A Veteran's Response to the National Security Agency

Here is my citizen's disclaimer to the NSA ¹ and which I will be attaching to everything I write from now on!

My personal statement to the first sychophant (and hangers-on [aka police / military person{s} ² who might arrest me]) of the 0.1% is as follows:

“It is not an honorable action to torture those who are testifying for their Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of assembly and speech. ³  Those taking such shameful actions can only be seen as enforcers - terrorsymps - for the terroristic 0.1%.  And as a Vietnam veteran, and then a person testifying for (the meaning of protest, after all) alternatives to the Vietnam (and succeeding Imperialistic) War(s), and now a supporter of Veterans for Peace, and a Third Order Lutheran Franciscan Associate, I take the suggestion of Stéphane Hessel - to return to the values of the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (values for which so many veterans fought during WW II) as the foundation from which to become outraged as the financial war being waged by the terrorist 0.1% against the activist 99.9% continues to take its toll.  To proclaim again that:

1. ‘disregard and contempt for human rights [by the terrorist 0.1%] have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind’ and
2. the highest aspiration of the common people - the activist 99.9% - is ‘the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want’”!

I still see the best overall review of the situation we face as being expressed in this 22+ minute video:  “Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine”!!  ⁴



























































1 Also known as Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (MfS) oder Staatssicherheitdeinst (SSD) fur seine Strumabteilung (SA), Schutzstaffel (SS), Sicherheitzpolizei (SiPo [Gestapo und Kriminalpolizei {Kripo}]), und Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) Untergebenen - eine Art Nachkriegs ODESSA.  Cf. the covert counterintelligence branch of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) located in South America during World War II - the SIS - (Special Intelligence Service), and the documents from the Internet Archive.

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2 As David Graeber reminds us *, “Police represent the state; the state has a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence within its borders; therefore, within that territory, police are by definition incommensurable with anyone else.  This is essential to understanding what police actually are.  Many sociological studies have pointed out that maybe 6% of the average police officer’s time is spent on anything that can even remotely be considered ‘fighting crime’.  Police are a group of armed, lower-echelon government administrators, trained in the scientific application of physical force to aid in the resolution of administrative problems.  They are bureaucrats with guns, and whether they are guarding lost children, talking rowdy drunks out of bars, or supervising free concerts in the park, the one common feature of the kind of situation to which they’re assigned is the possibility of having to impose ‘non-negotiated solutions backed up by the potential use of force’. ** The key term here I think, is ‘non-negotiable’.  Police do not negotiate ‐ at least when it comes to anything important ‐ because that would imply equivalency.  When they are forced to negotiate, they pretty much invariably break their word.” ***

* David Graeber, ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF GIANT PUPPETS:  broken windows, imaginary jars of urine, and the cosmological role of the police in American culture, p.28.

** Egon Bittner's phrase from Aspects of Police Work.  See also Mark Neocleus, The Fabrication of Social Order:  A Critical Theory of Police Power.

*** Consider here the fact that “police negotiators” are generally employed in hostage situations; in other words, in order to actually get the police to negotiate, one has to literally be holding a gun to someone’s head.  And in such situations police can hardly be expected to honor their promises; in fact, they could well argue they are morally obliged not to.

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3 In spite of former President George W. Bush's statement that the Constitution is “just a God-dammed piece of paper.”

After his 8:30 PM (EDT) address to the nation from the Oval Office on September 11, 2001, President G. W. Bush, went immediately to the Emergency Operations Center (his first visit there), where he centered the discussion on the new war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Late in the discussion, Secretary of War, Donald Rumsfeld, noted that international law allowed use of force only to prevent future attacks and not for retribution.

The President nearly bit his head off, yelling in the conference room, "No . . . I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." (Richard Allen Clarke, Against All Enemies:  Inside America's War On Terror. [New York: Free Press, 2004], p.24).

Cf. the transcript of Leslie Stahl's (CBS News 60 Minutes) interview with Paul O'Neill (former Treasury Secretary under President George Bush) as the source for Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty:  George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill which demonstrates (based on 19,000 internal documents) the impact of the PNAC "praetorian guard" on the "new American century."  That is to say, that plans were put in place, at least eight months before 9/11, for the invasion of Iraq.  Here's a YouTube link to the interview in case you're not a subscriber to 60 Minutes.

The comments of the person, Jon Gold, posting the above video are also quite instructive:  “What qualifies as suspicious behavior?  Bush telling his principals 10 days after his inauguration to "go find me a way" to go into Iraq?  Cheney meeting with nearly every oil executive in existence and discussing Iraq's oil fields months before 9/11, even though those executives denied meeting with him before Congress?  People in the Bush Administration discussing creating a "cassus belli" for war with Iraq prior to 9/11?  FBI Superiors blocking subordinates from doing their jobs?  The CIA seemingly protecting at least 2 of the hijackers?  The NSA lying about not knowing the location of two of the hijackers in San Diego?  NORAD lying about their air response that morning?  Multiple people in the Bush Administration denying that there were any warnings even though at least 14 countries warned us, and even though Bush received the August 6th, PDB [Presidential Daily Brief] and a multitude of PDBs that are supposedly worse than that one that we're not even allowed to see?  Cheney having a "back channel" to the different intelligence agencies prior to 9/11?  Bush fighting against having an investigation?  Bush refusing to cooperate fully with investigations?  A Bush lackey being put in charge of the so called "Independent" 9/11 Commission?  Money connected to 2 of the hijackers supposedly (and most likely) coming from a friend of the Bush family?  People like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice planning for war with Iraq within hours of the attacks?  Bush using 9/11 to go to war with Iraq?  Nobody being held accountable, and instead people that didn't deserve it being rewarded and promoted?  Does any of it?” Now, compare the 2017 film "War Machine"!

And, the rest, as they say, is ongoing history!

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4 Other references of interest:

• "Could this be part of the problem?"
• In a TEDx talk, Lawrence Lessig fleshes out the Anonymous Banker's presentation with his own fix - "Our democracy no longer represents the people . . . ."
• While, Noam Chomsky, puts much more of the big picture in context with his presentation - "Requiem for the American Dream"
• And recently, the Honorable Paul Craig Roberts (economist, and former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration [and noted as a co-founder of Reagonomics] and editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the Scripps Howard News Service) was invited to address an important conference of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in Moscow, in celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference.  Dr. Roberts gave a two part address on “The Threat Posed to International Relations By The Neoconservative Ideology of American Hegemony” both of which are available for perusal on his Institute for Political Economy WWW site.

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Three Strikes and You're Out

THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT:  Toward a Legal Philosophy and Spiritual Approach for the Pro-life (i.e., anti-nuclear war) Movement

(Homily prepared to kick off the establishment of the Burlington Northern Project and delivered at the Burlington Northern Railroad Company's corporate headquarters [which used to be in downtown Saint Paul, MN] on Sunday afternoon, August 5, 1984 with the title “CONNECTIONS:  Past, Present, and Future”.  In memory of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of World War II, we stayed up all night, taking turns reading through John Hersey's Hiroshima and folding hundreds of origami cranes (see the story of Sadako Sasaki) before passing them out to Burlington Northern employees as they entered the building for work on Monday morning.)

It was a little over a year ago that the seed for the Burlington Northern Project was planted by my reading an article on the “white death train” and seeing the picture of the big green Burlington Northern locomotive pulling it in the Fellowship of Reconciliation magazine.  But the events leading up to the formation of the Burlington Northern Project really began with our government's use of nuclear weapons beginning on August 6, 1945.  President Truman justified the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the claim that by forcing the Japanese to surrender without having to invade the home islands, he saved the lives of a million GIs (an invasion was planned for Nov. 1, 1945).

However, Japan had sued for peace fully six weeks before the dropping of the atomic bomb.  In mid-June they requested not only the USSR, but also Switzerland and Sweden to open negotiations for surrender.  U. S. officials, including the President, were well aware that Japan's surrender was at most a matter of months away, regardless of any invasion.  Yet the United States acted as if nothing was happening, and issued an ultimatum along with China and Britain to the Japanese on July 26, 1945.  The ultimatum was issued during the Potsdam conference and called upon the Japanese to surrender unconditionally or face “prompt and utter destruction”.

Japan was beaten and suing for peace.  No invasion of the Japanese home islands was scheduled until November.  Why, then, did the United States choose to obliterate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The answer is given in the diary of Admiral James Forrestal, who recorded a conversation with Secretary of State James Byrnes on July 28, two days after the ultimatum to Japan.  “Byrnes said that he was most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians get in . . . . Once in there, he felt it would not be easy to get them out . . . .”  The U. S. was determined to force the surrender at once - without any prolonged negotiations.  This was to ensure that the Soviet Union would not be involved in the negotiations and would have no role in Japan following the war.  The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented the opening salvo of the cold war - an example of the fate that awaited any people or power that dared stand in the way of American domination of Asia.

As we continue our journey on the way of peace, we place ourselves in a position of psychological disadvantage by referring to “first strike” capabilities.  While this terminology may be useful in describing countries which have not yet gone insane and actually used these weapons, as we have seen, our government continues in its insane hope that their “third strike” will bring peace to the world.  No matter how you visualize it, more and more of the world's population is coming to see that that “third strike” means we are all out.

In fact, this is the same conclusion reached by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after World War II and reiterated in the whole series of treaties and conventions on the rules of war since that time - most notably the Geneva Protocols concluded in 1977.

In essence, planning, preparing, and initiating war is a crime against humanity and anyone who is aware that crimes of state are being committed has an obligation to take what action they can to prevent those crimes from occurring.

In response to the excesses of the Nazi regime, to the fact that the death trains went by - nobody looked, nobody saw - that there was a tremendous silence, and that the assembly line of death, destruction, and dehumanization in Nazi Germany was furthered by many and protested by few, the Nuremberg Tribunal placed responsibility upon individuals to refrain from committing an act which violated the principles of international law, even though commanded by their country to do it.  So, we have a principle adopted which says that you have to interpose your estimate of the conduct, and not simply obey.

Our constitution says that international law is the supreme law of the land.  This has been affirmed by the Supreme Court with regard not only to treaties, but also to so-called customary international law which includes the law of war.  If you take the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons and match them up against the prohibitions for their use, you will find that nuclear weapons are outlawed for a variety of reasons.

When it comes to its nuclear strategy, “third strike” weapons, and the war plans that have recently been published, it is a reasonable thing for reasonable people to believe that our government is in violation of international law in a Nuremberg sense.  In other words, that it is planning in some way to wage aggressive war.  If that is the case, then individuals who are aware of this situation, if anything, are not doing enough, given the gravity of the evil that is involved and the danger, and given the understanding at Nuremberg that everyone has a responsibility to the enforcement of international law.

In this situation, the churches and synagogues, because they are the repositories of long term values, have a particularly important role.  Unfortunately, that role for the most part has been abdicated.  As Americans with various religious tradition or belief systems, we find that we are part of a people who have been seduced into idolatry.  Our idol is a rebellious system, a legitimate governmental service to its citizens which has gathered its own momentum, gone out of control, and now demands sacrificial obedience and promises security and benevolence.  We are part of a nation that has come to worship power, especially as that power is manifested in nuclear weapons.

How can we give up our reliance on militarism? We first have to realize that if we give up our reliance upon militarism and begin instead to resist it, we will not only lose its protection, but will eventually become its victims - not in the relatively short and voluntary periods allowed by our current non-violent direct actions, but in more serious ways, ways which we will no longer control. 

In preparation for that time - a time of loving acceptance of the violence that will be necessary to bring about this fundamental change - we will need to look to our belief systems and develop out of them a disciplined non-violence rooted in that power of love that wells up from our hearts.  Only then will we be able to go beyond our own needs for security and our own fears and allow the power of love to work through us.

Beyond examining our lives for continuing reliance on the fruits of militarism, and taking as many steps as possible to reduce our complicity, Shelley Douglass from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action suggests a modification of the Buddhist Karuna meditation to help us reach our goal:

We might sit in stillness and visualize the person whom we most love
in the world.  We surround that person with our love and care, praying
for them or holding them in our hearts.  Then we invite into that
caring the people next closest to us and surround them with the same
love and care.  We move out with our invitations, out to an ever-
widening circle of people, inviting them all into the same warmth
of love that enveloped the most beloved.  At the end of our medi-
tation we invite into our love the people from whom we feel most
estranged, those whom we dislike, fear, or hate.  We invite them
into our love and keep them there in prayer ....  [s]uch constant
practice in love can help us to become more deeply loving people.

This is an article that originated on an old Wintel 3.1 machine (which was gonna die come New Year's Eve, 2000).  In fact, I had to “edit” (using edit.com which called qbasic.exe) a .txt file to pull it over to a “new” Wintel '95 machine so as to format the file into the “new” HTML format for its presentation at that time.

The “article” was submitted to the Twin Cities Men's Center Newsletter (it, unfortunately, was never published).

Along the way I was reminded of an article on “e-CEOs” in Fortune magazine (May 24, 1999) which characterizes them as “evangelists [for their cause].”  We've not come that far from the religion of “religion” to the “religion of technology”.

Therapists
Or
The Rapists:
Checking the Mind-fucker's Queen

There's so much you don't know about me.
Cannot ever, no matter how hard I try to make it otherwise.
I have been places, done things impossible to recount . . .

if you're lonely and you're hurting, then you're human . . .

Chris Locke (a. k. a. RageBoy) in Dust My Broom
While in attendance at a male friend's birthday lunch, I often heard the word “denial” used in contexts similar to “you're sure you're not in denial,” as if, accepting the iatrogenic pathology, “everybody's doing it.”  Being no foreigner to the taunt, myself, I thought I would share a perspective on denial that I have been working through for more than twenty-five years, though it is only in the last four years that the pieces of the puzzle have come together with some clarity.  (There is something perverse about a university education when it fails to show one the authentically cumulative tradition of thought.  One has to discover the vital thinkers on their own and serendipitously; professors, if anything, pooh-pooh the very people one should be studying, and needless years are spent just randomly and with luck coming to understand one's heritage.)

A terminus a quo - an adolescent's amazement at the repression of sexual expression in society, fired by Paul Goodman's Growing Up? Absurd! (1960), and fueled since then by, amongst others, any of Wilhelm Reich's works written during the period 1927-1936, Gershon Legman's Love & Death:   A Study in Censorship (1963), any of Michel Foucault's works, but especially The History of Sexuality (1980) [read in the light of his earlier Madness and Civilization (1965)], and any of Ernest Becker's works, but especially the second edition of The Birth and Death of Meaning:   An Interdisciplinary Perspective On The Problem of [Human Being] (1971) and The Denial of Death (1974).  All of these works grappling with the question, as posed by Ernest Becker:  How do we move from childhood toward the practical self-deceit, the well-organized tyranny, of “normal” adult sexuality to accept the sublimation of the body-sexual character of our Oedipal project?  Or, in other words, how do I work through the real differences between a childish impossibility - I can have anything and everything I want - and an adult one - I can live forever?  Either way, leading naturally to the fundamental matters of sexuality and death. ¹

I became, of course, acquainted with the most widely accepted answer to the question:  that sexual repression is the sine qua non of civilized life and that a whole raft of devices are used by one's “ego” to defend itself from the demands of the “id,” “superego,” and environment. ²  But this did not satisfy me leading as it did to the rather dismal and pessimistic view of human being as expressed in Freud's Civilization And Its Discontents.

In addition, my work in the history of the philosophy of science brought me to the following interesting quote from Karl Popper's Conjectures And Refutations:  The Growth Of Scientific Knowledge (revised edition, 1972, pp. 34-38):

I should perhaps briefly describe the atmosphere in which [I began my work] and the examples by which it was stimulated.  After the collapse of the Austrian Empire there had been a revolution in Austria:  the air was full of revolutionary slogans and ideas, and new and often wild theories.  Among the theories which interested me . . . were . . . Freud's [theory of] psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler's so-called 'individual psychology'.

It was during the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these . . . theories . . .; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. . . .  [W]hat worried me was neither the problem of truth, at that stage at least, nor the problem of exactness or measurability.  It was rather that I felt that these . . . theories, though posing as sciences, had in fact more in common with primitive myths than with science; that they resembled astrology rather than astronomy. . . .

These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred.  The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated.  Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere:  the world was full of verifications of the theory.  Whatever happened always confirmed it.  Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it . . . because of their repressions which were still 'un-analyzed' and crying aloud for treatment [or, as would be stated today, because they were in denial]. . . .

The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their 'clinical observations'. . . . ³ 

What, I asked myself, did [this] confirm?  No more than that a case could be interpreted in the light of the theory.  But this meant very little, I reflected, since every conceivable case could be interpreted in the light of Adler's theory, or equally of Freud's. . . .  I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory.  It was precisely this fact - that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed - which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories.  It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness. . . .

The two psycho-analytic theories were . . . simply non-testable, irrefutable.  There was no conceivable human behaviour which could contradict them. . . .  [This] . . . mean[s] that those ‘clinical observations’ which analysts naively believe confirm their theory cannot do this any more than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in their practice.  And as for Freud's epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id, no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than for Homer's collected stories from Olympus. ⁴

The humanist critique of the psychological myth of paradise through self-knowledge recalls to us that we are all human beings - like children, discovering a strange world, not knowing where we came from or where we are going, we play games, we cry and laugh, we want to be “Big Daddy” Warbucks or Gina Rinehart, G. I. Jane or G. I. Joe, Dick Tracy or Brenda Starr, Kenneth or Gloria Copeland, Peter or Elizabeth Popoff.⁵  We have bad dreams now, we get sick when we eat certain foods, we have impossible fantasies of sexual fulfillment, we want everybody to listen to us with great respect.  And very soon we shall all be dead.  When a person comes into our experience claiming to hold the keys to the inner door of this astonishing journey, we must begin by recognizing them as another human being.  A human being is speaking, who was also a child and with whom other foods disagree and whose significant other is over-weight and who will also die one day.  We may then listen to what this person has to say.  But we shall take the attitude that it is just another human being that we are listening to.  Most of those working in the therapeutic or “helping” agencies (organizations designed to do away with doubts about how their particular view of the world works [and in our addictive society there is a vast network of psycho-therapists, counselors, and social workers with just this function]) cannot put up with this attitude very well.  Having identified with their particular causa sui project, they regard the attitude as an act of sacrilege in itself and as proof of the depravity of the one who maintains it.  Their goal is not communication but conversion.  They do not wish to understand but to conquer.  As Ernest Becker has pointed out, the reasons for this response are most human ones indeed.  But this does not mean that the psycho-therapeutic nomenclature should continue as an empirical measure within cultural conventions supporting the punishment of dissent, social control of deviants, or, at its most innocuous, fitting people uncritically into their standard hero-games.

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz raises four questions concerning the nature, scope, methods, and values of the psychotherapeutic enterprise; questions we would do well to ask our own therapists:

1)  Is the scope of psychotherapy the study and treatment of medical conditions, or the study and influencing of social performances?  In other words, are the objects of psychotherapeutic inquiry diseases or roles, happenings or actions?

2)  Is the aim of psychotherapy the study of human behavior, or the control of human (mis) behavior?  In other words, is the goal of psychotherapy the advancement of knowledge, or the regulation of (mis) conduct?

3)  Is the method of psychotherapy the exchange of communications, or the administration of diagnostic tests and curative treatments?  In other words, what does psycho-therapeutic practice actually consist of - listening and talking, or prescribing drugs, operating on the brain [in the case of psychiatry], and imprisoning persons labeled as 'mentally ill'?

4)  Finally, is the guiding value of psychotherapy individualism or collectivism?  In other words, does psychotherapy aspire to be the servant of the individual or of the state? ⁶

Szasz suggests that contemporary psychotherapy hedges on all of these questions.  And that indeed the mandate of the contemporary psychotherapist - that is, of the professionally loyal, “dynamic” or “progressive” psychotherapist - is precisely to obscure, and indeed deny, the ethical dilemmas of life, and to transform them into medicalized and technicalized problems susceptible to professional solutions.

Today while the entire U. S. society is crumbling around an archaic CIA-congressional-corporate-educational-FBI-financial-industrial-media-medical-military-NSA-police-political-prison-Secret-Service-terrorism-expert complex (or “hero-system”), unrelated to the needs and challenges of contemporary life, we see an apparent incapability and / or lack of imagination in our people to reconstruct the society around goals of peace and social justice.  More importantly, the margin that nature has been giving to our cultural fantasy is suddenly being narrowed down drastically with the consequences that for the first time in history we, if we are to survive, have to bring down to zero the large fictional element in our hero-systems.  Men of good will could begin with the therapeutic relationship, recalling Paul Feyerabend's description of the role of the “expert” in a free society:

[E]xperts are humans just as we are; . . . they have therefore the ability to produce bright ideas and the related ability to commit grievous mistakes. ⁷

One way or another, we're all baying at the moon. Chris Locke (a. k. a. RageBoy) in Dust My Broom THE END

1  There's a real bias being expressed here as all of these works are written by men.  One of my growth areas during the past four years is to have started reading the women's perspective on this issue; cf. e. g., Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (1970), Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will:  Men, Women and Rape (1975), Andrea Dworkin, Pornography:  Men Possessing Women (1981), Susan Griffin, Pornography and Silence:  Culture's Revenge Against Nature (1981), Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5(4), Margaret Jackson, "Sexual Liberation or Social Control?" and "Sex Research and the Construction of Sexuality:  A Tool of Male Supremacy" in Coveney, L., et al., The Sexuality Papers:  Male Sexuality And The Social Control Of Women (1984), Anne Wilson Schaef, Women's Reality:  An Emerging Female System in the White Male Society (3rd edition, 1992), Margaret Jackson, "“'Facts of Life' Or The Eroticization of Women's Oppression?  Sexology and the Social Construction of Heterosexuality”' in Pat Caplan, ed., The Cultural Construction of Sexuality (1987), Anne Wilson Schaef, When Society Becomes An Addict (1987).

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2  Sigmund Freud had originally proposed nine “defense mechanisms” - regression, repression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turing against the self, and reversal - to which his daughter, Anna, added a tenth, sublimation.  I believe the most recent count is twenty-four, including:  acting out, avoidance, denial, aestheticism, altruistic surrender, clowning, compliance, counterphobia, whistling in the dark, not to mention any more (before all of human being is included as a defence mechanism).

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3  See Appendix 1 for a footnote from Popper which clarifies what the Freudians meant by 'clinical observations'.  Cf. Footnote 4.

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4  More recently, Paul Kline, in a review of research on Freudian hypotheses, found large numbers of studies that failed one or more of the simple criteria for satisfactory research design (Paul Kline, "Sexual Deviation:  Psychoanalytic Research and Theory," in Glenn D. Wilson, ed., Variant Sexuality:  Research And Theory [Baltimore:  John Hopkins University Press, 1987], pp. 150-175.  Compare also:  Hans J. Eysenck, Decline And Fall Of The Freudian Empire (Harmondsworth:  Pelican, 1985), Adolf Grunbaum, The Foundations Of Psychoanalysis:  A Philosophical Critique (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1984), Jeffrey M. Masson, The Assualt On Truth:  Freud's Suppression Of The Seduction Theory (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984).

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4  More recently, Paul Kline, in a review of research on Freudian hypotheses, found large numbers of studies that failed one or more of the simple criteria for satisfactory research design (Paul Kline, "Sexual Deviation:  Psychoanalytic Research and Theory," in Glenn D. Wilson, ed., Variant Sexuality:  Research And Theory [Baltimore:  John Hopkins University Press, 1987], pp. 150-175.  Compare also:  Hans J. Eysenck, Decline And Fall Of The Freudian Empire (Harmondsworth:  Pelican, 1985), Adolf Grunbaum, The Foundations Of Psychoanalysis:  A Philosophical Critique (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1984), Jeffrey M. Masson, The Assualt On Truth:  Freud's Suppression Of The Seduction Theory (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984).

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5  See the 1992 American dramedy “Leap of Faith” starring Steve Martin and Debra Winger (amongst others).  A story about Jonas Nightengale. the fradulent faith healer, and Jane, his friend and manager (both loosely based on Peter and Elizabeth Popoff), who make a living traveling around America holding revival meetings and conducting 'miracles'.  Read more about the loosely based couple in James Randi's book The Faith Healers.

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6  Thomas S. Szasz, “Crime, Punishment, and Psychiatry,” in Abraham S. Blumberg, ed., Current Perspectives On Criminal Behavior:  Essays On Criminology, 2nd ed. (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), pp. 342-363.

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7  Paul Feyerabend, “Experts In A Free Society,” The Critic, Nov. - Dec., 1970, p.69.

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Appendix 1
Footnote 3 to Chapter 1 of Karl Popper's Conjectures And Refutations:

    'Clinical observations', like all other observations, are interpretations in the light of theories . . .; and for this reason alone they are apt to seem to support those theories in the light of which they were interpreted.  But real support can be obtained only from observations undertaken as tests (by 'attempted refutations'); and for this purpose criteria of refutation have to be laid down beforehand:  it must be agreed which observable situations, if actually observed, mean that the theory is refuted.  But what kind of clinical responses would refute to the satisfaction of the analyst not merely a particular analytic diagnosis but psycho-analysis itself?  And have such criteria ever been discussed or agreed upon by analysts?  Is there not, on the contrary, a whole family of analytic concepts, such as 'ambivalence' . . . which would make it difficult, if not impossible, to agree upon such criteria?  Moreover, how much headway has been made investigating the question of the extent to which the (conscious or unconscious) expectations and theories held by the analyst influence the 'clinical responses' of the patient?  (To say nothing about the conscious attempts to influence the patient by proposing interpretations to her, etc.)  Years ago I introduced the term 'Oedipus effect' to describe the influence of a theory or expectation or prediction upon the event which it predicts or describes:  it will be remembered that the causal chain leading to Oedipus' parricide was started by the oracle's prediction of this event.  This is a characteristic and recurrent theme of such  myths, but one which seems to have failed to attract the interest of the analysts, perhaps not accidentally.  (The problem of confirmatory dreams suggested by the analyst is discussed by Freud, for example in Gesammelte Schriften, III, 1925, where he says on p. 314:  'If anybody asserts that most of the dreams which can be utilized in an analysis . . . owe their origin to [the analyst's] suggestion, then no objection can be made from the point of view of analytic theory.  Yet there is nothing in this fact', he surprisingly adds, 'which would detract from the reliability of our results.') 

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African Americans vs. "evil rulers of darkness and spiritual wickedness in high places" (aka rich Republicans and / or neo-conservatives [including their Democratic sychophants], and hangers-on) . . .

Well, I've read Orwell's 1984, was in the deep South during the race riots that began in Greensboro, NC, February 1, 1960, and in the late '70s (early '80s?), read and have an affinity with Paul Feyerabend 's general description of the “political process” (see below). ¹

From these perspectives, the events unfolding in Ferguson, MO the past few days (since the “police” [four different police forces have been involved] shooting of an unarmed teenager there on August 9, 2014) underscore the questions asked in my last blog entry (July 9, 2014 “My response to John Whiteheads June 10, 2014 ‘guest column’” on Paul Craig Roberts' Institute for Political Economy WWW site) and further provide examples in line with analogies in the rest of the world as exclamation points.

Before we begin with a 9 minute 37 second news clip of the St. Louis County Police Department's “infantry battalion” response? on the evening of August 13 to the concerned citizens of Ferguson, MO “testifying for” their right to know and understand the background behind the killing of the unarmed teenager, I would like to point out that “testifying for” is the meaning of the word “protest.”  And that as we continue our journey on the way to peace, we place ourselves in a position of psychological disadvantage if we use the word “protest” because it has been tainted with a negative connotation by the military-industrial-CIA-corporate-educational-FBI-financial-media-medical-NSA-police-political-prison-Secret-Service-terrorism-expert complex (or “hero system”). ²

St. Louis County Police Open Fire on Peacefully Testifying Neighbors (news clip)

Before looking at the demographics (which are certain to have some impact) of the social problems presented by this situation, I mentioned Paul Feyerabend's general description of the “political process” above:

“The way in which social problems, problems of energy distribution, ecology,
education, care for the old and so on are ‘solved’ in our societies can be roughly
described in the following way.  A problem arises.  Nothing is done about it.
People get concerned.  Politicians broadcast this concern.  Experts are called in.
They develop a plan or a variety of plans.  Power-groups with experts of their
own effect various modifications until a watered down version is accepted and
realized.  The role of experts in this process has gradually increased.  Intellectuals
have developed theories about the application of science to social problems.
‘To get ideas’ they ask other intellectuals, or politicians.  Only rarely does it
occur to them that it is not their business but the business of those immediately
concerned to decide the matter.  They simply take it for granted that their
ideas and those of their colleagues are the only important ones and that people
have to adapt to them.” ³

As Mike Summer points out in his diary (read the comments to his diary also), the Normandy School District (a merger of two of the poorest, most heavily minority populations ‐ Normandy and Wellston ‐ around St. Louis) has a poverty rate of 92% (Wellston's poverty rate is 98% and 100% minority). ⁴

How much does a box of Swisher Sweets cost?  A 60 count box for $21.99 at Good Luck Wholesale ($44.00 - $50.00 retail).  What would be the selling price in the “black” market for one of those cigarillos?  $1.50?  $2.50?  There must have been a market! ⁵  Though as Hunter's diary suggests, why are we even dwelling on this question?

More interesting is the “politics” of the school district (stay with me through Mike's description):

“. . . [T]he state education board voted to merge the districts in 2010 (the first change to state school district boundaries in thirty-five years).  Plagued by white flight, crashing property values that destroyed tax revenues, and a loss of state funds as the better‐off residents of the area sent their children to private schools, the resulting district is short of everything.  Residents of the district voted again and again to raise their own property taxes, until their rates were actually the highest in the state, but a higher percentage of nothing was still nothing, and district revenues trended steadily down.

After the merger, the state board proceeded with the next step in their plan.  In 2012, they rated Normandy as a failed district, removed its accreditation, and placed it under direct state control.  The idea was to reform the district to the state board's design, only there was one problem:  the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled that students in a failed district had the right to go to other districts.  Hundreds of Normandy students signed up to do just that, heading for classrooms in surrounding districts, some of which were majority white.  At first, this generated tension.

News of the Supreme Court's upholding of the transfer law initially sparked anger
and fear among some white Francis Howell parents.

“I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed, or taking a
drug, or getting robbed,” one mother said during a school board meeting,
referring to the prospective arrival of Normandy students.

“We don't want this here in Francis Howell,” another parent said.

But for the most part that attitude didn't last.  Normandy students settled in at their new districts, and despite a financial drain ‐ Normandy had to cover the cost of transportation and pay tuition to the other districts for those students who transferred ‐ things seemed on an upswing in the district.

“...the remaining students and school community came together to celebrate
a spirit of new beginnings.  They held pep rallies and welcome‐back‐to‐school
gatherings.  Students at Normandy High School said they began tutoring each
other to improve the school's academic ranking...

“Indeed, walking the halls of Normandy High School at the beginning of the
school year, there was a sense of optimism despite the dire state of things.

Well, you know what they say about optimists.

Funding the transfer students was costing the district more than it cost to educate students within the district.  Part of that was transportation, but most of it was the simple fact that other districts spent far more on their students than the poverty‐stricken Normandy district.

The state board of education took over the district's finances, but rather than providing a new stream of revenue, they figured out a simple way to reduce costs:

“On Friday afternoon, the board met in a hastily called meeting to change
Normandy's accreditation status ‐‐ or at least how that accreditation is
described.  Normandy now has ‘accreditation as a state oversight district,’
the revised June minutes now read.

Get that?  The state board, which had taken away the accreditation, now argued that Normandy was accredited, magically, without having the district actually meet any of the standards they had set.  How did that happen?

“The Missouri State Board of Education, pursuant to its statutory authority
to waive its rules, including those regulating accreditation, has accredited
the Normandy Schools Collaborative and thus its schools, the state's motion
to the court says.  Because of that accreditation, the Plaintiffs are not entitled
to relief . . . .”

The school is now accredited because the board has the right to ignore the law the board claimed it was enforcing in the first place, and parents now have no right to transfer their kids to another district ... because the school is accredited.

Naturally, the case is headed back to court.  And if the accreditation by decree isn't enough for you, there's another bit of magic applied by the board.  That transfer law?  It only applies to school districts.  But see, Normandy Schools are no longer in a school district.  Normandy schools are now in a special collaborative and, according to the state board, “are not in any district in this state.”  So there you go.  You can't transfer from a district if you're not in a district, and if you happen to be in a district, it's magically accredited.  Problem solved.

So, who actually runs the school district that Michael Brown attended?  Well, the president of the board of education is Peter F. Herschend of Branson, Missouri.  Herschend isn't a former teacher, or a former principal, and doesn't have any training in the education field.  He's the owner of Herschend Family Entertainment, which runs Silver Dollar City in Branson (amongst other amusement parks) and owns the Harlem Globetrotters.  He's also one of the biggest contributors to the Republican Party in the state.

So, when you're wondering who runs Michael Brown's school district ‐ when you're wondering who's in control of an urban, minority district so poor that a student has to steal a bunch of cigarillos to survive ‐ it's a white Republican millionaire from out state.”

Finally, at the Federal level, it is interesting to note that the St Louis County Police Chief was amongst a host of other county police chiefs from around the country who have attended counter-terrorism training in Israel! ⁶

Lately the words of Amos to Israel from the Hebrew Original Witnessing (echoed by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Haggai to Judah) have been ringing clear:  “Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar and stomp righteousness into the mud.  Do you realize where you are?  . . .  People hate this kind of talk.  Raw truth is never popular.  But here it is, bluntly spoken:  Because you run roughshod over the poor and take the bread right out of their mouths, you're never going to move into the luxury homes you have built.  You're never going to drink wine from the expensive vineyards you've planted. . . .  Justice is a lost cause.  Evil is epidemic.  Decent people throw up their hands.  Protest and rebuke are useless, a waste of breath. . . .  Hate evil and love good, then work it out in the public square. . . .  Go out into the streets and lament loudly!  Fill the malls and shops with cries of doom!  Weep loudly, ‘Not me!  Not us!  Not now!’  Empty offices, stores, factories, workplaces.  Enlist everyone in the general lament. . . .  I can't stand your religious meetings.  I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.  I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals.  I'm sick of your fund‐raising schemes, your public relations and image making. . . .  Do you know what I want?  I want justice ‐ oceans of it.  I want fairness ‐ rivers of it.  That's what I want.  That's all I want.”

Updates:

• August 16, 2014 ‐ Judge rules in favor of Normandy families who want to transfer schools unfortunately, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article filed with static and pop-up advertisements often blotting out the news.
• August 19, 2014 ‐ Looks like the people of Ferguson hold quite a bit of power afterall . . . See Walt starr's diary on the Daily Kos . . . .
• August 20, 2014 ‐ Apparently a pattern has been established . . . video of the St. Louis Police killing of a black, mentally ill 25 year old just four miles from where the August 9 killing took place . . . .
• August 29, 2014 ‐ Best overall analysis of the situation not only in Ferguson, MO but also in the United Orwellian States of Amerika ‐ “"Ferguson isn't about black rage against cops.  It's about white rage against progress” . . . .
• September 7, 2014 ‐ New light on an old story (August 5, 2014 police killing of a 24 year old black shopper in a Wal‐Mart store in Beavercreek, OH) . . . .
• November 24, 2014 ‐ In response to the St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch's ‐ how shall we say it?  “subornation of perjury” ‐ in the “handling” ⁷ of the St. Louis Grand Jury to return his verdict of “No True Bill” indictment, I must now add that in the past I've also read Kafka's The Trial.  And, in particular, the inclusion in that book of the fable “Before the Law” previously published by Kafka. . . . ⁸
• December 9, 2014 ‐ Calling the kettle white ‐ “Thug Kills White Prosecutor and Wife in Texas” ‐ and the difference being white makes . . . .
• December 11, 2014 ‐ The reports just keep pouring in from around the country . . . Georgia man killed in drug raid was “face down when shot in the head” . . . and back . . . .
• December 18, 2014 ‐ Angela Davis ‐ “Right on!” again ‐ “From Michael Brown to Assata Shakur, the racist state of America persists” . . . .
• December 31, 2014 ‐ the folks over at “Mapping Police Violence” have done a real service in analyzing at least 1,175 of the persons killed by police in 2014.  At least twenty-six percent of that number (302) were African-American while at least eight percent of that number (98) were white.  African-Americans make up approximately thirteen percent of the population of the United States.  So, African-Americans were killed by police at twice the rate of their representation in the general population.  See the map, notes, and charts on the WWW site link above.
• January 5, 2015 ‐ A member of the St. Louis County Grand Jury in the determination of the “No True Bill” indictment in the Ferguson, MO killing of the unarmed teenager is suing the suborner! . . . .
• May 4, 2015 ‐ A White Son Of Ferguson On Why St. Louis Can't Change ‐ a long history . . . .
• May 5, 2015 ‐ Federal judge says St. Louis County grand juror's request to talk about Ferguson belongs in Missouri court"
• May 15, 2015 ‐ Ken Burns' Commencement Address to the 2015 Graduates of St Louis University . . . .
• March 26, 2017 ‐ a series of artistic updates:
• Hell You Talmbout ‐ Hanelle Monáe and Wondaland's music video ‐ repetition of names of the many African-Americans killed by police over the years
• Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery's 2016 book, They Can't Kill Us All:  Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement
• Miguel's How Many (Rolling Stone's backgrounder)
  
  
  
  Tes One's “Stand Our Ground” Poster
• The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas' 2017 best selling book for teens and young adults
• Background on the Missouri courts decisions to dismiss Grand Juror Doe's lawsuit vs the "suborner" - St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch.

To tell the truth - what a tangled web we weave!


















































1  The quoted reference in the subject of this blog post is to a verse in the Christian Belated Witnessing ‐ Ephesians 6:12.  As Paul Craig Roberts writes, “The only exceptional thing about the US is the extent of the evil that resides in Washington, D.C.”  In addition, see his “On the Brink of War and Economic Collapse”.  While outside “the Beltway,” consider what U. S. Marine General Smedley Butler said of his service in Central America, “I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General.  And during that period I spent most of my time being a high‐class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers.  In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

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2  Peace is war for the neo-conservatives (Project for the New American Century) and their puppet in the White House (Cf. for examples, Dr. Cornel West [Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary] on the “Niggerization of America” and “Going Off on Obama” and my more recent blog entry based on a reference on Paul Craig Robert's Institute for Political Economy blog to Thad Beversdorf's recent analysis, in addition to the "Nuclear Vault" in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and David Keen's Useful Enemies:  When Waging Wars is More Important than Winning Them ‐ “PNAC Historical Documentation and even Democrats enamored with all things Russian . . . not admitting The Most Essential Lessons of History”; also see the items for the August 29th, December 18th, and May 4th “Updates” at the conclusion of this blog post.)

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3  Science in a Free Society [London, England:  NLB, 1978], pp. 117 ff.  For an even more realistic view (taking into account the importance of money in the media / political process) see Bill Moyer's interview with Marty Kaplan (Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California) “Big Money's Effect on Big Media”.

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4  See the 2010 Census Block Data graphic for St. Louis, MO.  Click here for further information on the methodology.  Cf. the recent New Yorker cover and Jessie Hagopian's blog on what can be called the “school-to-prison vs. school-to-grave” pipeline for African-American children.  And, remember “the Angola 3” (see also one or more of the three documentary films “In The Land of the Free”, “Hard Time”, and “Herman's House”).

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5 See the more recent strangling death of a black person (Eric Garner) by a white police officer here and also here for selling cigarettes!

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6 Again, in case you missed it from its reference in footnote 2, see for deep background, my more recent blog entry based on a reference on Paul Craig Robert's Institute for Political Economy blog to Thad Beversdorf's recent analysis, in addition to the "Nuclear Vault" in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and David Keen's Usefull Enemies:  When Waging Wars is More Important than Winning Them ‐ “PNAC Historical Documentation and even Democrats enamored with all things Russian . . . not admitting The Most Essential Lessons of History”!

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7 For a beginning look at how the suborner “handled” the grand jury process see Questions No One Asked!

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8 For additional insightful background on The Trial, see Jacques Derrida's article “Before the Law” in his Acts of Literature; see also (if you can find it in English translation) his Force of Law:  The Mystical Foundation of Authority, 1990.

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My response to John Whiteheads June 10, 2014 "guest column" on Paul Craig Roberts' IPE WWW site . . .

Good Day!

I'm just cutting and pasting the text portion of the letter I sent to my politicos (senators, representative at both federal and state levels, governor ‐ the change from “one person, one vote” to “one dollar, one vote” has me agreeing more and more with Stéphane Hessel's “Time for Outrage” and tending more and more toward the French Invisible Committee's training manual “The Coming Insurrection” . . . ) as per Subject (John Whiteheads “guest column” and the IPE WWW site):

It was George Santayana who wrote in Volume 1 of his Reason and Common Sense ‐ “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.  When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement:  and when experience is not retained . . . infancy is perpetual.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  And the focus for this letter stems from the remembrance that the people of Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany failed to ask questions, demand answers, and hold their government officials accountable and we certainly know how those situations turned out.

So, from a long history of considerations around these themes (see Endnotes), the following questions (of many more) requiring your answers come to the forefront:

1)  What's the rationale behind turning government agencies into military outposts?  As of six years ago (the most recent BJS census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers - you can probably update me with more recent statistics), “73 federal law enforcement agencies . . . employed approximately 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers who were authorized to make arrests and carry firearms in the United States.”  About 94,320 of those officers (78.6%) were under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security (DHS - 54,600 officers) or the Department of Justice (DOJ - 39,720 officers).  Those figures do not include numbers which could be counted in the CIA, TSA, or contract security guards (for example, the Federal Protective Service had approximately 15,000 supplemental troops).  There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.

2)  What's with all of the government agencies stockpiling hollow point bullets?  For example, why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic sub-machine guns and 320,000 rounds of hollow point bullets?  For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?  Why does the Postal Service need “assorted small arms ammunition”?  Why did the DHS purchase “1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, along with 7,000 fully-automatic 5.56x45mm NATO ‘personal defense weapons’ plus a huge stash of 30-round high-capacity magazines”? That's in addition to the FBI's request for 100 million hollow-point rounds.  The Department of Education, IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service, are also among the federal agencies which have taken to purchasing ammunition and weaponry in bulk.

3)  Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?  And why is DHS acquiring more than 2,500 Mine-Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles, only to pass them around to local police departments across the country?  According to the New York Times (June 8, 2014):  “As President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s ‘long season of war,’ the former tools of combat ‐ M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more ‐ are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.  During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night‐vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.  The equipment has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units.”

4)  Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country?  And what exactly are they training for?  In Richland, South Carolina, for instance, U.S. Army Special Forces are participating in joint and secretive exercises and training with local deputies.  The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of the drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.  The Army and DHS also carried out similar drills and maneuvers involving Black Hawk helicopters in Texas, Florida, and other locations throughout the U.S.  (Minneapolis, MN ‐ August ‐ September 2012 [Minneapolis Star and Tribune, August 30, 2012]), ostensibly in order to provide officers with realistic urban training.

5)  What is being done to protect the American populace from the threat of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, being used against them?  Policy analysts point to Department of Defense Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities” (issued on Dec. 29, 2010 ‐ updated September 21, 2012 ‐ and available on the Defense Technical Information Center WWW site for reading) as justification for the government's use of military force to put down civil unrest within the United States.

6)  Why is FEMA stockpiling massive quantities of emergency supplies?  On January 10, 2014, FEMA submitted a solicitation (HSFE70-14-I-0006 available on the FBO WWW site) enlisting the service of contractors who could “supply medical bio‐hazard disposal capabilities and 40 yard dumpsters to 1,000 tent hospitals across the United States; all required on 24 ‐ 48 hour notice.” This coincides with other medical requests seeking massive amounts of supplies, such as “31,000,000 flu vaccinations,” “100,000 each of winter shirts and pants and the same for summer” and other goods and services requests as well like tarps, manufactured housing units, and beverages.

7)  Why does the TSA need $21,000 worth of potassium chlorate (about 116 pounds), a chemical compound often used in explosives?  (Solicitation Number:  HSTS02-14-Q-NCP059 available on the FBO WWW site) (Contract awarded to the same corporation that provided multiple explosives to the suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)

8)  Why is the Pentagon continuing to purchase mass amounts of ammunition while at the same time preparing to destroy more than $1 billion worth of bullets and missiles that are still viable?

9)  Moreover, what is really being done to hold the Pentagon accountable for its doctored ledgers, fraud, waste and mismanagement, which has cost the taxpayer trillions of dollars?  According to Reuters, “The Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments.” That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for.  That sum exceeds the value of China's economic output last year.

10)  Given the similarities between the government's Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools (Buchanan High School, Troy, MO.; Acadiana High School, Knoxville, TN; Germantown High School, Madison County, MS), in shopping malls (Southland Mall, Hayward, CA; Oak Court Mall, Memphis, TN), and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers, and bystanders into thinking it's a real crisis, how much of what is being passed off as real is, in fact, being staged by DHS for the “benefit” of training law enforcement, leaving us none the wiser?  These training exercises come complete with their own set of professionally trained Crisis Actors playing the parts of shooters, bystanders, and victims in order to help  schools and first responders create realistic drills, full-scale exercises, high-fidelity simulations, and interactive 3D films.

11)  Given that Americans are 110 times more likely to die of food borne illness than in a terrorist attack, why is the government spending trillions of dollars on “national security”?  How exactly is the $75 billion given to 15 intelligence agencies annually to keep us “safe” being spent?  And why is the DHS giving away millions of dollars worth of federal security grants to states that federal intelligence agencies ruled have “no specific foreign or domestic terrorism threat”?

12)  Why is the government amassing names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation, and what criteria is the government using for this database?  Keep in mind that this personal information is being acquired and kept without warrant or court order.  It's been suggested that in the event of nuclear war, the destruction of the US Government, and the declaration of martial law, this Main Core database, which as of six years ago contained some 8 million names of Americans (you can probably update me on the most recent statistics), would be used by military officials to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security, a program to be carried out by the Army and FEMA.

Taken individually, these questions are alarming enough.  However, when viewed collectively, they leave one wondering what exactly the U.S. government is preparing for and whether American citizens shouldn't be preparing, as well, for that eventuality when our so-called “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is no longer answerable to “we the people.”

As President Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general, warned of the dangers of the military-industrial (and now, additionally, congressional-corporate-educational-FBI-financial-media-medical-police-political-prison-Secret-Service-terrorism-expert) complex (or “hero system”) in his 1961 farewell address:  “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.  We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge . . . machinery of [war] . . . .”  And now as The Guardian (June12, 2014) reports, a war against its own people. ¹

Endnotes:

Three Strikes and You're Out:  Toward a Legal Philosophy and Spiritual Approach for the pro-Life (i e, anti-nuclear war) Movement - homily I delivered at Burlington Northern Railroad Company's corporate headquarters on Sunday, August 5, 1984, with the title “CONNECTIONS:  Past, Present, and Future” as kickoff for the Burlington-Northern Project – available here.

Ocean Beach Rag Comment to March 5, 2012 article “Thousands of College Students Converge on California Capitol ‐ Hundreds Occupy Inside” March 9, 2012 - available by request

Sincerely,

Updates:

Not having any responses to my letters in the almost three years since mailing, around mid-April, 2017, I began asking the one dozen questions from the letter - one a week, for twelve weeks - on both of my Senators' governmental contact WWW sites . . . ).

I was somewhat surprised at the response of Senator Al Franken to, judging from the date of the letter, what, perhaps, was by that time, the third question posed, suggesting that the question was an “opinion” and thanking me for expressing my “opinion.”

The staff member (who's task it was to write that letter) must have thought that either the original letter of twelve questions, or these questions, posed on a weekly basis, were my “opinion” rather than questions for which I was expecting answers (recall that the questions were raised in a "guest column" by John Whitehead which was referenced on Paul Craig Roberts' Institute for Political Economy WWW site [they originally appeared in John's 2013 book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State]).

Senator Klobuchar remains silent (though continues being busy with “rants and raves” regarding all things “Russian” [see the “example” link in the leading, explanatory paragraph of my blog entry of March 27, 2017]).

John begins his quest column with the following quote from Professor Henry A. Giroux (in his Truthout article “Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,” February 10, 2014; Professor Giroux currently holds the Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University; he is also the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy; if you are interested in reading some of his other articles, then click here; his most recent books are America's Addiction to Terrorism and America At War With Itself; and his WWW site):

““Why should anyone trust a government that has condoned torture, spied on at least 35 world leaders, supports indefinite detention, places bugs in thousands of computers all over the world, kills innocent people with drone attacks, promotes the post office to log mail for law enforcement agencies and arbitrarily authorizes targeted assassinations?”

In this era of endless war, with its attendant deceptions, dishonesty, untruths, hateful speech, alternative facts, and reductive curating, being a politician of the ”democratic” stripe certainly doesn't seem to mean much judging from these actions!











































1 It appears as though the war against the American people is beginning in earnest.  With preparations detailed in the Seton Hall University Law School “Battle Lab” study, the two way street between Chicago and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Homan Square in Chicago, and the most recent LAPD killing practice session in downtown Los Angeles.

Even more recently, in a planned massive military exercise in the Southwestern United States, “special ops”s are directed to swarm and operate undetected among civilians who have been deemed to be “hostile” ‐ March 26, 2015, Daily Mail article here . . . .

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