threatened, an exhausting process that ultimately destroys the effectiveness of our fear when we do really need it.

The chances are that your greatest fear is not death at all. We do fear the process of dying, but death itself is not actually so horrifying. Most of us believe in a higher power and an afterlife of some kind. Death is to be avoided, because it appears so final as far as this life is concerned, and that is a very healthy thing. When it cannot be avoided, death becomes the greatest of adventures, and perhaps a doorway into something even more wonderful. More importantly, death is inescapable for every single one of us. Nobody gets out of this life alive, so you are no different from anyone else in that regard. Acceptance of this can be very difficult, but don't shy away from the issue. It needs to be explored in the privacy of your own heart.

The chances are that you fear being "disappeared" far more than you actually fear death. I know I do, and you would have to be an idiot not to fear the isolation, and even the possible torture, that will follow. However - and this is why you must face death first - there is an inevitable end to any such situation. Sooner or later, it will come to put a very welcome end to your personal misery.

I have found that I am afraid of fear most of all. I was a skydiver for many years, so I would describe it as those last few seconds, falling, out of control, knowing you are about to die. There is only one big problem with that scenario - it is solely a product of my own imagination, and it is utter and absolute nonsense. I have actually been in really serious trouble in the air, and I recall feeling no fear whatsoever at the time. When adrenaline is that high, you get very cold and methodical about saving your own life. You don't feel a thing until it is all over, one way or another. In my case, it ended happily, but I doubt I would have felt fear even if it had not. I was far too busy and too focused at the time.

So why be afraid of fear you probably will not even feel? It doesn't make one single bit of sense, does it? When I get to this point in my cold sweat reverie, I generally fall asleep - and sleep like a baby.

Once you are free personally, and at peace with your fears, you can focus effectively on whittling away at that to-do list. Take a step back from yourself, and figure out what it is that you do best, where your individual talent really lies. Apply logic to determine how this can best serve the cause of freedom, and the chances are it will make you a living as well. Make a list of reasonable tasks that you can personally accomplish and accomplish well in the time allotted for your lifetime.

Then focus your energies on those tasks and perform them - one small thing at a time.

mood: determined tags: freedom, libertarian, liberty, news, politics, success