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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
===============================================================
America's Future, Inc., Behind The Headlines, May 1996
Big Business Is Promoting Socialism
-----------------------------------
by F.R. Duplantier
You'd think that Big Business interests would support free
enterprise, but the bulk of their annual corporate giving goes to
nonprofit groups promoting increased regulation and higher taxes.
An expert on corporate philanthropy claims that "corporate
America is funding its enemies." Austin Fulk of the Capital
Research Center reports that "many corporations give away their
investors' dollars to special interest advocacy groups that favor
irresponsible government policies harmful to a corporation's own
best interests." In a recent issue of Human Events, Fulk charges
that "big business is undermining American values by freely
contributing to tax-exempt groups that work against a free and
competitive market." He points out that "tax-exempt groups
receiving the biggest share of corporate charitable dollars
repeatedly offer status quo proposals to solve America's most
pressing problems: racial quotas, increased welfare and
entitlement programs, higher taxes and more government spending,
command-and-control environmental laws, and regulations on
employers."
More than 300 nonprofit advocacy groups got contributions from
America's top 250 corporations in 1993, but only 35 of those
groups received more than $250,000 apiece. Austin Fulk reports
that nearly two-thirds of these 35 groups "favor the liberal,
tried-and-failed policies of bureaucratic government. Groups such
as the Nature Conservancy, the NAACP, the Center for Community
Change, and Planned Parenthood get big corporate grants."
Liberal groups with a Big-Government bias aren't the only
beneficiaries of corporate largesse, however. "Corporations not
only fund groups working against the general interests of
business, but some also support radical activist groups that are
principled opponents of America's enterprise tradition," says
Fulk. "Corporate funding, even in small amounts, affects the
fortunes of radical activists far out of proportion to the actual
dollar amount. A corporate gift lends respectability to radical
groups. It gives them a credential so that they can ask other
corporations, individuals, and grantmaking foundations for
funding."
Donations to nonprofit groups that promote big government also
undermine the work of legitimate charities. "Private charities
have a record of effectively delivering services," says Fulk.
"But too often their work is overshadowed by failed government
programs that perpetuate the social problems they were supposed
to address. The mission of charity is hurt when government
programs replace private programs, and when taxpayer funding
replaces private contributions and individual voluntarism."
Austin Fulk of the Capital Research Center urges American
investors to hold corporate management responsible for foolish
and self-defeating philanthropy. If managers can't make
charitable contributions wisely, they should make none at all.
"Corporate managements do shareholders and the nation a grave
disservice when they fund leftist advocacy groups," says Fulk.
"If the welfare state is to be replaced by an opportunity
society, support for nonprofit institutions must become more
discerning. Individuals as well as corporations must champion
charities and advocacy groups that encourage self-reliance. And
they must refuse support to nonprofit groups that draw strength
from government."
America's Future, 7800 Bonhomme, St. Louis MO 63105
Phone: 314-725-6003 Fax: 314-721-3373


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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
================================================================
America's Future, Inc., Behind The Headlines, May 1996
Change The Orientation Of Welfare
---------------------------------
by F.R. Duplantier
What is the real purpose of welfare? Is it meant to help the
unfortunate get back on their feet, or was it designed from the
beginning to create a permanent underclass?
"The focus of Indiana's welfare policy should be to
help families become self-sufficient," says Andrew Bush
of the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis. "Gov-ernment
can best achieve this goal by recognizing its own
limitations and by drawing on the strengths of
charities, community-based organizations, and other
private service providers." In the April issue of
Alternatives in Philanthropy, published by the Capital
Research Center, Bush reports on the Indiana
Independence Initiative, a graduated work-based plan
that "would dramatically change the orientation of
welfare." This Initiative would help "able-bodied
parents find immediate work," says Bush. It also "would
open public aid to a wide range of non-government
service providers that would help families pursue self-
sufficiency."
In the same issue of Alternatives in Philanthropy,
Michael Hartmann of the Wisconsin Policy Research
Institute in Milwaukee reports that the Badger State
"has imposed stringent work requirements on welfare
recipients and has successfully moved many able-bodied
recipients into productive work." Wisconsin's welfare
caseload fell nearly 25 percent during a period in
which state caseloads across the country "increased by
an average of 35 percent." In 1988, Wisconsin
implemented the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills
program, which, as Hartmann explains, "required
caseworkers to closely monitor and motivate welfare
recipients in their search for employment." In 1993,
the state implemented a program called Work, Not
Welfare, which "limits AFDC payments to two years and
offers major job-training services."
The state legislature recently approved a new program
called Wisconsin Works, which provides "four graduated
work options" for welfare recipients. "Recipients
unable to perform self-sustaining work will engage in
work activities, vocational rehabilitation, and
counseling," says Hartmann of the first, transitional
phase of the program. "Recipients will learn work
habits and job skills necessary for employment in the
private sector" by doing community-service jobs in the
second phase. A period of subsidized employment
follows, after which participants "will be guided to
the best available immediate job in the private
sector."
Also in the April issue of Alternatives in
Philanthropy, Tom Tancredo and Dwight Filley of the
Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado point out
that social pathologies such as juvenile delinquency,
drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and welfare dependency have
all been linked to "the absence of a married father in
the household." Given this documented correlation, they
ask, "why does government policy seem geared toward
driving fathers away?" Despite the "oppressive burden
of federal laws," Colorado still has "considerable
latitude to end the perverse incen-tives that wreck
families and contribute to our social ills," say
Tancredo and Filley. "AFDC, for example, is a matching
fund program. If the Colorado legis-lature refused to
fund its share, AFDC would end in the state."
America's Future, 7800 Bonhomme, St. Louis MO 63105
Phone: 314-725-6003 Fax: 314-721-3373


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==================================================================
The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
==================================================================
Submitted by:
THE NEW AMERICAN -- July 25, 1994
Copyright 1994 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated.
P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913 414-749-3784
==================================================================
ARTICLE: American Opinion
TITLE: "High-Tech Nightmare"
SUBTITLE: "Traveling Big Brother's information superhighway"
AUTHOR: William F. Jasper
==================================================================
Since its publication in 1949, George Orwell's terrifying novel 1984
has provided a foreboding look at a possible future world in which
both man and machine have become mere instruments to serve the evil
purposes of the totalitarian state. In the book's opening chapter,
through the eyes and mind of protagonist Winston Smith, we gradually
glimpse and feel the suffocating omnipresence of an omnipotent government.
Smith and other tragic inhabitants of his grim world can scarcely look
in any direction without coming under the watchful gaze of the ever-present
visage of the black-mustachioed, Stalinesque Big Brother. Beneath the
ubiquitous posters of the supreme dictator blares the caption: BIG BROTHER
IS WATCHING YOU.
In the grotesque world of Big Brother we see the individual stripped of
all freedom, worth, dignity, and privacy. Technology is harnessed to
penetrate and subjugate every area of their lives, even their dreary,
pathetic homes. This is the chilling description of Smith's apartment:
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously.
Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very
low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long
as he remained within the field of vision which the metal
plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There
was of course no way of knowing whether you were being
watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system,
the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was
guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched
everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in
your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live,
from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that
every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness,
every movement scrutinized.
Our technological capabilities today are more than adequate to implement
this same kind of Orwellian nightmare, and politically we are headed in
that direction. In the past year the Clinton Administration has been
aggressively pushing a number of statist, privacy-invading initiatives
that have groups and individuals all across the political spectrum screaming
"Big Brother." Clinton proposals for a national identification card, a
national "information super highway," and installation of a federal
"Clipper chip" in our telephones, computers, fax machines, and other
electronic devices to allow government monitoring certainly justify the
concern that we have embarked on the "slippery slope."
It is perfectly apropos, of course, that Bill Clinton's Orwellian statist
programs be introduced with Orwellian "Newspeak," in which words often
mean the opposite of what we normally take them to mean. In 1984 the
Ministry of Truth proclaims, "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," and
"Ignorance Is Strength." In like manner, the Clinton Administration seems
to be saying, "Intrusion Is Privacy." With its Clipper chip proposal,
Team Clinton is saying, in effect: "In order to protect your privacy,
Fedgov has to have the ability to invade your privacy -- but you can trust
us not to."
The Clinton pitch is playing to a real and legitimate concern. In this
"information age" our lives are transparent. Our employment history, credit
rating, banking transactions, school and medical records, shopping habits,
travel, telephone and electronic communications, and many other intimate
details of our personal lives are floating in the ether of cyberspace,
available for abuse by government, commercial interests, hackers, personal
enemies, or other interested parties. In order to protect against
unauthorized use of this information, many individuals, companies, and
institutions are making use of data and voice encryption devices and software.
But encryption, says the Administration, threatens legitimate law enforcement
interests, by making it very difficult or impossible for police agencies to
decipher wire taps of dangerous criminal and terrorist elements. The growth
of digital telephone technology and new computer-enhanced efficiency
techniques that allow compressing, hopping, and spreading of telephone
and data transmissions has already made phone tapping extremely hard.
The Administration's solution is to force the private telephone systems
to develop software that will track and decipher transmissions, and to give
the government a monopoly on encryption.
Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh are pushing Congress to enact
requirements that telecommunications providers -- local telephone services,
cellular phone companies, wireless services, long distance networks, etc. --
be able to intercept targeted telephone calls and data transmissions. The
FBI is not proposing to dictate how companies will accomplish these
surveillance tasks; it simply wants to impose a three-year deadline for
companies to come up with methods and technology to do them.
Freeh says that in the digital information age the American people must
be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety
and security. Moreover, said the FBI head in an interview earlier this
year in which he defended the Clinton Administration's support for the
Digital Telephony and Communications Privacy Improvement Act of 1994,
taxpayers would be asked to pay up to half a billion dollars to develop
the computer software necessary to secure the telecommunications
infrastructure. "The costs are high, but you have to do a cost-benefit
analysis," said Freeh. "The damage to the World Trade tower and the
economic interests of the country are conservatively estimated at
$5 billion," he said, referring to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade
Center in New York. "I think the American people will agree that this
is a credible solution to the problem we face."*
Credible? Hardly. Dangerous? Absolutely. Not only are the Clinton proposals
doomed to failure as effective law enforcement measures against criminals,
but they are threatening precedents that would invite government abuse.
"Do not be fooled," the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an industry lobbying
group, warned on its computer bulletin board. "The FBI scheme would turn the
data superhighway into a national surveillance network of staggering
proportions."
In March, the Digital Privacy and Security Working Group, a coalition of
computer professionals, companies, trade associations, and privacy groups,
wrote a letter to President Clinton, challenging the Administration's
proposed digital telephony bill. "We still see no evidence that current
law enforcement efforts are being jeopardized by new technologies," the
group told the President. "Nor are we convinced that future law enforcement
activities will be jeopardized given industry cooperation." So far, the
Administration and other advocates of the new federal surveillance powers
have not cited any specific cases where criminals have eluded the long
arm of the law due to encryption or failure of telephone carriers to cooperate.
Undaunted, the police statists push onward. Confrontations in Congress
over the Clipper chip are now underway. Hearings on the matter were held
by the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3rd. The Clipper chip is a product
of the National Security Agency, the super-secret federal spy agency
headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland. According to Dr. Clinton Brooks,
the NSA scientist who led the Clipper chip research team, the chip project
began in 1989 and cost more than $2.5 million. "Cryptomathematicians" and
other specialists from NSA and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) developed a powerful encryption formula, dubbed Skipjack,
which was built into a microprocessor now known as the Capstone chip, for
use in computers to scramble data. The chip is embedded on a circuit board
known as a Tessera Card and connected to the innards of the computer.
The NSA designers then modified the Capstone chip for telephone encryption
and named the new creation the Clipper chip. The Clipper/Capstone chips
can either be built into the telephones, computers, and fax machines
themselves or put into separate devices about the size of a video cassette
tape which telephones, computers, and fax machines could be plugged into.
In order for the encryption to work, both the caller and the receiver have
to be using equipment with the Capstone/Clipper chips.
As presently proposed by the Administration, the Clipper encryption would
only be activated when two people decide they want to secure their
communications and initiate encryption by pushing a button on their phones
or devices. Their conversation or data transmission would then be scrambled
and rendered meaningless to outsiders by the Clipper chip, since only the
caller and receiver would have the "secret" numerical keys to encode and
decode the transmission.
Except that in the interest of "national security" and "law and order,"
the federal government would hold master keys to each Clipper chip. In
order to protect against government abuse, the master keys would be divided
in half and each half held in "escrow" by different federal agencies.
(The NIST and the Treasury Department have been selected as the custodial
"key escrow" agents.) Before a law enforcement agency could decode a
Clipper-encrypted transmission it would have to present its search warrant
authorizing the wiretap to each custodial agency. Combining the halves of
the key from each "key escrow" custodian, the law enforcement agency could
then decode the call.
Electronic privacy specialist Winn Schwartau writes in his new book,
Information Warfare: Chaos on the Electronic Superhighway, that there are
a number of flaws in this plan:
First, unless everyone uses Clipper, the entire effort is futile.
In order for everyone to use it, it would have to become a mandate
or law, therefore making other forms of encryption illegal. That
will never happen in an open society. Second, for the Clipper to
be accepted, the Government has to be trusted not to abuse their
capabilities to decrypt private transmissions without proper court
authorization, as is required today.
Schwartau notes also that "since no one outside of a select few will be able
to examine the internal workings of the Clipper system, we have to take on
faith that the Government doesn't have a so-called back-door to bypass the
entire escrow system." Considering the trustworthiness of governments
throughout history, it is probably wise in such matters to remain agnostic.
James Bidzos, president of RSA Data Security, a computer security firm, is
one expert who remains skeptical. He sees the Clipper chip as perhaps only
the "visible portion of a large-scale covert operation on U.S. soil by NSA."
John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation is another nonbeliever.
"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a Peeping
Tom to install your window blinds," said Barlow, in one of the most relevant
and on-target comments concerning the Clipper.
Clintonistas protest that Clipper opponents are getting all worked up over
nothing. "Voluntary, voluntary, voluntary," says Edward A. Roback, one of
NIST's computer specialists. "We're certainly not forcing anyone to use it
[Clipper chip technology]." "Domestically, anybody can use whatever they want,"
Roback insists. "There are no domestic restrictions and, no, the Administration
has no plans to propose any."
Winn Schwartau is not convinced. In Information Warfare he comments:
Perhaps the Government is engaged in a campaign to desensitize
the American public, a sophisticated form of Information Warfare.
First they attempt to pass a law, then they back off when attacked
by privacy advocates and adverse publicity. Next, they make the
very technology available that would have been used to implement
the proposed law, if it had been passed. Then Clipper is announced
and the flak hits the fan, so they back off again. They try to
convince the public that Clipper really is OK. Then maybe they'll
try to sneak it in another law, perhaps in a few months or a year.
See what happens. Sooner or later, the reasoning goes, the public
will cease to care and Clipper will become the law of the land.
It is a scenario that does not take great imagination to conjure.
It depends upon who is behind Clipper, the depth of their pockets,
their political wherewithal, and their motivation and resolve.
Right now it is the federal government that is behind Clipper, and it has
pretty deep pockets. As the largest buyer and user of computer and
telecommunications equipment and services, it is in a good position to
force "voluntary" adoption of its favored technologies and policies.
Defense contractors and other major providers of products and services
to government agencies may soon find themselves forced into the situation
of either adopting Clipper technology or losing government contracts.
"It's starting to look like economic coercion -- use this or else -- even
though the [Clipper] standard is supposed to be voluntary," says David
Peyton, vice president of the Information Technology Association of America.
Daniel Wietzner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation agrees. "The government
is going to use its purchasing power to try and make this a de facto standard,"
he argues.
The only currently available Clipper chip product is the AT&T Surety
Telephone Device 3600, which sells for about $1,200. The federal government
is ordering thousands of them even though it is an unproven commodity.
"The Clipper chip was developed in secrecy," notes Jim Schindler, an
information security manager at Hewlett-Packard, "and everyone begins to
question its strength without peer review."
The Clipper "flunked" its first equivalent of limited peer review. On June
2nd of this year news accounts reported that a computer scientist at AT&T
Bell Laboratories, Dr. Matthew Blaze, had discovered a basic flaw in the
Clipper technology. He didn't break the code; in fact, just the opposite --
he found a weak link in the Clipper chip that would allow users to further
scramble their transmissions so that they couldn't be decoded by the
government even with the use of its escrow keys. If this is the case --
and the NSA has not disputed Dr. Blaze's findings -- the Clipper will be
no more useful for apprehending criminals and terrorists than other
encryption devices and software programs that law enforcement cannot decode.
The NSA has all but conceded that the Clipper flaw exists, but has attempted
to minimize its significance. "Anyone interested in circumventing law-
enforcement access would most likely choose simpler alternatives," the NSA's
director of policy, Michael A. Smith, said in a written statement issued in
response to the Blaze report. "More difficult and time-consuming efforts,
like those discussed in the Blaze paper, are very unlikely to be employed."
This is a very significant and interesting admission. Smith seems to be
conceding that: 1) with sufficient knowledge, resources, and motivation,
criminals could evade Clipper via the Blaze technique; and 2) there are
ways to evade Clipper's surveillance requiring even less knowledge,
resources, and motivation than the Blaze method. Either way, it is the
ostensible targets of Clipper -- criminals and terrorists -- who are most
likely to have the knowledge, resources, and motivation to evade the
technology.
That leaves the average, law-abiding citizen as the logical primary target
of the Clipper. There is a parallel here, of course, with the Clinton drive
for more gun control laws, which (as always) are ignored by the criminal
element and serve only to penalize and criminalize the responsible gun owner.
But the cult of Big Brother is not stopping with surveillance of
telecommunications; Clipper is just the beginning. According to the
computer industry journal PC Week, "The Clinton administration is
working on creating an identification card that every American will
need to interact with any federal government agency." In its May 9th
issue, PC Week reported, "Sources close to the administration said
President Clinton is also considering signing a pair of executive
orders that would facilitate the connection of individuals' bank
accounts and federal records to a government identification card."
According to PC Week, the national ID proposal was presented by the
U.S. Postal Service in April at the Card Tech/ Secure Tech Conference
in Crystal City, Virginia as a "general purpose U.S. services smart
card" to be used by individuals and companies when sending or receiving
electronic mail (E-mail), transferring funds, and interacting with
government agencies.
The computer weekly reported that Postal Service representative Chuck
Chamberlain outlined at the conference "how an individual's U.S. Card
would be automatically connected with the Department of Health and
Human Services, the U.S. Treasury, the IRS, the banking system, and a
central database of digital signatures for authenticating E-mail and
other transactions."
"While the U.S. Card is only a proposal," noted PC Week, "the Postal
Service is prepared to put more than 100 million of the cards in citizens'
pockets within months of administration approval, which could come at
any time," according to Chamberlain.
"There won't be anything you do in business that won't be collected and
analyzed by the government," charges William Murray, a security consultant
to accounting firm Deloitte and Touche in New Canaan, Connecticut, who
attended the Crystal City conference. "This is a better surveillance
mechanism than Orwell or the government could have imagined."
The "smart card" is also a central feature of the Clinton "health care
reform" program. However, some "Friends of Hillary" have even grander
visions. Mary Jane England, MD, a member of the executive committee of
the White House Health Project and president of the Washington Business
Group on Health, a national outfit comprised of some of the nation's
leading corporate welfare statists, is especially excited about the
potential for implanting smart chips in your body. Addressing the 1994
IBM Health Care Executive Conference last March in Palm Springs,
California, Dr. England said:
The Smart Card is a wonderful idea, but even better would be
capacity not to have a card, and I call it "a chip in your ear,
" that would actually access your medical records, so that no
matter where you were, and if you came into an emergency room
unconscious -- and for those of you who treat or know anything
about adolescents, forget the card because they're not going to
have the card when they need it anyway -- [we would have] some
capacity to access that medical record. We need to go beyond the
narrow conceptualization of the Smart Card and really use some
of the technology that's out there. The worst thing we could do
is put in place a technology that's already outdated, because
all of you are in the process of building these systems. Now is
the time to really think ahead....
I don't think that computerized, integrated medical records with
a capacity to access through a chip in your ear is so far off and
I think we need to think of these things.
Considering the Orwellian mind-set of the Clinton regime, the Administration's
fervent campaign for creating a national (federally funded and controlled)
"information network" that will "link every home, business, lab, classroom
and library by the year 2015" becomes positively frightening. This is the
same Administration, remember, that is advocating a huge new National Police
Corps; implementing warrantless searches for firearms; advocating severe
restrictions on firearms ownership by law-abiding citizens; usurping control
of state jurisdiction over law enforcement and criminal justice; and
attempting to purge all religious expressions and symbols from the workplace.
It is the same Administration that wants to take away your right to medical
privacy, but refused to make the records of its own health care task force
public (and even defied a court order to do so). It is the same regime that
(whether through criminal malice or criminal incompetence) wielded its police
powers in such a blatantly tyrannical fashion that it is responsible for the
deaths and incineration of more than 80 members of an arguably harmless
religious sect.
With due respect to Electronic Frontier's Mr. Barlow, trusting this
government to protect your privacy and your rights is more like asking
Jack the Ripper to install the locks on your home.
END OF ARTICLE
==================================================================
THE NEW AMERICAN -- July 25, 1994
Copyright 1994 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated.
P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913
==================================================================

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101 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CONSERVE RESOURCES AND
PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN YOUR HOME
Recycle everything you can; newspaper, cans, glass, aluminum foil and pans,
motor oil, scrap metal, etc. In the Portland area, many recyclables get
picked up at your curb.
Investigate local recycling centers that take items your garbage hauler
doesn't (scrap paper, plastics, appliances).
Save your kitchen scraps for the compost pile.
Avoid the use of household pesticides. Fly swatters work very well.
Clean your windows with vinegar and water instead of chemical products.
Use cold water in the washer unless it's necessary to use warm or hot.
Use washable rags, not paper towels, for cleaning spills and other household
chores.
Crumpled newspaper are great for washing windows.
Use cloth diapers. The plastic in disposable diapers doesn't break down in
landfills.
Use cloth, not paper napkins.
Don't put hazardous substances down your drain or in your trash (paint thinner
furniture polish, etc). Dispose of them on designated hazardous-waste
collection days.
Don't use electrical appliances for things you can easily do by hand.
Reuse brown paper bags to line your trash can instead of plastic liners.
Reuse bread bags, butter tubs, etc.
Use reusable containers to store foods - not plastic wraps and foil.
Write to companies that send unwanted junk mail...ask them to take you off
their list.
Save your coat hangers and return them to the cleaners.
Take unwanted, reusable items to a charitable organization or thrift shop.
Don't leave water running needlessly.
Install a water-saving shower head.
Set your water heater at 130 degrees.
Have your water heater insulated free of charge by your utility company.
Turn the heat down and wear a sweater.
Lower your house temperature by one degree per hour every hour you'll be
away or asleep.
Turn the lights off when you're out of the room. Ditto with the TV.
Get a free energy audit from your utility company.
Burn only seasoned wood in your wood stove or fireplace.
IN YOUR YARD
Start a compost pile.
Plant shrubs and trees that provide food and shelter for birds and other
creatures.
Feed the birds; put up birdhouses and baths.
Pull weeds instead of using herbicides.
Learn about natural insect controls as alternatives to pesticides.
Landscape with plants that aren't prone to insect and fungus problems.
Ignore caterpillars and most native leaf-chewing insects. Let birds and
insect predators take care of them.
Use beer traps for slugs instead of baiting with poisons.
Use organic fertilizers...manure or Zoo Doo helps condition your soil and
fertilize at the same time.
If you use pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, don't throw leftovers in
the trash, down your drain, or into a storm sewer. Dispose of them on a
hazardous-waste collection day.
Compost your leaves and yard debris or take them to a yard debris recycler.
Burning them creates air pollution and putting them out with the trash is a
waste of landfill space.
Use mulch to conserve water in your garden.
Plant things that don't require a lot of water.
Take extra plastic and rubber pots back to the nursery.
Large expanses of lawn are not good habitat for other creatures, plus they
usually must be maintained with chemicals and extensive watering. Dig up
some of your grass and plant native shrubs and trees instead.
Plant short, dense shrubs close to your home's foundation to help insulate
against the cold.
ON VACATION
Turn down the heat and turn off the water heater before you go.
Carry reusable cups, dishes, and flatware.
Make sure your plastic trash doesn't end up in the ocean.
Don't pick flowers or collect wild creatures for pets...leave animals and
plants where you find them.
Don't buy souvenirs made from wild animals.
Watch out for wildlife...give consideration to all living things you see
crossing the road.
Build smaller campfires.
Stay on the trail.
IN YOUR CAR
Drive sensibly...dont't waste gas.
Keep your car tuned up.
Carpool. In the Portland area call 227-7665 for information.
Use public transit.
Ride your bike or walk instead of driving.
Buy a more gas-efficient car.
Recycle your engine oil.
Keep your tires properly inflated to save gas.
Recycle your old tires.
Keep your wheels in alignment to save your tires.
Don't litter.
AT YOUR BUSINESS
Start an office recycling program for office and computer paper, cardboard,
etc.
Use scrap paper for informal notes to yourself and others.
Print things on recycled paper.
Print or copy on both sides of the paper.
Use smaller paper for smaller memos.
Reuse manila envelopes and file folders.
Hide the throw-away cups and train people to bring their mugs to meetings.
Route things around the office or put non-urgent communications on a bulletin
board rather than making multiple copies.
Use the stairs instead of the elevator.
Office building landscape doesn't have to be sterile lawns and bedding plants.
Plant trees and shrubs the birds will like.
Put a bird feeder outside your office window.
WHEN YOU'RE SHOPPING
Don't buy food or household products in plastic or styrofoam containers if
there is an alternate (milk and egg cartons, vegetable oils, butter tubs,
etc.) They can't or are difficult to be recycled and they don't break
down in the environment
Don't buy "disposable" anything. Paper plates and towels and foam cups are
extravagant wastes of the world's resources.
If you must buy disposables, buy paper products rather than plastics or
styrofoam. The manufacture of styrofoam depletes the ozone layer.
Buy durable products and keep them a little longer. Cheap furniture, clothes,
and appliances often have short life spans.
Check the energy rating on major appliances you buy.
Read labels and buy the least toxic product available for cleaning, pest
control, and other jobs.
Put your parcels into one big sack instead of collecting several small ones.
Don't buy things with excess packaging (individually wrapped cheese slices,
apples on a paper tray wrapped with cellophane, etc).
Buy in bulk; reduce pollution that comes from the manufacture and disposal
of many small packages.
Ask questions...don't buy products that are hazardous to the environment or
that were manufactured at the expense of important animal habitat.
Buy locally grown food and locally made products when possible.
Don't buy products that come from endangered animals.
Don't keep exotic pets.
PERSONAL EFFORTS
Join a conservation organization.
Volunteer your time to conservation projects.
Give money to worthy conservation/environmental causes.
Check your lifestyle...think about effects of your daily actions on the
environment.
Take advantage of the non-game wildlife checkoff on your Oregon tax form.
Vote for candidates who share your sentiments.
Read books and articles on wildlife and environmental issues.
Watch nature programs on TV (and call your local Nature BBS).
Subscribe to conservation or environmental publications. Purchase them
as gifts for others.
SPREAD THE WORD
Convert by example...encourage other people to save resources too.
Tease, cajole, persuade, or shame your family, friends, and neighbors for
not recyling, not being energy conscious, etc.
Complain to merchants about excess packaging, use of plastics, etc. Write
letters to companies. Patronize merchants who are environmentally conscious.
Write your legislators when you have an opinion about pending legislation
on environmental, land use, or other issues.
Teach children to respect nature and the environment. Take them on a hike,
help them plant a tree or build a bird house, buy them a nature book or
subscription to a wildlife magazine.
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven
& the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845
Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766
realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662
Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699
The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK
The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674
Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X

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103rd Congress phone and fax numbers
====================================
The following information is from the US Congress "Yellow Book," Jan.
1993. Four seats were vacant at that time, in CA, MS, OH, and WI. The
list below of 436 people includes 5 non-voting members, from Guam (GU),
Puerto Rico (PR), Samoa (SA), Virgin Islands (VI), and DC. (some of
those abbreviations may be wrong)
p st representative phone fax
= == ============================= ============== ==============
R AK Young, Donald 1-202-225-5765 1-202-225-5765
D AL Bevill, Thomas 1-202-225-4876 1-202-225-0842
D AL Browder, Glen 1-202-225-3261 1-202-225-9020
D AL Cramer Jr, Robert E. 1-202-225-4801 na
D AL Hilliard, Earl F. 1-202-225-2665 na
R AL Bachus, Spencer 1-202-225-4921 na
R AL Callahan, H. L. 1-202-225-4931 1-202-225-0562
R AL Everett, Terry 1-202-225-2901 na
D AR Lambert, Blanche 1-202-225-4076 na
D AR Thornton, Raymond 1-202-225-2506 1-202-225-9273
R AR Dickey, Jay 1-202-225-3772 1-202-225-8646
R AR Hutchinson, Tim 1-202-225-4301 na
D AZ Coppersmith, Sam 1-202-225-2635 1-202-225-2607
D AZ English, Karan 1-202-225-2190 1-202-225-8819
D AZ Pastor, Ed 1-202-225-4065 1-202-225-1655
R AZ Kolbe, James T. 1-202-225-2542 1-202-225-0378
R AZ Kyl, Jon L. 1-202-225-3361 na
R AZ Stump, Robert 1-202-225-4576 1-202-225-6328
D CA Becerra, Xavier 1-202-225-6235 1-202-225-2202
D CA Beilenson, Anthony 1-202-225-5911 na
D CA Berman, Howard L. 1-202-225-4695 na
D CA Brown Jr., George E. 1-202-225-6161 1-202-225-8671
D CA Condit, Gary 1-202-225-6131 1-202-225-0819
D CA Dellums, Ronald V. 1-202-225-2661 1-202-225-9817
D CA Dixon, Julian C. 1-202-225-7084 1-202-225-4091
D CA Dooley, Calvin M. 1-202-225-3341 1-202-225-9308
D CA Edwards, Donald 1-202-225-3072 1-202-225-9460
D CA Eshoo, Anna G. 1-202-225-8104 na
D CA Fazio, Vic 1-202-225-5716 1-202-225-0354
D CA Filner, Bob 1-202-225-8045 na
D CA Hamburg, Dan 1-202-225-3311 na
D CA Harman, Jane 1-202-225-8220 na
D CA Lantos, Thomas 1-202-225-3531 na
D CA Lehman, Richard H. 1-202-225-4540 na
D CA Martinez, Matthew G. 1-202-225-5464 1-202-225-4467
D CA Matsui, Robert T. 1-202-225-7163 1-202-225-0566
D CA McCandless, Alfred 1-202-225-5330 1-202-226-1040
D CA Miller, George 1-202-225-2095 1-202-225-5609
D CA Mineta, Norman Y. 1-202-225-2631 na
D CA Pelosi, Nancy 1-202-225-4965 1-202-225-8259
D CA Roybal-Allard, Lucille 1-202-225-1766 1-202-226-0350
D CA Schenk, Lynn 1-202-225-2040 1-202-225-2042
D CA Stark, Fortney H. 1-202-225-5065 na
D CA Torres, Esteban E. 1-202-225-5256 na
D CA Tucker III, Walter R. 1-202-225-7924 1-202-225-7926
D CA Waters, Maxine 1-202-225-2201 na
D CA Waxman, Henry A. 1-202-225-3976 1-202-225-4099
D CA Woolsey, Lynn 1-202-225-5161 na
R CA Baker, Bill 1-202-225-1880 1-202-225-2150
R CA Calvert, Ken 1-202-225-1986 na
R CA Cox, Christopher 1-202-225-5611 1-202-225-9177
R CA Cunningham, Randy 1-202-225-5452 1-202-225-2558
R CA Doolittle, John T. 1-202-225-2511 1-202-225-5444
R CA Dornan, Robert K. 1-202-225-2965 1-202-225-3694
R CA Dreier, David 1-202-225-2305 1-202-225-4745
R CA Gallegly, Elton 1-202-225-5811 na
R CA Herger, Walter W. 1-202-225-3076 1-202-225-1609
R CA Horn, Steve 1-202-225-6676 na
R CA Huffington, Michael 1-202-225-3601 na
R CA Hunter, Duncan L. 1-202-225-5672 1-202-225-0235
R CA Kim, Jay C. 1-202-225-3201 1-202-226-1485
R CA Lewis, Jerry 1-202-225-5861 1-202-225-6498
R CA McKeon, Howard P. 1-202-225-1956 1-202-226-0683
R CA Moorhead, Carlos J. 1-202-225-4176 1-202-226-1279
R CA Packard, Ronald 1-202-225-3906 1-202-225-0134
R CA Pombo, Richard 1-202-225-1947 1-202-226-0861
R CA Rohrabacher, Dana 1-202-225-2415 1-202-225-7067
R CA Royce, Ed 1-202-225-4111 na
R CA Thomas, Bill 1-202-225-2915 na
D CO Schroeder, Patricia 1-202-225-4431 1-202-225-5842
D CO Skaggs, David E. 1-202-225-2161 na
R CO Allard, Wayne 1-202-225-4676 1-202-225-8630
R CO Hefley, Joel 1-202-225-4422 1-202-225-1942
R CO McInnis, Scott 1-202-225-4761 1-202-226-0622
R CO Schaefer, Daniel 1-202-225-7882 1-202-225-7885
D CT DeLauro, Rosa 1-202-225-3661 1-202-225-4890
D CT Gejdenson, Samuel 1-202-225-2076 1-202-225-4977
D CT Kennelly, Barbara B. 1-202-225-2265 1-202-225-1031
R CT Franks, Gary 1-202-225-3822 1-202-225-5085
R CT Johnson, Nancy L. 1-202-225-4476 1-202-225-4488
R CT Shays, Christopher 1-202-225-5541 1-202-225-9629
D DC Norton, Eleanor Holmes 1-202-225-8050 1-202-225-3002
R DE Castle, Michael N. 1-202-225-4165 1-202-225-2291
D FL Bacchus, James 1-202-225-3671 1-202-225-9039
D FL Brown, Corrine 1-202-225-0123 1-202-225-2256
D FL Deutsch, Peter 1-202-225-7931 1-202-225-8456
D FL Gibbons, Samuel M. 1-202-225-3376 na
D FL Hastings, Alcee L. 1-202-225-1313 1-202-225-0690
D FL Hutto, Earl 1-202-225-4136 1-202-225-5785
D FL Johnston II, Harry 1-202-225-3001 1-202-225-8791
D FL Meek, Carrie 1-202-225-4506 1-202-226-0777
D FL Peterson, Peter 1-202-225-5235 1-202-225-1586
R FL Bilirakis, Michael 1-202-225-5755 1-202-225-4085
R FL Canady, Charles T. 1-202-225-1252 na
R FL Diaz-Balart, Lincoln 1-202-225-4211 1-202-225-8576
R FL Fowler, Tillie 1-202-225-2501 na
R FL Goss, Porter J. 1-202-225-2536 1-202-225-6820
R FL Lewis, Thomas 1-202-225-5792 1-202-225-1860
R FL McCollum, William 1-202-225-2176 na
R FL Mica, John L. 1-202-225-4035 1-202-226-0821
R FL Miller, Dan 1-202-225-5015 1-202-226-0828
R FL Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana 1-202-225-3931 1-202-225-5620
R FL Shaw Jr., E. C. 1-202-225-3026 1-202-225-8398
R FL Stearns, Clifford B. 1-202-225-5744 1-202-225-3973
R FL Thurman, Carol L. 1-202-225-1002 1-202-226-0329
R FL Young, C. W. 1-202-225-5961 1-202-225-9764
D GA Bishop, Sanford 1-202-225-3631 1-202-225-2203
D GA Darden III, George 1-202-225-2931 na
D GA Deal, Nathan 1-202-225-5211 1-202-225-8272
D GA Johnson, Don 1-202-225-4101 1-202-226-1466
D GA Lewis, John 1-202-225-3801 1-202-225-0351
D GA McKinney, Cynthia 1-202-225-1605 1-202-226-0691
D GA Rowland, J. R. 1-202-225-6531 na
R GA Collins, Mac 1-202-225-5901 1-202-225-2515
R GA Gingrich, Newt 1-202-225-4501 1-202-225-4656
R GA Kingston, Jack 1-202-225-5831 1-202-226-2269
R GA Linder, John 1-202-225-4272 na
D GU Underwood, Robert A. 1-202-225-1188 1-202-226-0341
D HI Abercrombie, Neil 1-202-225-2726 na
D HI Mink, Patsy T. 1-202-225-4906 1-202-225-4987
D IA Smith, Neal 1-202-225-4426 na
R IA Grandy, Fred 1-202-225-5476 na
R IA Leach, James 1-202-225-6576 1-202-226-1278
R IA Lightfoot, James R. 1-202-225-3806 1-202-225-6973
R IA Nussle, James Allen 1-202-225-2911 1-202-225-9129
D ID LaRocco, Larry 1-202-225-6611 na
R ID Crapo, Michael D. 1-202-225-5531 na
D IL Collins, Cardiss 1-202-225-5006 1-202-225-8396
D IL Costello, Jerry F. 1-202-225-5661 1-202-225-0285
D IL Durbin, Richard J. 1-202-225-5271 1-202-225-0170
D IL Evans, Lane 1-202-225-5905 1-202-225-5396
D IL Lipinski, William O. 1-202-225-5701 1-202-225-1012
D IL Poshard, Glendal W. 1-202-225-5201 1-202-225-1541
D IL Reynolds, Mel 1-202-225-0773 na
D IL Rostenkowski, Daniel 1-202-225-4061 na
D IL Rush, Bobby L. 1-202-225-4372 1-202-226-0333
D IL Sangmeister, George 1-202-225-3635 1-202-225-4447
D IL Yates, Sidney R. 1-202-225-2111 1-202-225-3493
R IL Crane, Philip M. 1-202-225-3711 na
R IL Ewing, Thomas 1-202-225-2371 1-202-225-8071
R IL Fawell, Harris W. 1-202-225-3515 1-202-225-9420
R IL Gutierrez, Luis V. 1-202-225-8203 1-202-225-7810
R IL Hastert, J. D. 1-202-225-2976 1-202-225-0697
R IL Hyde, Henry J. 1-202-225-4561 1-202-226-1240
R IL Manzullo, Donald 1-202-225-5676 1-202-225-5284
R IL Michel, Robert H. 1-202-225-6201 1-202-225-9461
R IL Porter, John E. 1-202-225-4835 1-202-225-0157
D IN Buyer, Steve 1-202-225-5037 na
D IN Hamilton, Lee H. 1-202-225-5315 1-202-225-1101
D IN Jacobs Jr., Andrew 1-202-225-4011 na
D IN Long, Jill 1-202-225-4436 na
D IN McCloskey, Frank 1-202-225-4636 1-202-225-4688
D IN Roemer, Timothy 1-202-225-3915 1-202-225-6798
D IN Sharp, Philip R. 1-202-225-3021 na
D IN Visclosky, Peter J. 1-202-225-2461 1-202-225-2493
R IN Burton, Daniel 1-202-225-2276 1-202-225-0016
R IN Myers, John T. 1-202-225-5805 na
D KS Glickman, Daniel 1-202-225-6216 na
D KS Slattery, James 1-202-225-6601 1-202-225-1445
R KS Meyers, Jan 1-202-225-2865 1-202-225-0554
R KS Roberts, Pat 1-202-225-2715 1-202-225-5375
D KY Baesler, Scotty 1-202-225-4706 na
D KY Barlow, Tom 1-202-225-3115 1-202-225-2169
D KY Mazzoli, Romano L. 1-202-225-5401 na
D KY Natcher, William H. 1-202-225-3501 na
R KY Bunning, James 1-202-225-3465 1-202-225-0003
R KY Rogers, Harold 1-202-225-4601 1-202-225-0940
D LA Fields, Cleo 1-202-225-8490 1-202-225-8959
D LA Hayes, James A. 1-202-225-2031 1-202-225-1175
D LA Jefferson, William 1-202-225-6636 1-202-225-1988
D LA Tauzin, W. J. 1-202-225-4031 1-202-225-0563
R LA Baker, Richard H. 1-202-225-3901 1-202-225-7313
R LA Livingston, Robert 1-202-225-3015 1-202-225-0739
R LA McCrery, James 1-202-225-2777 1-202-225-8039
D MA Frank, Barney 1-202-225-5931 1-202-225-0182
D MA Kennedy II, Joseph P. 1-202-225-5111 1-202-225-9322
D MA Markey, Edward J. 1-202-225-2836 1-202-225-8689
D MA Meehan, Martin T. 1-202-225-3411 1-202-226-0771
D MA Moakley, John Joseph 1-202-225-8273 1-202-225-7304
D MA Neal, Richard E. 1-202-225-5601 1-202-225-8112
D MA Olver, John W. 1-202-225-5335 1-202-226-1224
D MA Studds, Gerry E. 1-202-225-3111 1-202-225-2212
R MA Blute, Peter I. 1-202-225-6101 1-202-225-2217
R MA Torkildsen, Peter G. 1-202-225-8020 1-202-225-8037
D MD Cardin, Benjamin L. 1-202-225-4016 na
D MD Hoyer, Steny H. 1-202-225-4131 1-202-225-4300
D MD Mfume, Kweisi 1-202-225-4741 1-202-225-3178
D MD Wynn, Albert R. 1-202-225-8699 1-202-225-8714
R MD Bartlett, Roscoe G. 1-202-225-2721 na
R MD Bentley, Helen D. 1-202-225-3061 1-202-225-4251
R MD Gilchrest, Wayne T. 1-202-225-5311 1-202-225-0254
R MD Morella, Constance 1-202-225-5341 1-202-225-1389
D ME Andrews, Thomas H. 1-202-225-6116 1-202-225-9065
R ME Snowe, Olympia J. 1-202-225-6306 na
D MI Barcia, James A. 1-202-225-8171 1-202-225-2168
D MI Bonior, David E. 1-202-225-2106 1-202-226-1169
D MI Carr, Robert 1-202-225-4872 1-202-225-1260
D MI Collins Jr., Barbara 1-202-225-2261 1-202-225-6645
D MI Conyers Jr., John 1-202-225-5126 1-202-225-0072
D MI Dingell, John D. 1-202-225-4071 1-202-225-7426
D MI Ford, William D. 1-202-225-6261 na
D MI Kildee, Dale E. 1-202-225-3611 na
D MI Levin, Sander M. 1-202-225-4961 1-202-226-1033
D MI Stupak, Bart 1-202-225-4735 1-202-225-4744
R MI Camp, David Lee 1-202-225-3561 1-202-225-9679
R MI Henry, Paul B. 1-202-225-3831 na
R MI Hoekstra, Peter 1-202-225-4401 na
R MI Knollenberg, Joe 1-202-225-5802 1-202-226-2356
R MI Smith, Nick 1-202-225-6276 na
R MI Upton, Frederick S. 1-202-225-3761 1-202-225-4986
D MN Minge, David 1-202-225-2331 na
D MN Oberstar, James L. 1-202-225-6211 1-202-225-0699
D MN Penny, Timothy J. 1-202-225-2472 1-202-225-0051
D MN Peterson, Collin C. 1-202-225-2165 1-202-225-1593
D MN Sabo, Martin O. 1-202-225-4755 na
D MN Vento, Bruce F. 1-202-225-6631 na
R MN Grams, Rod 1-202-225-2271 1-202-225-9802
R MN Ramstad, James M. 1-202-225-2871 1-202-225-6351
D MO Clay, William L. 1-202-225-2406 1-202-225-1725
D MO Danner, Pat 1-202-225-7041 na
D MO Gephardt, Richard A. 1-202-225-2671 1-202-225-7452
D MO Skelton, Ike 1-202-225-2876 1-202-225-2695
D MO Volkmer, Harold L. 1-202-225-2956 1-202-225-7834
D MO Wheat, Alan 1-202-225-4535 1-202-225-5990
R MO Emerson, Bill 1-202-225-4404 1-202-225-9621
R MO Hancock, Melton D. 1-202-225-6536 1-202-225-7700
R MO Talent, James M. 1-202-225-2561 1-202-225-2563
D MS Montgomery, G. V. 1-202-225-5031 1-202-225-3375
D MS Parker, Paul M. 1-202-225-5865 1-202-225-5886
D MS Taylor, Gene 1-202-225-5772 1-202-225-7074
D MS Whitten, Jamie L. 1-202-225-4306 1-202-225-4328
D MT Williams, Pat 1-202-225-3211 na
D NC Clayton, Eva 1-202-225-3101 na
D NC Hefner, W. G. 1-202-225-3715 1-202-225-4036
D NC Lancaster, H. M. 1-202-225-3415 1-202-225-0666
D NC Neal, Stephen L. 1-202-225-2071 1-202-225-4060
D NC Price, David E. 1-202-225-1784 1-202-225-6314
D NC Rose, Charles 1-202-225-2731 1-202-225-2470
D NC Valentine, Tim 1-202-225-4531 1-202-225-1539
D NC Watt, Melvin 1-202-225-1510 1-202-225-1512
R NC Ballenger, Thomas C. 1-202-225-2576 1-202-225-0316
R NC Coble, Howard 1-202-225-3065 1-202-225-8611
R NC McMillan, J. A. 1-202-225-1976 na
R NC Taylor, Charles Hart 1-202-225-6401 1-202-251-0794
D ND Pomeroy, Earl 1-202-225-2611 1-202-226-0893
D NE Hoagland, Peter 1-202-225-4155 na
R NE Barrett, William E. 1-202-225-6435 na
R NE Bereuter, Douglas 1-202-225-4806 1-202-226-1148
D NH Swett, Richard N. 1-202-225-5206 na
R NH Zeliff Jr., William 1-202-225-5456 1-202-225-4370
D NJ Andrews, Robert E. 1-202-225-6501 na
D NJ Hughes, William J. 1-202-225-6572 1-202-226-1108
D NJ Klein, Herbert C. 1-202-225-5751 na
D NJ Menendez, Robert 1-202-225-7919 1-202-226-0792
D NJ Pallone Jr., Frank 1-202-225-4671 1-202-225-9665
D NJ Payne, Donald M. 1-202-225-3436 1-202-225-4160
D NJ Torricelli, Robert 1-202-224-5061 1-202-225-0843
R NJ Franks, Bob 1-202-225-5361 1-202-225-9460
R NJ Gallo, Dean A. 1-202-225-5034 1-202-225-0658
R NJ Roukema, Marge 1-202-225-4465 1-202-225-9048
R NJ Saxton, H. J. 1-202-225-4765 1-202-225-0778
R NJ Smith, Christopher 1-202-225-3765 1-202-225-7768
R NJ Zimmer, Richard A. 1-202-225-5801 1-202-225-9181
D NM Richardson, William 1-202-225-6190 na
R NM Schiff, Steven H. 1-202-225-6316 1-202-225-4975
R NM Skeen, Joseph 1-202-225-2365 1-202-225-9599
D NV Bilbray, James H. 1-202-225-5965 1-202-225-8808
R NV Vucanovich, Barbara 1-202-225-6155 1-202-225-2319
D NY Ackerman, Gary L. 1-202-225-2601 na
D NY Engel, Eliot L. 1-202-225-2464 na
D NY Flake, Floyd H. 1-202-225-3461 1-202-226-4169
D NY Hinchey, Maurice D. 1-202-225-6335 na
D NY Hochbrueckner, G. 1-202-225-3826 1-202-225-0776
D NY LaFalce, John J. 1-202-225-3231 na
D NY Lowey, Nita M. 1-202-225-6506 1-202-225-0546
D NY Maloney, Carolyn B. 1-202-225-7944 na
D NY Manton, Thomas J. 1-202-225-3965 na
D NY McNulty, Michael R. 1-202-225-5076 1-202-225-5077
D NY Nadler, Jerrold 1-202-225-5635 1-202-225-6923
D NY Owens, Major R. 1-202-225-6231 1-202-226-0112
D NY Rangel, Charles B. 1-202-225-4365 1-202-225-0816
D NY Schumer, Charles E. 1-202-225-6616 1-202-225-4183
D NY Serrano, Jose E. 1-202-225-4361 1-202-225-6001
D NY Slaughter, Louise M. 1-202-225-3615 1-202-225-7822
D NY Towns, Edolphus 1-202-225-5936 1-202-225-1018
D NY Velazquez, Nydia M. 1-202-225-2361 1-202-226-0327
R NY Boehlert, Sherwood 1-202-225-3665 1-202-225-1891
R NY Fish Jr., Hamilton 1-202-225-5441 1-202-225-0962
R NY Gilman, Benjamin A. 1-202-225-3776 na
R NY Houghton, Amory 1-202-225-3161 1-202-225-5574
R NY King, Peter T. 1-202-225-7896 1-202-226-2279
R NY Lazio, Rick A. 1-202-225-3335 na
R NY Levy, David A. 1-202-225-5516 1-202-225-4672
R NY McHugh, John M. 1-202-225-4611 na
R NY Molinari, Susan 1-202-225-3371 1-202-226-1272
R NY Paxon, L. W. 1-202-225-5265 1-202-225-5910
R NY Quinn, Jack 1-202-225-3306 1-202-226-0347
R NY Solomon, Gerald B. 1-202-225-5614 1-202-225-1168
R NY Walsh, James T. 1-202-225-3701 1-202-225-4042
D OH Applegate, Douglas 1-202-225-6265 na
D OH Brown, Sherrod 1-202-225-3401 na
D OH Fingerhut, Eric D. 1-202-225-5731 na
D OH Hall, Tony P. 1-202-225-6465 na
D OH Kaptur, Marcy 1-202-225-4146 1-202-225-7711
D OH Mann, Davis S. 1-202-225-2216 na
D OH Sawyer, Thomas C. 1-202-225-5231 1-202-225-5278
D OH Stokes, Louis 1-202-225-7032 1-202-225-1339
D OH Strickland, Ted 1-202-225-5705 1-202-226-0331
D OH Traficant Jr., James 1-202-225-5261 1-202-225-3719
R OH Boehner, John Andrew 1-202-225-6205 1-202-225-0704
R OH Gillmor, Paul E. 1-202-225-6405 na
R OH Hobson, David L. 1-202-225-4324 na
R OH Hoke, Martin R. 1-202-225-5871 1-202-226-0994
R OH Kasich, John R. 1-202-225-5355 na
R OH Oxley, Michael G. 1-202-225-2676 na
R OH Pryce, Deborah 1-202-225-2015 1-202-226-0986
R OH Regula, Ralph 1-202-225-3876 1-202-225-3059
D OK Brewster, Billy Kent 1-202-225-4565 na
D OK English, Glenn 1-202-225-5565 1-202-225-8698
D OK McCurdy, David 1-202-225-6165 1-202-225-9746
D OK Synar, Michael 1-202-225-2701 1-202-225-2796
R OK Inhofe, James M. 1-202-225-2211 1-202-225-9187
R OK Istook, Ernest Jim 1-202-225-2132 na
D OR DeFazio, Peter A. 1-202-225-6416 na
D OR Furse, Elizabeth 1-202-225-0855 na
D OR Kopetski, Michael J. 1-202-225-5711 1-202-225-9477
D OR Wyden, Ronald 1-202-225-4811 na
R OR Smith, Robert F. 1-202-225-6730 na
D PA Blackwell, Lucien E. 1-202-225-4001 1-202-225-7362
D PA Borski, Robert A. 1-202-225-8251 1-202-225-4628
D PA Coyne, William J. 1-202-225-2301 na
D PA Foglietta, Thomas M. 1-202-225-4731 1-202-225-0088
D PA Holden, Tim 1-202-225-5546 1-202-226-0996
D PA Kanjorski, Paul E. 1-202-225-6511 1-202-225-9024
D PA Klink, Ron 1-202-225-2565 na
D PA Margolies-Mezvinsky, Marjorie 1-202-225-6111 1-202-226-0798
D PA McHale, Paul 1-202-225-6411 1-202-225-5320
D PA Murphy, Austin J. 1-202-225-4665 1-202-225-4772
D PA Murtha, John P. 1-202-225-2065 1-202-225-5709
R PA Clinger Jr., William 1-202-225-5121 1-202-225-4681
R PA Gekas, George W. 1-202-225-4315 1-202-225-8440
R PA Goodling, William F. 1-202-225-5836 1-202-226-1000
R PA Greenwood, Jim 1-202-225-4276 1-202-225-9511
R PA McDade, Joseph M. 1-202-225-3731 1-202-225-9594
R PA Ridge, Thomas J. 1-202-225-5406 na
R PA Santorum, Richard J. 1-202-225-2135 1-202-225-7747
R PA Shuster, Bud 1-202-225-2431 na
R PA Walker, Robert S. 1-202-225-2411 na
R PA Weldon, Curt 1-202-225-2011 1-202-225-8137
D PR Romero-Barcelo, Carlos 1-202-225-2615 1-202-225-2154
D RI Reed, John F. 1-202-225-2735 1-202-225-9580
R RI Machtley, Ronald K. 1-202-225-4911 1-202-225-4417
D SA Faleomavaega, Eni F.H. 1-202-225-8577 na
D SC Clyburn, James E. 1-202-225-3315 1-202-225-2302
D SC Derrick, Butler 1-202-225-5301 na
D SC Spratt Jr., John M. 1-202-225-5501 1-202-225-0464
R SC Inglis, Bob 1-202-225-6030 na
R SC Ravenel Jr., Arthur 1-202-225-3176 na
R SC Spence, Floyd 1-202-225-2452 1-202-225-2455
D SD Johnson, Timothy P. 1-202-225-2801 1-202-225-2427
D TN Clement, Robert 1-202-225-4311 1-202-226-1035
D TN Cooper, James 1-202-225-6831 1-202-225-4520
D TN Ford, Harold E. 1-202-225-3265 na
D TN Lloyd, Marilyn 1-202-225-3271 1-202-225-6974
D TN Tanner, John S. 1-202-225-4714 1-202-225-1765
R TN Duncan Jr., John J. 1-202-225-5435 1-202-225-6440
R TN Gordon, Bart 1-202-225-4231 1-202-225-6887
R TN Quillen, James H. 1-202-225-6356 1-202-225-7812
R TN Sundquist, Donald 1-202-225-2811 1-202-225-2814
D TX Andrews, Michael A. 1-202-255-7508 na
D TX Brooks, Jack 1-202-225-6565 1-202-225-1584
D TX Bryant, John 1-202-225-2231 na
D TX Chapman, Jim 1-202-225-3035 1-202-225-7265
D TX Coleman, Ronald D. 1-202-225-4831 na
D TX Edwards, Chet 1-202-225-6105 1-202-225-0350
D TX Frost, Martin 1-202-225-3605 1-202-225-4951
D TX Geren, Peter 1-202-225-5071 1-202-225-2786
D TX Gonzalez, Henry B. 1-202-225-3236 1-202-225-1915
D TX Green, Gene 1-202-225-1688 1-202-225-9903
D TX Hall, Ralph M. 1-202-225-6673 1-202-225-3332
D TX Johnson, Eddie Bernice 1-202-225-8885 na
D TX Laughlin, Gregory H. 1-202-225-2831 1-202-225-1108
D TX Ortiz, Solomon P. 1-202-225-7742 1-202-226-1134
D TX Pickle, J. J. 1-202-225-4865 na
D TX Sarpalius, Bill 1-202-225-3706 1-202-225-6142
D TX Stenholm, Charles W. 1-202-225-6605 1-202-225-2234
D TX Tejeda, Frank 1-202-225-1640 na
D TX Washington, Craig A. 1-202-225-3816 na
D TX Wilson, Charles 1-202-225-2401 1-202-225-1764
D TX de la Garza, E 1-202-225-2531 1-202-225-2534
R TX Archer, William 1-202-225-2571 1-202-225-4381
R TX Armey, Richard K. 1-202-225-7772 1-202-225-7614
R TX Barton, Joseph 1-202-225-2002 1-202-225-3052
R TX Bonilla, Henry 1-202-225-4511 na
R TX Combest, Larry 1-202-225-4005 na
R TX DeLay, Thomas 1-202-225-5951 na
R TX Fields, Jack 1-202-225-4901 na
R TX Johnson, Sam 1-202-225-4201 na
R TX Smith, Lamar S. 1-202-225-4236 1-202-225-8628
D UT Orton, William H. 1-202-225-7751 1-202-226-1223
D UT Shepherd, Karen 1-202-225-3011 1-202-226-0354
R UT Hansen, James V. 1-202-225-0453 1-202-225-5857
D VA Boucher, Rick 1-202-225-3861 na
D VA Byrne, Leslie L. 1-202-225-1492 na
D VA Moran Jr., James P. 1-202-225-4376 1-202-225-0017
D VA Payne Jr., Lewis F. 1-202-225-4711 1-202-226-1147
D VA Pickett, Owen B. 1-202-225-4215 1-202-225-4218
D VA Scott, Robert C. 1-202-225-8351 1-202-225-3854
D VA Sisisky, Norman 1-202-225-6365 1-202-226-1170
R VA Bateman, Herbert H. 1-202-225-4261 1-202-225-4382
R VA Bliley Jr., Thomas J. 1-202-225-2815 na
R VA Goodlatte, Robert W. 1-202-225-5431 1-202-225-9681
R VA Wolf, Frank R. 1-202-225-5136 na
D VI de Lugo, Ron 1-202-225-1790 1-202-225-9392
I VT Sanders, Bernard 1-202-225-4115 1-202-225-6790
D WA Cantwell, Maria 1-202-225-6311 1-202-225-2286
D WA Dicks, Norman D. 1-202-225-5916 na
D WA Foley, Thomas S. 1-202-225-2006 na
D WA Inslee, Jay 1-202-225-5816 1-202-226-1137
D WA Kreidler, Mike 1-202-225-8901 1-202-226-2361
D WA McDermott, James A. 1-202-225-3106 1-202-225-9212
D WA Swift, Al 1-202-225-2605 1-202-225-2608
D WA Unsoeld, Jolene 1-202-225-3536 1-202-225-9095
R WA Dunn, Jennifer 1-202-225-7761 na
D WI Barrett, Thomas M. 1-202-225-3571 na
D WI Gunderson, Steve 1-202-225-5506 1-202-225-6195
D WI Kleczka, Gerald D. 1-202-225-4572 na
D WI Obey, David R. 1-202-225-3365 na
R WI Klug, Scott 1-202-225-2906 na
R WI Petri, Thomas E. 1-202-225-2476 1-202-225-2356
R WI Roth, Toby 1-202-225-5665 1-202-225-0087
R WI Sensenbrenner, F. J. 1-202-225-5101 1-202-225-3190
D WV Mollohan, Alan B. 1-202-225-4172 1-202-225-7564
D WV Rahall II, Nick Joe 1-202-225-3452 1-202-225-9061
D WV Wise Jr., Robert E. 1-202-225-2711 1-202-225-7856
R WY Thomas, Craig 1-202-225-2311 1-202-225-0726


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US Senate, 103rd Congress phone and fax numbers
===============================================
Information from US Congress Yellow Book, January 1993
p st name phone fax
= == ======================== ============== ==============
R AK Murkowski, Frank H. 1-202-224-6665 1-202-224-5301
R AK Stevens, Ted 1-202-224-3004 1-202-224-1044
D AL Heflin, Howell T. 1-202-224-4124 1-202-224-3149
D AL Shelby, Richard C. 1-202-224-5744 1-202-224-3416
D AR Bumpers, Dale 1-202-224-4843 1-202-224-6435
D AR Pryor, David 1-202-224-2353 na
D AZ DeConcini, Dennis 1-202-224-4521 1-202-224-2302
R AZ McCain, John 1-202-224-2235 na
D CA Boxer, Barbara 1-202-225-5161 na
D CA Feinstein, Diane 1-202-224-3841 na
D CO Campbell, Ben N. 1-202-225-4761 1-202-225-0228
R CO Brown, Henry 1-202-224-5941 na
D CT Dodd, Christopher J. 1-202-224-2823 na
D CT Lieberman, Joseph I. 1-202-224-4041 1-202-224-9750
D DE Biden Jr., Joseph R. 1-202-224-5042 na
R DE Roth Jr., William V. 1-202-224-2441 1-202-224-2805
D FL Graham, Robert 1-202-224-3041 na
R FL Mack, Connie 1-202-224-5274 1-202-224-8022
D GA Nunn, Samuel 1-202-224-3521 1-202-224-0072
R GA Coverdell, Paul 1-202-224-3643 na
D HI Akaka, Daniel K. 1-202-224-6361 1-202-224-2126
D HI Inouye, Daniel K. 1-202-224-3934 1-202-224-6747
D IA Harkin, Thomas 1-202-224-3254 1-202-224-7431
R IA Grassley, Charles E. 1-202-224-3744 na
R ID Craig, Larry E. 1-202-224-2752 1-202-224-2573
R ID Kempthorne, Dirk 1-202-224-6142 1-202-224-5893
D IL Moseley-Braun, Carol 1-202-224-2854 na
D IL Simon, Paul 1-202-224-2152 1-202-224-0868
R IN Coats, Daniel R. 1-202-224-5623 1-202-224-8964
R IN Lugar, Richard G. 1-202-224-4814 na
R KS Dole, Robert 1-202-224-6521 1-202-224-8952
R KS Kassebaum, Nancy L. 1-202-224-4774 1-202-224-3514
D KY Ford, Wendell H. 1-202-224-4343 na
R KY McConnell, Mitch 1-202-224-2541 1-202-224-2499
D LA Breaux, John B. 1-202-224-4623 na
D LA Johnston, J. Bennett 1-202-224-5824 na
D MA Kennedy, Edward M. 1-202-224-4543 1-202-224-2417
D MA Kerry, John F. 1-202-224-2742 na
D MD Mikulski, Barbara A. 1-202-224-4654 1-202-224-8858
D MD Sarbanes, Paul S. 1-202-224-4524 1-202-224-1651
D ME Mitchell, George J. 1-202-224-5344 na
R ME Cohen, William S. 1-202-224-2523 1-202-224-2693
D MI Levin, Carl 1-202-224-6221 na
D MI Riegle Jr., Donald 1-202-224-4822 1-202-224-8834
D MN Wellstone, Paul 1-202-224-5641 1-202-224-8438
R MN Durenberger, David 1-202-224-3244 na
R MO Bond, Christopher S. 1-202-224-5721 1-202-224-8149
R MO Danforth, John C. 1-202-224-6154 na
R MS Cochran, Thad 1-202-224-5054 na
R MS Lott, Trent 1-202-224-6253 1-202-224-2262
D MT Baucus, Max 1-202-224-2651 na
R MT Burns, Conrad R. 1-202-224-2644 1-202-224-8594
R NC Faircloth, D. M. 1-202-224-3154 1-202-224-7406
R NC Helms, Jesse 1-202-224-6342 na
D ND Conrad, Kent 1-202-224-2043 na
D ND Dorgan, Byron L. 1-202-225-2611 1-202-225-9436
D NE Exon, J. J. 1-202-224-4224 na
D NE Kerrey, Joseph R. 1-202-224-6551 1-202-224-7645
R NH Gregg, Judd 1-202-224-3324 na
R NH Smith, Robert 1-202-224-2841 1-202-224-1353
D NJ Bradley, William 1-202-224-3224 1-202-224-8567
D NJ Lautenberg, Frank R. 1-202-224-4744 1-202-224-9707
D NM Bingaman, Jeff 1-202-224-5521 na
R NM Domenici, Pete V. 1-202-224-6621 1-202-224-7371
D NV Bryan, Richard H. 1-202-224-6244 na
D NV Reid, Harry 1-202-224-3542 1-202-224-7327
D NY Moynihan, Daniel P. 1-202-224-4451 1-202-224-9293
R NY D'Amato, Alfonse M. 1-202-224-6542 1-202-224-5871
D OH Glenn, John 1-202-224-3353 na
D OH Metzenbaum, Howard 1-202-224-2315 1-202-224-6519
D OK Boren, David L. 1-202-224-4721 na
R OK Nickles, Donald 1-202-224-5754 1-202-224-6008
R OR Hatfield, Mark O. 1-202-224-3753 na
R OR Packwood, Robert 1-202-224-5244 na
D PA Wofford, Harris 1-202-224-6324 1-202-224-4161
R PA Specter, Arlen 1-202-224-4254 na
D RI Pell, Claiborne 1-202-224-4642 1-202-224-4680
R RI Chafee, John H. 1-202-224-2921 na
D SC Hollings, Ernest F. 1-202-224-6121 na
R SC Thurmond, Strom 1-202-224-5972 1-202-224-1300
D SD Daschle, Thomas A. 1-202-224-2321 1-202-224-2047
R SD Pressler, Larry 1-202-224-5842 1-202-224-1630
D TN Mathews, Harlan 1-202-224-1036 1-202-228-3679
D TN Sasser, James 1-202-224-3344 na
D TX Krueger, Robert 1-202-224-5922 na
R TX Gramm, Phil 1-202-224-2934 na
R UT Bennett, Robert 1-202-224-5444 na
R UT Hatch, Orrin G. 1-202-224-5251 1-202-224-6331
D VA Robb, Charles S. 1-202-224-4024 1-202-224-8689
R VA Warner, John W. 1-202-224-2023 1-202-224-6295
D VT Leahy, Patrick J. 1-202-224-4242 na
R VT Jeffords, James M. 1-202-224-5141 na
D WA Murray, Patty 1-202-224-2621 1-202-224-0238
R WA Gorton, Slade 1-202-224-3441 1-202-224-9393
D WI Feingold, Russell 1-202-224-5323 na
D WI Kohl, Herbert H. 1-202-224-5653 na
D WV Byrd, Robert C. 1-202-224-3954 1-202-224-4025
D WV Rockefeller, John D. 1-202-224-6472 1-202-224-1689
R WY Simpson, Alan K. 1-202-224-3424 1-202-224-1315
R WY Wallop, Malcolm 1-202-224-6441 1-202-224-3230


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THE PRICE THEY PAID
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the
Declaration of Independence?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured
before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two
lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons
captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships
of the revolutionary war.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.
Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation
owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the
Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty
would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his
ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and
properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to
move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress
without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions
were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery,
Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the
British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his
headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to
open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy
jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying.
Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his
gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in
forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his
children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a
broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution.
These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were
soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they
valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they
pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance
on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to
each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
Targetshooter's notes:
They gave you and I a free and independent America. The history
books never told you a lot of what happened in the revolutionary
war. We didn't just fight the British. We were British subjects at
that time and we fought our own government! Perhaps you can now see
why our founding fathers had a hatred for standing armies, and
allowed through the second amendment for everyone to be armed.
Frankly, I can't read this without crying. Some of us take these
liberties so much for granted.
We shouldn't.
Peace my friends,
Garry Hildreth
(Targetshooter)
Erie, Pa

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Newsgroups: freenet.shrine.songs
From: aa300 (Jerry Murphy)
Subject: Concord Poem
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 90 15:38:12 EST
CONCORD HYMN by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sung at the completion of the Battle Monument - July 4, 1837
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: NIRVANAnet(tm)
&TOTSE 510/935-5845 Walnut Creek, CA Taipan Enigma
Burn This Flag 408/363-9766 San Jose, CA Zardoz
realitycheck 415/666-0339 San Francisco, CA Poindexter Fortran
Governed Anarchy 510/226-6656 Fremont, CA Eightball
New Dork Sublime 805/823-1346 Tehachapi, CA Biffnix
Lies Unlimited 801/278-2699 Salt Lake City, UT Mick Freen
Atomic Books 410/669-4179 Baltimore, MD Baywolf
Sea of Noise 203/886-1441 Norwich, CT Mr. Noise
The Dojo 713/997-6351 Pearland, TX Yojimbo
Frayed Ends of Sanity 503/965-6747 Cloverdale, OR Flatline
The Ether Room 510/228-1146 Martinez, CA Tiny Little Super Guy
Hacker Heaven 860/456-9266 Lebanon, CT The Visionary
The Shaven Yak 510/672-6570 Clayton, CA Magic Man
El Observador 408/372-9054 Salinas, CA El Observador
Cool Beans! 415/648-7865 San Francisco, CA G.A. Ellsworth
DUSK Til Dawn 604/746-5383 Cowichan Bay, BC Cyber Trollis
The Great Abyss 510/482-5813 Oakland, CA Keymaster
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
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THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new
nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal.
Now we are engaged ina great civil war, testing whether that nation or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great bat-
tlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a
final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a
larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this
ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it
far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God
shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
-------------------------------------
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: NIRVANAnet(tm)
&TOTSE 510/935-5845 Walnut Creek, CA Taipan Enigma
Burn This Flag 408/363-9766 San Jose, CA Zardoz
realitycheck 415/666-0339 San Francisco, CA Poindexter Fortran
Governed Anarchy 510/226-6656 Fremont, CA Eightball
New Dork Sublime 805/823-1346 Tehachapi, CA Biffnix
Lies Unlimited 801/278-2699 Salt Lake City, UT Mick Freen
Atomic Books 410/669-4179 Baltimore, MD Baywolf
Sea of Noise 203/886-1441 Norwich, CT Mr. Noise
The Dojo 713/997-6351 Pearland, TX Yojimbo
Frayed Ends of Sanity 503/965-6747 Cloverdale, OR Flatline
The Ether Room 510/228-1146 Martinez, CA Tiny Little Super Guy
Hacker Heaven 860/456-9266 Lebanon, CT The Visionary
The Shaven Yak 510/672-6570 Clayton, CA Magic Man
El Observador 408/372-9054 Salinas, CA El Observador
Cool Beans! 415/648-7865 San Francisco, CA G.A. Ellsworth
DUSK Til Dawn 604/746-5383 Cowichan Bay, BC Cyber Trollis
The Great Abyss 510/482-5813 Oakland, CA Keymaster
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X

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THE GERMAN SURRENDER DOCUMENTS - WWII
Instrument of Surrender
of
All German armed forces in HOLLAND, in
northwest Germany including all islands,
and in DENMARK.
1. The German Command agrees to the surrender of all armed
forces in HOLLAND, in northwest GERMANY including the
FRISLIAN ISLANDS and HELIGOLAND and all islands, in
SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, and in DENMARK, to the C.-in-C. 21
Army Group.
=This to include all naval ships in these areas=
These forces to lay down their arms and to surrender
unconditionally.
2. All hostilities on land, on sea, or in the air by German
forces in the above areas to cease at 0800 hrs. British
Double Summer Time on Saturday 5 May 1945.
3. The German command to carry out at once, and without
argument or comment, all further orders that will be issued
by the Allied Powers on any subject.
4. Disobedience of orders, or failure to comply with them, will
be regarded as a breach of these surrender terms and will be
dealt with by the Allied Powers in accordance with the laws
and usages of war.
5. This insturment of surrender is independent of, without pre-
judice to, and will be superseded by any general instrument
of surrender imposed by or on behalf of the Allied Powers
and applicable to Germany and the German armed forces as a
whole.
6. This instument of surrender is written in English and in German.
The English version is the authentic text.
7. The decision of the Allied Powers will be final if any doubt
or dispute arise as to the meaning or intrepretation of the
surrender terms.
=HANS GEORG von FRIEDBERG=
=KINZEL=
=G. WAGNER=
=B. L. MONTGOMERY=
=Field - Marshal= =POLECK=
=FRIEDEL=
=4 May 1945=
=1830 hrs.=
---------------------------------------
{Reichspresident Donitz's authorization to Colonel General Jodl}
{to conclude a general surrender:}
Hauptquartier, den 6. Mai 1945
Ich bevollmachtige Generaloberst J o d l ,
Chef des Wehrmachtfuhrungsstabes in Oberkommando
der Wehrmact, zum Abschluss eines Waffenstill-
E i s e n h o w e r .
[ SEAL ] =DONITZ=
GroBadmiral.
---------------------------------------
Only this text in English is authoritative
ACT OF MILITARY SURRENDER
1. We the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command,
hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied
Expeditionary Forces and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command all
forces on land, sea and in the air who are at this date under German
control.
2. The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German
military, naval and air authorties and to all forces under German
control to cease active operations at =2301= hours Central European
time on = 8 May = and to remain in the positions occupied at that
time. No ship, vessel, or aircraft is to be scuttled, or any damage
done to their hull, machinery or equipment.
3. The German High Command will at once issue to the appropriate com-
mander, and ensure the carrying out of any further orders issued by
the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and by the Soviet
High Command.
4. This act of military surrender is without prejudice to, and will be
superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on
behalf of the United Nations and applicable to GERMANY and the German
armed forces as a whole.
5. In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under
their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender,
the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and the Soviet High
Command will take such punitive or other action as they deem ap-
propriate.
Signed at =RHEIMS at 0241= on the =7th= day of May, 1945.
=France=
On behalf of the German High Command.
=JODL=
IN THE PRESENCE OF
On behalf of the Supreme Commander, On behalf of the Soviet
Allied Expeditionary Force. High Command
=W. B. SMITH= =SOUSLOPAROV=
=F SEVEZ=
Major General, French Army
(Witness)
---------------------------------------
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
SERIAL 1
ORDERS BY THE SUPREME COMMANDER,
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE RELATING TO
ARMY AND AIR FORCES UNDER GERMAN CONTROL
1. Local commanders of the Army and Air Force under German control on the
Western Front, in NORWAY and in the CHANNEL ISLANDS will hold them-
selves in readiness to receive detailed orders for the surrender of
their forces from the Supreme Commander's subordinate commanders
opposite their front.
2. In the case of NORWAY the Supreme Commander's representatives will be
the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Scottish Command and Air
Officer Commanding 13 Group RAF.
3. In the case of the CHANNEL ISLANDS the Supreme Commander's representa-
tives will be the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern
Command and Air Officer Commanding 10 Group RAF.
=WALTER B SMITH=
Signed....................
For the Supreme Commander, RAF
Dated =0241 7th= May, 1945
=Rheims France=
---------------------------------------
SPECIAL ORDERS BY THE SUPREME COMMANDER, ALLIED
EXPEDITIONARY FORCE TO THE GERMAN HIGH COMMAND
RELATING TO NAVAL FORCES
For the purpose of these orders the term "Allied Representatives" shall be
deemed to include the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, and any
subordinate commander, staff officer or agent acting pursuant to his orders.
SPECIAL ORDERS BY THE SUPREME COMMANDER, ALLIED
EXPEDITIONARY FORCE TO THE GERMAN HIGH COMMAND
RELATING TO NAVAL FORCES
PART I GENERAL
Definition of Naval Forces
1. For the purpose of these orders all formations, units, and personnel
of the German Navy together with the Marine Kusten Polizie shall be
refered to as the German Naval Forces.
2. Members of the Marine Kusten Polizie will immediately be placed under
the command of the appropriate German Naval Commanders who will be
responsible for their maintenance and supply where applicable, to the
same extent and degree as for units of the German Navy.
German Naval Representatives and information required immediately
3. The German High Command will dispatch within 48 hours after the
surrender becomes effective, a res ponsible Flag Officer to the Allied
Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force at his headquarters. This Flag
Officer will furnish the Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force,
with:-
a. Corrected copies of charts showing all minefields in Western
Europe waters, including the BALTIC as far as LUBECK
(inclusive) which have been laid by German and Ger-
man-controlled vessels or aircraft, positions of all wrecks,
booms and other underwater obstructions in this area,
details of the German convoy routes and searched channels
and of all bouys, lights and other navigational aids in this
area. The appropriate navigational publications are also
required.
b. Details of the exact location of all departments and
branches of the German Admiralty (OKM).
c. All available information concerning the numbers and types
of German minesweepers and sperr- brechers in German
controlled Dutch ports and German NORTH SEA ports that can
be obtained without delaying his departure. This German
Flag Officer is to be accompanied by a Communications
Officer who is familiar with the German Naval W/T organiza-
tion and who is to bring with him the current naval com-
munications Orders, including allocation of frequencies,
list of W/T and R/T call signs in force, and a list of all
codes and cyphers in use, and intended to be brought into
use.
d. Location of all surface warships down to and including
"Elbing" class Torpedo Boats, and of all submarines and "E"
Boats.
4. The German High Command will also dispatch within 48 hours after the
surrender becomes effective a responsibile officer, not below the rank
of Captain, by coastal craft to report to the Admiral Commanding at
DOVER for onward routing to Commander-in-Chief, THE NORE, with:-
a. Corrected copies of charts showing all minefields in the
NORTH SEA SOUTH of 54 30' NORTH and EAST of 1 30' EAST laid
by German and German-controlled vessels or aircraft,
positions of all wrecks, booms and all other underwater
obstructions; details of all German Convoy routes and
searched channels in this area, and of all bouys, lights and
other navigational aids which are under German control.
Appropriate navigational publications are also required.
b. All available information concerning the numbers and types
of German minesweepers and sperrbrechers in German contolled
Dutch ports and German NORTH SEA ports that can be obtained
without delaying his departure.
5. Another responsible German Naval Officer, with similar information is
to be dispatched by un- escorted aircraft painted white to MANSTON
Areodrome position 51 20' NORTH, 1 20' EAST for onward routing to
Commander-in-Chief, THE NORE.
6. The German High Command will issue instructions to certain German
naval commands as indicated below:-
a. The Naval Commander-in-Chief, NORTH SEA will dispatch by
coastal craft within 48 hours after the surrender becomes
effective a responsible officer, not below the rank of
Captain, to the Admiral Commanding at DOVER for onward
routing to Commander-in-Chief, THE NORE, with:-
(1) details of minesweeping operations carried out in
the German convoy route between the HOOK OF
HOLLAND and HAMBURG and in approaches to harbours
between these two ports during the previous 60
days;
(2) numbers and postions of all British mines swept
during these operations;
(3) details of all controlled mine-fields in this area
and information whether they have been rendered
ineffective;
(4) details of all other mining and types of mines
employed in the harbours and harbour approaches of
CUXHAVEN, EMDEN, TERSCHELLING, TEXEL, IJMUIDEN,
AMSTERDAM, SCHEVENINGEN, HOOK OF HOLLAND and
ROTTERDAM;
(5) berthing facilities in the harbours enumerated in
paragraph (6a). (4) above and the numbers of
auxiliary minesweepers which can be accomodated;
(6) a list of all W/T and R/T call signs in use by the
German Navy. Any of the above information which
cannot be obtained without delaying the departure
of this officer will be forwarded subsequently as
soon as it is available.
b. The Naval Commander-in-Chief, NORTH SEA, will also dispatch
as soon as possible by coastal craft to DOVER thirteen
German Naval Officers who must be familiar with the German
swept channels between the HOOK OF HOLLAND and CUXHAVEN.
These officers will bring with them all the charts and books
required for naviagation in this area and will be accom-
panied by pilots (and interpreters if necessary).
c. The Naval Commander-in-Chief, NORWAY, will dispatch by sea
within 48 hours after the surrender becomes effective, a
responsible officer, not below the rank of Captain to the
Commander-in-Chief, ROSYTH, with corrected copies of charts
showing all German minefields in the NORTH SEA, NORTH of 56
NORTH, all wrecks, booms and other underwater obstructions,
details of German convoy routes and searched channels in
this area, of the approach channels to the principal
Norwegian ports and of all bouys, lights and other naviga-
tional aids in this area. This officer will also bring with
him the disposition of all "U" Boats and details of all
orders affecting their future movements. He will be
accompanied by six German Naval Officers with pilots (and
interpreters if necessary) who are familiar with the coastal
swept channels between OSLO and TROMSO. These officers will
bring with them all the charts and books required for
navigation in Norwegian waters, and a list of all W/T and
R/T call signs in use by the German Navy.
d. The Naval Commander-in-Chief, NORWAY, will dispatch a
duplicate party to the above with similar information by an
unescorted aircraft painted white to DREM Airfield 56 02'
NORTH 02 48' WEST.
e. The Naval Commander-in-Chief, NORWAY, will report by W/T to
the Commander-in-Chief, ROSYTH, within 48 hours after the
surrender becomes effective, the following information:-
(1) Berthing facilities at OSLO, CHRISTIANSAND,
STAVANGER, BERGEN, TRONDHEIM, NARVIK, and TROMSO.
(2) The appropriate quantities of furnace oil fuel,
diesel oil fuel, and coal at all the principal
Norwegian ports between OSLO and TROMSO.
7. The German Admiral SKGGERAK will dispatch by sea within 48 hours after
the surrender becomes effective, a responsible officer not below the
rank of Captain, to the Commander-in-Chief, ROSYTH, with corrected
copies of charts showing all German minefields, wrecks, booms, and
other underwater obstructions, details of German convoy routes and
searched channels, bouys, lights and other navigational aids in the
SKAGGERAK, KATTEGAT, THE BEITS AND SOUND, KIEL BAY and BALTIC WATERS
WEST of 14 EAST. This officer will also bring with him the disposi-
tion of all "U" boats in the above area and details of all orders
affecting their future movements. He will be accompanied by three
German Naval officers with pilots (and interpreters if necessary) who
are familiar with the coastal swept channels, and channels in the
Swedish territorial waters, in the waters referred to above. These
officers will bring with them all the charts and books required for
navigation in these waters, and a list of all W/T and R/T call signs
in use by the German Navy.
The German Admiral SKAGGERAK will dispatch a duplicate party to that
specified above, with similar information, by air in unescorted
aircraft painted white to DREM Airfield 56 02' NORTH 02 48' WEST.
8. The German Naval Officers who will be dispatched to DOVER and ROSYTH
by sea will proceed to positions in latitude 51 19' NORTH longitude 1
43' EAST and latitude 56 47' NORTH longitude 1 13' WEST respectively,
where they will be met by British warships and escorted to their
destination. The ships or craft in which they travel are to fly a
large white flag at the masthead by day and are to illuminate these
white flags by night. These ships are to broadcast their positions
hourly by W/T on 500 ks. (600 meters) whilst on passage.
Information required within fourteen days
9. The German High Command will furnish the following information to the
Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force, at by within
fourteen days of cessation of hostilities.
a. Locations of all warships, auxiliaries and armed coastal
craft operating under the orders of the German Naval Command
stating particulars of the operational unit to which they
are attached, giving approximate totals of all naval
personal embarked in each vessel, (including naval flak and
merchant ship flak).
b. A statement of the organizations of all naval shore Com-
mands, giving location of all naval establishments, includ-
ing establishments for experiment and research, names of all
Commanding Officers and Principal Staff Officers of the rank
of Commander in each establishment.
c. A statement of the strength and location of all naval land
forces including naval infrantry, naval flak, merchant ship
flak and naval personnel manning naval coast artillery and
full particulars of all Coastal and port defenses giving
nature and locations.
d. Lists of stocks of furnace oil fuels, diesel oil fuel,
petrol, and coal of 500 tons or more at, or in the vicinity
of, all ports between IJMUIDEN and HAMBURG inclusive.
e. A statement of location of the principal naval armament
depots with approximate overall stocks of each major item
held.
f. The following communications information:-
(1) location and details concerning all
V/S, W/T (including D/F) and radar
stations in use by, and under constuc-
tion for the German Navy, these details
to include types and capabilities of all
equipment fitted.
(2) details of the current naval W/T
organization, lists of W/T and R/T call
signs in force, and allocation of all
frequencies for communication and radar
purposes.
(3) location and details of all naval
communications (including Infra-Red)
and naval radar training and research
establishments.
g. Full details of all German minefields in the NORTH SEA,
SKAGGERAK, KATTEGAT, BEITS, and SOUND.
h. Full details of the German naval minesweeping organization
including the communications organization.
j. Full details of the communications (including Infra-Red) and
radar equipment fitted in all German minesweepers and
sperrbrechers.
k. Technical details of all types of minesweeping gear used by
the German Navy.
l. Details of all mining and types of mines employed and of
berthing facilities available for ships of 150 feet in
length and 16 feet draught at:-
BREMERHAVEN
WILHELMSHAVEN
SCHIERMONNIKOOG
DELFZIJL
10. The German High Command will also furnish the Allied Naval Commander,
Expeditionary Force, with two copies of all coding and cyphering
systems which have been, are being, or were to be used by the German
Navy with the necessary instructions for their use and the dates
between which they have been, or were to have been used.
PART II - CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT
Orders to warships, auxiliaries, merchant ships and other craft
11. The German High Command will forthwith direct all German and Ger-
man-controlled warships, auxiliaries, merchant ships and other craft
to comply with the following instructions:-
a. All warships, auxiliaries, merchant ships and other craft in
harbours are to remain in harbour pending further directions
from the Allied Representatives.
b. All warships, auxiliaries, merchant ships and other craft at
sea are to report their positions in plain language im-
mediately to the nearest British, US or Soviet Coast wire-
less Telegraphy station on 500 kc/s (600 metres), and are to
proceed to the nearest German or Allied port or such ports
as the Allied Representatives may direct, and remain there
pending further directions from the Allied Representatives.
At night they are to show lights and to display searchlights
with beams held vertically.
c. All warships and merchant ships whether in port or at sea
will immediately train all weapons fore and aft. All
torpedo tubes will be unloaded and breech blocks will be
removed from all guns.
d. All warships and merchant ships in German or Ger-
man-controlled harbours will immediately land and store in
safety all ammunition, warheads and other explosives. They
will land all portable weapons but, pending further instuc-
tions, warships will retain onboard the fixed armament.
Fire control and all other equipment will be maintained on
board intact and fully efficient.
e. All minesweeping vessels are to carry out the means of
disarmament prescribed in c. and d. above, (except that they
will however, retain on board such portable weapons and
explosives as are required for minesweeping purposes) and
are to be prepared immediately for minesweeping service
under the direction of the Allied Representatives. They
will complete with fuel where necessary.
f. All German salvage vessels are to carry out the measures of
disarmament prescribed in c. and d. above (except that they
will retain on board such explosives as are required for
salvage purposes.) These vessels, togipment and personnel,
are to be prepared for immediate salvage operations under
the direction of the Allied Representatives, completing with
fuel where necessary for this purpose.
g. The movement of transport on the inland waterways of GERMANY
may continue, subject to orders from the Allied Representa-
tives. No vessels moving on inland waterways will proceed
to neutral waters.
SUBMARINES
12. The German High Command will tranmit by W/T on appropriate frequencies
the two messages in Annexures 'A' and 'B' which contain instructions
to submarines at sea.
NAVAL AIRCRAFT
13. The German High Command will forthwith direct that:-
a. German naval aircraft are not to leave the ground or water
or ship pending directions from the Allied Representatives;
b. naval aircraft in the air are to return immediately to their
bases.
NEUTRAL SHIPPING
14. The German High Command will forthwith direct that all neutral
merchant ships in German and German-controlled ports are to be
detained pending further directions from the Allied Representatives.
ORDERS RELATING TO SABOTAGE, SCUTTLING, SAFETY MEASURES, PILOTAGE AND PERSONNEL
15. The German High Command will forthwith issue categorical directions
that:-
a. No ship, vessel or aircraft of any description is to be
scuttled, or any damage done to their hull, machinery or
equipment.
b. all harbour works and port facilities of whatever nature,
including telecommunications and radar stations, are to be
preserved and kept free from destruction or damage pending
further directions from the Allied Representatives, and all
necessary steps taken and all necessary orders issued to
prohibit any act of scuttling, sabotage, or other willful
damage.
c. all boom defenses at all ports and harbours are to be opened
and kept open at all times; where possible, they are to be
removed.
d. all controlled minefields at all ports and harbours are to
be disconnected and rendered ineffective.
e. all demolition charges in all ports and harbour works are to
be removed or rendered ineffective and their presence
indicated.
f. the existing wartime sustem of navigational lighting is to
be maintained, except that all dimmed lights are to be shown
at full brilliancy, and lights only shown by special
arrangement are to be exhibited continously.
In particular:-
(1) HELIGOLAND Light is to be burnt
at full brilliancy.
(2) The bouyage of the coastal convoy
route from the HOOK OF HOLLAND to
HAMBURG is to be commenced, mid-channel
light bouys being laid six miles apart.
(3) Two ships are to be anchored as
mark vessels in the following positions:-
54 20' N, 5 00' E.
54 20' N, 6 30' E.
These ships are to fly a large black flag at the masthead by
day and by night are to flash a searchlight vertically every
30 seconds.
g. All pilotage services are to continue to operate and all
pilots are to be held at their normal stations ready for
service and equipped with their charts.
h. German Naval and other personnel concerned in the operation
of ports and administrative services in ports are to remain
at their stations and to continue to carry out their normal
duties.
PERSONNEL
16. The German High Command will forthwith direct that except as may be
required for the purpose of giving effect to the above special
orders:-
a. all personnel in German warships, auxiliaries, merchant
ships and other craft, are to remain on board their ships
pending further directions from the Allied Representatives.
b. all Naval personnel ashore are to remain in their establish-
ments.
17. The German High Command will be responsible for the immediate and
total disarmament of all naval personnel on shore. The orders issued
to the German High Command in respect of the disarmament and war
material of land forces will apply also to naval personnel on shore.
=H. M. BURROUGH=
Signed.......................
For the Supreme Commander, AEF.
=Dated 0241 7th May 1945=
=Rheims, France=
ANNEXURE 'A'
SURRENDER OF GERMAN "U" BOAT FLEET
To all "U" Boats at sea:
Carry out the following instuctions forthwith which have been given by the
Allied Representatives
(A) Surface immediately and remain surfaced.
(B) Report immediately in P/L your position in
latitude and longitude and number of your "U" Boat
to nearest British, US, Canadian or Soviet coast W/T
station on 500 kc/s (600 metres) and to call sign GZZ 10
on one of the following high frequencies: 16845 - 12685
or 5970 kc/s.
(C) Fly a large black or blue flag by day.
(D) Burn navigation lights by night.
(E) Jettison all ammunition, remove breachblocks from
guns and render torpedos safe by removing pistols.
All mines are to be rendered safe.
(F) Make all signals in P/L.
(G) Follow strictly the instructions for proceeding
to Allied ports from your present area given in
immediately following message.
(H) Observe strictly the orders of Allied Representatives
to refrain from scuttling or in any way damaging your
"U" Boat.
2. These instructions will be repeated at two-hour
intervals until further notice.
ANNEXURE 'B'
To all "U" Boats at sea. Observe strictly the instructions already given to
remain fully surfaced.
Report your position course and speed every 8 hours.
Obey any instructions that may be given to you by any Allied authority.
The following are the areas and routes for "U" Boats surrendering-
(1) Area 'A'.
a. Bound on West by meridian 026 degs West and South by
parallel 043 degs North in Barents Sea by meridian 020 degs
East in Baltic Approaches by line joining the Naze and Hantsholm
but excludes Irish Sea between 051 degs thirty mins and 055 degs
00 mins North and English Channel between line of Lands End
Scilly Islands Ushant and line of Dover-Calais.
b. Join one of following routes at nearest point and
procceed along it to Loch Eriboll (058 degs 33 minutes North
004 degs 37 mins West)
Blue route: All positions North and West unless otherwise indicated
049 degs 00 mins 009 degs 00 mins 053 degs 00 mins
012 degs 00 mins 058 degs 00 mins 011 degs 00 mins
059 degs 00 mins 005 degs 30 mins thence to Loch Eriboll.
Red route: 053 degs 45 mins North 003 degs 00 mins East
059 degs 45 mins 001 degs 00 mins 059 degs 45 mins
003 degs 00 mins thence to Loch Eriboll.
c. Arrive at Loch Eriboll between sunrise and 3 hours
before sunset.
(2) Area 'B'
a. The Irish Sea between parallel of 051 degs 30 mins
and 055 degs 00 mins North.
b. Proceed Beaumaris Bay (053 degs 19 mins North 003
degs 58 mins West) to arrive between sunrise and 3 hours
before sunset.
(3) Area 'C'
a. The English Channel between line of Lands End -
Scilly Isles - Ushant and line of Dover - Calais.
b. 'U' Boats in area 'C' are to join one of following routes
at nearest point: Green route: position 'A' 049 degs
10 mins North 005 degs 40 mins West position 'B' 050 degs 00
mins North 003 degs 00 mins West thence escorted to Weymouth.
Orange route: position 'X' 050 degs 30 mins North 000 degs 50 mins East
position 'Y' 050 degs 10 mins North 001 degs 50 mins West
thence escorted to Weymouth.
c. Arrive at either 'B' or 'Y' between sunrise and 3 hours
before sunset.
(4) Area 'D'
a. Bound on West by lines joining The Naze and Hantsholm
and on East by lines joining Lubeck and Trelleborg.
b. Proceed to Kiel.
(5) Area 'E'
a. Mediterranean Approaches bound on North by 043 degs North
on South by 026 degs North and on West by 026 degs West.
b. Proceed to a rendezvous in position 'A' 036 degs 00 mins
North 011 degs 00 mins West and await escort reporting expected
time of arrival in plain language to Admiral Gibraltar on
500 kc/s.
c. Arrive in position 'A' between sunrise and noon G.M.T.
(6) Area 'F'
a. The North and South Atlantic West of 026 degs West.
b. Proceed to nearest of one of following points
arriving between sunrise and 3 hours before
sunset: W 043 degs 30 mins North 070 degs 00 mins
West approach from a point 15 miles due East X 038
degs 20 mins North 074 degs 25 mins West approach
from a point 047 degs 18 mins North 051 30 mins
West on a course 270 degs Z 043 31 mins North 065
degs 05 mins West approach from point 042 degs 59
mins North 054 degs 28 mins West on a course 320
degs.
---------------------------------------
UNDERTAKING
GIVEN BY CERTAIN GERMAN EMISSARIES
TO THE ALLIED HIGH COMMANDS
It is agreeed by the German emissaries undersigned that the following German
officers will arrive at a place and time designated by the Supreme Commander,
Allied Expeditionary Force, and the Soviet High Command prepared, with planary
powers, to execute a formal ratification on behalf of the German High Command of
this act of Unconditional Surrender of the German armed forces.
Chief of the High Command
Commander-in-Chief of the Army
Commander-in-Chief of the Navy
Commander-in-Chief of the Air Forces.
SIGNED
=JODL=
Representing the German High Command.
DATED =0241 7th May 1945=
=Rheims, France=
---------------------------------------
{Reichspresident Donitz's authorization to German representatives
to execute ratification}
A b s c h r i f t.
Der Oberste Befehlshaber
Hauptquartier, den 7.5.45.
der Wehrmact
/Bitte in der Antwort vorstehendes
Geschaftszeichen, das Datum und
kurzen Inhalt anzugegen./
ICH BEVOLLMACHTIGE
GENERALFELDMARSCHALL K E I T E L
ALS CHEF DES OBERKOMMANDOS DER
WEHRMACHT UND ZUGLEICH ALS OBER-
BEFEHLSHABER DES HEERES,
GENERALADMIRAL VON FRIEDBERG
ALS OBERBEFEHLSHABER DER KRIEGSMARINE,
GENERALOBERST S T U M P F
ALS VERTRETER DES OBERBEFEHLSHABERS
DER LUFTWAFFE
ZUR RATIFIZIERUNG DER BEDINGUNGSLKSEN
KAPITULATION DER DEUTSCHEN STREITKRAFTE GEGENUBER
DEM OBERBEFEHLSHABER DER ALLIIERTEN
EXPEDITIONSSTREITKRAFTE UND DEM SOWYET-OBER-KOMMANDO.
DONITZ
GROBADMIRAL.
Siegel.
---------------------------------------
ACT OF MULITARY SURRENDER
1. We the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command,
hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied
Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Supreme High Command of
the Red Army all forces on land, at sea, and in the air who are at
this date under German control.
2. The German High Command will at once issue order to all German
military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German
control to cease active operations at 2301 hours
Central European time on 8th May 1945, to remain in all positions
occupied at that time and to disarm completely, handing over their
weapons and equipment to the local allied commanders or officers
designated by Representatives of the Allied Supreme Commands. No ship,
vessel, or aircraft is to be scuttled, or any damage done to their
hull, machinery or equipment, and also to machines of all kinds,
armament, apparatus, and all the technical means of prosecution of war
in general.
3. The German High Command will at once issue to the appropriate com-
manders, and ensure the carrying out of any further orders issued by
the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and by the Supreme
Command of the Red Army.
4. This act of military surrender is without prejudice to, and will be
superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on
behalf of the United Nations and applicable to GERMANY and the
German armed forces as a whole.
5. In the event of the German High Command or any of the forces under
their control failing to act in accordance with this Act of Surrender,
the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and the Supreme High
Command of the Red Army will take such punitive or other action as
they deem appropriate.
6. This Act is drawn up in the English, Russian and German languages.
The English and Russian are the only authentic texts.
Signed at =Berlin= on the =8 . = day of May, 1945
=Von Friedeburg= =Keitel= =Stumpff=
On behalf of the German High Command
IN THE PRESENCE OF:
=A.W.Tedder=
On behalf of the On behalf of the
Supreme Commander Supreme High Command of the
Allied Expeditionary Force Red Army
=Georgi Zhukov=
At the signing also were present as witnesses:
=F. de Lattre-Tassigny= =Carl Spaatz=
General Commanding in Chief General, Commanding
First French Army United States Strategic Air Force
---------------------------------------
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God's help, have
wrung from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The western world has
been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned
the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men.
They have violated their churches, destroyed their homes, corrupted their
children, and murdered their loved ones. Our Armies of Liberation have restored
freedom to these suffering peoples, whose spirit and will the oppressors could
never enslave.
Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the
East. The whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world
has been freed. United, the peace-loving nations have demonstrated in the West
that their arms are stronger by far than the might of dictators or the tyranny
of military cliques that once called us soft and weak. The power of our peoples
to defend themselves against all enemies will be proved in the Pacific was as it
has been proved in Europe.
For the trimuph of spirit and of arms which we have won, and of its promise to
peoples everywhere who join us in the love of freedom, it is fitting that we, as
a nation, give thanks to Almighty God, who has strengthened us and given us the
victory.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, HARRY S. TRUMAN, President of the United States of America,
do hereby appoint Sunday, May 13, 1945 to be a day of prayer.
I call upon the people of the United States, whatever their faith, to unite in
offering joyful thanks to God for the victory we have won and to pray that He
will support us to the end of our present struggle and guide us into the way of
peace.
I also call upon my countrymen to dedicate this day of prayer to the memory of
those who have given their lives to make possible our victory.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the
United States of America to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this eighth day of May in
.. the year of our Lord
-----------------------------------
| | nineteen hundred
| |
| | and forty-five
| T H E G R E A T S E A L |
| | and of the
| |
| O F T H E | Independence
| |
| | of the United
| U N I T E D S T A T E S |
| | States of America
| O F |
| | the one hundred
| A M E R I C A |
| | and sixty-ninth.
| |
-----------------------------------
By the President: =Harry S. Truman=
-------------------------------------
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THE JAPANESE SURRENDER DOCUMENTS - WWII
TRANSLATION of Foreign Minister Shiegemitsu's credentials
TRANSLATION
H I R O H I T O ,
By the Grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan, seated on the Throne occupied
by the same Dynasty changeless through ages eternal,
To all who these Presents shall come, Greeting!
We do hereby authorise Mamoru Shigemitsu, Zyosanmi, First Class of the
Imperial Order of the Rising Sun to attach his signature by command and
in behalf of Ourselves and Our Government unto the Instrument of
Surrender which is required by the Supreme Commander for the Allied
Powers to be signed.
In witness whereof, We have hereunto set Our signature and caused the
Great Seal of the Empire to be affixed.
Given at Our Palace in Tokyo, this first day of the ninth month of the
twentieth year of Syowa, being the two thousand six hundred and fifth
year from the Accession of the Emperor Zinmu.
..
| Seal of |
| the | Signed: H I R O H I T O
| Empire |
!!
Countersigned: Naruhiko-o
Prime Minister
---------------------------------------
TRANSLATION of General Umezu's credentials
TRANSLATION
H I R O H I T O ,
By the Grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan, seated on the Throne occupied
by the same Dynasty changeless through ages eternal,
To all who these Presents shall come, Greeting!
We do hereby authorise Yoshijiro Umezu, Zyosanmi, First Class of the
Imperial Order of the Rising Sun to attach his signature by command and
in behalf of Ourselves and Our Government unto the Instrument of
Surrender which is required by the Supreme Commander for the Allied
Powers to be signed.
In witness whereof, We have hereunto set Our signature and caused the
Great Seal of the Empire to be affixed.
Given at Our Palace in Tokyo, this first day of the ninth month of the
twentieth year of Syowa, being the two thousand six hundred and fifth
year from the Accession of the Emperor Zinmu.
..
| Seal of |
| the | Signed: H I R O H I T O
| Empire |
!!
Countersigned: Yoshijiro Umezu
Chief of the General
Staff of the Imperial
Japanese Army
Soemu Toyoda
Chief of the General
Staff of the Imperial
Japanese Army
---------------------------------------
I N S T R U M E N T O F S U R R E N D E R
We, acting by command of and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan, the
Japanese Government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters,
hereby accept the provisions set forth in the declaration issued by the
heads of the Governments of the United States, China, and Great Britain
on 26 July 1945 at Potsdam, and subsequently adhered to by the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, which four powers are hereafter referred to
as the Allied Powers.
We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of
the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed
forces and all armed forces under the Japanese control wherever
situated.
We hereby command all Japanese forces wherever situated and the
Japanese people to cease hostilites forthwith, to preserve and save
from damage all ships, aircraft, and military and civil property and to
comply with all requirements which my be imposed by the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers or by agencies of
the Japanese Government at his direction.
We hereby command the Japanese Imperial Headquarters to issue at once
orders to the Commanders of all Japanese forces and all forces under
Japanese control wherever situated to surrender unconditionally
themselves and all forces under their control.
We hereby command all civil, military and naval officials to obey and
enforce all proclamations, and orders and directives deemed by the
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to be proper to ef- fectuate
this surrender and issued by him or under his authority and we direct
all such officials to remain at their posts and to continue to perform
their non-combatant duties unless specifically
relieved by him or under his authority.
We hereby undertake for the Emperor, the Japanese Government and their
successors to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration in
good faith, and to issue whatever orders and take whatever actions may
be required by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Poers or by any
other designated representative of the Allied Powers for the purpose of
giving effect to that Declaration.
We hereby command the Japanese Imperial Government and the Japanese
Imperial General Headquarters at once to liberate all allied prisoners
of war and civilian internees now under Japanese control and to provide
for their protection, care, maintenance and immediate transportation to
places as directed.
The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the
state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate these terms
of surrender.
Signed at TOKYO BAY, JAPAN at 0904 I
on the SECOND day of SEPTEMBER, 1945
MAMORU SHIGMITSU
By Command and in behalf of the Emperor
of Japan and the Japanese Government
YOSHIJIRO UMEZU
By Command and in behalf of the Japanese
Imperial General Headquarters
Accepted at TOKYO BAY, JAPAN at 0903 I
on the SECOND day of SEPTEMBER, 1945,
for the United States, Republic of China, United Kingdom and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and in the interests of the
other United Nations at war with Japan.
DOUGLAS MAC ARTHUR
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
C.W. NIMITZ
United States Representative
HSU YUNG-CH'ANG
Republic of China Representative
BRUCE FRASER
United Kingdom Representative
KUZMA DEREVYANKO
Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics Representative
THOMAS BLAMEY
Commonwealth of Australia
Representative
L. MOORE COSGRAVE
Dominion of Canada Representative
JACQUES LE CLERC
Provisional Government of the French
Republic Representative
C.E.L. HELFRICH
Kingdom of the Netherlands
Representative
LEONARD M. ISITT
Dominion of New Zealand Representative
---------------------------------------
Translation of Emperor Hirohito's Receipt of the Surrender documents
P R O C L A M A T I O N
Accepting the terms set forth in the Declaration issued by the heads of
the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China on July
26th, 1945 at Potsdam and subse- quently adhered to by the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, We have commanded the Japanese Imperial
Government and the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters to sign on
Our behalf the Instrument of Surrender presented by the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers and to issue General Orders to the
Military and Naval Forces in accordance with the direction of the
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. We command all Our people
forthwith to cease hostilities, to lay down their arms and faithfully
to carry out all the provisions of Instrument of Surrender and the
General Orders issued by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters
hereunder.
This second day of the ninth month of the twentieth year of Syowa
..
| Seal of |
| the | Signed: H I R O H I T O
| Emperor |
!!
Countersigned: Naruhiko-o
Prime Minister
Mamoru Shigemitsu
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Iwao Yamazaki
Minister of Home Affairs
Juichi Tsushima
Minister of Finance
Sadamu Shimomura
Minister of War
Mitsumasa Yonai
Minister of Navy
Chuzo Iwata
Minister of Justice
Tamon Maeda
Minister of Education
Kenzo Matsumura
Minister of Welfare
Kotaro Sengoku
Minister of Agriculture
and Forestry
Chikuhei Nakajima
Minister of Commerce
and Industry
Naoto Kobiyama
Minister of Transportation
Fumimaro Konoe
Minister without Portfolio
Taketora Ogata
Minister without Portfolio
Binshiro Obata
Minister without Portfolio
---------------------------------------
INSTRUMENT OF SURRENDER
of the
Japanese and Japanese-Controlled Armed Forces
in the Philippine Islands
to the Commanding General
United States Army Forces, Western Pacific
Camp John Hay
Baguio, Mountain Province,
Luzon, Philippine, Islands
3 September, 1945
Pursuant to and in accordance with the proclamation of the Emperor of
Japan accepting the terms set forth in the declaration issued by the
heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China
on 26 July 1945; at Potsdam and sub- sequently adhered to by the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics; and to the formal instrument of sur-
render of the Japanese Imperial Government and the Japanese Imperial
General Headquarters signed at Toyko Bay at 0908 on 2 September 1945:
1. Acting by command of and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan,
the Japanese Imperial Government and the Japanese Imperial
General Headquarters, We hereby surrender unconditionally to
the Commanding General, United States Army Forces, Western
Pacific, all Japanese and Japanese-controlled armed forces,
air, sea, ground and auxiliary, in the Philippine Islands.
2. We hereby command all Japanese forces wherever situated in
the Philippine Islands to cease hostilities forthwith, to
preserve and save from damage all ships, aircraft, and
military and civil property, and to comply with all require-
ments which may be imposed by the Commanding General, United
States Army Forces, Western Pacific, or his authorized
representatives.
3. We hereby direct the commanders of all Japanese forces in the
Philippine Islands to issue at once to all forces under their
command to surrender unconditionally themselves and all
forces under their control, as prisoners of war, to the
nearest United States Force Commander.
4. We hereby direct the commanders of all Japanese forces in the
Philippine Islands to surrender intact and in good order to
the nearest United States Army Force Commander, at times and
at places directed by him, all equipment and supplies of
whatever nature under their control.
5. We hereby direct the commanders of all Japanese forces in the
Philippine Islands at once to liberate all Allied prisoners
of war and civilian internees under their control, and to
provide for their protection, care, maintenance and immediate
transportation to places as directed by the nearest United
States Army Force Commander.
6. We hereby undertake to transmit the directives given in
Paragraphs 1 through 5, above, to all Japanese forces in the
Philip- pine Islands immediatlely by all means within our
power, and further to furnish to the Commanding General,
United States Army Forces, Western Pacific, all necessary
Japanese emissaries fully empowered to bring about the
surrender of Japanese forces in the Philippine Islands with
whom we are not in contact.
7. We hereby undertake to furnish immediatly to the Commanding
General, United States Army Forces, Western Pacific, a
statement of the designation, numbers, loacations, and
commanders of all Japanese armed forces, ground, sea, or air,
in the Philippine Islands.
8. We hereby undertake faithfully to obey all further pro-
clamation, orders and directives deemed by the Commanding
General, United States Armed Forces, Western Pacific, to be
proper to effecuate this surrender.
Signed at Camp John Hay, Baguio, Mountain Province, Luzon, Philippine
Islands, at 1210 hours 3 September 1945:
TOMOYUKI YAMASHITA, DENHICI OKOCHI,
General, Imperial Japanese Vice Admiral, Imperial Japanese
Army Highest Commander, Navy, Highest Commander,
Imperial Japanese Army in Imperial Japanese Navy in the
the Philippines. Philippines.
By command and in behalf
of the Japanese Imperial
General Headquarters
Accepted at Camp John Hay, Baguio, Mountain Province Luzon
Philippine Islands, at 1210 hours 3 September 1945:
For the Commander-in-Chief, United States Army Forces, Pacific:
EDMOND H. LEAVY,
Major General, USA
Deputy Commander, United States Army Forces,
Western Pacific.
---------------------------------------
UNITED STATES ARMY FORCES IN KOREA
HEADQUARTERS XXIV CORPS
OFFICE OF THE COMMANDING GENERAL
APO 235 c/o POSTMASTER
SAN FRANSICO, CALIFORNIA
FORMAL SURRENDER BY THE SENIOR JAPANESE GROUND,
SEA, AIR AND AUXILIARY FORCES COMMANDS WITHIN
KOREA SOUTH OF 38 NORTH LATITUDE TO THE COM-
MANDING GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY FORCES IN
KOREA, FOR AND IN BEHALF OF THE COMMANDER-IN-
CHIEF UNITED STATES ARMY FORCES, PAFIFIC
WHEREAS an Instrument of Surrender was on the 2d day of September 1945
by command of and behalf of the Emperor of Japan, the Japanese Govern-
ment and the Japanese Imperial Headquarters signed by Foreign Minister
Mamouru Shigemitsu by command and in behalf of the Emperor of Japan,
the Japanese Government and by Yoshijiro Umezu by command of and in
behalf of the Japanese Imperial Headquaters and
WHEREAS the terms of the Instrument of Surrender were subsequently as
follows:
"1. We, acting by command of an in behalf of the Emperor of
Japan, the Japanese Government and the Japanese Imperial
General Headquarters, hereby accept the provisions set forth
in the declaration issued by the heads of the Governments of
the United States, China, and Great Britian on 26 July 1945
at Potsdam, and subsequently adhered to by the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, which four powers are hereafter
referred to as the Allied Powers.
"2. We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied
Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of
all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under the
Japanese control wherever situated.
"3. We hereby command all Japanese forces wherever situated and
the Japanese people to cease hostilites forthwith, to
preserve and save from damage all ships, aircraft, and
military and civil property and to comply with all require-
ments which my be imposed by the Supreme Commander for the
Allied Powers or by agencies of the Japanese Government at
his direction.
"4. We hereby command the Japanese Imperial Headquarters to issue
at once orders to the Commanders of all Japanese forces and
all forces under Japanese control wherever situated to
surrender unconditionally themselves and all forces under
their control.
"5. We hereby command all civil, military and naval officials to
obey and enforce all proclamations, and orders and directives
deemed by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers to be
proper to ef- fectuate this surrender and issued by him or
under his authority and we direct all such officials to
remain at their posts and to continue to perform their
non-combatant duties unless specifically relieved by him or
under his authority.
"6. We hereby undertake for the Emperor, the Japanese Government
and their successors to carry out the provisions of the
Potsdam Declaration in good faith, and to issue whatever
orders and take whatever actions may be required by the
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers or by any other
designated representative of the Allied Powers for the
purpose of giving effect to that Declaration.
"7. We hereby command the Japanese Imperial Government and the
Japanese Imperial General Headquarters at once to liberate
all allied prisoners of war and civilian internees now under
Japanese control and to provide for their protection, care,
maintenance and immediate transportation to places as
directed.
"8. The authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to
rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for
the Allied Powers who will take such steps as he deems proper
to effectuate these terms of surrender.
WHEREAS the terms of surrender were, on the 2d day of September 1945 as
given by the United States, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom,
the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics and other allied powers,
accepted by the Imperial Japanese Government, and
WHEREAS on the 2d day of September 1945 the Imperial General Head-
quarters by direction of the Emperor has ordered all its commanders in
Japan and abroad to cause the Japanese Armed Forces and Japanese
controlled forces under their command to cease hostilities at once, to
lay down their arms and remain in their present locations and to
surrender unconditionally to commanders acting in behalf of the United
States, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, the British Empire
and the Union of Socialist Republics, and
WHEREAS the Imperial General Headquarters, its senior commanders and
all ground, sea, air and auxiliary forces in the main islands of Japan,
minor islands adjacent thereto, Korea south of 38 north latitude and
the Philippines were directed to surrender to the Commmander-in-Chief
of the United States Army Forces, Pacific and
WHEREAS the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army Forces,
Pacific has appointed the Commanding General, XXIV Corps as the Command
General, United States Army Forces in Korea, and has directed him as
such to act for the Commander- in-Chief United States Army Forces,
Pacific in the reception of the surrender of the senior Japanese
commanders of all Japanese ground, sea, air and auxiliary forces in
Korea south of 38 north latitude and all islands adjacent thereto. Now
therefor
We, the undersigned, senior Japanese commanders of all Japanese ground,
sea, air and auxiliary forces in Korea south of 38 north latitude, do
hereby acknowledge:
a. That we have been duly advised and fully informed
of the contents of the Proclamation by the Emperor
of Japan, the Instrument of Surrender and the
orders herein above referred to.
b. That we accept our duties and obligations under
said instruments and orders and recognize the
necessity for our strict compliance therewith and
adherence thereto.
c. The the Commanding General, United States Army
Forces in Korea, is the duly authorized representa-
tive of the Commander-in-Chief United States Army
Forces, Pacific and that we will completely and
immediately carry out and put into ef fect his
instructions.
Finally, we do hereby formally and unconditionally surrender to the
Commanding General, United States Army Forces in Korea, all persons in
Korea south of 38 degrees North Latitude who are in the Armed Forces
of Japan, and all military installations, ordnance, ships, aircraft,
and other military equipment or property of every kind or description
in Korea, including all islands adjacent thereto, south of 38 degrees
North Latitude over which we exercise jurisdiction or control.
In case of conflict or ambiguity between the English text of this
document and any translation thereof, the English shall prevail.
Signed at SEOUL, KOREA at 1630 hours on the 9th day of September 1945.
YOSHIO SOZUKI
Senior Japanese commander of all
Japanese ground and air forces
in Korea south of 38 north
latitude.
GISABURO YAMAGUCHI
Senior Japanese commander of all
Japanese naval forces in Korea
south of 38 north latitude.
I, Nobuyuki Abe, the duly appointed, qualified and acting Governor
General of KOREA do hereby certify that I have read and fully under-
stand the contents of the foregoing Instrument of Surrender, and of all
documents referred to therein.
I hereby acknowledge the duties and obligations imposed upon me by said
documents, insofar as they apply to all matters within my jurisdiction
or control as Governor General of Korea, and recognize the necessity of
my strict compliance therewith and adherence thereto.
In particular do I reconize that the Commanding General, UNITED STATES
ARMY FORCES IN KOREA, is the duly authorized representative of the
Commander-in-Chief, UNITED STATES ARMY FORCES, PACIFIC, and that I am
completely and immediately to carry out and put into effect his
instructions.
Signed at SEOUL, KOREA, at 1630 hours on the 9th day of September 1945.
NOBUYUKI ABE
(Governor General of KOREA)
Accepted at SEOUL, KOREA, at 1630 hours on the 9th day of
September 1945 for and in behalf of the Commander-in-Chief
of the United States Army Forces, Pacific.
JOHN R. HODGE
JOHN R. HODGE
Lieutenant General U.S. Army
Commanding General
United States Army Forces in Korea
THOMAS C. KINCAID
T. C. KINCAID
Admiral, U. S. Navy
Representative of the United States Navy
---------------------------------------
SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER
SOUTH EAST ASIA
INSTRUMENT OF SURRENDER OF JAPANESE FORCES UNDER
THE COMMAND OR CONTROL OF THE SUPREME COMMANDER,
JAPANESE EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, SOUTHERN REGIONS,
WITHIN THE OPERATIONAL THEATRE OF THE SUPREME
ALLIED COMMANDER, SOUTH EAST ASIA
1. In pursuance of and in compliance with:
(a) the Instrument of Surrender signed by the Japanese
plenipotentiaries by command and on behalf of the
Emperor of Japan, the Japanese Government and the
Japanese Imperial General Headquarters at Toyko on
2 September, 1945;
(b) General Order No. 1, promulgated at the same place
and on the same date;
(c) the Local Agreement made by the Supreme Commander,
Japanese Expeditionary Forces, Southern Regions, with
the SupEast Asia at
Rangoon on 27 August, 1945;
to all of which Instrument of Surrender, General Order and Local
Agreement this present Instrument is complementary and which it in no
way supersedes, the Supreme Commander, Japanese Expeditionary Forces,
Southern Regions (Field Marshall Count Terauchi) does hereby surrender
unconditionally to the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia
(Admiral The Lord Louis Mountbatten) himself and all Japanese sea,
ground, air and auxiliary forces under his command or control and
within the operational theatre of the Supreme Allied Commander, South
East Asia.
2. The Supreme Commander, Japanese Expeditionary Forces,
Southern Regions, undertakes to ensure that all orders and
instructions that may be issued from time to time by the
Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, or by any of his
subordinate Naval, Military, or Air-Force Commanders of
whatever rank acting in his name, are scrupulously and
promptly obeyed by all Japanese sea, ground, air and auxili-
ary forces under the command or control of the Supreme
Commander, Japanese Expeditionary Forces, Southern Regions,
and within the operational theatre of the Supreme Allied
Commander, South East Asia.
3. Any disobediance of, or delay or failure to comply with,
orders or instructions issued by the Supreme Allied Com-
mander, South East Asia, or issued on his behalf by any of
his subordinate Naval, Military, or Air Force Commanders of
whatever rank, and any action which the Supreme Allied
Commander, South East Asia, or his subordinate Commanders
action on his behalf, may determine to be detrimental to the
Allied Powers, will be dealt with as the Supreme Allied
Commander, South East Asia may decide.
4. This Instrument takes effect from the time and date of signing.
5. This Instrument is drawn up in the English Language, which is
the only authentic version. In any case of doubt to
intention or meaning, the decision of the Supreme Allied
Commander, South East Asia is final. It is the respon-
sibility of the Supreme Commander, Japanese Expeditionary
Forces, Southern Regions, to make such translations into
Japanese as he may require.
Signed at Singapore at 0341 hours (G.M.T.) on 12 September, 1945.
SEISHIRO ITAGAKI LOUIS MOUNTBATTAN
(for) SUPREME COMMANDER SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER
JAPANESE EXPEDITIONARY FORCES, SOUTH EAST ASIA
SOUTHERN REGIONS
-------------------------------------
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X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: NIRVANAnet(tm)
&TOTSE 510/935-5845 Walnut Creek, CA Taipan Enigma
Burn This Flag 408/363-9766 San Jose, CA Zardoz
realitycheck 415/666-0339 San Francisco, CA Poindexter Fortran
Governed Anarchy 510/226-6656 Fremont, CA Eightball
New Dork Sublime 805/823-1346 Tehachapi, CA Biffnix
Lies Unlimited 801/278-2699 Salt Lake City, UT Mick Freen
Atomic Books 410/669-4179 Baltimore, MD Baywolf
Sea of Noise 203/886-1441 Norwich, CT Mr. Noise
The Dojo 713/997-6351 Pearland, TX Yojimbo
Frayed Ends of Sanity 503/965-6747 Cloverdale, OR Flatline
The Ether Room 510/228-1146 Martinez, CA Tiny Little Super Guy
Hacker Heaven 860/456-9266 Lebanon, CT The Visionary
The Shaven Yak 510/672-6570 Clayton, CA Magic Man
El Observador 408/372-9054 Salinas, CA El Observador
Cool Beans! 415/648-7865 San Francisco, CA G.A. Ellsworth
DUSK Til Dawn 604/746-5383 Cowichan Bay, BC Cyber Trollis
The Great Abyss 510/482-5813 Oakland, CA Keymaster
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
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This file was uploaded by Ben Morehead, Associate Publisher of
_Policy_Review_ magazine and authorized agent for the copyright
holder. All rights reserved. You may contact the Associate Publisher
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CompuServe ID: 71603,2037
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To order Policy Review, call 800-544-4843.
From the Fall 1993 issue of Policy Review magazine:
1983
Awakening from Orwell's Nightmare
by
ANDREW E. BUSCH AND ELIZABETH EDWARDS SPALDING
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the end of
the Cold War. Although it was difficult to foresee at the time, a
series of events in 1983 would come together to stop the seemingly
inexorable advance of Soviet totalitarianism and to lay the
groundwork for the eventual triumph of the West.
These events were neither inevitable nor self-executing. They
depended upon the decisions of men, and of one man in
particular -- Ronald Reagan -- who understood the meaning of this
century, the nature of the Cold War, and the set of circumstances
that he and his country faced. In 1983, the elements of President
Reagan's strategy joined for the first time, making possible the
successes that wrought the changes in Eastern Europe in 1989 and
culminated in the 1991 implosion of the Soviet regime and the rest
of its empire.
The Evil Empire Speech
The central theme of President Reagan's foreign policy was the
ethical distinction he continually made between the West and the
Soviet bloc. At his first press conference as president, Mr. Reagan
bluntly referred to the nature of Leninist "morality," correctly
telling a contemptuous press corps that Soviet leaders "reserve
unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,"
in order to achieve their objective of world communism. In a famous
speech before the British Parliament in June 1982, the president
called for a "crusade for freedom," and he predicted that it would
be communism, not freedom, that would end up on the "ash-heap of
history."
But President Reagan's most important Cold War speech was his March
1983 address to religious broadcasters in which he called the
Soviet Union an "evil empire":
Let us be aware that while they [the Soviet regime]
preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over
individual man, and predict its eventual domination over all people
on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.... I
urge you to beware the temptation of pride -- the temptation of
blithely declaring yourselves above it all and labelling both sides
equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive
impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant
misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle
between right and wrong and good and evil.
Mr. Reagan underscored the message that no longer
would the United States remain silent about the true nature of the
Soviet regime. Apprehending the importance of ideas and the danger
of truth far better than Mr. Reagan's critics did, the Kremlin
construed the evil empire speech as an act of political aggression.
Many people understood from the beginning that Mr. Reagan was
right. What since has become clear, however, is the effect that his
pronouncement had on those who lived in that empire. Among others,
Lech Walesa later maintained that the evil empire speech was an
epochal event in the long struggle of Eastern Europe to be free;
even former Soviet officials since have acknowledged that the
speech, in the words of Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, helped
"the motherland realize ... it was indeed evil." President Reagan's
ultimate vindication came when the foreign minister of the Russian
Federation, Andrei Kozyrev, added his concurrence: The Soviet
Union, Mr. Kozyrev said in 1992, had been an "evil empire."
The legitimacy of this rhetorical counteroffensive was reinforced
in September 1983 when the Soviets under Yuri Andropov shot down a
Korean Airlines passenger jet, KAL 007, demonstrating with
appalling clarity the accuracy of President Reagan's March charge.
The incident not only gave momentum to Mr. Reagan's exposure of the
nature of the Soviet regime; it also shut down a nascent movement
within the administration for a more accommodationist stance toward
the Kremlin.
The year 1983 also was significant for the intermediate-range
nuclear forces (INF) deployments in Western Europe. In November
1981, President Reagan reaffirmed the 1979 North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) dual-track decision, then championed by West
German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, to deploy missiles and to
negotiate for arms control. With the Soviets more aggressive than
ever as they deployed one SS-20 a week, President Reagan sought to
strengthen the West through the deployment of 108 Pershing II and
464 ground-launched cruise missiles, scheduled to begin in November
1983. To do so, he had to overcome one of the most powerful Soviet
propoganda offensives in the entire Cold War.
Peace Movements
As the Soviets had attempted to stymie NATO's founding and the
Western alliance in the late 1940s through subversion, aggression,
and totalitarian propaganda, so too, they tried to shape a
situation favorable to Kremlin hegemony in the superpower nuclear
age. It was all part of the same Cold War. The key to success, the
Kremlin knew, lay in dividing and sapping NATO of its unity and
meaning. The Soviets hoped, at a minimum, that opposition to the
Pershings and cruise missiles would become a substantial lever to
crack the Atlantic alliance. To this end, they sponsored and
inspired large portions of the nuclear freeze movement in Europe.
Six European countries had scheduled elections for 1983 -- Great
Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Norway,
and the Netherlands -- and in each of these countries, the leading
liberal-left party had been captured by the peace movement and was
opposing INF deployment. Had voters in these countries turned
against deployment, the NATO alliance probably would have collapsed
at its greatest moment of peril.
Because of the resolution of key statesmen, the parties that stood
for military preparedness all won in 1983. Helmut Kohl and the
Christian Democrats won the West German elections in March,
defeating a Social Democratic Party that had drifted to the left.
Margaret Thatcher, who did so much to draw together NATO allies at
the Williamsburg summit of late 1982, was overwhelmingly re-elected
in Britain in June. Pro-deployment parties also won 1983 elections
in Italy, Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands. France did not have
an election that year, but President Francois Mitterand, though a
Socialist, stood strong in his support of Mr. Reagan and
deployment, and against Soviet domination of the continent.
Euromissile deployment proceeded on schedule, and, more important,
the Atlantic alliance held strong. Late 1983 into 1984 was a period
of NATO cohesion unprecedented since the collective defense
organization's founding. NATO allies saw through the Kremlin
tactics aimed at straining Western unity in November 1983, when the
Soviets walked out of the START talks in Geneva. The allies
concurred with President Reagan that negotiations could come only
after the establishment of Western strength and acknowledgment of
that strength by the Soviet Union. As Mrs. Thatcher noted that
Reagan "strengthened not only America's defenses, but also the will
of America's allies."
The SDI Wild Card
President Reagan's revolution in strategic defense also came in
1983. His March 23 speech challenged the very nature of modern
warfare. It dazed the Soviets and helped to break the back of the
nuclear freeze movement. Mr. Reagan rejected the logic of mutually
assured destruction (MAD) and flexible response, which left
civilian populations totally vulnerable to nuclear destruction. He
announced the goal of making nuclear weapons "impotent and
obsolete." As the president said, "What if free people could live
secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the
threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that
we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before
they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"
With this March 1983 speech, President Reagan finished putting
forth his vision to transform radically the global strategic
situation and the nature of defense. Mr. Reagan showed that the
West had the political courage and know-how to fight and win what
Soviet thinkers commonly called the scientific-technical revolution
in military affairs. The Kremlin referred over and over to American
militarization of space. Soviet leaders Konstantin Chernenko and
especially Mikhail Gorbachev attempted vigorously to derail SDI.
Mr. Gorbachev and his Foreign Ministers Eduard Shevardnadze and
Aleksandr Bessmertnykh now have conceded the importance of SDI in
driving change in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. President
Reagan had begun to move the West beyond containment with the
promise of propelling the world beyond communism and Cold War.
Turning the Tide in El Salvador
As Ronald Reagan pursued a two-track strategy in Europe and on
defense policy -- one track securing the base of the Western alliance
and restoring our deterrent capacity, the other track seizing the
initiative with SDI -- he also constructed a two-tiered policy in the
Third World. First, President Reagan sought to brace American
friends and prevent further Soviet penetration. Second, he began to
pursue the offensive against many of the Kremlin clients that had
taken power in the 1970s: Cambodia, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan,
Grenada, and Nicaragua. No other year was as pivotal to the
president's strategy as was 1983.
It is easy to forget that, throughout 1982 and 1983, a serious
question existed as to whether the United States would be able to
ensure the survival of a fledgling democracy in El Salvador. When
the communists launched a major offensive in late 1983 that scored
several important victories, the Faribundo Marti National
Liberation Front (FMLN) was at its peak, leading Newsweek to
hypothesize that the Salvadoran army might collapse before
Christmas. There can be little doubt that failure in El Salvador
would have worsened prospects for democracy in Guatemala and
Honduras, if not prompted their fall. In that event, Mexico would
have been the next likely target.
Yet, while the war in El Salvador remained a stalemate, the first
signs appeared that U.S. aid was slowing the FMLN in the field.
Through American encouragement, El Salvador's government amended
itself: death-squad killings declined rapidly, and a crucial
shakeup occurred in the Salvadoran high command in November 1983.
All told, 1983 was the last year that the survival of the incipient
Salvadoran democracy was in immediate doubt.
Although the issue had surfaced in 1982, vigorous debate over aid
to the Nicaraguan resistance exploded in the summer of 1983. The
aid battle and the Contras' fortunes see-sawed throughout the
1980s, but 1983 was the first year the United States concentrated
significant political attention on the Nicaraguan resistance. It
was in 1983 that the Reagan administration, for the first time,
frankly made the case for aid. Turning back attempts in Congress to
end existing funding for the Contras, the administration also
proposed expanding Contra troop strength to 15,000. The Nicaraguan
resistance already had reached 12,000 men under arms, higher than
any other guerrilla army in Latin America, and the Contras grew
bolder.
The Reagan Doctrine Defined
A turning point had been reached in policy toward Nicaragua and,
more generally, in policy toward Soviet Third-World clients:
"covert" aid to resistance forces increasingly would be covert in
name only. While the successes in El Salvador were crucial, they
came within the framework of traditional containment policy. At the
same time, a much more proactive policy in the Third World began to
take shape in Nicaragua -- what became known as the Reagan Doctrine.
The Reagan administration had staked out a position putting the
U.S. on the side of anti-communist forces not only materially but
also morally, and it had given notice to the Soviets that the
Brezhnev Doctrine was not an acceptable point of departure for
superpower relations. In addition, aid to the Nicaraguan resistance
was linked with aid to El Salvador as two sides -- offensive and
defensive -- of a coherent policy.
Just how correct President Reagan was about communist designs for
the region became clear later. Contra pressure helped force the
Sandinistas to hold elections in February 1990; shortly after they
were ousted, the FMLN sued for peace. This linkage further was
dramatized last May when a cache of arms and documents that proved
continuing ties between the Sandinistas and communist guerrillas in
El Salvador and elsewhere was discovered outside Managua.
Grenada: Puncturing Brezhnev
The most dramatic and abrupt reversal of the Soviet design
throughout the eight years of the Reagan presidency came on October
25, 1983, when U.S. airborne troops and Marines landed on the
island of Grenada. This small island country 100 miles off the
coast of Venezuela had fallen into the Soviet orbit in March 1979,
after Maurice Bishop, a Marxist lawyer, and his "New Jewel
Movement" seized power in a coup d' tat. For the next
four-and-a-half years, Grenada moved closer to serving as a base
for Kremlin ambitions and power projection in the Caribbean, a
threat that President Reagan had identified and warned of in his
March SDI speech.
When Mr. Bishop was overthrown and executed in mid-October by even
more hard-line communist elements of the New Jewel Movement,
Grenada's small island neighbors, in the form of the Organization
of East Caribbean States, invited U.S. intervention. President
Reagan ordered the invasion to proceed on October 25. When the
operation ended a few days later, 75 percent of the American people
and 90 percent of the Grenadian people polled had supported the
action.
The American invasion of Grenada was the first major use of force
by the United States since the Vietnam War, and it was the first
time that U.S. troops had been used to liberate a communist
country. Vast stockpiles of Soviet weapons and a collection of
damning documents were discovered, American students were evacuated
successfully, Cuban forces were defeated in battle, and the
Brezhnev Doctrine was punctured. For the first time in recent
memory, the United States was on the offensive for freedom, both
substantively and directly.
Grenada was a tiny island with a tiny population of 85,000, but its
significance was huge. Historians should record that October 24,
1983, represented the high-water mark of the Soviet empire. Never
again would the communists in the Kremlin control as much territory
or wield as much influence as they did on the day before Army
Rangers landed at Point Salines. At the end of 1983, the Soviet
Third-World strategy was thwarted in key respects, and important
American allies had been reinvigorated.
Shock Waves of the Economic Rebound
Finally, victory against the Soviet Union in the Cold War was
undergirded by the remarkable recovery of the U.S. economy from the
stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In January 1983, the
United States began a 93-month period of sustained, noninflationary
economic growth. By the time the expansion ended in the summer of
1990 during the Bush administration, the Berlin Wall no longer
existed.
This economic expansion had three important effects. First, it
ensured the 1984 re-election of Ronald Reagan and the continuation
of the policies that were instrumental to victory in the primary
theater of the Cold War. Second, it guaranteed the economic
resources necessary to pursue these policies and, more generally,
to maintain a strong American presence in the world. Lastly, the
ability of the United States to pull itself out of its economic
doldrums had a momentous impact on the Soviets' faith in their
Marxist beliefs. America's economic growth disproved the
"inevitability" of the collapse of capitalism, which the Soviets
had thought to be at hand. Indeed, the recovery led to a serious
re-appraisal of economic collectivism throughout the West and the
Third World, inducing many socialist governments to introduce
capitalist reforms.
The Vulnerable Empire
Ronald Reagan entered office determined to turn around the Cold War
and complete the policy of containment. In both theory and
practice, President Reagan grasped that the Soviet Union was at a
crisis point in the early 1980s, and he saw clearly the central
contradiction within Kremlin policy that made the Soviet empire
vulnerable: it was bankrupt economically, yet was engaging in
renewed heights of external aggression. By 1980, still on a
perpetual wartime footing because of their ideology, the Soviets
invested more than two to three times what the United States did on
military spending. Mr. Reagan aimed to push this Soviet paradox of
internal decay and outward expansion, all the while reminding the
world of the tyrannical nature of the Soviet regime. In this task
he succeeded. Although their economy continued to falter and their
military spending consumed over 25 percent of GNP by 1987, the
Soviets under Mikhail Gorbachev still attempted to accelerate world
communism and emulate the arms and military capacity of the West.
But within the next four years, the Kremlin lost its empire, and
its domestic and foreign policies collapsed.
Certainly there were important points in shifting the Cold War
prior to 1983: the growth of the consensus in favor of increased
defense spending in the late 1970s; the throttling of SALT II; the
catalytic impact of Iran and Afghanistan; and the election of
Ronald Reagan in 1980. The president understood the import of these
factors, conveyed them to the American people, and incorporated
them into his policies. While victory against the Soviets was
nearer after 1983, its outline was not visible for several years.
In contrast to most of the media and foreign policy experts,
President Reagan knew that the triumphs of 1983 should not be
translated into conciliation and compromise as the political theme
of 1984.
The Beginning of the End
In sum, then, 1983 was the crucial year. It was the year that
America conclusively demonstrated it was not in decline, as had
seemed the trend at any point from 1968 on, but vigorously would
defend itself and carry the fight to the Soviets. The ideological
counterattack reached full voice, NATO was saved, nuclear
deterrence was protected successfully from the assault of the
nuclear freeze movement, the strategic defense initiative was
launched, El Salvador and with it containment in Central America
survived the worst that could be thrown against it, the groundwork
was laid for the Reagan Doctrine, the Brezhnev Doctrine was
disassembled in Grenada, and an economic expansion began that
reaffirmed American prosperity for the rest of the decade. In many
respects, the "Vietnam syndrome" that had prevented American vigor
for a decade was dismantled, not in the Persian Gulf War of 1991,
but in 1983.
These factors, including SDI, Euromissile deployment, and elements
of the rhetorical counteroffensive, created what Mr. Shevardnadze
later referred to as a "Gordian knot" for the Soviet leadership,
which found itself at times "sinking into despair over the impasse"
that ultimately would lead to a radically new policy direction.
Genrikh Trofimenko, who was head of the Department for the Study of
the U.S. Foreign Policy at the former Soviet Institute of the USA
and Canada, similarly remarked that Mr. Reagan's strategy, and the
effect it had on the Soviet regime, convinced "99 percent of all
Russians that Reagan won the Cold War."
None of President Reagan's grand strategy that began to coalesce in
1983 was inevitable; in fact, every element of it was bitterly
opposed and ridiculed by powerful segments of American and Western
political, cultural, and intellectual opinion. And even those who
believed in the policies could not know the outcome. Only the
steadfast political wisdom, confidence, and determination of Ronald
Reagan -- and the common sense of the American citizenry -- ensured that
America held firm. A president must join prudence and courage in
the service of right principles, and he must be led by the soul of
his people while being willing and able to lead their minds.
As 1980 denotes a watershed in domestic politics, 1983 is the
counterpart in world politics. The year 1983 -- a year of
extraordinary importance to the ongoing triumph of human freedom in
the protracted conflict against communist totalitarianism -- stands
out as more than a historical marker. It is an anniversary worth
noting not only for its own sake but also for the lessons it
offers: history is made by human beings making choices, and in a
battle for the survival of great and good principles, simply being
right is not enough. Fortune favors the brave.
To reprint more than short quotations, please write or FAX Ben
Morehead, Associate Publisher, Policy Review, 214 Massachusetts
Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20002, FAX (202) 675-0291.

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Libertarianism In One Lesson
A forceful one-page essay describing
the essence of the Libertarian idea
and how it can lead to a world of
abundance & harmony.
By David Bergland
LIBERTARIANISM IN ONE LESSON
========================================
This is a simple summary of what
"Libertarianism" is. It was originally
written by David Bergland, the 1984
Libertarian Party (LP) presidential
candidate, for distribution during his
campaign.
LIBERTARIANISM IN ONE LESSON
by David Bergland
Perhaps the most common question
put to Libertarian Party (LP) candidates
is: "What is Libertarianism?" Or,
"What does the LP stand for?"
First, let's avoid some common
errors and confusion by stating what
libertarianism is not. It is NOT a
combination of left and right positions.
It does not fit on the traditional
political spectrum. That spectrum does
not admit the idea that all people have
the right to control their own lives, in
all respects, and the obligation to take
responsibility for themselves and their
own actions. Liberals and conservatives
agree that the rest of us are evil or
incompetent or both and must therefore
be controlled by government. They
differ only on which aspects of our
lives should be controlled most.
By contrast, Libertarians hold that
each person has the absolute right of
self-ownership over his or her life,
body, speech, action and honestly
acquired property. Each has the
obligation to respect those same rights
in mutual respect for each other's right
of self-ownership. Anything that is
peaceful, voluntary and honest violates
no rights and thus is not a proper
subject for governmental intervention.
Law enforcement's only proper
function is to assist us in defending
our rights. The only proper laws are
those which penalize such conduct as
murder, rape, kidnaping, robbery,
burglary, arson, trespass, pollution and
fraud. On an international scale, the
U.S. armed forces should be confined to
providing security against foreign
attack on American shores. They should
not be used in foreign wars.
Libertarianism is the philosophy of
the Declaration of Independence and the
American Revolution. Most people, most
of the time, deal with each other on the
libertarian basis of mutual respect.
Two groups don't: criminals and
government. Libertarians challenge the
notion that government can legitimately
coerce the rest of us through taxation,
regulation, conscription and criminal
penalties imposed upon peaceful,
voluntary conduct. We demand that laws
be limited to their proper functions and
that government personnel be held to the
same standard of respect for our rights
that the rest of us follow.
The Libertarian Party is for all
people who do not want to be controlled
and who do not want to control others.
On all issues we will support increased
personal liberty and reduced government
control. We know that a free society is
possible and that it is practical. We
are committed to work for as long as it
may take to achieve it.
2nd. ed., 2/10/84

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THE FIRST THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION - JUNE 20, 1676:
"The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series
of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr
with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought
to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this
wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst
of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered
his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for
our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion,
and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened,
and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with
many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them,
without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been
sensible of, if it be the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed,
It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies
are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the
Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his
returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as
not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading
him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:
The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the
29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving
and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many
Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not
those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent
to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as
a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council
doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people
of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same
Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all,
even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a
living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ."
------------------------------------
The First Thanksgiving Proclamation (June 20, 1676)
On June 20, 1676, the governing council of Charlestown,
Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express
thanks for the good fortune that had seen their community
securely established. By unamimous vote they instructed
Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a day of
thanksgiving, our first. That proclamation is reproduced here
in the same language and spelling as the original.
------------------------------------
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)
Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
Permission is hereby granted to download, reprint, and/or otherwise
redistribute this file, provided appropriate point of origin
credit is given to the preparer(s) and the National Public
Telecomputing Network.
V R T


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Newsgroups: info.firearms.politics
Subject: Waco Article
From: ACUS10@waccvm.sps.mot.com (Mark Fuller)
WACO
What really happened during the government's
assault on, siege and ultimate destruction of
the Branch Davidians, and who is responsible?
by M. Pietrantoni
as printed in American Survival 12/93
[Most Americans believe the federal government's actions leading
to the deaths of Branch Davidian religious sect leader David Koresh and
nearly 100 of his followers at their compound outside Waco, Texas, last
spring were justified and necessary to control the illegal activities of
religious fanatics. Yet many troubling questions about the government's
actions remain unanswered. And as of this writing, it remains unclear
whether the Branch Davidians were in fact violating any laws. And
critics are asking if the government's heavy handed tactics were
justified--The editors.]
Why did the disaster of the destructions of the Branch Davidians
in Waco happen? Was it, as the government would have you believe, the
inevitable result of a religious fanatic who led those who believed in
him to their deaths? Or was it something far worse, a government out of
control? Or worse still, a government in control, knowing full well what
it was doing?
The media and government played up the supposedly sinister and
sensational aspect of "stockpiling" of weapons by the BDs, but in
actuality, Texas Rangers recovered about 200 guns from the ashes of the
compound, an average of 2 per person. In Texas the average number of
guns owned by citiizens is about four per person.
The flaws and lies in the search warrant which the federal
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, BATF, attempted to execute at
the Branch Davidian compound are so numerous that it would take a book
length article to detail them all. Here are just three of the more
glaring examples of the flaws in the warrant:
- Special Agent Davy Aguilera, BATF, was the head investigator
of the Branch Davidian probe. An affidavit by Aquilera filed in support
of the warrant notes a conversation by another BATF agent, Carlos
Torres, with one Joyce Sparks, a child abuse investigator with the Texas
Department of Human Services. Ms. Sparks had twice visited the BD
residence in Mt. Carmel to investigate reports that BD leader David
Koresh (who changed his name from Vernon Howell) had been "sexually
abusing young girls," reports, by the way, that Ms. Sparks found to be
unsubstantiated. In Aguilera's affidavit he says that Ms. Sparks told
agent Torres that during her second visit to the compound on April 6,
1992, "Koresh told her that he was the 'Messenger' from God, that the
world was coming to an end, and that when he 'reveals' himself the riots
in Los Angeles would pale in comparison to what was going to happen in
Waco, Texas." If Ms. Sparks is to be believed then David Koresh may well
have had a special link to the Almighty, since the L.A. riots, started
on April 27, 1992. [Three weeks afterwards].
- In another part of Aguilera's supporting affidavit he cites
the claim by one Marc Breault, a disgruntled former member of the BDs,
that Breault, "participated in firearm shooting exercises conducted by
Howell (David Koresh)." One can only wonder what kind of shot Marc
Breault proved to be during these shooting exercises, since Mr. Breault
is blind.
- In his affidavit agent Aguilera told the federal magistrate
from whom he was seeking the search warrant, that Koresh was in
possession of a "clandestine" firearms publication: The Shotgun News, a
well-respected national publication which carries ads by gun retailers
and wholesalers, and has a circulation of more than 150,000.
The February 28 raid by the BATF upon the Mt. Carmel compound,
was in all senses a disaster. Six Branch Davidians and four BATF agents
died and an unknown number of BDs (including Koresh) and 15 agents were
wounded. Every aspect of the raid, from its planning to its execution
was a case study in how not to conduct such an operation.
From a tactical standpoint dozens of questions about the raid
have been raised, for example why were there no ambulances on scene for
such a high risk operation? Why did BATF commanders give the go-ahead
for the raid even though they knew before it had ever started that the
Branch Davidians knew that the raid was imminent? Etc., etc.
There is, however, another category of questions regarding the
raid. Questions which call into doubt many of the government assertions.
Consider the following.
From the New York Times, March 28, 1993, "Moments before the
trailers arrived at the compound, two Scout helicopters and one Apache
helicopter from Austin, filled with senior federal agents, circled
overhead."
"The helicopters had been supplied by the (Texas) National
Guard, which typically lends them to Federal agencies only when the
agencies need them for law-enforcement operations involving illegal
drugs. Texas officials had been told by the bureau (BATF) that the three
helicopters were warranted because of suspicions of illegal drugs in the
compound."
"But for weeks after the raid, federal officials insisted to
reporters that there was never any suspicion of drugs at Mount Carmel.
This week, after the governor's office indicated that it believed it had
been misled by the agency, the firearms bureau for the first time said
the compound may have held a methamphetamine laboratory." It should be
noted that there is no mention of drug activity anywhere in the search
warrant. This use of military helicopters by the BATF appears to be a
clear vviolation of Title 32, of the U.S. Code, better known as the
"Posse Comitatus" act.
The BATF maintains that they were "ambushed" by the Branch
Davidians, and that it was the Davidians who opened fire first. There
are indications that the first shots may have been fired by BATF. In an
article of the June 1993 edition of Soldier of Fortune, author James L.
Pate notes that; "In phone calls to Texas news outlets and to CNN Koresh
claimed an agent fired the first shot as Koresh opened the compound door
to ask why the BATF was there. This is given some credence by one SOF
law enforcement source who said an agent had an accidental discharge
getting out of ... trailers used to transport and conceal agents--that
he wounded himself in the leg and cried out 'I'm hit!'"
"A slightly different version was told by Brad Branch, a cult
member who surrendered. On 23 March, Branch used a jailhouse pay phone
to call a radio station and say it was the BATF who fired the first
shots, wounding Koresh and killing his 2-year-old daughter. This matches
information from FBI and Texas Ranger sources whose investigations
indicate BATF fired first."
In June the House Appropriations subcommittee began hearings on
the performance of the federal agents during the BATF raid. During those
hearings, the FBI played for the first time publicly, a 30-minute
recording of telephone calls made to 911 during the raid, by David
Koresh and another leading Branch Davidian, Harvard educated lawyer
Wayne Martin. It turns out that the tapes the FBI gave the committee
were heavily edited and portions of the tape were played out of sequence
giving a distorted impression of what really happened. Indeed The Dallas
Morning News reported that a Waco police communications supervisor,
Maria DeMarco, said the 30-minute tape was incomplete and "gives a false
impression of how the event occurred."
This author has heard the actual tape, (it is much longer than
30 minutes) in its normal sequence. It is chilling to listen to, as
Koresh and later Wayne Martin speak to Lieutenant Larry Lynch of the
sheriffs office, amidst a cacophony of gunshots. Two portions of these
conversations are particularly interesting. The first is Koresh speaking
to Lynch;
Lynch: "What I'm doing is trying to establish some links with
you."
Koresh: "No, no, no, no, no, let me tell you something. You see,
you brought a bunch of guys out here and you killed some of my children.
We told you we wanted to talk." Later in the conversation Koresh says to
Lynch: "Now we are willing and we've been willing all this time to sit
down with anybody." It turns out that Koresh, many months before had
indeed offered to let the BATF come into the compound to check out his
weapons.
In another portion of the tape is a conversation between Lynch
and Wayne Martin. This conversation is on a speakerphone with Martin
across the room trying to take cover from BATF fire:
Lynch: "Wayne, talk to me Wayne. Tell me how you are."
Martin: "I have a right to defend myself. You started firing
first."
Lynch: "OK let's resolve it. Let's resolve this Wayne, before
someone gets hurt. OK?...I'm trying to make contact with the persons
outside (referring to the BATF). OK?"
A few moments later: Martin: "We've ceased fire but they're
firing at us."
The Siege--Immediately after the fiasco of the BATF raid the FBI
was given control of operations at Mt. Carmel. For 51 days the FBI tried
using psychological warfare tactics against those inside. The first
thing they did was cut off the electricity, water and sewer service to
the compound. Of course this resulted in deteriorating sanitation
conditions inside. Even though it was the government that cut off these
services, both Attorney General Reno and President Clinton would later
cite the sanitary conditions as a prime reason for the FBI assault of
April 19. "The sanitation situation within the compound we were told was
beginning to deteriorate," said Reno. And from President Clinton; "The
children....being forced to live in unsanitary and unsafe
conditions,"--Liberty magazine, June 1993.
As the days wore on the government began portraying the siege as
a "hostage crises" and brought in the FBI's HRT, Hostage Rescue Team.
The simple fact is that this was not a hostage crisis. Those who wanted
to leave the compound were permitted to do so very early on, in fact
some 37 people including 21 children left the compound voluntarily.
The FBI began ratcheting up the psychological pressure by
blasting music and macabre sounds into the compound all night long.
These sounds included the screeches of rabbits being slaughtered, as
well as Tibetan chants. The sounds were accompanied by high power
searchlights that were aimed into the compound as government helicopters
flew over the buildings at rooftop level.
By day, government tanks cleared fields of fire, and crushed the
cars, trucks, boats, bicycles and tricycles that belonged to the
Davidians and their children.
All the while, the FBI was holding daily press conferences,
assuring the public that they "would wait as long as necessary" and that
"time was on our (the FBI's) side."
The Final Assault--According to Janet Reno, she "was convinced
that the passage of time only increased the likelihood of incidents and
possible attendant injuries and harm." Yet the FBI's own Hostage
Negotiation Training Manual unequivocally states that, "Time is always
in our favor."
Despite the manual, and the public statements, the government
saw fit in the pre-dawn hours of April 19, to begin an assault against
the Branch Davidians. There had been no provocation from those within
the compound.
It must be remembered that what the world saw on TV that April
morning, the Mt. Carmel compound aflame, was the very end of a more than
six-hour-long assault by the government. That assault began with the
absurd spectacle of government loudspeakers blaring "this is not an
assault" into the compound while tanks were repeatedly ramming the
building and collapsing its stairways and hallways.
And why would those inside need or want to escape? Because the
government had for six hours or more been pumping a virulent type of
teargas known as CS into the building. Yet according to an article
entitled "Mass Murder, American-Style" that appeared in the June 1993
issue of Liberty magazine: "We find that a week before the assault, the
FBI said that it would not use tear gas on the compound, because it
feared for the safety of the children. It had evidence that the adults
had gas masks but the children did not.'" However just seven days later,
"the FBI's operational plan was to pump in gas until the masks failed --
which would require eight hours of continuous gassing." Also of interest
is the fact that CS gas is to be banned for military use as of January
1994 under terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention. According to
Benjamin C. Garrett, director of the Chemical and Biological Arms
Control Institute, CS would have particularly impacted the children:
"The reaction would have intensified for the children" since "the
smaller you are the sooner you would feel response."
The government maintains that the fire which consumed the
compound was deliberately set by those inside. Others theorize that the
fire resulted from lighted kerosine lanterns being knocked over as the
tanks rammed the building. There is a third possibility. One that is
both disturbing to think about and frightening in its implications. That
is that the fire was no accident, that it was purposely set by the
government.
The American Justice Federation, AJF, headed by attorney Linda
Thompson, has released a videotape of the FBI attack against the
compound. A lot of the footage has been compiled from satellite feeds to
the TV networks from video tape that has not been previously available
to the public. Some of the scenes directly contradict government
assertions. For example, one scene clearly shows a tank ramming through
a wall of the compound two separate times. Each timee the tank backs out
a jet of flame coming from a nozzle at the front of the tank and aimed
into the building is clearly visible.
It has now been determined that most of the women and all of the
children fled to the underground concrete bunker to escape the CS gas.
The bunker was located underneath the lawn on the north side of the
compound, not underneath the building itself.
Dr. N.S. Pirwani the chief medical investigator has stated that
"21 of the BDs died of gunshot wounds but the rest died of smoke
inhalation and suffocation due to being buried in debris when the bunker
collapsed." What would cause a concrete bunker to collapse? The AJF
videotape shows a tank moving backwards and forwards over what is
described as the roof of that bunker before the fire in the compound
ever started.
Dick DeGuerrin, Koresh's attorney was asked in an interview in
SoF if the fire was deliberately set by the government. His answer, "I'm
not ready to say that. I don't have any evidence to support it. I heard
a rumor that six or eight specially trained [men] were sent in to shoot
people...when you look at some of the wounds, they were not suicide
wounds."
The End or Just the Beginning-- Waco, coming as it did just months after
the government seige of Idaho recluce and racial separatist Randy
Weaver, may not be an isolated inci- dent. Are we seeing a pattern
established where the government will use the rubric of "gun control,"
"child abuse" or other allegations to attack law-abiding people it deems
undesirable?
After the immolation of the Branch Davidians, President Clinton
said: "I hope very much that others who will be tempted to join cults
and to become involved with people like David Koresh will be deterred by
the horrible scenes they have seen." He also, on the evening of the fire
called Attorney General Janet Reno and said to her, "You should sleep
well. You did a good job today."
The AJF tape, Waco -- The Big Lie, can be purchased for $20 from
the American Justice Federation, 3850 South Emerson Ave., Indianapolis,
IN 46203.

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The following info was captured from the Patriot BBS
((818) 888-9882) and I'm uploading it as I got it.
Social Security Information
===========================
It has been brought to my attention that there is an IRS manual that
states that if you have a social security number you are classified as
a business entity. You all know that a business entity does not and
cannot receive wages. They can only receive "income". This is why
the IRS can and does harass everyone for taxes. They are only a
business and the Constitution does not apply to a business entity.
Citizen of the State or an alien?
=================================
The Government Code Section 242, states that you are either a Citizen
of this State, a Citizen of another State, or an alien. Now if you
are a citizen of the District of Columbia (which is not a State),
under the so-called 14th Amendment you are a second class citizen or
an alien as the law relates to you. You can be regulated in all
aspects of life, as you are not a "Citizen". If you don't believe me,
look at any law, it only applies to the "residents of the state" not
to the "Citizens of the State".
State Rights or One World Slavery?
==================================
Everyone wants the government out of their hip pocket, and
from my legal research there is only one way to do it. That is to
restore State Rights and State Citizenship, as our founding fathers
intended these States to be a Republic, not a democracy (mob rule).
The federal government is harassing the people in the
several states as they are not State Citizens, but only "residents"
and are "aliens" to the States, as they are "citizens of the United
States" (District of Columbia). The Federal Government can and does
tax their citizens and they do it legally. You cannot remain a
federal citizen and correct the situation.
You must advocate the restoring of State Rights and State
Citizenship for those that qualify for such status. If you do this,
everything else that you want will come to pass, aliens will still
become liable for the federal tax, State Citizens will be exempt.
This is according to the Bible and Christianity.
Next, by restoring State Rights and State Citizenship you
will throw a kink in the one world government dictatorship advocated
by the President. Only "federal" citizens are subject to the
"federal" debt, the Citizens of Mexico and the Citizens of Japan
arenot subject to the "federal" debt, and neither are the Citizens of
the Several States.
You become subject to the "federal" debt when you obtain a
Social Security Number and have your children's birth certificate
registered with the state as security for the "federal debt". This
is correct as the birth certificate is given to the federal
"Commerce Department". As the Federal Reserve System proudly states
in the publications the security of the federal debt is secured by
the future labors of the federal citizens.
I hope that you will read and understand what this means
and you may grow to be a effective force with the future American
Republic, and not a slave under the one world government.

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From the Chicago Tribune, 1/13/94, Editorial:
Too much ado about two crosses
It must be exhausting to be a self-appointed guardian of church-state
separation in this age. For Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, national
spokesperson for American Atheists Inc., life seems to be a constant odyssey in
search of insidious schemes to sneak in a little religion where it doesn't
belong.
He has taken on everything from religious symbols on municipal seals, to
street signs pointing the way to churches, to Christmas decorations and
menorahs on municipal property. Usually, one way or another, he has won, for
if you give a fine reading to the Constitution--and force a court to render on
it--it is clear that government and religion aren't to mix.
It is, however, hard to believe that this is what the framers of the Bill
of Rights had in mind when they crafted the 1st Amendment. Properly worried
about the official imposition or intolerance of religion, they made certain
that government could neither establish it nor prohibit its free exercise.
Sherman is worried these days about two foot-high crosses atop a sign at
Waukegan's 142-year-old, city-owned Oakwood Cemetary. Most people wouldn't
think twice about seeing a cross at a cemetary, or be offended by it. But
Sherman has been thinking about it a lot, and sees offense to the Constitution.
He has taken his cause to the Waukegan City Council, asking that the
crosses be removed forthwith--or he will, of course, sue. For legal standing,
he is joined by an 18-year-old Waukegan resident, to whom the crosses are "a
violation of personal freedom."
Most people would rightly wonder exactly what freedom is at stake here,
other than that of an atheist to be nettlesome about an insignificant matter.
They might wonder if nothing is sacred to this guy, but that is exactly his
point. More basically, they might wonder why this is worth bothering about.
Waukegan Mayor Bill Durkin has the proper perspective. He will investigate
the constitutionality of the issue, and he will not make the mistake of other
communities in spending thousands of dollars and years of litigation fighting a
Sherman crusade. But he will not roll over easily, or any time soon.
Sherman probably is right, in a strictly legal sense. But obsessively
pursuing matters so inconsequential and harmless only serves to trivialize a
bedrock of American democracy. There truly are times to be vigilant, as the
founders were, about the improper mingling of religion and state. This is not
one of them.
=============================================================================
Letter to the Editor in response, 1/20/94:
CHICAGO--What you call in your editorial "Too much ado about two crosses
(Jan. 13)" obsessive pursuit of inconsequential matters, I call the pursuit of
what really matters.
Christians in this country often see such things as a cross over a public
cemetary, a nativity scene or Christmas tree in public places as rather
mundane, secular symbols of our society in America. For that minority,
including myself, who is not Christian, such symbols are not inconsequential
nor secular; rather they are painful reminders that no matter what the
Constitution says, we do in fact live in a Christian nation.
I applaud every effort of Rob Sherman's to separate church from state.
Daniel Kelber

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THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM MYTH:
Presidential Elections:
The Multi-Partisan Truth
by Jackie Bradbury, Secretary
Missouri Libertarian Party
People in the United States have been clinging to a myth
for a very long time now - that the United States is a two
party system. Heck, they use the term "bipartisan" as if it
means that all views are represented, when in fact it is only
two opinions out of many. We Libertarians know this is
incorrect (and we have been using the term ourselves lately in
Columbia, meaning Libertarians and Greens), but it's nice to
have it verified by outside sources.
The source I used is my old college days history
textbook: _Essentials_Of_American_History_. It lists all of
the Presidential elections from 1789 (I added 1988 and 1992):
it lists most of the candidates who got anything near a
significant vote total or an electoral vote.
See the chart below (Sysop note: adjoining file). As you
can see, in fact a _three-way_ race is more common than any
other. Three-way races make up 44% of all of our Presidential
elections, as a matter of fact (23 out of 52 total), and two-
candidate races only make up 37% of all Presidential elections
in history... We have even had a few four and five-way races
as well (19% of all elections). And as an interesting note,
look at how rare a two-way race is in the 20th Century as
compared to the previous one. Perhaps we could speculate WHY
the cycle swings from multi-candidate elections to two-
candidate elections.
It may have something to do with social upheaval - you
can point to many of the multi-party swings and they tend to
correspond with social movements such as women's suffrage, the
civil rights movement, etc. They also somewhat correspond to
economic stability as well, such as the current economic
crisis (our national debt) corresponds with the current multi-
candidate swing in the cycle. I'm sure a more competent
political scientist than I can figure out what happens and
why: the important thing is that, whatever the reasons, you
can see that indeed multi-candidate and multi-partisan
politics are no strangers to democracy in the United States.
(taken from the SHOW ME FREEDOM, June 1993 issue, a
publication of the Missouri Libertarian Party).

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The Third Week of Foot Injuries
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1994
If the prosecution of the Branch Davidians had a foot or
even four feet they would all be punctured by bullets in this
third week. It was an impressive third week for the trial. We
have heard confirmation of the violation of the posse comitatus
law, admission of intent to deceive the public, and testimony the
government was lying as to events.
First we have three National Guardsmen admitting they were
piloting helicopters in the initial attack upon the home of the
Branch Davidians in Waco. This is specifically prohibited by the
Posse Comitatus Act. I have previously noted this is felony
murder as deaths resulted during the course of the commission of
a felony. Previously I suggested it was only when the tanks were
used by the FBI. We now have testimony by the pilots of the
helicopters that the entire raid constituted felony murder.
The pilots were under some pressure to give their original
testimony as first they (all of them) testified they did not get
within 1000 feet of the compound. Then there was video tape
shown in court they had circled the compound at least three times
and that of course demonstrated perjury on their part. They
indicated their testimony was under pressure of the prosecutors.
As they had made continuous flight recordings for the three
hours of their flight time they were unable to identified who had
edited it down to seventeen minutes and presented it as the sum
total off the flight time.
Next the government was requested to present all the
information supporting the statements in the Treasury Department
report of the incident. The prosecution objected saying the
report was meant for public and media consumption and, in effect,
not intended to represent provable or substantiable statements.
Listen up. The prosecution has said that what they want you
to read has absolutely NOTHING to do with what they can prove in
court. What they want the media to present has no relation to
the evidence. The prosecution has objected to having to prove
anything in the Treasury report.
That folks is an admission of deliberately misleading the
public with a report that is insubstantial. In layman's terms
that means if we can be clever enough in our wording they might
belief us. In reality it means there is nothing in the Treasury
report that is credible as by prosecution statement it was
created only for public an media consumption and not to present
what really happened.
Finally we have the who was ordered to be the inside man to
infiltrate and report on David Koresh. Immediately afterwards he
hired his own attorney as he believed the BATF was making him the
scapegoat. He believed this because he knew they were lying
about events as they occured.
In the previous two weeks we have no two witnesses who can
tell the same story of the original attack. We have no testimony
of any intent to serve the search warrant in a peaceful manner.
We have no witness who can swear to any intention to identify
themselves or their possession of a warrant. We have no person
who can swear they did identify themselves and their possession
of a warrant.
Now in the third week we have a specific admission of felony
violation of the posse comitatus law. We have specific admission
the Treasury intended to mislead the public. We have specific
allegation from a person who knows what happened that the
government was lying to the public.
If Kafka were alive today he would abandon fiction as he
could not imagine any trial as strange as this.
We have almost every mainstream dissent from the government
version proven correct in only three weeks and all by prosecution
witnesses. People who have supported the government now know
they have been lied to. People who have questioned felony murder
now have no question it occured.
If there is going to be justice, when are the felony
murderers going to be indicted?

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14 page printout, page 37 to 50 of 225
SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
GEORGE WASHINGTON.
During the presidential campaign of 1880, the Christian Union
made the startling admission that, of the nineteen men who, up to
that time, had held the office of President of the United States,
not one, with the Possible exception of Washington, had ever been
a member of a Christian church.
Was Washington a church member? Was he in any sense a
Christian? In early life he held a formal adherence to the church
of England, serving, for a time, as a vestryman in the parish in
which he resided. But this being merely a temporal office did not
necessitate his being a communicant, nor even a believer in
Christianity. In his maturer age he was connected with no church.
Washington, the young Virginia planter, might, perhaps, with some
degree of truthfulness, have been called a Christian; Washington,
the Soldier, statesman and sage, was not a Christian, but a Deist.
This great man, like most men in public life, was reticent
respecting his religious views. This rendered a general knowledge
of his real belief impossible, and made it easy for zealous
Christians to impose upon the public mind and claim him for their
faith. Whatever evidence of his unbelief existed was, as far as
possible, suppressed. Enough remains, however, to prompt me to
attempt the task of proving the truth of the following
propositions:
1. That Washington was not a Christian communicant.
2. That he was not a believer in the Christian religion.
WAS WASHINGTON A COMMUNICANT?
Washington was not a communicant. This fact can be easily
demonstrated. A century ago it was the custom of all classes,
irrespective of their religious beliefs, to attend church.
Washington, adhering to the custom, attended. But when the
administration of the sacrament took place, instead of remaining
and partaking of the Lord's Supper as a communicant would have
done, he invariably arose and retired from the church.
The closing years of his life, save the last two, were passed
in Philadelphia, he being then President of the United States. In
addition to his eight years' incumbency of the presidency, he was,
during the eight years of the Revolutionary war, and also during
the six years that elapsed between the Revolution and the
establishment of the Federal government, not only a frequent
visitor in Philadelphia, but during a considerable portion of the
time a resident of that city. While there he attended the Episcopal
churches of which the Rev. William White and the Rev. James
Abercromble were rectors. In regard to his being a communicant, no
evidence can be so pertinent or so decisive as that of his pastors.
Bishop White, the father of the Protestant Episcopal church of
America, is one of the most eminent names in church history. During
a large portion of the period covering nearly a quarter of a
century, Washington, with his wife, attended the churches in which
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Bishop White officiated. In a letter dated Fredericksburg, Aug. 13,
1835, Colonel Mercer sent Bishop White the following inquiry
relative to this question:
"I have a desire, my dear Sir, to know whether Gen.
Washington was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal
church, or whether he occasionally went to the communion only,
or if ever he did so at all. ... No authority can be so
authentic and complete as yours on this point."
To this inquiry Bishop White replied as follows:
"Philadelphia, Aug. 15, 1835.
"Dear Sir: In regard to the subject of your inquiry, truth
requires me to say that Gen. Washington never received the
communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister.
Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant.
... I have been written to by many on that point, and
have been obliged to answer them as I now do you. I am
respectfully.
"Your humble servant,
"WILLIAM WHITE."
(Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 196, 197).
In a standard Christian authority, Sprague's "Annals of the
American Pulpit," written and compiled by Rev. Wm. B. Sprague,
D.D., is a sketch of the life of Rev. James Abercromble, D.D. In
this biographical sketch is to be found some very important
evidence from the pen of Washington's other pastor, pertaining to
the subject under consideration. I quote the following:
"One incident in Dr. Abercrombie's experience as a
clergyman, in connection with the Father of his Country, is
especially worthy of record; and the following account of it
was given by the Doctor himself, in a letter to a friend, in
1831 shortly after there had been some public allusion to it:
'With respect to the inquiry you make I can only state the
following facts; that, as pastor of the Episcopal church,
observing that, on sacramental Sundays, Gen. Washington,
immediately after the desk and pulpit services, went out with
the greater part of the congregation -- always leaving Mrs.
Washington with the other communicants -- she invariably being
one -- I considered it my duty in a sermon on Public Worship,
to state the unhappy tendency of example, particularly of
those in elevated stations who uniformly turned their backs
upon the celebration of the Lord's Supper. I acknowledge the
remark was intended for the President; and as such he received
it. A few days after, in conversation with, I believe, a
senator of the United States, he told me he had dined the day
before with the President, who in the course of conversation
at table said that on the preceding Sunday he had received a
very just reproof from the pulpit for always leaving the
church before the administration of the Sacrament; that he
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
honored the preacher for his integrity and candor; that he had
never sufficiently considered the influence of his example,
and that he would not again give cause for the repetition of
the reproof; and that, as he had never been a communicant,
were he to become one then it would be imputed to an
ostentatious display of religious zeal? arising altogether
from his elevated station. Accordingly, he never afterwards
came on the morning of sacramental Sunday, though at other
times he was a constant attendant in the morning'" (Annals of
the American Pulpit, Vol. v, p. 394).
Here we have a confirmation of the statement previously made
that Washington absented himself from church on sacramental
Sundays; undeniable proof that during the later years of his life
he was not a communicant; and, above all, the assurance of
Washington himself that "he had never been a communicant."
The Rev. E.D. Neill, in the Episcopal Recorder, the organ of
the church of which it is claimed Washington was a communicant,
says:
"As I read, a few days ago, of the death of the Rev.
Richard M. Abercrombie, rector of St. Matthew's Protestant
Episcopal church in Jersey City, memories of my boyhood arose.
He was born not far from my father's house in Philadelphia and
was the son of the Rev. James Abercrombie, a fine scholar and
preacher, who had in early life corresponded with the great
lexicographer, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and in later years was the
assistant minister of Christ's and St. Peter's churches, in
Philadelphia, where my maternal ancestors had worshiped for
more than one generation. One day, after the father had
reached four score years, the lately deceased son took me into
the study of the aged man, and showed me a letter which
President George Washington had written to his father,
thanking him for the loan of one of his manuscript sermons.
Washington and his wife were regular attendants upon his
ministry while residing in Philadelphia. The President was not
a communicant, notwithstanding all the pretty stories to the
contrary, and after the close of the sermon on sacramental
Sundays, had fallen into the habit of retiring from the church
while his wife remained and communed."
Referring to Dr. Abercrombie's reproof of Washington, Mr.
Neill says:
"Upon one occasion Dr. Abercromble alluded to the unhappy
tendency of the example of those dignified by age and position
turning their backs upon the celebration of the Lord's Supper.
The discourse arrested the attention of Washington, and after
that he never came to church with his wife on Communion
Sunday."
The Rev. Dr. Wilson, in his famous sermon on the Religion of
the Presidents, also alludes to this subject. He says:
"When the Congress sat in Philadelphia, President
Washington attended the Episcopal church. The rector, Dr.
Abercrombie, told me that on the days when the sacrament of
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
the Lord's Supper was to be administered, Washington's custom
was to rise just before the ceremony commenced, and walk out
of church. This became a subject of remark in the
congregation, as setting a bad example. At length the Doctor
undertook to speak of it, with a direct allusion to the
President. Washington was heard afterwards to remark that this
was the first time a clergyman had thus preached to him, and
he should henceforth neither trouble the Doctor nor his
congregation on such occasions; and ever after that, upon
communion days, he 'absented himself altogether from the
church.'
The Rev. Bird Wilson, D.D., author of the "Memoir of Bishop
White," says:
"Though the General attended the churches in which Dr.
White officiated, whenever he was in Philadelphia during the
Revolutionary war, and afterwards while President of the
United States, he never was a communicant in them" (Memoir of
Bishop White, p. 188).
The Rev. Beverly Tucker, D.D., of the Episcopal church, has
attempted to prove that Washington was a churchman. But while
professing to believe that he was a communicant before the
Revolution he is compelled to admit that there is a doubt about his
communing after the Revolution. He says:
"The doubt has been raised partly on the strength of a
letter written by Bishop White in 1832. He says that
Washington attended St. Peter's church one winter, during the
session of the Continental Congress, and that during his
Presidency he had a pew in Christ church, 'which was
habitually occupied by himself, by Mrs. Washington, who was
regularly a communicant, and by his secretaries. This language
is taken to mean, and probably correctly, that Washington did
not commune."
Dr. Tucker is evidently not acquainted with Bishop White's
letter to Col. Mercer in 1835. There is no question as to the
meaning of that letter. Continuing, Dr. Tucker says:
"The doubt rests again on the recollection of Mrs.
Fielding Lewis, Nelly Custis, Gen. Washington's step-
granddaughter, written in 1833, who states that after the
Mount Vernon family removed from Pohick church to Christ
church, Alexandria, the General was accustomed, on Communion
Sundays, to leave the church with her, sending the carriage
back for Mrs. Washington."
Washington's biographer, the Rev. Jared Sparks, who seems to
have entertained the popular notion that Washington was in early
life a communicant, admits that at a latter period he ceased to
commune. He says:
"The circumstance of his withdrawing himself from the
communion service at a certain period of his life has been
remarked as singular. This may be admitted and regretted, both
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
on account of his example and the value of his opinions as to
the importance and practical tendency of this rite" (Life of
Washington, Vol. ii, p. 361).
Origen Bacherer, in his debate with Robert Dale Owen in 1831,
made an effort to prove that Washington was a Christian
communicant. He appealed for help to the Rev. Wm. Jackson, rector
of the Episcopal church of Alexandria, the church which Washington
had attended. Mr. Jackson was only too willing to aid him. He
instituted an exhaustive investigation for the purpose of
discovering if possible some evidence of Washington having been a
communicant. Letters of inquiry were addressed to his relatives and
friends. But his efforts were unsuccessful. While he professed to
believe that Washington was a Christian, he was compelled to say:
"I find no one who ever communed with him" (Bacheler-Owen
Debate, Vol. ii, p. 262).
This, as might be supposed, did not satisfy Mr. Bacherer, and
he entreated the rector to make another attempt. The second attempt
was as fruitless as the first.' He writes:
"I am sorry after so long a delay in replying to your
last, that it is not in my power to communicate something
decisive in reference to General Washington's church
membership" (Ibid., ii, p. 370.)
In the same letter Mr. Jackson says:
"Nor can I find any old person who ever communed with
him."
The "People's Library of Information" contains the
following:
"The question has been raised as to whether any one of
our Presidents was a communicant in a Christian church.
There is a tradition that Washington asked permission of a
Presbyterian mister in New Jersey to unite in communion. But
it is only a tradition. Washington was a vestryman in the
Episcopal church. But that office required no more piety
than it would to be mate of a ship. There is no account of
his communing in Boston, or in New York, or Philadelphia, or
elsewhere, during the Revolutionary struggle."
The tradition of Washington's wishing to unite with a
Presbyterian minister in communion, like many other so-called
traditions of the same character, has been industriously
circulated. And yet it is scarcely possible to conceive of a more
improbable story. Refusing to commune with the members of the
church in which he was raised, and the church he was in the habit
of attending, and going to the priest of another church -- a
stranger -- and asking to commune with him! Had Washington been
some intemperate vagabond, the story might have been believed.
But Washington was not an inebriate, and was never so pressed for
a drink as to beg a sup of sacramental wine from a Calvinistic
clergyman.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Gen. A.W. Greely, U.S.A., in an article on "Washington's
Domestic and Religious Life" which was published in the Ladies'
Home Journal for April, 1896, says:
"But even if he was ever confirmed in its [the
Episcopal] faith there is no reliable evidence that he ever
took communion with it or with any other church."
Some years ago, I met at Paris, Texas, an old gentlemen, Mr.
F.W. Miner, who was born and who lived for a considerable time
near Mt. Vernon. He told me that when a boy he was once in
company with a party of old men, neighbors in early life of
Washington, who were discussing the question of his religious
belief. He says that it was admitted by all of them that he was
not a church member, and by the most of them that he was not a
Christian.
Mr. George Wilson of Lexington, Mo., whose ancestors owned
the Custis estate, and founded Alexandria, where Washington
attended church, writes as follows: "My great-grandmother was
Mary Alexander, daughter of 'John the younger,' who founded
Alexandria. The Alexander pew in Christ church was next to
Washington's, and an old lady, a kinswoman of mine, born near
Alexandria and named Alexander, told me that the tradition in the
Alexander family was that Washington NEVER took communion."
In regard to Washington being a vestryman, Mr. Wilson says:
"At that time the vestry was the county court, and in order to
have a hand in managing the affairs of the county, in which his
large property lay, regulating the levy of taxes, etc.,
Washington had to be a vestryman."
The St. Louis Globe contained the following in regard to the
church membership of Washington:
"It is a singular fact that much as has been written
about Washington, particularly with regard to his superior
personal virtue, there is nothing to show that he was ever a
member of the church. He attended divine service, and lived
an honorable and exemplary life, but as to his being a
communicant, the record is surprisingly doubtful."
In an article conceding that Washington was not a
communicant, the Western Christian Advocate says:
"This is evident and convincing from the Life of Bishop
White, bishop of the Episcopal church in America from 1787
to 1836. Of this evidence it has been well said: 'There does
not appear to be any such undoubtable evidence existing. The
more scrutinously the church membership of Washington is
examined, the more doubtful it appears. Bishop White seems
to have had more intimate relations with Washington than any
clergyman of his time. His testimony outweighs any amount of
influential argumentation on the question.'
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
The following is a recapitulation of the salient points in
the preceding testimony, given in the words of the witnesses. It
is in itself an overwhelming refutation of the claim that
Washington was a communicant:
"Gen. Washington never received the communion in the
churches of which I am the parochial minister." -- Bishop
White.
"On sacramental Sundays, Gen. Washington, immediately
after the desk and pulpit services, went out with the
greater part of the Congregation." -- Rev. Dr. Abercromble.
"After that, [Dr. Abercrombie's reproof,] upon communion
days, he absented himself altogether from the church." -- Rev.
Dr. Wilson.
"The General was accustomed, on communion Sundays, to
leave the church with her [Nelly Custis], sending the
carriage back for Mrs. Washington. " -- Rev. Dr. Beverly
Tucker.
"He never was a communicant in them [Dr. White's
churches]." -- Rev. Dr. Bird Wilson.
"I find no one who ever communed with him." -- Rev.
William Jackson.
"The President was not a communicant." -- Rev. E.D.
Neill.
"This [his ceasing to commune] may be admitted and
regretted." -- Rev. Jared Sparks.
"There is no reliable evidence that he ever took
communion." -- Gen. A.W. Greely.
"There is nothing to show that he was ever a member of
the church." -- St. Louis Globe.
"I have never been a communicant." -- Washington,
quoted by Dr. Abercrombie.
The claim that Washington was a Christian communicant must
be abandoned; the claim that he was a believer in Christianity, I
shall endeavor to showy is equally untenable.
WAS WASHINGTON A CHRISTIAN?
In the political documents, correspondence, and other
writings of Washington, few references to the prevailing religion
of his day are found. In no instance has he expressed a disbelief
in the Christian religion, neither can there be found in all his
writings a single sentence that can with propriety be construed
into an acknowledgment of its claims. Once or twice he refers to
it in complimentary terms, but in these compliments there is
nothing inconsistent with the conduct of a conscientious Deist.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Religions, like their adherents, possess both good and bad
qualities, and Christianity is no exception. While there is much
in it deserving the strongest condemnation, there is also much
that commands the respect and even challenges the admiration of
Infidels. Occupying the position that Washington did, enjoying as
he did the confidence and support of Christians, it was not
unnatural that he should indulge in a few friendly allusions to
their religious faith.
In his "Farewell Address," the last and best political paper
he gave to the Christian religion is not once named. In this work
he manifests the fondest solicitude for the future of his
country. His sentences are crowded with words of warning and
fatherly advice. But he does not seem to be impressed with the
idea that the safety of the government or the happiness of the
people depends upon Christianity. He recommends a cultivation of
the religious sentiment, but evinces no partiality for the
popular faith.
In the absence of any recorded statements from Washington
himself concerning his religious belief, the most conclusive
evidence that can be presented is the admissions of his clerical
acquaintances. Among these there has been preserved the testimony
of his pastors, Bishop White and Dr. Abercromble.
In a letter to Rev. B.C.C. Parker of Massachusetts, dated
Nov. 28, 1832, in answer to some inquiries respecting
Washington's religion, Bishop White says:
"His behavior [in church] was always serious and attentive,
but as your letter seems to intend an inquiry on the point of
kneeling during the service, I owe it to the truth to declare
that I never saw him in the said attitude. ... Although I was
often in company with this great man, and had the honor of dining
often at his table, I never heard anything from him which could
manifest his opinions on the subject of religion. ... Within a
few days of his leaving the presidential chair, our vestry waited
on him with an address prepared and delivered by me. In his
answer he was pleased to express himself gratified by what he had
heard from our pulpit; but there was nothing that committed him
relatively to religious theory" ("Memoir of Bishop White," pp.
189-191; Sparks' "Life of Washington," Vol. ii., p. 359).
The Rev. Parker, to whom Bishop White's letter is addressed,
was, it seems, anxious to obtain some evidence that Washington
was a believer in Christianity, and, not satisfied with the
bishop's answer, begged him, it would appear, to tax his mind for
some fact that would tend to show that Washington was a believer.
In a letter dated Dec. 21, 1832, the bishop writes as follows:
"I do not believe that any degree of recollection will
bring to my mind any fact which would prove General
Washington to have been a believer in the Christian
revelation further than as may be hoped from his constant
attendance upon Christian worship, in connection with the
general reserve of his character" ("Memoir of Bishop White,"
p. 193).
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Bishop White's testimony does not afford positive proof of
Washington's unbelief, but it certainly furnishes strong
presumptive evidence of its truth. It is hardly possible to
suppose that he could have been a believer and have let his most
intimate Christian associates remain in total ignorance of the
fact. Bishop White indulges a faint hope that he may have been,
but this hope is simply based on his "constant attendance" at
church, and when we consider how large a proportion of those who
attend church are unbelievers, that many of our most radical
Freethinkers are regular church-goers, there are very small
grounds, I think, upon which to indulge even a hope. But even
this "constant attendance" on the part of Washington cannot be
accepted without some qualification; for, while it is true that
he often attended church, he was by no means a constant
attendant. Not only did he uniformly absent himself on communion
days, but the entries in his diary show that he remained away for
several Sundays in succession, spending his time at home reading
and writing, riding out into the country, or in visiting his
friends.
But if Bishop White cherished a faint hope that Washington
had some faith in the religion of Christ, Dr. Abercrombie did
not. Long after Washington's death, in reply to Dr. Wilson, who
had interrogated him as to his illustrious auditor's religious
views, Dr. Abercrombie's brief but emphatic answer was:
"Sir, Washington was a Deist."
Washington rarely attended, as we have seen, any church but
the Episcopal, hence, if any denomination of Christians could
claim him as an adherent, it was this one. Yet here we have two
of its most distinguished representatives, pastors of the
churches which he attended, the one not knowing what his belief
was, the other disclaiming him and asserting that he was a Deist.
The Rev. Dr. Wilson, who was almost a contemporary of our
earlier statesmen and presidents, and who thoroughly investigated
the subject of their religious beliefs, in his sermon already
mentioned affirmed that the founders of our nation were nearly
all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been
elected -- George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson --
not one had professed a belief in Christianity. From this sermon
I quote the following:
"When the war was over and the victory over our enemies
won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace
were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was
neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely
voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published
by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show
that the question was gravely debated whether God should be
in the Constitution or not, and, after a solemn debate he
was deliberately voted out of it. ... There is not only in
the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws
and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its
administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
who have been called to administer the government have not
been men making any public profession of Christianity. ...
Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by
the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a
professing Christian."
Dr. Wilson's sermon was published in the Albany Daily
Advertiser in 1831, and attracted the attention of Robert Dale
Owen, then a young man, who called to see its author in regard to
his statement concerning Washington's belief. The result of his
visit is given in a letter to Amos Gilbert. The letter is dated
Albany, November 13, 1831., and was published in New York a
fortnight later. He says:
"I called last evening on Dr. Wilson, as I told you I
should, and I have seldom derived more pleasure from a short
interview with anyone. Unless my discernment of character
has been rievously at fault, I met an honest man and sincere
Christian. But you shall have the particulars. A gentleman
of this city accompanied me to the Doctor's residence. We
were very courteously received. I found him a tall,
commanding figure, with a countenance of much benevolence,
and a brow indicative of deep thought, apparently
approaching fifty years of age. I opened the interview by
stating that though personally a stranger to him, I had
taken the liberty of calling in consequence of having
perused an interesting sermon of his, which had been
reported in the Daily Advertiser of this city, and regarding
which, as he probably knew, a variety of opinions prevailed.
In a discussion, in which I had taken a part, some of the
facts as there reported had been questioned; and I wished to
know from him whether the reporter had fairly given his
words or not. ... I then read to him from a copy of the
Daily Advertiser the paragraph which regards Washington,
beginning, 'Washington was a man,' etc., and ending,
'absented himself altogether from the church.' 'I indorse,'
said Dr. Wilson, with emphasis, 'every word of that. Nay, I
do not wish to conceal from you any part of the truth, even
what I have not given to the public. Dr. Abercrombie said
more than I have repeated. At the close of our conversation
on the subject his emphatic expression was -- for I well
remember the very words -- 'Sir, Washington was a Deist.'"
In concluding the interview, Dr. Wilson said: "I have
diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the
public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges
himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will
candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he
was a Deist and nothing more.),
In February, 1800, a few weeks after. Washington's death,
Jefferson made the following entry in his journal:
"Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when
the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure
from the government, it was observed in their consultation
that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the
Bank of Wisdom
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and
they thought they should so pen their address as to force
him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a
Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too
cunning for them. He answered every article of their address
particularly, except that, which he passed over without
notice" (Jefferson's Works, Vol. iv., p. 572).
Jefferson further says: "I know that Gouverneur Morris, who
claimed to be in his secrets, and believed himself to be so, has
often told me that General Washington believed no more in that
system [Christianity] than he did" (Ibid).
Gouverneur Morris was the principal drafter of the
Constitution of the United States; he was a member of the
Continental Congress, a United States senator from New York, and
minister to France. He accepted, to a considerable extent, the
skeptical views of French Freethinkers.
The "Asa" Green mentioned by Jefferson was undoubtedly the
Rev. Ashbel Green, chaplain to Congress during Washington's
administration. In an article on Washington's religion,
contributed to the Chicago Tribune, B.F. Underwood says:
"If there were an Asa Green in Washington's time he was
a man of no prominence, and it is probable the person
referred to by Jefferson was the Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, who
served as chaplain to the Congress during the eight years
that body sat in Philadelphia, was afterwards president of
Princeton College, and the only clerical member of Congress
that signed the Declaration of Independence. His name shines
illustriously in the annals of the Presbyterian church in
the United States."
Some years ago I received a letter from Hon. A.B. Bradford
of Pennsylvania, relative to Washington's belief. Mr. Bradford
was for a long time a prominent clergyman in the Presbyterian
church, and was appointed a consul to China by President Lincoln.
His statements help to corroborate the statements of Dr. Wilson,
Thomas Jefferson, and Mr. Underwood. He says:
"I knew Dr. Wilson personally, and have entertained him
at my house, on which occasion he said in my hearing what my
relative, the Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green of Philadelphia,
frequently told me in his study, viz., that during the time
that Congress sat in that city the clergy, suspecting from
good evidence that Washington was not a believer in the
Bible as a revelation from heaven, laid a plan to extort
from him a confession, either pro or con, but that the plan
failed. Dr. Green was chaplain to Congress during all the
time of its sitting in Philadelphia; dined with the
President on special invitation nearly every week; was well
acquainted with him, and after he had been dead and gone
many years, often said in my hearing, though very
sorrowfully, of course, that while Washington was very
deferential to religion and its ceremonies, like nearly all
the founders of the Republic, he was not a Christian, but a
Deist."
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Mr. Underwood's article contained the following from the pen
of Mr. Bradford:
"It was during his [Dr. Green's] long residence in
Philadelphia that I became intimately acquainted with him as
a relative, student of theology at Princeton, and a member
of the same Presbytery to which he belonged. Many an hour
during my student and clergyman days did I spend with him in
his study at No. 150 Pine street, Philadelphia, listening to
his interesting and instructive conversation on
Revolutionary times and incidents. I recollect well that
during one of these interviews in his study I inquired of
him what were the real opinions Washington entertained on
the subject of religion. He promptly answered pretty nearly
in the language which Jefferson says Dr. Rush used. He
explained more at length the plan laid by the clergy of
Philadelphia at the close of Washington's administration as
President to get his views of religion for the sake of the
good influence they supposed they would have in
counteracting the Infidelity of Paine and the rest of the
Revolutionary patriots, military and civil. But I well
remember the smile on his face and the twinkle of his black
eye when he said: 'The old fox was too cunning for Us.' He
affirmed, in concluding his narrative, that from his long
and intimate acquaintance with Washington he knew it to be
the case that while he respectfully conformed to the
religious customs of society by generally going to church on
Sundays, he had no belief at all in the divine origin of the
Bible, or the Jewish-Christian religion."
The testimony of General Greely, whose thorough
investigation of Washington's religious belief makes him an
authority on the subject, is among the most important yet
adduced. From his article on "Washington's Domestic and Religions
Life" I quote the following paragraphs:
"The effort to depict Washington as very devout from
his childhood, as a strict Sabbatarian, and as in intimate
spiritual communication with the church is practically
contradicted by his own letters."
"In his letters, even those of consolation, there
appears almost nothing to indicate his spiritual frame of
mind. A particularly careful study of the man's letters
convinces me that while the spirit of Christianity, as
exemplified in love of God and love of man [Theophilauthropy
or Deism], was the controlling factor of his nature, yet he
never formulated his religious faith."
"It is, however, somewhat striking that in several
thousand letters the name of Jesus Christ never appears, and
it is notably absent from his last will."
"His services as a vestryman had no special
significance from a religious standpoint. The political
affairs of a Virginia county were then directed by the
vestry, which, having the power to elect its own members,
was an important instrument of the oligarchy of Virginia."
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
"He was not regular in attendance at church save
possibly at home. While present at the First Provencal
Congress in Philadelphia he went once to the Roman Catholic
and once to the Episcopal church. He spent four mouths in
the Constitutional Convention, going six times to church,
once each to the Romish high mass, to the Friends', to the
Presbyterian, and thrice to the Episcopal service."
"From his childhood he traveled on Sunday whenever
occasion required. He considered it proper for his negroes
to fish, and on that day made at least one contract. During
his official busy life Sunday was largely given to his home
correspondence, being, as he says, the most convenient day
in which to spare time from his public burdens to look after
his impaired fortune and estates."
Dr. Moncure D. Conway, who made a study of Washington's life
and character, who had access to his private papers, and who was
employed to edit a volume of his letters, has written a monograph
on "The Religion of Washington," from which I take the following:
"In editing a volume of Washington's private letters
for the Long Island Historical Society, I have been much
impressed by indications that this great historic
personality represented the Liberal religious tendency of
his tune. That tendency was to respect religious
organizations as part of the social order, which required
some minister to visit the sick, bury the dead, and perform
marriages. It was considered in nowise inconsistent with
disbelief of the clergyman's doctrines to contribute to his
support, or even to be a vestryman in his church."
"In his many letters to his adopted nephew and young
relatives, he admonishes them about their manners and
morals, but in no case have I been able to discover any
suggestion that they should read the Bible, keep the
Sabbath, go to church, or any warning against Infidelity."
"Washington had in his library the writings of Paine,
Priestley, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and other
heretical works."
Conway says that "Washington was glad to have Volney as his
guest at Mount Vernon," and cited a letter of introduction which
Washington gave him to the citizens of the United States during
his travels in this country.
In a contribution to the New York Times Dr. Conway says:
"Augustine Washington, like most scholarly Virginians
of his time, was a Deist. ... Contemporary evidence shows
that in mature life Washington was a Deist, and did not
commune, which is quite consistent with his being a
vestryman. In England, where vestries have secular
functions, it is not unusual for Unitarians to be vestrymen,
there being no doctrinal subscription required for that
office. Washington's letters during the Revolution
Bank of Wisdom
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SIX HISTORIC AMERICANS -- GEORGE WASHINGTON.
occasionally indicate his recognition of the hand of
Providence in notable public events, but in the thousands of
his letters I have never been able to find the name of
Christ or any reference to him."
There is no evidence to show that Washington, even in early
life, was a believer in Christianity. The contrary is rather to
be presumed. His father, as Dr. Conway states, was a Deist; while
his mother was not excessively religious, His brother, Lawrence
Washington, was, it is claimed, the first advocate of religious
liberty in Virginia, and evidently an unbeliever, so that instead
of being surrounded at home by the stifling atmosphere of
superstition, he was permitted to breathe the pure air of
religious freedom.
It is certain that at no time during his life did he take
any special interest in church affairs. Gen. Greely says that "He
was not regular in church attendance save possibly at home." At
home he was the least regular in his attendance. His diary shows
that he attended about twelve times a year. During the week he
Superintended the affairs of his farm; on Sunday he usually
attended to his correspondence. Sunday visitors at his house were
numerous. If he ever objected to them it was not because they
kept him from his devotions, but because they kept him from his
work. In his diary he writes:
"It hath so happened, that on the last Sundays -- call
them the first or seventh [days] as you please, I have been
unable to perform the latter duty on account of visits from
strangers, with whom I could not use the freedom to leave
alone, or recommend to the care of each other, for their
amusement."
When he visited his distant tenants to collect his rent,
their piety, and not his, prevented him from doing the business
on Sunday, as the following entry in his diary shows:
"Being Sunday, and the people living on my land very
religious, it was thought best to postpone going among them
till to-morrow."
His diary also shows that he "closed land purchases, sold
wheat, and, while a Virginia planter, went fox hunting on
Sunday."
He did not, like most pious churchmen, believe that
Christian servants are better than others. When on one occasion
he needed servants, he wrote:
"If they are good workmen, they may be from Asia,
Africa, or Europe; they may be Mahomedans, Jews, or
Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists."
These extracts contain no explicit declarations of disbelief
in Christianity, but between the lines we can easily read, "I am
not a Christian."
**** ****
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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Here is the info on the plaques at the Blackbird Airpark as read from
Paul Stahl's photos he sent me. Thanks again to Paul for sending them
to me. Please note that there are a few typos/spelling errors in this
information. I included them in the spirit of accurate reporting!?
LOCKHEED
A-12
The A-12 was the proof-of-concept vehicle for the SR-71/YF-12 family
of "Blackbirds." It was the 12th in a series of designs for a U-2
replacement from Kelly Johnson's "Skunk Works," hence the designation
"A-12." Although its operational service is shrouded in mystery, it
is believed the single-seat A-12 was used exclusively in covert
operations by the CIA from 1967 to 1968.
**************
Of the fifteen A-12's produced, this is the prototype aircraft,
#60-6924....the first one built and flown. Although momentarily
lifting off during a high-speed taxi check on Apr 24, 1962, it's
first real flight was two days later, from the Air Force's classi-
fied Groom Lake flight test facility in Nevada. Restoration
courtesy of Lockheed Advanced Development Company.
SPECIFICATIONS
Wing Span...........................55.6 ft
Wing Area.......................1,795 sq ft
Length (excluding pitot)...........98.75 ft
Height..............................18.5 ft
Empty Weight.....................60,000 lbs
Gross Takeoff Weight............120,000 lbs
Engine.....2 Pratt & Whitney J-58 Turbojets
Static Thrust (each)...........32,500 lbs
(Note: #6924 made its first flight with
two Pratt & Whitney J75's installed.)
Crew......................................1
Sensor Payload....................2,500 lbs
PERFORMANCE
Maximun Speed.........Mach 3.35 (2,211 mph)
at 85,000 ft (estimated)
Maximum Range (unrefuelled)........2,500 mi
Maximum Operational Ceiling.......95,000 ft
This aircraft is on loan from the USAF Museum Program


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ARAB-ISRAELI WARS
=================
Since the United Nations partition of PALESTINE in 1947 and the
establishment of the modern state of ISRAEL in 1948, there have
been four major Arab-Israeli wars (1947-49, 1956, 1967, and
1973) and numerous intermittent battles. Although Egypt and
Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979, hostility between Israel
and the rest of its Arab neighbors, complicated by the demands
of Palestinian Arabs, continued into the 1980s.
THE FIRST PALESTINE WAR (1947-49)
The first war began as a civil conflict between Palestinian
Jews and Arabs following the United Nations recommendation of
Nov. 29, 1947, to partition Palestine, then still under
British mandate, into an Arab state and a Jewish state.
Fighting quickly spread as Arab guerrillas attacked Jewish
settlements and communication links to prevent implementation
of the UN plan.
Jewish forces prevented seizure of most settlements, but Arab
guerrillas, supported by the Transjordanian Arab Legion under
the command of British officers, besieged Jerusalem. By April,
Haganah, the principal Jewish military group, seized the
offensive, scoring victories against the Arab Liberation Army
in northern Palestine, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. British military
forces withdrew to Haifa; although officially neutral, some
commanders assisted one side or the other.
After the British had departed and the state of Israel had been
established on May 15, 1948, under the premiership of David
BEN-GURION, the Palestine Arab forces and foreign volunteers
were joined by regular armies of Transjordan (now the kingdom
of JORDAN), IRAQ, LEBANON, and SYRIA, with token support from
SAUDI ARABIA. Efforts by the UN to halt the fighting were
unsuccessful until June 11, when a 4-week truce was declared.
When the Arab states refused to renew the truce, ten more days
of fighting erupted. In that time Israel greatly extended the
area under its control and broke the siege of Jerusalem.
Fighting on a smaller scale continued during the second UN
truce beginning in mid-July, and Israel acquired more
territory, especially in Galilee and the Negev. By January
1949, when the last battles ended, Israel had extended its
frontiers by about 5,000 sq km (1,930 sq mi) beyond the 15,500
sq km (4,983 sq mi) allocated to the Jewish state in the UN
partition resolution. It had also secured its independence.
During 1949, armistice agreements were signed under UN auspices
between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The
armistice frontiers were unofficial boundaries until 1967.
SUEZ-SINAI WAR (1956)
Border conflicts between Israel and the Arabs continued despite
provisions in the 1949 armistice agreements for peace
negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who
had left Israeli-held territory during the first war
concentrated in refugee camps along Israel's frontiers and
became a major source of friction when they infiltrated back to
their homes or attacked Israeli border settlements. A major
tension point was the Egyptian-controlled GAZA STRIP, which was
used by Arab guerrillas for raids into southern Israel.
Egypt's blockade of Israeli shipping in the Suez Canal and Gulf
of Aqaba intensified the hostilities.
These escalating tensions converged with the SUEZ CRISIS caused
by the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian president
Gamal NASSER. Great Britain and France strenuously objected to
Nasser's policies, and a joint military campaign was planned
against Egypt with the understanding that Israel would take the
initiative by seizing the Sinai Peninsula. The war began on
Oct. 29, 1956, after an announcement that the armies of Egypt,
Syria, and Jordan were to be integrated under the Egyptian
commander in chief. Israel's Operation Kadesh, commanded by
Moshe DAYAN, lasted less than a week; its forces reached the
eastern bank of the Suez Canal in about 100 hours, seizing the
Gaza Strip and nearly all the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai
operations were supplemented by an Anglo-French invasion of
Egypt on November 5, giving the allies control of the northern
sector of the Suez Canal.
The war was halted by a UN General Assembly resolution calling
for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of all occupying
forces from Egyptian territory. The General Assembly also
established a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to replace
the allied troops on the Egyptian side of the borders in Suez,
Sinai, and Gaza. By December 22 the last British and French
troops had left Egypt. Israel, however, delayed withdrawal,
insisting that it receive security guarantees against further
Egyptian attack. After several additional UN resolutions
calling for withdrawal and after pressure from the United
States, Israel's forces left in March 1957.
SIX-DAY WAR (1967)
Relations between Israel and Egypt remained fairly stable in
the following decade. The Suez Canal remained closed to
Israeli shipping, the Arab boycott of Israel was maintained,
and periodic border clashes occurred between Israel, Syria, and
Jordan. However, UNEF prevented direct military encounters
between Egypt and Israel.
By 1967 the Arab confrontation states--Egypt, Syria, and
Jordan--became impatient with the status quo, the propaganda
war with Israel escalated, and border incidents increased
dangerously. Tensions culminated in May when Egyptian forces
were massed in Sinai, and Cairo ordered the UNEF to leave Sinai
and Gaza. President Nasser also announced that the Gulf of
Aqaba would be closed again to Israeli shipping. At the end of
May, Egypt and Jordan signed a new defense pact placing
Jordan's armed forces under Egyptian command. Efforts to
de-escalate the crisis were of no avail. Israeli and Egyptian
leaders visited the United States, but President Lyndon
Johnson's attempts to persuade Western powers to guarantee free
passage through the Gulf failed.
Believing that war was inevitable, Israeli Premier Levi ESHKOL,
Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, and Army Chief of Staff
Yitzhak RABIN approved preemptive Israeli strikes at Egyptian,
Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi airfields on June 5, 1967. By the
evening of June 6, Israel had destroyed the combat
effectiveness of the major Arab air forces, destroying more
than 400 planes and losing only 26 of its own. Israel also
swept into Sinai, reaching the Suez Canal and occupying most of
the peninsula in less than four days.
King HUSSEIN of Jordon rejected an offer of neutrality and
opened fire on Israeli forces in Jerusalem on June 5. But a
lightning Israeli campaign placed all of Arab Jerusalem and the
Jordanian West Bank in Israeli hands by June 8. As the war
ended on the Jordanian and Egyptian fronts, Israel opened an
attack on Syria in the north. In a little more than two days
of fierce fighting, Syrian forces were driven from the Golan
Heights, from which they had shelled Jewish settlements across
the border. The Six-Day War ended on June 10 when the UN
negotiated cease-fire agreements on all fronts.
The Six-Day War increased severalfold the area under Israel's
control. Through the occupation of Sinai, Gaza, Arab
Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Golan Heights, Israel shortened
its land frontiers with Egypt and Jordan, removed the most
heavily populated Jewish areas from direct Arab artillery
range, and temporarily increased its strategic advantages.
OCTOBER WAR (1973)
Israel was the dominant military power in the region for the
next six years. Led by Golda MEIR from 1969, it was generally
satisfied with the status quo, but Arab impatience mounted.
Between 1967 and 1973, Arab leaders repeatedly warned that they
would not accept continued Israeli occupation of the lands lost
in 1967.
After Anwar al-SADAT succeeded Nasser as president of Egypt in
1970, threats about "the year of decision" were more frequent,
as was periodic massing of troops along the Suez Canal.
Egyptian and Syrian forces underwent massive rearmament with
the most sophisticated Soviet equipment. Sadat consolidated
war preparations in secret agreements with President Hafez
al-ASSAD of Syria for a joint attack and with King FAISAL of
Saudi Arabia to finance the operations.
Egypt and Syria attacked on Oct. 6, 1973, pushing Israeli
forces several miles behind the 1967 cease-fire lines. Israel
was thrown off guard, partly because the attack came on Yom
Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the most sacred Jewish religious
day (coinciding with the Muslim fast of Ramadan). Although
Israel recovered from the initial setback, it failed to regain
all the territory lost in the first days of fighting. In
counterattacks on the Egyptian front, Israel seized a major
bridgehead behind the Egyptian lines on the west bank of the
canal. In the north, Israel drove a wedge into the Syrian
lines, giving it a foothold a few miles west of Damascus.
After 18 days of fighting in the longest Arab-Israeli war since
1948, hostilities were again halted by the UN. The costs were
the greatest in any battles fought since World War II. The
Arabs lost some 2,000 tanks and more than 500 planes; the
Israelis, 804 tanks and 114 planes. The 3-week war cost Egypt
and Israel about $7 billion each, in material and losses from
declining industrial production or damage.
The political phase of the 1973 war ended with disengagement
agreements accepted by Israel, Egypt, and Syria after
negotiations in 1974 and 1975 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry
A. KISSINGER. The agreements provided for Egyptian
reoccupation of a strip of land in Sinai along the east bank of
the Suez Canal and for Syrian control of a small area around
the Golan Heights town of Kuneitra. UN forces were stationed
on both fronts to oversee observance of the agreements, which
reestablished a political balance between Israel and the Arab
confrontation states.
Under the terms of an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed on
Mar. 26, 1979, Israel returned the Sinai peninsula to Egypt.
Hopes for an expansion of the peace process to include other
Arab nations waned, however, when Egypt and Israel were
subsequently unable to agree on a formula for Palestinian
self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the 1980s
regional tensions were increased by the activities of militant
Palestinians and other Arab extremists and by several Israeli
actions. The latter included the formal proclamation of the
entire city of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital (1980), the
annexation of the Golan Heights (1981), the invasion of
southern Lebanon (1982), and the continued expansion of Israeli
settlement in the occupied West Bank. DON PERETZ

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From: Debra Floyd <dfloyd@igc.apc.org>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n N e w s S e r v i c e
Deborah K. Floyd, M.A., Publisher
Kenneth M. Richards, Editor
Anika Collins, Editor
-=-=-=-=-
a service of the Institute for Global Communications
PeaceNet * EcoNet * ConflictNet * LaborNet * WomensNet
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
How to get into Canada
Are you looking for the land of milk and honey, where you can have a
much better life without even working? Then you are looking for
CANADA.
Even if you are just looking for a "Western" country, or want to get
into the United States of America, Canada is a very easy stepping
stone to these other countries.
Why Canada?
Canada has the most generous of all government benefit programs as
well as being the easiest country to get into in the whole world.
BENEFITS
********
As a refugee or "landed immigrant" in Canada you can not run for
political office or vote in provincial election, but other than that
you are legally entitled to more government benefits than do their own
citizens. (It is a pretty good idea when you do get to the country to
join one of the mainstream political parties, as it will help you in
the future to get high paying political appointments to various
government departments and committees.) You can get free housing,
free health care, free day-care (for your children,) free education,
free money, free food, and all levels of government: federal,
provincial and municipal, will fight each other to see who will give
you the most. In addition there are religious organization who will
give you free help, plus many government funded multicultural (ethnic)
groups who will do everything possible to make your life there as easy
and prosperous as possible. Ever if you are not a citizen, the
government will give you money to start your own multicultural
organization to help other people going to Canada. If you do get
government funding to set up such a group, you decide what salary to
pay yourself, limited only by the size of the government grant.
If you want a job, any job, you have advantages over many Canadian
citizens, and more rights than white Canadian males. The federal
(Canadian) government and many provinces have Employment Equity Laws
that set minimum quotas for (ethnic) minorities and women, based upon
local statistics. This gives you an advantage in jobs, especially
management positions, even if you don't have any experience in that
occupation. If you are obviously non-white, you are almost guaranteed
a government job, if you want one. Should you not get a job you want,
not only can you make a complaint with an Employment Equity Commission
you can also go to the provincial and federal Human Rights Commission.
There are also many training programs available free of charge to
assist you, that are not available to citizens. The government will
even give you money to start your own business.
Should you decide you don't want to work, but instead receive Welfare
or Family Benefits, there is no difficulty in doing so. The more
children you have (or claim are yours though they might not be) the
more money you will get. They are so liberal in their social services
policies, so eager to please, that the administration of these
programs is set up so that you can easily falsely register as five or
ten or more people and therefore receive five or ten or more times the
benefits and never get caught. Many people do this and use the money
to purchase their own home, or a multiple unit dwelling they can then
rent out to other newcomers.
The government benefits you receive are highest in the major urban
areas (and their surrounding areas) such as Vancouver (and Richmond,)
British Columbia, Toronto (North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke,
Mississauga and Bramalea,) Ontario, and in Montreal, Province of
Quebec. The government encourages newcomers to settle in these areas,
and with the assistance of multicultural (ethnic) organizations, will
assist you in doing so.
Education is free for your children. If you get enough people from
your home country to petition a school to have a "Heritage Language
Program" the school will be obliged to teach your children your home
language. If the school doesn't already have a teacher who knows that
language, they will be obliged to hire one of the parents (or another
person) who knows that language and can teach it to the children (and
the language teachers does not need to have any teaching or other
credentials to do so).
EASE OF ENTRY
*************
Of all the countries in the World, Canada is the easiest in which to
become an immigrant. Should you wish to get into the U.S.A., get into
Canada first, and then entry into the U.S.A. is easy. With all the
benefits due to you upon getting to Canada, the only reason why you
might not want to live there is their cold winters. Canada is
democratic, peaceful, has a very low crime rate, and a relatively
small police force. Should you ever get caught for any criminal
offence, Canada has the most lenient sentences, often just giving you
a waring, though for serious violent crimes you will likely be sent
home (at the government's expense).
There are four main methods of entering Canada: illegally, as a
refugee, as a landed immigrant (permanent resident status), or as a
citizen.
Illegally:
Entering Canada illegally shouldn't be necessary, as they have by far
the most liberal immigration and refugee entry laws in the whole
world. If you do plan to enter illegally because you have not or will
not be accepted any other way, you can visit Canada using a Visitor's
or Student visa, and then once it is about to run out, you can easily
disappear in Canada. Under a student visa you are eligible for free
health care in most provinces.
Additionally, Canadian documents such as: entry permits, returning
resident permits, renewal of Minister's permits, immigration visa,
visitor visas and employment authorizations can easily be purchased.
There is no need to buy poor quality fake documents, as real
Government of Canada documents are in wide distribution, worldwide; as
many government workers appear to supplement their salaries by selling
these forms.
At the present time, it is estimated that out of a population of 27.5
million peole, 500,000 are in that country illegally. For political
reasons, every few years, the Canadian government solves the problem
of illegal immigrants by granting them all an amnesty; that is during
these amnesties anybody who is in that country illegally who comes
forward and admits it automatically gets "landed immigrant" status
unless they have been caught committing a serious violent criminal
act.
Refugees:
Every year about 20,000 go to Canada as political refugees. The
Canadian Minister of Immigration has announced that figure may rise to
as high as 60,000 a year.
Half of these peole go to Canada sponsored and paid for by the
Government of Canada. Most of the rest are sponsored and their
transporation paid for by refugee organizations; many are church and
other religious groups, and the others are ethnic organizations.
The United Nations Convention on Refugees defines a refugee as
somebody who has reason to fear persecution in their home country
because of their race, religion, gender, nationality, political
viewpoint, or membership in a particular social group. Canada has
expanded this definition; for instance their Supreme Court has
included "reproductive freedom" so that a Chinese woman who is
pregnant with her second child (which is against the law of the
Peoples' Republic of China, and will result in her being sterilized
against her will after the birth of that child,) can claim refugee
status, and Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) permits
political refugee status on the basis of homosexuality.
Should you be refused entry for reasons such as not meeting the
medical criterion, you can use these same medical grounds (such as
having TB or AID's) to claim entry for compassionate and humanitarian
reasons.
You should contact a church or other religious organization, or the
Canadian Embassy or Consulate in your country. Remember the U.N.
definition of a Convention Refugee before you give the reason(s) why
yo may fear for you and your family's lives, and keep your story
simple so you don't get caught lying.
Once you get to Canada, stay in touch with the organization who
arranged your entry as they can make sure you get the maximum benefits
your are entitled to in Canada.
Immigration:
Canada grants over 250,000 people a year "landed immigrant"
(permanent resident) status. With only 27.5 million people in their
country, this is by far, the highest per capita figure in the World.
You can emmigrate to Canada on several grounds:
- Family Class Sponsorship
- Entrepreneurs,
- Investors,
- the self-employed, or as an
- Independent Applicant.
To enter under the Family Class Sponsorship, your relative who must be
a "landed immigrant" or citizen in Canada, requests of the Canadian
government, that you join them. This can easily be taken advantage of
as in many countries there is little provable documentation as to whom
is related to who. This is the easiest way to emmigrate to Canada.
Investors and Entrepreneurs typically need to bring a minimum of
$250,000 with them to Canada. This money is meant to be invested in
Canada or to start a business there. It is common for several people
to put their money together so as to have over the $250,000 and this
money is used to get the first person into Canada as an Entrepreneur
or Investor. After a year, that money is sent out of Canada, and then
re-enters the country with another "entrepreneur". Using this method,
the very same money can be used to get several people into Canada over
several years.
The "self-employed" must prove that they can make a significant
artistic, cultural or economic contribution to Canada to gain entry.
To be able to use this criterion, your best bet is to be an "artist"
or a "writer" and contact an artistic or cultural groups to provide
you wil a letter to back up your story even if you never really made
your living this way.
The second easiest way to get "landed immigrant" status in Canada is
under the heading of an "Independent Applicant".
Canada has a point system to decide your eligibility. There are
three methods get into Canada using that system:
1 - They give points depending upon your education. The more
education; the more points. You just have to provide the
documents or certificates. Due to the number of applicants, they
almost never verify if your documents are real or forgeries.
2 - Points are assigned based upon your claimed occupation. The
maximum number of points (almost enough to guarantee your entry,)
are awarded if you claim to be a: scientist, computer programmer,
engineer or electronic technician. You should have documents to
support your claims. They do not test you to see if you actually
have any knowledge of your claimed specialty, and rarely verify
your documents. Fake engineering degrees and computer programming
certificates that will almost guarantee your entry are widely
available in Asia and most of Eastern Europe.
3 - If you have a job guarantee in Canada, your chances of getting
into Canada are extremely good.
There are many employment agencies throughout the World and
Canada that will arrange jobs in any occupation in Canada. If you
are female there is a very high demand for "domestic helpers"
(housekeepers and nannies). Check for ads in your country's
newpaper's or ethnic newspapers from Canada.
Even if there isn't a job waiting for you in Canada, for a price,
most of these companies will provide you with fake documentation
saying there is a guaranteed job waiting for you in Canada, and
you can use this documentation to get into the country.
Warning: It is best to get a personal recommendation from somebody
who has successfully gotten to Canada, as to the reputation of the
employment agency. A few agencies have been known to abuse their
applicants and send them to Canada to be prostitutes.
Citizenship:
Normally it takes at least three years of living in Canada to become a
citizen of that country. There are two ways to instantly become a
citizen: marry a Canadian citizen, or be born in Canada.
Many countries have marriage bureaus. Usually they bring together
women from their home country with Canadian men. (A few will also
introduce men to Canadian women.) It is your right to find the
richest man you can, to marry. If you marry him and stay married for
at least 6 months, even if you then get divorced, you get to keep your
Canadian citizenship. Additionally, if you actually marry the
Canadian man and then divorce him for a good reason, you will likely
get one-half of all his assets (businesses, family home, other
property, cars, etc.). If you want half of his assets, it is best to
create a record of repeated physical abuse, whether or not any has
occured. To do this contact any women's groups after 4 or 5 months of
marriage, to complain of physical abuse, to establish a record of
your first complaints. In the sixth month or later, hit or otherwise
injure yourself so that you will have at least bruising and call
the Police and say your husband has beaten you. You will then do
the same a second time, but first call the women's shelter and then
the Police. This second time, ask the Police to drive you to the
women's shelter on the grounds that you fear for your life. The
shelter will get you a place to live and get you a free lawyer to help
you divorce your Canadian husband and claim half of all his assets.
Feminist groups will also greatly assist you. You will now not only
be a Canadian citizen, but also be rich!
Another way to get into Canada is to be a parent of a Canadian. It is
common for a pregnant woman to get a visitor's visa to visit Canada,
but to time the visit to be around the date of the birth. If the
child is born in Canada, it is automatically a Canadian citizen.
Having a child who is a Canadian citizen greatly increases the chance
for the woman to be given "landed immigrant" status. Once the woman
is a landed immigrant, she can now sponsor her husband and other
members of her family to come to Canada.
With all its benefits, Canada is the greatest place to emmigrate to!
.

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"Work, Family, Future"
Address to the American Association of Retired Persons
Governor Bill Clinton
Henry Gonzales Convention Center
San Antonio, Texas
June 4, 1992
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much President
Burgess, ladies and gentlemen. I am so honored to be invited to be
here with you today. I appreciate the warm welcome on coming in.
It is an amazing thing to be through this long string of
presidential primaries where I learned a lot about not only how
much we have in common, but how different we are as Americans. I'm
always amazed at each day I learn something about how American
people can look at the same set of facts and draw different
conclusions from it. And since I am here at the AARP, I thought I
would tell you a story I heard the other day that illustrates this
point so well -- about a couple who'd been married just a little
over fifty years. They were sitting out on their porch rocking in
their chairs, and the husband looked at his wife and he said,
"Sarah, you know we've been together a long time." And she said,
"Yes." And he said, "I'm really a man of few words -- all these
years there are so many things I should have said to you that I
didn't." She said, "Yeah." He said, "You know, we got married in
the depression and you believed in me, but it was the depression.
And not long after we got married our little business went down and
I was flat broke, but you hung in there with me." And she said,
"Yeah, I did." He said, "Then I went off to World War II and I got
that bad wound, and it took me a year to overcome it, but you hung
in there with me everyday." She said, "Yeah, I did." He said,
"Then after the war, we finally moved into our own home for the
first time and six months later a tornado came along and blew it
down. It took us six years to get in our house again, but you hung
in there with me, didn't you." And she said, "Yes, I did." And
he said, "Well, Sarah, before it is too late, I just want to tell
you one thing. Honey, you're bad luck." So, if you want to be
involved in this enterprise on which I have embarked, you have to
be willing to have people see facts in a different way than you do.
In that connection, I want to compliment your president for the
theme of this conference: generations coming together. As
governor, I have worked hard to serve the retired people of my
state -- one of the states with the highest percentage of people
over 65 in the United States. But, I want to be president to
restore the promise of the American Dream for our children. When
I was a freshman at Georgetown University 28 years ago, I had a
professor of Western Civilization who said that the very special
thing about our civilization in general, and the United States in
particular, is that we had always believed that the future could be
better than the present, and that each of us has a personal, moral
responsibility to make it so. That's what I want to talk about
today -- beyond the talk of Democrats and Republicans, beyond
pointing the finger of blame to the assumption of responsibility.
For the plain truth is that millions of our fellow citizens of all
ages do not believe the future will be better than the present, and
millions more do not believe they have a personal, moral
responsibility to make it so. I learned the American Dream and I
lived the American Dream as a child growing up in Arkansas. Nearly
half a century ago, I was born in a little town called Hope.
Somebody's here from there, probably. We're everywhere now. I have
two delegates from Chicago who were born in Hope -- one from
Queens. We're way over our quota. My father died in a car wreck
three months before I was born. My mother went back to nursing
school so that she could earn a living to support me. Until I was
four, I was raised by loving grandparents of modest means but great
determination. They taught me to read and count when I was two and
three. They taught me in their own way that our country isn't
just another place, it's an idea -- a solid covenant that spans
generations, a commitment to uphold the values we learn in our
families -- to honor our parents and grandparents, to offer a
helping hand to our sisters and brothers, to protect and provide
for our children and our children's children. I learned from
my grandparents the basic contract of American life that if you
work hard and play by the rules, you will be rewarded. That promise
has come true for me beyond my wildest dreams. But as I have
traveled across this great nation of ours, I've met too many good,
hardworking people for whom that promise has been broken. Coming
over here today, I couldn't help remembering the encounter I had in
Nashua, New Hampshire with a couple named Mary Annie and Edward
Davis, who broke down crying telling me how every week they had to
chose between their food and the medicine they needed to stay alive
and healthy. People like them have done right by America and now
it's time for America to do right by them. One of the reasons I
entered this race for president is that I was tired of seeing
people being punished for their devotion to work and family, to
country, and community. If any Americans have kept faith with the
American promise, it's the generation that worked their way out of
the Great Depression, brought their way to victory over Nazism and
Fascism, led the way through the Cold War and sacrificed to provide
my generation with opportunities our parents never had. I'm going
to be a president who does right by older Americans because you've
done right by America. And your country owes you that. Doing right
means understanding that Social Security is a commitment that must
be kept, not just for today's beneficiaries, but to today's working
people who are paying into the system for their tomorrows. It's a
covenant -- Social Security -- a covenant between generations, and
I will honor that. Doing right means understanding, that in spite
of Medicare, most senior citizens still pay too much for health
care. In fact, a recent study found that the average elderly person
is actually paying a higher percentage of income for health care
today than in 1965 -- just before Medicare was enacted in the first
place. During the first year of my administration, we'll send a
national health plan to Congress to control the cost of health care
by taking on the insurance and health care and government
bureaucracies that add tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary
costs to our system. My plan will provide a comprehensive package
of benefits and have measures to discourage excessive cost and
especially to hold down the price of prescription drugs. The plan
will include long term care for the elderly and the disabled --
charging people based on their ability to pay -- and will emphasize
greater choice in care, from home to nursing home service. After
you've worked hard all of your life you shouldn't be wiped out by
serious illness and you should have as much control over your own
life as possible. America is the only advanced nation in the world
without a national health plan. We spend 30% more of our income on
health care than any of our major competitors, and we do less with
it. And we lag behind them as a result on many measures of health
care from infant mortality, to heart disease, to life expectancy.
We also, I might add, are dramatically underfunding women's health
research and development in areas from breast cancer to ovarian
cancer to osteoporosis and that's why the bill now in the Congress
ought to pass for new health investment. As you know so well,
Americans pay more for prescription drugs than the citizens of
nations who have national health plans. This is a special burden to
elderly people who aren't poor enough to be on Medicaid but aren't
rich enough to pay their bills themselves. Their numbers are
legion. Mary Annie and Edward Davis are but two of the hundreds of
thousands of them. As the Senate Special Committee on Aging,
chaired by my good friend and fellow Arkansan, David Pryor found,
prices of prescription drugs during the last decade have risen by
three times the rate of inflation. And to add insult to injury,
some American drug companies charge Americans more for the same
products here than they charge people in other countries. That's
wrong and I want to change it. That's why I support Senator
Pryor's bill to take away tax breaks for drug companies to raise
their prices more than the rate of inflation. When you go to the
doctor or the drug store or the hospital, your next stop shouldn't
be the poor house. These issues have long been a concern to me.
Fifteen years ago, as one of America's youngest attorney generals,
I created the Advocates for the Elderly Program to help older
people with their legal problems. As governor of my state I led the
nation's governors in fighting to stop the unfair termination of
Social Security disability benefits. In Arkansas, we started a
long-term care program called Elder Choices, which let seniors use
money normally reserved for nursing home care for long-term care
services of their own choice -- from personal care to home health
care to adult day care. The country I want to lead will honor its
obligations to people who've worked hard all their lives. But I
also have to come here today to challenge you and all older
Americans to honor our obligations to our nation's children because
our future depends on their strength, their intelligence, their
skills, their citizenship. Thanks to Social Security and
Medicare, our country has made progress in reducing poverty among
older Americans. We can all be proud of the fact that, beginning in
1985, for the first time in the history of America, the elderly
were less poor than the rest of America. By contrast, poverty has
exploded among our children. Our new poor in America are young
children and their mothers -- most of whom are working mothers --
and we cannot be proud of that. We can't be proud that 13% of
America's children have no health coverage whatever; that 30% of
all of our pre-schoolers are not immunized against mumps, measles,
and rubella; that every year 40,000 babies born in the United
States die before their first birthday. And many more are born with
very low birth weights, imposing great costs on society and bearing
mental and physical limitations which may dog them throughout their
lives and further undermine their ability to be contributing
citizens. We can't be proud of the fact that 20% of all children
under eighteen and 25% of all children under six are living under
poverty; that teenage boys are more likely to die from gunshot
wounds than natural causes; that each year a half-a-million
American children do not finish high school, and millions more stop
there with no further education, thus condemned to losing out in
the tough global competition in which what you earn depends on what
you can learn. It is astonishing to note that families under the
age of 30 are earning more than 25% less than what their
counterparts were seventeen years ago. We cannot be proud of this
because today's children are tomorrow's workers, tomorrow's tax
payers, tomorrow's parents, tomorrow's citizens. If they grow up
malnourished, unhealthy, and unprepared to compete in the 21st
century, then America will be neither safe nor solvent, neither
prosperous nor powerful. We must not neglect our children and let
their decline be the legacy of our generation. They are the
national security issue of 1992. As all of you know, we know what
works. We know what works in raising children -- how to help them
grow up healthy and hopeful, loving and learning, and ready to
build their futures and libraries and laboratories instead of
giving their lives away to gangs and guns on our meanest streets.
Mr. Bush says when it comes to investing in America, we have more
will than wallet. What I say, now that we've won the Cold War,
we've got to find the will to invest in our people, in our jobs, in
our education, in our health care and reclaim our own legacy. We
have the wallet to spend over $100 billion on the savings and loan
bailout in this year alone. We have the wallet to let health care
cost go up two and three times the rate of inflation with the money
going straight to insurance and bureaucracy while our competitors
hold them down. We have the wallet to keep protecting Germany from
the Soviet threat, while German factory workers earn 20% more than
Americans for a shorter work week, and the Germans invest in the
former Soviet Republics, while the former Soviet Republics slash
their own defense budgets far more than we have cut ours. And in
the 1980's, we had the wallet to cut taxes on the wealthiest
Americans and corporations, while raising taxes on the middle
class, slashing our investments in the future, and exploding the
federal deficit. I know that the generation that won World War II
and the Cold War has the vision and the will and the discipline to
join this crusade to invest in our young people and reinvigorate
our economy. Your generation has sweated and sacrificed and died
for others. You've never had the attitude, "I've got mine, you get
lost." At the end of World War II, you led a strong America in
rebuilding Europe and Japan. At the end of the Cold War, you must
lead us in rebuilding America -- in regaining our commitment to the
future. You can teach all Americans lessons in patriotism, and
citizenship, and responsibility. As president, I must challenge
you, and all Americans, to support a new national commitment to
provide every baby born in the United States with a healthy start
in life from health care and nutrition for expectant mothers and
their infants to immunization for young children. I will challenge
you and all Americans to provide pre school for every child who
needs it by finally fully funding Head Start so all our children
can start school ready to learn. All this is in your self-interest
and in our national interest. If we don't fully fund Head Start
today, we may not be able to fully fund Social Security twenty
years from now. As president, I must challenge you and all
Americans to help make every American school a model school because
all our children deserve the best. I will challenge you and all
Americans to support a domestic GI Bill -- a domestic peace corp
that will offer college loans to every American of every age
willing to repay the loan or give a couple of years of service back
to our community here at home -- not a peace corp for abroad, but
a peace corp for America. Think of it as we are here in San
Antonio. If every young person from San Antonio, or El Paso, or
Laredo, or Houston, or Dallas, or Texarkana, or Lubbock, if every
one of them got a college education from a national service loan
and came home to work as a police officer, a teacher, in a drug
rehabilitation program, with kids in trouble, we could solve the
problems of America at home and educate a whole generation of
Americans. It would be the best money we ever spent. For those
who do not want to go to college, we should follow our competitors
and give every high school graduate at least two years of further
education and training on the job with a national apprenticeship
program to restore the dignity of blue collar work in America. In
order to do this, we must have the discipline to control health
care costs -- which is the single most important force in the
exploding federal deficit today -- to reinvest all of our defense
costs in rebuilding the American economy, and to ask upper income
Americans to pay their fair share of taxes. Those who received most
of the benefits of the 1980's should shoulder more of the burden of
the 1990's. Let me be specific, although it may not be politically
popular. If your income went up and your taxes went down in the
last twelve years, if family income is over $200,000, you should
pay more. We cannot ask the middle class to pay more. Their incomes
went down and their taxes went up in the 1980's. I support a
higher rate for the richest Americans and a sur-tax on
millionaires, such as that recommended in the recent tax bill
sponsored by Senator Lloyd Bentsen and vetoed by the president. And
if an older American on Medicare has an income in excess of
$125,000 a year, I think there should be a higher price for
Medicare if, in return, you get control of health care costs and a
sensible system of long-term care. No one should be forced to pay
for the same old system and just take money out of private pocket
and send it direct to health care companies or a bureaucracy that
is out of control. We didn't get into this mess overnight, and we
won't get out of it without some sacrifice from those most able to
make it. The days of something for nothing for a few at the top are
over. To make America work again, we need more incentives for
private investment and new plant and equipment, to start new
businesses, to invest in the most depressed areas of our cities and
rural America. We also need more direct investment in education and
in health care in our future. Unless those whose incomes went
up while their taxes went down in the 80's pay their fair share, we
simply cannot afford to increase these investments and bring down
our huge deficit. These are problems we must all face. I
also hope you will support other policies which reinforce the
values of work and family. For all of those working poor families
I talked about, how about a simple tax system that says we will
increase the earned income tax credit so that if you work forty
hours a week and you've got children in the house you will be
lifted above the poverty line. How about a welfare reform system
that says we'll invest more in your education and training and
child care and medical coverage, but you have to go to work. We
have to end welfare as we know it. How about providing more
choices for elderly people in long-term care and more choices among
public schools for parents and their children so there will be some
competition but no private vouchers to deplete the limited
resources of our public education system. How about the toughest
possible system of child support enforcement so people can't bring
kids into this world, cross the state line, and leave them for the
government to raise. That's the kind of thing we ought to be
supporting. How about a safe streets initiative that will bring
police back to the blocks everyday, walking the same streets,
working with the same neighbors, enlisting the energies of people
to shut down the crack houses and open up the city parks. These are
the kind of programs we need in America today. And so I say to the
AARP, I respect the theme of this conference. I ask you to live it.
I ask you to go home and ask your fellow Americans to reach across
generational lines. As I said at the beginning, I was raised by my
grandparents until I was four. I spent a lot of time with my
great-grandparents who lived out in the country in what would be
called a shack today. They were poor, but they were loving and
strong people. They made me feel loved and know discipline. They
gave me self-esteem and respect for others. In the governor's
office in Arkansas, I've got a picture of my grandmother in grade
school in 1916, a picture a my grandfather at the furnace of a
sawmill in 1923, a picture of my great-grandfather holding my hand
in a hospital room in 1952. It's a long way in America from the
photographs I have on my wall to our meanest streets where children
don't know who their grandparents are, too often have to worry
about their parents' own behavior and even drug abuse, and where
too many join gangs to find the extended family I knew naturally as
a child. America's future needs an investment of your time as well
as money. America's children need grandparents, even if they are
not their own. I want to lift the earnings limit on Social Security
but I know our Social Security depends on your time being given
over to more than earnings. The elderly people of this country
could revolutionize the lives of troubled children of America
through volunteer programs in schools and communities all across
this land. For America is a dream every child must cherish, a
promise every generation must keep, a legacy we must leave to our
children and our grandchildren. And so I challenge you not only to
fight and strive and struggle to save social security, but also to
preserve, protect and defend the security of our children; to fight
not only to keep medicare strong and stable but to make our economy
grow and prosper; to work not only to keep older Americans out of
poverty but to lift our children up as well. Support programs that
reflect our shared values, putting the future ahead of the present,
moving people from welfare to work, establishing tough child
support, lifting the working poor, creating a new system of
national service for college education and more. Work, family,
future -- that is what we must honor and reward. Together we can
end this era of every person for himself and begin the era of we're
all in this together. Together we can do for America, what America
did for Europe and Japan at the end of World War II: build a
prosperous and powerful new economy with millions of new jobs and
dozens of new industries with people who are healthy and strong,
and children who believe the future will be better than the
present. Most of all, we can leave our children a nation that is
stronger, freer and richer than the one we inherited. That must, in
the end, be the true measure of our legacy as Americans: did we
leave this world better than we found it? Today, the answer would
be no, tomorrow the answer can be yes. It is that question on which
this coming election depends. Thank you, and God bless you all.


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THE 10 "CANNOTS" BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN
"You cannot build character and courage
by taking away man's initiative and independence."
"You cannot help small men
by tearing down big men."
"You cannot strengthen the weak
by weakening the strong."
"You cannot lift the wage earner
by pulling down the wage payer."
"You cannot help the poor man
by destroying the rich."
"You cannot keep out of trouble
by spending more than your income."
"You cannot further the brotherhood of man
by initiating class hatred."
"You cannot establish security
on borrowed money."
"You cannot bring about prosperity
by discouraging thrift."
"You cannot help men permanently
by doing for them
what they could and should
do for themselves."
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Tomorrow's 0rder of Magnitude Finger_Man 408-961-9315
My Dog Bit Jesus Suzanne D'Fault 510-658-8078
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The following article is from the Spring/Summer 1988 issue
of CIVIL LIBERTIES, a newspaper published by the American
Civil Liberties Union. It is presented for the purpose of
editorial critique. The opinions of the authors are not
necessarily those of this presenter.
BOYFRIENDS AND HUSBANDS USE COURTS
TO BLOCK WOMEN'S ABORTIONS
By Dawn Johnsen and Lynn Paltrow
(Staff Attorneys, "ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project")
During the last several months, the anti-abortion forces
have implemented a new strategy in their systematic campaign
to deprive women of their reproductive freedom. In cases in
Indiana, Utah, and Pennsylvania, individual men, represented
by anti-choice lawyers, have sought and obtained temporary
restraining orders ("TROs") from state courts enjoining
women from exercising their right to choose to have an
abortion. Three cases were recently brought by men who
claimed to be the women's "boyfriends" and two were brought
by the women's husbands.
These cases, usually orchestrated by anti-choice activists,
only arise where there is a problem in the marriage or the
relationship. They frequently reflect not a concern for the
woman or the baby that might be, but rather a hurt or
spurned lover's desire to continue or control the
relationship. Husbands and boyfriends, of course, have
every right to express their views on pregnancy from the
beginning of the relationship and to seek a different
relationship if the couple's views on childbearing do not
coincide. Partners who disagree about terminating a
pregnancy should seek help from a professional counselor not
a court order from a judge.
Thus far, these cases have been concentrated in Indiana,
where courts have issued three TROs in the last two months.
This strategy was devised by Indiana attorney James Bopp,
Jr., who is general counsel to the National Right to Life
Committee. Bopp has stated that his ultimate goal is to
bring one of these cases to the U.S. Supreme Court as a
device to have Roe vs. Wade, and the many subsequent cases
recognizing a woman's right to choose to have an abortion,
overturned. Bopp has made available at no cost, and is
advertising nationwide, what he calls a "Father's Rights
Litigation Kit." It contains all of the legal documents
necessary to bring a case seeking to enjoin a woman from
having an abortion. In addition to the Indiana cases, this
litigation kit has already been used by a "boyfriend" to
obtain a TRO against a pregnant woman in Philadelphia.
Anti-choice lawyers have issued ominous warnings of more
cases to come.
WITHOUT A HUSBAND'S CONSENT
Although the pregnant women in the five current (and any
future) cases are almost certain to prevail in the end,
these women have and will suffer devastating constitutional
deprivations prior to their ultimate victory. Ordering a
woman not to end an unwanted pregnancy directly conflicts
with a long line of U.S. Supreme Court decisions recognizing
the constitutional right of every individual to decide
whether and when to have a child. The Court specifically
held in 1976 that a woman has the right to have an abortion
without her husband's consent. And every lower federal
court to address the issue has ruled that requiring spousal
consent or notification is unconstitutional; spousal consent
laws are ultimately just a mechanism for harming pregnant
women through delay and/or harassment.
The harms to pregnant women are clear from the experiences
of the women in the first two Indiana cases. On April 4,
1988, a court in Vigo County, Indiana, issued a TRO
prohibiting a young unmarried woman from obtaining an
abortion. Clinics and physicians were also ordered not to
perform an abortion on her. The woman, identified as Jane
Doe, had no prior notice and no opportunity to oppose the
court order which was requested by an man identified as John
Smith, allegedly Jane's boyfriend.
Three days later, the court held a hearing to determine
whether it would permanently order Jane not to have an
abortion. The court permitted John to testify about the
most intimate details of Jane's life, with the judge
personally evaluating her sexual relationships, her use of
birth control, and the degree to which Jane and her
boyfriend allegedly loved each other. The court also
permitted three other people to testify on John's behalf.
Jane herself refused to be subjected to the embarrassment of
testifying and being cross-examined, properly maintaining
that her reasons for wanting an abortion were highly
personal and the court was acting unlawfully in seeking to
examine those reasons.
BOYFRIEND OF THREE MONTHS
The Vigo court ignored the Constitution and controlling
Supreme Court precedent and issued a permanent injunction
ordering Jane to bear a child. Forcing nine months of
pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and unwanted motherhood on
anyone is an awesome and intolerable burden. Moreover, Jane
was only 18 years old, John claimed to have been her
boyfriend for only three months, and his responsibility for
the pregnancy was challenged.
Based solely on the testimony of John and his three
witnesses, the court found that Jane's reasons (never
articulated by her) for wanting an abortion were not good
enough. The court trivialized the abortion decision by
focusing on, for example, John's claim that Jane simply
"wishes to look nice in a bathing suit this summer,"
ignoring the many obvious reasons such as age, length of
relationship, life plans, and health which undoubtedly
influenced Jane's decision to have an abortion. By the time
of the court order, her abortion had been delayed at least
five days and though abortion is safer than childbirth at
all stages, each week of delay increases by 50 percent the
physical risks to a woman's life and by 30 percent the risks
to her health.
On April 13, Jane notified the Indiana Supreme Court that
she had terminated her pregnancy despite the court order;
like the millions of women who sought and obtained illegal
abortions before Roe vs. Wade, Jane would not tolerate the
unconstitutional invasion of her rights and the risks to her
physical and emotional health that the court order imposed.
The issue, however, is not over.
As briefs were being filed in Jane's case, yet another
Indiana court issued a TRO ordering a woman not to have an
abortion, again at the request of an alleged "boyfriend."
Although the court ultimately dismissed the court order,
properly finding that the woman had a clearly established
constitutional right to make the decision to choose to have
an abortion, the boyfriend immediately requested a further
court order from the Indiana Court of Appeals, then from the
Indiana Supreme Court, and then from two U.S. Supreme Court
Justices, all of whom denied his request. This case, which
took a total of sixteen days before the woman was no longer
under a court order not to have an abortion, exemplifies the
extreme tenacity of the opponents of reproductive freedom.
THE BURDEN OF PREGNANCY
The so-called right-to-lifers' attempts to justify their
harassment of these women as a desire to simply balance
legitimate rights of the men involved is unconvincing.
There is not way to balance the burden of pregnancy; it is
not possible for the woman to carry the fetus for four-and -
a-half months and then give it to the man to carry for four-
and-a-half months. As the Supreme Court has recognized, as
long as the fetus is inside the woman's body, she must be
the one to decide. Moreover, it is clear that Bopp and
others taking these cases seek to prohibit ALL abortions
whether the husbands and boyfriends agree or not.
Certainly every individual has the constitutional right to
decide, free from government interference, whether or not to
have a child. This right, however, clearly does not give a
man the right to force a particular woman to have his child.
To the contrary, the Constitution guarantees that the power
of the government will not be used to compel anyone, male or
female, to be an unwilling participant in procreation. If
men can force women to continue pregnancies, then men could
just as easily get court orders to force women to have
abortions, and women could force men to produce sperm or
undergo vasectomies.
The ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project is working with the
Indiana Civil Liberties Union to represent the women in the
first two Indiana cases. Bopp is representing the men. The
ACLU also has alerted its affiliates to watch for further
such attempts to deprive pregnant women of their
constitutional rights and has distributed a model brief to
help defeat this latest attack on the right of ALL people to
reproductive freedom.
(Dawn Johnsen and Lynn Paltrow are staff attorneys for the
ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project.)
Jane's boyfriend.
Thr

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TOWARD EQUAL ACCESS: PROVIDING INFORMATION
ACCESS SERVICES TO BLIND
AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PERSONS
UNDER THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT (ADA)
THE INFORMATION ACCESS PROJECT FOR BLIND INDIVIDUALS
NATIONAL INFORMATION ACCESS CENTER
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
1800 JOHNSON STREET
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 21230
(410) 659-9314
A Project of the National Federation of the Blind
with financial support from the U.S. Department of Justice
The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) provides new legal
protection to millions of persons not previously covered by a civil
rights law. The Act, which was signed by President Bush on July 26,
1990, has established "a clear and comprehensive national mandate
for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with
disabilities." Specific provisions of the ADA apply to employment,
activities conducted by units of state and local government,
transportation services, public accommodations, and to
telecommunications services. With financial support from the United
States Department of Justice, the National Federation of the Blind
has established The National Information Access Center to assist
these entities and blind persons in meeting the ADA's information
access requirements. The Center is part of a nationwide information
access project primarily designed to assist units of state and
local government and places of public accommodation in meeting
their respective obligations under titles II and III of the ADA.
Forms of prohibited discrimination include using disability as
the grounds for failing to hire or promote persons in employment;
excluding persons with disabilities from covered programs or
services that are commonly available to others; failing to give
persons with disabilities the benefits, privileges, and advantages
provided to others by any covered program, service, or activity;
and failing to provide persons with disabilities with auxiliary
aids and services or other reasonable modifications needed by such
persons to have equal access to covered opportunities, aids,
benefits, services, and programs.
As with other civil rights laws, the ADA seeks equal access
for the persons covered. Equal access in the case of persons with
disabilities will often mean providing opportunities for
participation by anyone who is otherwise eligible without regard to
disability. There are circumstances, however, when active planning
and steps to remove barriers to access will have to be done.
Barriers to access exist when full enjoyment of an opportunity,
aid, benefit, or service is limited by any particular disabling
condition.
Most entities covered by the ADA produce information of
various kinds to describe their services and programs. The
information may include general descriptions, detailed
instructions, reports, directories, regulatory documents, and so
forth. These materials are produced in the normal course of
business and are readily available in ink print form. For the most
part they are not readily available in alternative non-visual
media. Failure to consider the information access needs of blind
and visually impaired persons in covered activities would violate
the ADA.
Reasonable means do exist to provide written information in
ink print and in alternative non-visual forms as well, but most
entities covered by the ADA are not well informed about both their
obligations to provide accessible materials and the methods
available for doing so. This brochure will explain the ADA's
information access requirements and suggest existing alternatives
for meeting them.
WHO MUST PROVIDE INFORMATION IN ALTERNATIVE NON-VISUAL MEDIA?
Requirements for providing accessible information in
alternative non-visual media are an integral part of the ADA's
nondiscrimination policy. The policy applies generally to all
covered activities, including both the employment practices and
non-employment-related services of ADA-covered entities. Covered
activities include the services, programs, and activities of units
of state and local governments, providers of public transportation
services, and places of public accommodation, and the employment
practices of most employers. The ADA's requirements with respect to
employment practices generally become effective on July 26, 1992
for employers with twenty-five or more employees and two years
later for employers with fifteen or more employees. Services
provided by places of public accommodation, and by public entities
(units of state and local government) must comply with the
nondiscrimination requirements on January 26, 1992.
Places of public accommodation include entities in twelve
specific categories, which include the following: lodging places,
inns and hotels; restaurants, bars, or other establishments serving
food and drink; motion picture houses, theaters, concert halls,
stadiums, or other places of entertainment; auditoriums, convention
centers, lecture halls, or other place of public gathering;
bakeries, grocery stores, clothing stores, hardware stores,
shopping centers, or other sales or rental establishments,
laundromats, dry-cleaners, banks, barber shops, beauty shops,
travel services, shoe repair services, funeral parlors, gas
stations, offices used for professional services; transportation
terminals or depots; museums and galleries; places of recreation
and education; and social service agencies.
WHAT COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS APPLY
The general nondiscrimination policy of the ADA is restated in
each of its major titles. The policy is designed to afford persons
with disabilities an equal opportunity to obtain the same
opportunities, aids, benefits, services, and programs (including
employment opportunities) that any covered entity provides to
persons without disabilities. Equal outcomes resulting from
opportunities are not required, but equal access to opportunities
must be assured.
The existence of a disabling condition may not cause or result
in the denial of aids, benefits, services, and programs. To further
that goal the ADA requires employers to make reasonable
accommodations necessary for persons with disabilities to perform
the essential functions of a job. Covered entities are also
expected to make reasonable modifications in the provision of their
aids, benefits, or services so that persons with disabilities will
be afforded equal access. Auxiliary aids and services are
specifically required, as a part of this obligation.
The provision of information in alternative non-visual media
is both a form of reasonable accommodation and an auxiliary aid or
service. Covered entities must analyze their methods of
communicating with employees or patrons and take steps to provide
information in alternative non-visual media. Information which is
provided solely in ink print is not accessible to most blind
people. The media chosen to be accessible must be appropriate to
the needs of blind or visually impaired persons and must respond to
individual needs for accessible communications. The law encourages
flexible approaches to achieve the goal of equal access for each
individual.
The ADA's standard of "reasonableness" must be emphasized. The
provision of information in media accessible to the blind should
not pose unreasonable burdens in most instances. However, demands
for accessible information that exceed the reasonable capabilities
of a covered entity would not be required. Instead, a covered
entity would be required to provide accessible information to the
extent that reasonable alternatives for doing so are available.
Reasonable accommodations or alternatives are those which would not
pose an undue hardship or an undue burden for the covered entity.
Budget, size, and programmatic factors are considered in balancing
off the competing standards of reasonable accommodation and undue
burden.
FORMS OF ALTERNATIVE NON-VISUAL MEDIA
Alternative forms of accessible media may include sound
recordings, Braille, raised line drawings, enlarged print, and
digital text in computer readable formats. Acquisition or
modification of equipment may be necessary in some instances to
provide blind and visually impaired persons with equal access to
printed information. For example, a place of public accommodation,
such as a hotel, that provides printed information to its sighted
guests may provide the same information in sound recorded form for
blind guests. In that event, the hotel should also have a device
capable of playing the sound recording, which may be used by a
blind guest upon request.
Advancements in computer technology make reproduction of
documents by computer in full-word speech and in Braille both
affordable and feasible. Moreover, computers capable of running
programs for synthetic speech as well as print-to-Braille
translation programs are now widely available and used by most
covered entities. Synthetic speech output devices can be purchased
for as low as $600.00. High quality Braille translation programs
are also available for as low as $250.00. Special devices to
provide hard-copy Braille output can be purchased at prices
approximately the same as a high quality laser printer.
Selection of alternative non-visual media must be made to meet
individual needs and in response to individual requests and
circumstances. The provision of auxiliary aids and services on a
case-by-case basis may mean that a sighted person will read aloud
the printed text or material to a blind person. For instance, the
ADA does not require that all restaurants have Brailled editions of
their menus available. It does require that the server or another
employee read the menu if that form of assistance is requested.
Although Braille is highly useful in many circumstances, not all
blind persons have been trained adequately to use it efficiently.
Therefore, the provision of information in media accessible to the
blind must necessarily be handled with flexibility. There are some
circumstances in which the use of a sighted reader may be the most
reasonable and efficient alternative available. In other
situations, such as in the case of documents containing lengthy
instructions or guidelines to be used as a reference, Brailled,
recorded, large print, and computer readable versions may all be
necessary.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
THE INFORMATION ACCESS PROJECT FOR BLIND INDIVIDUALS
NATIONAL INFORMATION ACCESS CENTER
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
1800 JOHNSON STREET
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 21230
(410) 659-9314


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History of Information Sharing With Israel
Bullock's attorney turned over to investigators an FBI
intelligence report on the Nation of Islam whose disappearance
had caused alarm at the bureau. The search of ADL offices in San
Francisco and Los Angeles turned up more FBI materials, including
a three-volume report on a Middle East terrorist group. Moreover,
Bullock's written reports to the ADL, which he said were
channeled across the country, contained legally confidential
material that he attributed to "official friends," the ADL's
euphemism for law enforcement officers.
While denying that the ADL spies on individuals, Foxman testily
argued in an interview that the organization has a right to do
whatever it must within the law to combat antisemitism. "What are
they [the FBI volumes] doing in our files?" Foxman said. "Because
they belong in our files. ... because somebody shared it with
us."
Since news of the investigation broke, a group of Arab
Americans listed in the ADL's files has charged in a civil
lawsuit that the ADL invaded the Arab Americans' privacy with its
"massive spying operation" and forwarded confidential information
to the governments of Israel and South Africa.
Evidence of the ADL's information sharing with the Israeli
government is largely historical. In 1961, former ADL national
director Benjamin R. Epstein wrote to a B'nai B'rith official
that the ADL was following Arab diplomats and activists in
America and sharing its information with the governments of
Israel and the United States.
In his 1988 autobiography, ADL general counsel Arnold Forster,
who oversaw the fact-finding operation, described how "fact-
finding and counteraction became the heart of the organization."
He also wrote that he was often a "source" for the Mossad,
Israel's CIA, in tracking down suspected war criminals.
"ADL does not act as an agent of Israel," said Foxman,
bristling at the charge. He called such questions about ADL's
conduct "antisemitism. ... I'm sorry if it offends some people.
This is far reaching. We see a conspiracy. I see a conspiracy.
It's out there ... it's proved itself every day."
Underlying the San Francisco case is a gradual evolution in the
ADL's mission. Soon after the organization was founded, the 1915
lynching of Leo Frank, a leader of the Atlanta chapter of the
Jewish fraternal organization B'nai B'rith, caused the group to
focus much of its energy on protecting the physical safety of
Jews by publicly exposing bigotry and forcing officials to act.
Organized intelligence gathering was a natural outgrowth. In
the 1930s, the ADL "undertook a massive research operation which
uncovered the interlocking directorates of hate groups, their
links to Hitler's Germany and other centers of Nazi propaganda,"
according to an ADL account. In the civil rights era, it worked
in concert with the FBI to combat the Ku Klux Klan.
In 1975, the ADL issued a report entitled "Target U.S.A.: The
Arab Propaganda Offensive" that described how mainstream Arab-
American groups were allied with non-Arab "apologists" such as
"some church people, clergy and lay, a number of university-based
intellectuals and scholars, plus elements in the liberal
community ... some groups formerly active in the antiwar movement
during the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, plus the extreme Left,
Old and New, segments of the political Far Right, and the
traditional anti-Jewish hate fringe . . . and a small number of
anti-Israel, anti-Zionist Jews."
Once this broad rationale took hold, the civil rights watchdog
increasingly devoted its investigative apparatus to
"counteracting" what it calls "anti-Israel" sentiment or "the new
antisemitism" in the United States.
In practice, this means the ADL keeps track of politically
active Americans or groups that repeatedly criticize Israel or
lobby for Palestinian rights. The ADL argues that any threat to
Israel's "image" in America endangers the $3 billion annual
package of U.S. military and economic aid to Israel and thereby
jeopardizes the long-term fate of all Jews.
"I understand that it's difficult for other people to
understand," said Foxman, but a "viable, safe, secure haven" in
Israel is "part and parcel of the safety and security and
survival of the Jewish people."
Bullock's work as described in the lengthy transcripts of his
interviews with police and in FBI summaries of his
statements tracks the shift in the ADL's emphasis. In the 1960s
and 1970s, he focused primarily on tradtional organized
antisemitic extremist organizations. But during the 1980s,
Bullock said he increasingly focused on groups critical of
Israeli policies, such as anti-apartheid groups, but not overtly
antisemitic.
Bullock's computer database grew to include more than 10,000
names of individuals and hundreds of political, social and
business groups, including some that had worked closely with the
ADL. But his primary concentration was on groups he labeled
"Right," "Arabs," "Pinkos," and "Skins." He acknowledged sharing
his information with law enforcement, a fact investigators
confirmed when they searched Gerard's police department files and
found duplicates of Bullock's files. Bullock told police that ADL
officials knew about his database.
Bullock said he got "checks regular once-a-week" from the ADL
that were paid through Los Angeles attorney Bruce Hochman.
Hochman said in an interview that he paid Bullock at the ADL's
request to protect the undercover role.
Bullock told police that he met Gerard at a meeting at the San
Francisco ADL office and that executive director Richard
Hirschhaut was aware that Gerard was a key source.
The ADL dispatched Bullock on special assignments to Chicago
and Germany. For a particularly sensitive operation he said he
got the approval of Irwin Suall, national director of fact
finding. Both officials have come under scrutiny in the
investigation. Suall and Hirschhaut declined comment.
Bullock told police he was the ADL's "resident expert" on
antisemitism in San Francisco and maintained the ADL office
files. He said he was the only "fact finder, spy, whatever you
want to call me, on the West Coast."
Bullock monitored several of the groups profiled in the ADL's
published reports, occasional exposes that are a blend of
advocacy journalism and intelligence briefings. In 1987, Bullock
volunteered to work on a march of the Mobilization for Jobs,
Peace and Justice, a coalition of liberal groups that included
the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), according
to director Carl Finamore.
"He [Bullock] just showed up at our office one day to help. He
comes in, he's friendly, insinuates himself, asserts himself,
tells a little bit about his personal background to get you
interested in him as a human being, makes suggestions," Finamore
said.
Some `Material Is Clearly Contraband'
The ADL wanted information on the ADC, a group that challenges
defamatory Arab stereotypes, because it considered the
organization a "highly active pro-PLO propaganda group." An ADL
report said the ADC's members favor "political support for
suspected PLO terrorists residing in the U.S."
Bullock also volunteered at the ADC's San Francisco Bay Area
chapter, where he carried banners, helped with crowd control
during demonstrations and took photographs, according to Osama
Doumani, who at the time served as the ADC's regional director.
"He would come to my office and he would hug me in a comradely
fashion and volunteer for work. He wanted to have a presence
whenever we had something important," he said.
The ADL has labored to draw a distinction between Bullock's
more controversial activities and work he was authorized to do
for ADL, leaving investigators largely unconvinced.
In a court affidavit, San Francisco Police Inspector Ronald
Roth said that based on a comparison of Bullock's database with
the seized ADL records, "It is believed that Bullock's databases
are in fact the ADL databases."
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Dwyer argued in court that
"some of that [ADL] material is clearly contraband." The ADL, he
said, does not "have the right to rap sheet photographs; they do
not have the right to people's fingerprint cards."
But Foxman and other ADL officials say its fact finders
basically employ the methods of investigative journalists, taking
notes at public meetings, culling published material for facts,
and cultivating law enforcement sources, in order to publish
important exposes about bigotry and prejudice.
"It's a First Amendment right," Foxman said. "We have a right
to gather information and to disseminate it. ... We look at
pieces. We look at individuals. We look at ideologies."
[end]
The Washington Post
October 19, 1993
page A13
EVOLUTION OF THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE
FULL NAME: Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
MISSION: "The immediate object of the league is to stop, by
appeals to reason and conscience, and if necessary, by
appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people and
to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens
alike." (ADL founding charter, 1913)
ORGANIZATION: National director Abraham H. Foxman oversees 200
staff members who work in New York, Washington, and 30
regional offices in major cities. About 15,000 ADL
supporters donate time, money and advice.
BUDGET: $31 million in 1992, chiefly raised through donations to
the ADL, which is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit
foundation established for educational purposes.
BRIEF HISTORY:
1913 A group of Jewish attorneys in Chicago forms the ADL,
using a grant from B'nai B'rith, an international
fraternal organization.
1915 Lynching of Atlanta B'nai B'rith leader Leo Frank
galvanizes the ADL to work toward protecting the physical
safety of Jews.
1930s The ADL leads the U.S. fight against pro-Fascist groups
and "America First" isolationists, establishing a pattern
in which ADL research was shared with federal agencies.
1940s The ADL emphasizes involvement in civil rights
litigation, contesting harsh immigration policies and
opposing restrictive covenants that prevented Jews from
moving into desirable neighborhoods.
1950s The ADL supplies federal agencies with information on
alleged subversives, but also challenges Sen. Joseph R.
McCarthy (R-Wis.) and works quietly to clear those
wrongly accused of being communists or their
sympathizers.
1960s The ADL works closely with law enforcement authorities
on various types of civil rights litigation. It forms
department of Middle Eastern affairs after the Six Day
War in 1967 underscores Israel's vulnerability.
1970s The ADL increasingly focuses on the threat to Israel of
pro-Arab or anti-Israel advocates in the United States,
especially their efforts to persuade the United States to
end its military assistance to Israel.
1980s The ADL emerges as a vigorous member of the pro-Israel
lobby, even as it continues to investigate left- and
right-wing extremist groups. It develops a model for hate
crimes legislation, which recently was upheld by the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Recent ADL reports: In addition to its annual audits of antisemitic
incidents, the ADL has published reports that discussed the views of
such diverse figures as Patrick J. Buchanan, David Duke, Lyndon H.
LaRouche, Jr., and Louis Farrakhan. It has issued studies on
antisemitic sentiment among black nationalist and left-wing radicals;
the continuing activities of Ku Klux Klan leaders, the pursuit of
Nazi war criminals, the phenomenon of Skinheads and several reports
on what it calls the "anti-Israel Lobby" or pro-Arab propaganda
groups in the United States.
Compiled by Barbara J. Saffir from news services and ADL.
[end]
The Washington Post
October 19, 1993
page A12
Case of the Critical Librarians
Research on Bibliographer Used to Counter Vote on Israeli Censorship
by Jim McGee
Reference librarian David L. Williams says he learned firsthand how
the ADL's fact-finding operation uses information to counteract
critics of Israel.
Williams, who works at the Chicago Public Library, was listed in
ADL fact finder Roy H. Bullock's files as an "Arab" activist.
Involved in liberal causes since the Vietnam War, Williams in 1977
joined the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC), a Chicago-based
group that published a newsletter about what it considered human
rights abuses by Israel. The ADL has described the PHRC as an "anti-
Israeli propaganda group."
The Chicago ADL office built up a file on Williams, according to
Barry Morrison, who headed the city's ADL office at the time. Bullock
told the FBI that he was sent to Chicago on special assignment
specifically to investigate the PHRC. Williams's name was listed in
the database that Bullock shared with a San Francisco police
intelligence officer, Thomas Gerard.
Williams's interest in the rights of Palestinians dovetailed with
his duties at the Chicago Public Library, where he was assigned to
order books on the Middle East. In 1989, Williams prepared an in-
house bibliography for the Chicago library system on the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict.
The ADL thought the bibliography was weighted in favor of the pro-
Palestinian authors and went to Williams's superiors with its
information on his political activities.
Williams also was a member of the American Library Association
(ALA), which for years has approved resolutions condemning censorship
in other countries. In 1992, Williams and other ALA members persuaded
the association to adopt a resolution criticizing Israeli censorship
in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Morrison met privately with ALA officials to argue that a
resolution singling out Israel was unfair and laid out the ADL's
information on Williams. ALA President Marilyn Miller said she told
the ADL officials that "we don't censor our own members."
"Obviously I felt strongly that ALA should take a stand on this or
I wouldn't have gone to them with this," Williams said. "... They
[the ADL] equate that with antisemitism."
In February, the ADL issued a news release condemning the ALA for
its failure to retract what the ADL called a "false and biased anti-
Israel resolution." The release noted that the ADL "fights
antisemitism and all forms of bigotry."
"When we ultimately found that despite numerous efforts that we had
failed, then we chose to condemn and attack the ALA," Morrison said.
"Ultimately their officials are responsible for the image, reputation
and stature of their organization."
"I think they [the ALA] were made to feel that they were in danger
of being condemned for being antisemitic for voicing any kind of
criticism of Israel," said Mark Rosenweig, a Jewish librarian from
New York who supported the ALA's censorship resolution.
The ADL began working at the "grass-roots level," according to
Morrison, encouraging Jewish librarians in the library association to
push for retraction of the measure. An ALA group called the Jewish
Librarians Committee took the lead; a fact sheet prepared by the ADL
was distributed to ALA members. In June, at its annual convention in
New Orleans, the ALA revoked the Israeli censorship resolution.
"ADL did not engage in any form of pressure or intimidation ...,"
said Kenneth Jacobson, the ADL's director of international affairs.
"We recognize and respect the First Amendment rights of Israel's
critics in this country and fully exercise our own free speech
rights. There is nothing illegal, improper, or clandestine about our
efforts and nothing merits our apology."
[end]
The Washington Times
October 19, 1993
page A13
Loudoun Investigator's Mission: An Expenses-Paid Trip to Israel
by Robert O'Harrow, Jr.
For much of his career, Donald Moore was an investigator with
the Loudoun County sheriff's department. He loved undercover
surveillance, and sometimes went through trash dumpsters in a
furtive search for clues.
For eight days in May 1991, More became a police emissary of
sorts on an all-expenses paid "mission" to Israel sponsored by
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith. He and 11 other
American officers, including some from the District and
Montgomery County, received a military briefing and shared ideas
with national police leaders.
Two years later, the trip and other ADL-sponsored missions came
under scrutiny by the San Francisco District Attorney's office,
which has been examining whether the ADL granted favors to peace
officers to encourage them to share confidential police
information with the organization.
One officer who went along on Moore's trip, former San
Francisco inspector Thomas Gerard, has pleaded not guilty to
felony charges that he passed along police information to
longtime ADL operative Roy H. Bullock.
Authorities say Moore and the other officers on the May 1991
trip are not targets of the investigation; at least three of the
officers have been interviewed by the FBI or police authorities
in California.
Bullock has said the ADL had "numerous peace officers"
supplying confidential criminal records and other information,
court records show. Some civil rights groups and privacy rights
experts say they fear the ADL, and possibly other private groups,
quietly have supplemented police intelligence-gathering by doing
investigative work off limits to police.
"That is a real question that we have, not only in San
Francisco, but also in other communities," said John Crew, an
American Civil Liberties Union attorney.
ADL officials acknowledge they have worked closely with law
enforcement on investigating bias crimes, police training, and
drafting hate crimes legislation. But they say such cooperation
is part of the organization's civic duty and deny knowingly
accepting illegal information. "There's nothing that we do that
is sinister and there's nothing that we do that is against the
law," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL's national director.
Moore and other officers say they often have turned to the ADL
for help, but not to the point of sharing restricted information.
Moore was fired last year in an unrelated incident after
sheriff's officials said he was found going through private phone
messages. He was acquitted last year of charges that he helped
plan an abduction of Lewis du Pont Smith, an heir to the du Pont
fortune and a longtime follower of political extremist Lyndon H.
LaRouche Jr.
It was his investigation of LaRouche that brought Moore into
close contact with the ADL. In 1986, he was assigned to
investigate LaRouche followers after the group moved its
headquarters to Leesburg in Loudoun County.
Working as a local point man in an investigation that
eventually involved federal agents in several cities, Moore set
up a computer database in Leesburg listing LaRouche associates
and cultivated local residents to help track their movements.
Moore began working with ADL fact finder Mira Boland, who
joined the ADL in 1982 and was assigned to cultivate law
enforcement sources. Boland is now widely known among police as a
source of reliable tips, sometimes from "snitches" who infiltrate
hate groups. Boland declined repeated requests to be interviewed,
saying ADL leaders denied her permission.
Beginning in 1986, court records show, Boland said she began
sharing information on LaRouche with Moore and other Loudoun
sheriff's deputies. The two regularly exchanged details about
LaRouche, including clips from his groups' publications and
county gun permit records.
When LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy and mail fraud in
1988 in Alexandria, the ADL celebrated with prosecutors, Moore
and others involved in the case. Boland has a photo of the
celebration in her office.
Transcripts of a recent federal wiretap of Moore's telephone on
an unrelated case describe his relationship with the ADL. "I need
to find a guy the ADL had a little old woman knocking on his
apartment in New York two hours after I had asked," Moore said on
the recording, court papers show. "I told the feds exactly where,
when and how to get him. And he was got."
Moore said in an interview that he has never passed along
restricted records to the ADL. "Did I share any information with
them? Nothing that wasn't public information," he said.
Despite questions raised by investigators about ADL's tactics,
Washington area police agencies praise the group. They say
Boland's fact-finding office in the District and the publications
it produces are helpful in researching extremist groups.
In Maryland, the District and Virginia, for instance, police
are not allowed to create files on individuals or groups solely
because of their political or racial views. The ADL has no such
restraints, police say. ADL officials say fact finders such as
Boland work in the same ways as journalists.
"In one way, it's like another law enforcement agency," said
Lt. Tim Boyle, of the Maryland-National Capital Park Police in
Montgomery, who went on the 1991 ADL trip to Israel. "They can
tell you who the leaders are, when they started, that type of
thing. They have no restrictions on them."
Boyle turned to the ADL in 1989 when a teenager of Asian
descent was taunted as a "gook" and attacked with steel-toed
boots by a gang of Skinheads.
When one of the gang leaders disappeared, the ADL offered to
use its sources to help find him, Boyle said. Eventually, using a
young undercover operative, the ADL infiltrated the Skinheads and
found the suspect, who was arrested in Pittsburgh.
Much of the ADL's work with law enforcement goes beyond
investigations. In New Jersey, the ADL helped the state attorney
general's office produce a hate-crime training video, now
circulated to some 700 police agencies across the country. The
ADL also helps police draft legislation to curb hate crimes.
The ADL views its special police missions to Israel as another
intensive training activity, giving officers a chance to meet
with top Israeli police, intelligence officers and political
leaders.
"They have been our unofficial consultant," said James
Mulvihill, a New Jersey assistant attorney general who speaks
with ADL officials on an almost weekly basis. "I regard them as
the premier prejudice fighting organization.
[end]

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THE AGE OF REASON.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES.
IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had
beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by
whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had
brought among them a great English and American heart -- Thomas
Paine. He had pleaded for Louis Caper -- "Kill the king but spare
the man." Now he pleaded, -- "Disbelieve in the King of kings, but
do not confuse with that idol the Father of Mankind!"
In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason"
he describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of
the year 1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the
state it has since appeared, before a guard came about three in the
morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public
Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation." This was
on the morning of December 28. But it is necessary to weigh the
words just quoted -- "in the state it has since appeared." For on
August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an appeal for Paine's
liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin de Thionville a
copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason], formerly our
colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding foreigners
from the national representation. This book was written by the
author in the beginning of the year '93 (old style). I undertook
its translation before the revolution against priests, and it was
published in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent
it, seemed offended with me for having translated this work."
Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious
colleagues of Robespierre, this early publication seems to have
been so effectually suppressed that no copy bearing that date,
1793, can be found in France or elsewhere. In Paine's letter to
Samuel Adams, printed in the present volume, he says that he had it
translated into French, to stay the progress of atheism, and that
he endangered his life "by opposing atheism." The time indicated by
Lanthenas as that in which he submitted the work to Couthon would
appear to be the latter part of March, 1793, the fury against the
priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees against them of
March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even greater
than that of his body, be remembered, and the readiness with which
death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved
by the "Mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given
Couthon by Paine's book involved danger to him and his translator.
On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of Lanthenas
was included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton
persuaded Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might
be in danger. Whether this was because of the "Age of Reason," with
its fling at the "Goddess Nature" or not, the statements of author
and translator are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the
manuscript, with considerable additions and changes, for
publication in English, as he has stated in the Preface to Part II.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
1
THE AGE OF REASON.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by
sentence, proved to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to
Merlin de Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon
in 1793. This discovery was the means of recovering several
interesting sentences of the original work. I have given as
footnotes translations of such clauses and phrases of the French
work as appeared to be important. Those familiar with the
translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded that he was too much
of a literalist to depart from the manuscript before him, and
indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an instance
(presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would
Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his
translation. This original work was divided into seventeen
chapters, and these I have restored, translating their headings
into English. The "Age of Reason" is thus for the first time given
to the world with nearly its original completeness.
It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the
proof of his "Age of Reason" (Part I.) which went through the press
while he was in prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of
some sentences as abbreviated in the haste he has described. A
notable instance is the dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the
words rendered by Lanthenas "trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop
meconnu." The addition of these words to Paine's tribute makes it
the more notable that almost the only recognition of the human
character and life of Jesus by any theological writer of that
generation came from one long branded as an infidel.
To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision
must be attributed the preservation in it of the singular error
already alluded to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme
fidelity, would have corrected. This is Paine's repeated mention of
six planets, and enumeration of them, twelve years after the
discovery of Uranus. Paine was a devoted student of astronomy, and
it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not participated in
the universal welcome of Herschel's discovery. The omission of any
allusion to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was
printed from a manuscript written before 1781, when Uranus was
discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793, Paine might not have
discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation, and, having no
time for copying, he would naturally use as much as possible of the
same manuscript in preparing his work for English readers. But he
had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an erratum which,
if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the
paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. He
states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he
"saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of
government would be followed by a revolution in the system of
religion," and that "man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams
that it had long been his intention to publish his thoughts upon
religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams in 1776.
Like the Quakers among whom he was reared Paine could then readily
use the phrase "word of God" for anything in the Bible which
approved itself to his "inner light," and as he had drawn from the
first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy, John Adams,
a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
2
THE AGE OF REASON.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
Testament. Paine replied that he did not, and at a later period
meant to publish his views on the subject. There is little doubt
that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during the
American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on
the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a
practicable method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery)
without publishing it. At any rate it appears to me certain that
the part of "The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite
science, astronomy, was written before 1781, when Uranus was
discovered.
Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian
phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear from several
allusions in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early
life, or before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so
called were substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of
Paine's statements concerning them appears as I write in an account
sent by Count Leo Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of the Russian sect
called Dukhobortsy (The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang
up in the last century, and the narrative says:
"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards
'Dukhoborcheskaya' were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to
Russia. The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the
soul of man dwells God himself, and that He himself guides man by
His inner word. God lives in nature physically and in man's soul
spiritually. To Christ, as to an historical personage, the
Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance ... Christ was God's
son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves 'sons of
God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to show
us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818,
visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these
religious subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion
about Jesus Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From
the Old and New Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is
useful,' mostly the moral teaching. ... The moral ideas of the
Dukhobortsy are the following: -- All men are, by nature, equal;
external distinctions, whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing.
This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have directed further,
against the State authority. ... Amongst themselves they hold
subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be
contrary to their ideas."
Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long
before the birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to
whom the American Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine
arraigned the union of Church and State, his ideal Republic was
religious; it was based on a conception of equality based on the
divine son-ship of every man. This faith underlay equally his
burden against claims to divine partiality by a "Chosen People," a
Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or an Aristocracy.
Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's "inner
light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous
republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and
"Age of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained
by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of
George Fox.
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Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently
instructive. That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh
year before publishing his religious convictions was due to a
desire to work out some positive and practicable system to take the
place of that which he believed was crumbling. The English engineer
Hall, who assisted Paine in making the model of his iron bridge,
wrote to his friends in England, in 1786: "My employer has Common
Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories
of Divinity, but does not seem to establish any for himself." But
five years later Paine was able to lay the corner-stone of his
temple: "With respect to religion itself, without regard to names,
and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the
'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker
the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from
each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of
every one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of
Paine's Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of
George Fox confuting the doctor in America who "denied the light
and Spirit of God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not
in the Indians. Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him
'whether or not, when he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was
not something in him that reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was
such a thing in him that did so reprove him; and he was ashamed
when he had done wrong, or spoken wrong.' So we shamed the doctor
before the governor and the people." (Journal of George Fox,
September 1672.)
Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity (The
Crisis, vii., 1778), did but logically defend it in "The Age of
Reason," by denying a special revelation to any particular tribe,
or divine authority in any particular creed of church; and the
centenary of this much-abused publication has been celebrated by a
great conservative champion of Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who,
in his "Foundations of Belief," affirms that "inspiration" cannot
be denied to the great Oriental teachers, unless grapes may be
gathered from thorns.
The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of
Reason," (October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church
Congress, Norwich, on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney,
F.R.S., Canon of Manchester, read a paper in which he said: "I
cannot deny that the increase of scientific knowledge has deprived
parts of the earlier books of the Bible of the historical value
which was generally attributed to them by our forefathers. The
story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and
loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought into
harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its ethnological
statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories
of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are
incredible in their present form. Some historical element may
underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven chapters in
that book, but this we cannot hope to recover." Canon Bonney
proceeded to say of the New Testament also, that the Gospels are
not so far as we know, strictly contemporaneous records, so we must
admit the possibility of variations and even inaccuracies in
details being introduced by oral tradition." The Canon thinks the
interval too short for these importations to be serious, but that
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any question of this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason
fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are as
spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it
"serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors
their charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe
their interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in
Part II. of the work, that Paine calls attention to an
interpolation introduced into the first American edition without
indication of its being an editorial footnote. This footnote was:
"The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one only. Vide
Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in America, answered
Paine's work, and in quoting less than a page from the "Age of
Reason" he made three alterations, -- one of which changed "church
mythologists" into "Christian mythologists," -- and also raised the
editorial footnote into the text, omitting the reference to
Mosheim. Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the gospel of
Luke being carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if
not of Mr. Paine's own invention, of no better authority whatever."
And so on with further castigation of the author for what he never
wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was the unconscious means
of introducing into the text within the year of Paine's
publication.
If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and
exact man, and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as
Priestley could make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will
appear not very wonderful when I state that in a modern popular
edition of "The Age of Reason," including both parts, I have noted
about five hundred deviations from the original. These were mainly
the accumulated efforts of friendly editors to improve Paine's
grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of such;
and some resulted from the sale in London of a copy of Part Second
surreptitiously made from the manuscript. These facts add
significance to Paine's footnote (itself altered in some
editions!), in which he says: "If this has happened within such a
short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which
prevents the alteration of copies individually; what may not have
happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no
printing, and when any man who could write, could make a written
copy, and call it an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the
far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into
which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by
reason of their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for
instance, speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century,
admires the acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of
the best of them, but says "there is rarely much to be said for
their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and
difficult investigation," and that they shared with their
adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of a priori
philosophizing." [NOTE: Science and Christian Tradition, p. 18
(Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently
because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the
turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced
the 'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible
outside pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really
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founded the Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many
things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and
Baur (being the first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from
Renan (being the first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and
notably from Huxley, who has repeated Paine's arguments on the
untrustworthiness of the biblical manuscripts and canon, on the
inconsistencies of the narratives of Christ's resurrection, and
various other points. None can be more loyal to the memory of
Huxley than the present writer, and it is even because of my sense
of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as a typical
instance of the extent to which the very elect of free-thought may
be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are
contending. He says that Butler overthrew freethinkers of the
eighteenth century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth century
type; and it was precisely because of his critical method that he
excited more animosity than his deistical predecessors. He
compelled the apologists to defend the biblical narratives in
detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge the tribunal of reason and
knowledge to which they were summoned. The ultimate answer by
police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years ago England
was suppressing Paine's works, and many an honest Englishman has
gone to prison for printing and circulating his "Age of Reason."
The same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the
seats of learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the
suppression of Paine, begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued
in the long indifference of the representatives of our Age of
Reason to their pioneer and founder. It is a grievous loss to them
and to their cause. It is impossible to understand the religious
history of England, and of America, without studying the phases of
their evolution represented in the writings of Thomas Paine, in the
controversies that grew out of them with such practical
accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist Church
in Paris and New York, and of the great rationalist wing of
Quakerism in America.
Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of
Paine's time took the "Age of Reason" very seriously indeed.
Beginning with the learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff,
a large number of learned men replied to Paine's work, and it
became a signal for the commencement of those concessions, on the
part of theology, which have continued to our time; and indeed the
so-called "Broad Church" is to some extent an outcome of "The Age
of Reason." It would too much enlarge this Introduction to cite
here the replies made to Paine (thirty-six are catalogued in the
British Museum), but it may be remarked that they were notably
free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in the pulpits.
I must venture to quote one passage from his very learned
antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., "late Fellow of Jesus
College, Cambridge." Wakefield, who had resided in London during
all the Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders
uttered against the author of "Rights of Man," indirectly brands
them in answering Paine's argument that the original and
traditional unbelief of the Jews, among whom the alleged miracles
were wrought, is an important evidence against them. The learned
divine writes:
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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
"But the subject before us admits of further illustration from
the example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his
opposition to the corruptions of government has raised him so many
adversaries, and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have
exerted themselves in blackening his character and in
misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life,
will it not be a most difficult, nay an impossible task, for
posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a wreck of modern
literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to identify
the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will a
true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future
period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and
mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently
extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated
by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a
melioration of condition to the common people, and their
deliverance from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the
numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be
reviled, persecuted, and burned in effigy, with every circumstance
of insult and execration, by these very objects of his benevolent
intentions, in every corner of the kingdom?"
After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine
pleaded so earnestly, -- while in England he was denounced as an
accomplice in the deed, -- he devoted himself to the preparation of
a Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions
and adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared
in what was variously known as White's Hotel or Philadelphia House,
in Paris, No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early
and fresh manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, "The
Age of Reason," and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas in
March 1793. It is entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under
the year 1793, but with the title "L'Age de la Raison" instead of
that which it bore in 1794, "Le Siecle de la Raison." The latter,
printed "Au Burcau de l'imprimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No.
4," is said to be by "Thomas Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de
I'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire du Congres du departement des
affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre d'Amerique, et auteur des
ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES DROITS DE L'HOMME."
When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors,
Paine, unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention
whose sole legal function was to frame a Constitution, retired to
an old mansion and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr.
J.G. Alger, whose researches in personal details connected with the
Revolution are original and useful, recently showed me in the
National Archives at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of
Georgeit, Paine's landlord, by which it appears that the present
No. 63 is not, as I had supposed, the house in which Paine resided.
Mr. Alger accompanied me to the neighborhood, but we were not able
to identify the house. The arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine
in his essay on "Forgetfulness" (Writings, iii., 319). When his
trial came on one of the charges was that he had kept in his house
"Paine and other Englishmen," -- Paine being then in prison, -- but
he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry accusations brought
against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord." This Section
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took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis, whereas the
present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or Georger) had
been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion (said by
Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour), and it
would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution
(October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political
comrades, that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last
literary bequest to the world, -- "The Age of Reason," -- in the
state in which it has since appeared, as he is careful to say.
There was every probability, during the months in which he wrote
(November and December 1793) that he would be executed. His
religious testament was prepared with the blade of the guillotine
suspended over him, -- a fact which did not deter pious
mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having
written the book.
In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely
the first edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the
manuscript, no doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to
whom Paine, on his way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow
was an American ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French
archives cast an unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that
no liberties were taken with Paine's proofs.
I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my
editorial work on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious
misprints, and also any punctuation which seems to render the sense
less clear. And to that I will now add that in following Paine's
quotations from the Bible I have adopted the Plan now generally
used in place of his occasionally too extended writing out of book,
chapter, and verse.
Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793,
and released on November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his
old friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded
his (Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouvemeur Morris, as American
Minister in Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive from
semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and
taken to the Minister's own residence. It was not supposed that he
could survive, and he owed his life to the tender care of Mr. and
Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus a prisoner in his room, with death
still hovering over him, that Paine wrote Part Second of "The Age
of Reason."
The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October
25, 1795, and claimed to be "from the Author's manuscript." It is
marked as "Entered at Stationers Hall," and prefaced by an
apologetic note of "The Bookseller to the Public," whose
commonplaces about avoiding both prejudice and partiality, and
considering "both sides," need not be quoted. While his volume was
going through the press in Paris, Paine heard of the publication in
London, which drew from him the following hurried note to a London
publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton:
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"SIR, -- I have seen advertised in the London papers the
second Edition [part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the
advertisement says, from the Author's Manuscript, and entered at
Stationers Hall. I have never sent any manuscript to any person. It
is therefore a forgery to say it is printed from the author's
manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the Publisher a pretence
of Copy Right, which he has no title to.
"I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent
to London. I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by
what means any copy has got over to London. If any person has made
a manuscript copy I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish
you would talk to Mr. ----- upon this subject as I wish to know by
what means this trick has been played, and from whom the publisher
has got possession of any copy.
T. PAINE.
"PARIS, December 4, 1795,"
Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above
letter on the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was
probably "Symonds" in the original, and possibly that publisher was
imposed upon. Eaton, already in trouble for printing one of Paine's
political pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the "Age of
Reason" was issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is
said to be "printed for, and sold by all the Booksellers in Great
Britain and Ireland." It is also said to be "By Thomas Paine,
author of several remarkable performances." I have never found any
copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my possession. It
is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the prosecution of
Williams for selling a copy of it.
A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many
clerical and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the
sense. The worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the
misleading date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine
completed Part First, -- an error that spread far and wide and was
fastened on by his calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to
prove his inconsistency. The editors have been fairly demoralized
by, and have altered in different ways, the following sentence of
the preface in Symonds: "The intolerant spirit of religious
persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals,
styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the Inquisition; and
the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot of the
Church." The rogue who copied this little knew the care with which
Paine weighed words, and that he would never call persecution
"religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor
concede that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of
fire and faggot. What Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit of
church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the
tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of an
Inquisition and the Guillotine, of the Stake."
An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph
Cowen, ex-M.P., which that gentleman permits me to bring to light,
besides being one of general interest makes clear the circumstances
of the original publication. Although the name of the correspondent
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does not appear on the letter, it was certainly written to Col.
John Fellows of New York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of
Reason." He published the pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine
confided his manuscript on his way to prison. Fellows was
afterwards Paine's intimate friend in New York, and it was chiefly
due to him that some portions of the author's writings, left in
manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she was a freethinker were
rescued from her devout destructiveness after her return to
Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is dated at
Paris, January 20, 1797.
"SIR, -- Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his
departure for America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you.
I received two letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable
time past, in which you inform me of your entering a copyright of
the first part of the Age of Reason: when I return to America we
will settle for that matter.
"As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty
years past you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the
connection with his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen
thousand of the second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to
Mr. F[ranklin] Bache. I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and
the copy-right by my own direction was entered by him. The books
did not arrive till April following, but he had advertised it long
before.
"I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70
pages, from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr.
Barnes of Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to
be forwarded to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who
since his return from America told me that he put it into the post
office at New York for Bache. I have yet no certain account of its
publication. I mention this that the letter may be enquired after,
in case it has not been published or has not arrived to Mr. Bache.
Barnes wrote to me, from London 29 August informing me that he was
offered three hundred pounds sterling for the manuscript. The offer
was refused because it was my intention it should not appear till
it appeared in America, as that, and not England was the place for
its operation.
"You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my
several works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an
undertaking I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs
to me of right, but nobody but myself can do it; and as every
author is accountable (at least in reputation) for his works, he
only is the person to do it. If he neglects it in his life-time the
case is altered. It is my intention to return to America in the
course of the present year. I shall then [do] it by subscription,
with historical notes. As this work will employ many persons in
different parts of the Union, I will confer with you upon the
subject, and such part of it as will suit you to undertake, will be
at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by disinterestedness
and inattention to money matters, and by accidents, that I am
obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The printer
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(an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part of
'the Age of Reason' made a manuscript copy of the work while he was
printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means
that an edition of it came out in London.
"We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the
federal elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you
that the French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as
minister. While Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of
softening matters with this government, for he was in good credit
with them tho' they were in high indignation at the infidelity of
the Washington Administration. It is time that Mr. Washington
retire, for he has played off so much prudent hypocrisy between
France and England that neither government believes anything he
says.
"Your friend, etc.,
"THOMAS PAINE."
It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got
ahead of that sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its
errors continue in all modern American editions to the present day,
as well as in those of England. For in England it was only the
shilling edition -- that revised by Paine -- which was suppressed.
Symonds, who ministered to the half-crown folk, and who was also
publisher of replies to Paine, was left undisturbed about his
pirated edition, and the new Society for the suppression of Vice
and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who sold pious
tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold one
copy of the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his
trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the prosecution of
Williams. He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not
much elated by it, especially after a certain adventure on his way
to Lincoln's Inn. He felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet
a woman bathed in tears. She led him into the small book-shop of
Thomas Williams, not yet called up for judgment, and there he
beheld his victim stitching tracts in a wretched little room, where
there were three children, two suffering with Smallpox. He saw that
it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to take away to prison
the husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented his
publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society which had
retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the Bishop of
London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams
was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had
witnessed, and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now
suppressed, asked permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy,
he urged, was a part of the Christianity they were defending. Not
one of the Society took his side, -- not even "philanthropic"
Wilberforce -- and Erskine threw up his brief. This action of
Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only a year in prison
instead of the three he said had been intended.
While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were
circulating Erskine's speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous
sermon "On the Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which
was from Paine's "Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the
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Deity" appended. This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the
circulation of Paine's "Discourse to the Theophilanthropists"
(their and the author's names removed) under the title of "Atheism
Refuted." Both of these pamphlets are now before me, and beside
them a London tract of one page just sent for my spiritual benefit.
This is headed "A Word of Caution." It begins by mentioning the
"pernicious doctrines of Paine," the first being "that there is No
GOD" (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine existence
taken from Paine's works. It should be added that this one dingy
page is the only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the
tract form which I have been able to find in recent years, and to
this no Society or Publisher's name is attached.
The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty
years' war for religious liberty in England, in the course of which
occurred many notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his
pillory at Choring Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned,
-- its head imprisoned more than nine years for publishing the "Age
of Reason." This last victory of persecution was suicidal.
Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents of Paine, helped in setting
Carlile up in business in Fleet Street, where free-thinking
publications have since been sold without interruption. But though
Liberty triumphed in one sense, the "Age of Reason." remained to
some extent suppressed among those whose attention it especially
merited. Its original prosecution by a Society for the Suppression
of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel upon
a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the
fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was
alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false
notion that the "Age of Reason" was vulgar and illiterate. The
theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of
their antagonist, the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and
Clymer, on whom the University of Pennsylvania had conferred the
degree of Master of Arts, -- but the gentry confused Paine with the
class described by Burke as "the swinish multitude." Skepticism, or
its free utterance, was temporarily driven out of polite circles by
its complication with the out-lawed vindicator of the "Rights of
Man." But that long combat has now passed away. Time has reduced
the "Age of Reason" from a flag of popular radicalism to a
comparatively conservative treatise, so far as its negations are
concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth he heard a
sermon in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was so wicked
that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box which
was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer;
"and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of
buttons!" This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be
regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical
bones may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even
found useful in holding clerical vestments together.
But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason"
something beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially
call attention to the new departure in Theism indicated in a
passage corresponding to a famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a
note in Part II. The discovery already mentioned, that Part I. was
written at least fourteen years before Part II., led me to compare
the two; and it is plain that while the earlier work is an
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amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the phenomena of
planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on "the
universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by
that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and
disposition to do good ones." This exaltation of the moral nature
of man to be the foundation of theistic religion, though now
familiar, was a hundred years ago a new affirmation; it has led on
a conception of deity subversive of last-century deism, it has
steadily humanized religion, and its ultimate philosophical and
ethical results have not yet been reached.
**** ****
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The following is the text of a speach about the Gulf War not given by
former CIA agent Phil Agee. The reason Agee wasn't able to give the
speech is because Bush and his CIA buddies have deemed that what Agee
has to say is too dangerous for the American public to know about.
The text of Agee's speech, taken from Z magazine and posted recently
by Bill Mills is included below so that anyone who wishes to know what
this former CIA-agent has to say can do so, in accordance with the
right of Freedom of Speech in the Constitution so revered, we are
told, by those who would burn it rather than respect it, and who would
censor "dangerous" speech such as that below. Whether you read it, all
of it, is, now, a matter of free choice.
[Errors corrected since prev. post listed at end]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PRODUCING THE PROPER CRISIS a speech by Philip Agee, formerly of the CIA.
From Z magazine, Oct. 1990
On the eve of Philip Agee's 20-city tour to campuses and community
groups throughout the U.S. the Nicaraguan foreign ministry revoked his
Nicaraguan passport preventing him from traveling freely. Jean Caiani
of Speak Out!, who organized his tour, is helping coordinate a
national campaign to regain his original passport which was revoked in
1979 on the grounds that Agee's writings and speaking pose "a serious
threat to the national security of the United States." Following is
the speech that Agee planned to give at his scheduled engagements.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Sooner or later it had to happen: the fundamental transformation of
U.S. military forces was really only a matter of time. Transformation,
in this sense, from a national defense force to an international
mercenary army for hire. With a U.S national debt of $3 trillion, some
$800 billion owned by foreigners, The United States sooner or later
would have to find, or produce, the proper crisis - one that would
enable the president to hire out the armed forces, like a national
export, in order to avoid conversion of the economy from military to
civilian purposes. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, encouraged, it seems, by
the Bush administration, is the necessary crisis.
Not long after the invasion, I watched on Spanish television Bush's
call to arms, when he said "our way of life" is at stake. For days
afterwards I kept watching and reading for news of the tens of
millions of people in this country, who would take to the streets in
joy, in celebration that their days of poverty, homelessness,
illiteracy and uncared-for illness might soon end. What I saw instead,
like most of you, was the Bush "way of life" - fishing, boating, and
golfing on the coast of Maine like any respectable member of the
Eastern elite. Bush's military machismo of recent weeks reminded me of
what General Noriega said about Bush a couple of years ago, before
Bush decided to smash Panamanian nationalism for the foreseeable
future. You remember? Noriega told his deputy in the Panamanian
Defense Forces, who later made it public, he said, "I've got George
Bush - by the balls."
When I read that, I thought, how interesting - one of those rare
statements that contain two revelations. Back in the 1970s, when he
was director of the CIA, Bush tried to get a criminal indictment
against me for revelations I was making about CIA operations and
personnel. But he couldn't get it, I discovered later in documents I
received under the Freedom of Information Act. The reason was that in
the early 1970s the CIA had committed crimes against me while I was in
Europe writing my first book. If they indicted and prosecuted me, I
would learn the details of those crimes, whatever they were:
conspiracy to assassination, kidnapping, a drug plant. So they couldn't
indict because the CIA under Bush, and before him under William Colby,
said the details had to stay secret. So what did Bush do? He prevailed
on President Ford to send Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, to
Britain where I was living, to get them to take action. A few weeks
after Kissinger's secret trip a Cambridge policeman arrived at my door
with a deportation notice. After living in Britain nearly five years,
I had suddenly become a threat to the security of the realm. During
the next two years I was not only expelled from Britain, but also from
France, Holland, West Germany, and Italy - all under U.S. pressure.
For two years I didn't know where I was living, and my two sons, then
teenagers, attended four different schools in four different
countries.
The latest is the government's attempt to prevent me from speaking in
the U.S now. Where this will end, we still don't know.
How many of you have friends or relatives right now in Saudi Arabia or
the Persian Gulf area? I wonder how they feel, so close to giving
their lives to protect a feudal kingdom where women are stoned to
death for adultery, where a thief is punished by having his hand
amputated, where women can't drive cars or swim in the same pool as
men? Where bibles are forbidden and no religion save Islam is allowed?
Where Amnesty International reports that torture is routine, and that
last year 111 people were executed, 16 of them political prisoners,
all but one by public beheading. And not by clean cut, with a
guillotine, but with that long curved sword that witnesses say
requires various chops. Not that Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait before the
invasion, are any different in terms of political repression than any
number of U.S.-supported allies. But to give your life for those
corrupt, cruel, family dictatorships? Bush says we're "stopping
aggression." If that were true, the first thing U.S. forces would have
done after landing, they would have dethroned the Gulf emirs, sheiks,
and kings, who every day are carrying out the worst aggression against
their own people, especially women. Mainstream media haven't quite
said it yet, as far as I know, but the evidence is mounting that
George Bush and his entourage wanted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait,
encouraged it, and then refused to prevent it when they could have.
I'll get back to Bush later, but first, a quick review of what brought
on this crisis. Does the name Cox bring anything special to mind? Sir
Percy Cox?
In a historical sense this is the man responsible for today's Gulf
crisis. Sir Percy Cox was the British High Commissioner in Baghdad
after World War I who in 1922 drew the lines in the sand establishing
for the first time national borders between Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and
Saudi Arabia. And in each of these new states the British helped set
up and consolidate ruling monarchies through which British banks,
commercial firms, and petroleum companies could obtain monopolies.
Kuwait, however, had for centuries belonged to the Basra province of
the Ottoman Empire. Iraq and the Iraqis never recognized Sir Percy's
borders. He had drawn those lines, as historians have confirmed, in
order deliberately to deprive Iraq of a viable seaport on the Persian
Gulf. The British wanted no threat from Iraq to their dominance in the
Gulf where they had converted no less than ten sheikdoms, including
Kuwait, into colonies. The divide and rule principle, so
well-practiced in this country since the beginning. In 1958 the
British-installed monarchy in Iraq was overthrown in a military coup.
Three years later, in 1961, Britain granted independence to Kuwait,
and the Iraqi military government massed troops on the Kuwaiti border
threatening to take the territory by force. Immediately the British
dispatched troops, and Iraq backed down, still refusing to recognize
the border. Similar Iraqi threats occurred in 1973 and 1976.
This history, Saddam Hussein's justification for annexing Kuwait, is
in the books for anyone to see. But weeks went by as I waited and
wondered why the International Herald Tribune, which publishes major
articles from the Washington Post, New York Times and wire services,
failed to carry the background. Finally, a month after the invasion,
the Herald Tribune carried a Washington Post article on the historical
context written by Glenn Frankel. I've yet to find this history in
Time or Newsweek. Time, in fact, went so far as to say that Iraq's
claims to Kuwait were "without any historical basis." Hardly
surprising, since giving exposure to the Iraqi side might weaken the
campaign to Hitlerize Saddam Hussein. Also absent from current accounts
is the CIA's role in the early 1970s to foment and support armed
Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. The Agency, in league with the Shah of
Iran, provided $16 million in arms and other supplies to the Kurds,
leading to Iraqi capitulation to the Shah in 1975 over control of the
Shat al Arab. This is the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates, that
separates the two countries inland from the Gulf and is Iraq's only
access to Basra, its upriver port. Five years later, in 1980, Iraq
invaded Iran to redress the CIA-assisted humiliation of 1975, and to
regain control of the estuary, beginning the eight year war that cost
a million lives.
Apart from Iraq's historical claims on Kuwait and its need for access
to the sea, two related disputes came to a head just before the
invasion. First was the price of oil. OPEC had set the price at $18
per barrel in 1986, together with production quotas to maintain that
price. But Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had long exceeded their
quotas, driving the price down to around $13 in June. Iraq, saddled
with a $70 billion debt from the war with Iran, was losing billions of
dollars in oil revenues which normally account for 95 precent of its
exports. Meanwhile, industrialized oil consumers like the United
States were enjoying the best price in 40 years, in inflation-adjusted
dollars. Iraq's other claim against Kuwait was theft. While Iraq was
occupied with Iran during the war, Kuwait began pumping from Iraq's
vast Rumaila field that dips into the disputed border area. Iraq
demanded payment for oil taken from this field as well as forgiveness
of Kuwaiti loans to Iraq during the war with Iran. Then in July, Iraq
massed troops on the Kuwaiti border while OPEC ministers met in
Geneva. That pressure brought Kuwait and the Emirates to agree to
honor quotas and OPEC set a new target price of $21, although Iraq had
insisted on $25 per barrel. After that Hussein increased his troops on
the border from 30,000 to 100,000. On August 1, Kuwaiti and Iraqi
negotiators, meeting in Saudi Arabia, failed to reach agreement over
the loans, oil thefts, and access to the sea for Iraq. The next night
Iraq invaded. Revelations since then, together with a review of events
prior to the invasion, strongly suggest that U.S. policy was to
encourage Hussein to invade and, when invasion was imminent, to do
nothing to discourage him. Consider the following.
During the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Iraq and
continued this policy right up to August 2, the day of the invasion.
In April, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, John
Kelly, testified before Congress that the United States had no
commitment to defend Kuwait. On July 25, with Iraqi troops massed on
the Kuwait border, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met
with Hussein. Minutes of the meeting were given by the Iraqis to the
Washington Post in mid-August.
According to these minutes, which have not been disputed by the State
Department, the Ambassador told Hussein that Secretary of State James
Baker had instructed her to emphasize to Hussein that the U.S. has "no
opinion" on Iraqi-Kuwait border disputes. She then asked him, in light
of Iraqi troop movements, what his intentions were with respect to
Kuwait. Hussein replied that Kuwait's actions amounted to "an economic
war" and "military action against us." He said he hoped for a peaceful
solution, but if not, he said, "it will be natural that Iraq will not
accept death..." A clearer statement of his intentions would be hard
to imagine, and hardly a promise not to invade. The Ambassador gave no
warning from Baker or Bush that the U.S. would oppose an Iraqi
takeover of Kuwait. On the contrary she said, "I have a direct
instruction from the President to seek better relations with Iraq." On
the same day Assistant Secretary of State Kelly killed a planned Voice
of America broadcast that would have warned Iraq that the U.S. was
"strongly committed" to the defense of its friends in the Gulf, which
included, of course, Kuwait. During the week between the Ambassador's
meeting with Hussein and the invasion, the Bush administration forbade
any warning to Hussein against invasion, or to the thousands of people
who might become hostages. The Ambassador returned to Washington as
previously scheduled for consultations. Assistant Secretary Kelly, two
days before the invasion, again testified publicly before Congress to
the effect that the U.S. had no commitment to defend Kuwait. And,
according to press reports and Senator Boren, who heads the Senate
Intelligence Committee, the CIA had predicted the invasion some four
days before it happened.
Put these events together, and add the total absence of any public or
private warning by Bush to Hussein not to invade, together with no
U.S. effort to create international opposition while there was time.
Assuming the U.S. was not indifferent to an invasion, one has to ask
whether Bush administration policy was in effect to encourage Hussein
to create a world crisis. After all, Iraq had chemical weapons and had
already used them against Iran and against Kurds inside Iraq. He was
know to be within two to five years of possessing nuclear weapons. He
had completely upset the power balance in the Middle East by creating
an army one million strong. He aspired to leadership of the Arab world
against Israel, and he threatened all the so-called moderate, i.e.,
feudal regimes, not just Kuwait. And with Kuwait's oil he would
control 20 percent of the world's reserves, a concentration in radical
nationalist hands that would be equal, perhaps to the Soviet Union,
Iraq's main arms supplier. Saddam Hussein, then, was the perfect
subject to allow enough rein to create a crisis, and he was even more
perfect for post-invasion media demonization, a la Qaddafi, Ortega,
and Noriega.
Why would Bush seek a world crisis? The first suggestion came, for me
at least, when he uttered those words about "our way of life" being at
stake. They brought to mind Harry Truman's speech in 1950 that broke
Congressional resistance to Cold War militarism and began 40 years of
Pentagon dominance of the U.S. economy. It's worth recalling Truman's
speech because Bush is trying to use the Gulf crisis, as Truman used
the Korean War, to justify what some call military Keynesianism as a
solution for U.S. economic prqoblems. This is, using enormous military
expenditures to prevent or rectify economic slumps and depressions,
while reducing as much as possible spending on civilian and social
programs. Exactly what Reagan and Bush did, for example, in the early
and mid-1980s.
In 1950 the Truman administration adopted a program to vastly expand
the U.S and West European military services under a National Security
Council document called NSC-68. This document was Top Secret for 25
years and, by error, it was released in 1975 and published. The
purpose of military expansion under NSC-68 was to reverse the economic
slide that began with the end of World War II wherein during five
years the U.S. GNP had declined 20 percent and unemployment had risen
from 700,000 to 4.7 million. U.S. exports, despite the subsidy program
known as the Marshall Plan, were inadequate to sustain the economy,
and remilitarization of Western Europe would allow transfer of
dollars, under so-called defense support grants, that would in turn
generate European imports from the U.S. As NSC-68 put the situation in
early 1950: "the United States and other free nations will within a
period of a few years at most experience a decline in economic
activity of serious proportions unless more positive governmental
programs are developed..."
The solution adopted was expansion of the military. But support in
Congress and the public at large was lacking for a variety of reasons,
not least the increased taxes the programs would require. So Truman's
State Department, under Dean Acheson, set out to sell the so-called
Communist Threat as justification, through a fear campaign in the
media that would create a permanent war atmosphere. But a domestic
media campaign was not enough. A real crisis was needed, and it came
in Korea. Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, in their history of the 1945-55
period, "The Limits of Power", show that the Truman administration
manipulated this crisis to overcome resistance to military build-up
and a review of those events show striking parallels to the Persian
Gulf crisis of 1990. Korea at the end of World War II had been divided
north-south along the 38th parallel by the U.S. and the Soviets. Five
years of on-again, off-again conflict continued: first between
revolutionary forces in the south and U.S. occupation forces, then
between the respective states established first between the U.S. in
the south, then by the Soviets in the north. Both states threatened to
reunify the country by force, and border incursions with heavy
fighting by military forces were common. In June 1950, communist North
Korean military forces moved across the border toward Seoul, the South
Korean capital. At the time, the North Korean move was called "naked
aggression", but I.F. Stone made a convincing case, in his "Hidden
History of the Korean War", that the invasion was provoked by South
Korea and Taiwan, another U.S. client regime.
For a month South Korean forces retreated, practically without
fighting, in effect inviting the North Koreans to follow them south.
Meanwhile Truman rushed in U.S. military forces under a United Nations
command, and he made a dramatic appeal to Congress to for an
additional $10 billion, beyond requirements for Korea, for U.S. and
European military expansion. Congress refused. Truman then made a
fateful decision. In September 1950, about three months after the
conflict began, U.S., South Korean, and token forces from other
countries, under the United Nations banner, began to push back the
North Koreans. Within three weeks the North Koreans had been pushed
north to the border, the 38th parallel, in defeat. That would have
been the end of the matter, at least the military action, if the U.S.
had accepted a Soviet UN resolution for a cease-fire and UN-supervised
country-wide elections. Truman, however, needed to prolong the crisis
in order to overcome congressional and public resistance to his plans
for U.S. and European rearmament. Although the UN resolution under
which U.S. forces were fighting called only for "repelling" aggression
from the north, Truman had another plan. In early October U.S. and
South Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel heading north, and
rapidly advanced toward the Yalu River, North Korea's border with
China where only the year before the communists had defeated the
U.S.-backed Kuomintang regime. The Chinese communist government
threatened to intervene, but Truman had decided to overthrow the
communist government in North Korea and unite the country under the
anti-communist South Korean dictatorship. As predicted, the Chinese
entered the war in November and forced the U.S. and its allies to
retreat once again southward. The following month, with the media full
of stories and pictures of American soldiers retreating through snow
and ice before hordes of advancing Chinese troops, Truman went on
national radio, declared a state of national emergency, and said what
Bush's remarks about "our way of life" at stake recalled. Truman
mustered all the hype and emotion he could, and said: "Our homes, our
nation, all the things that we believe in, are in great danger. This
danger has been created by the rulers of the Soviet Union." He also
called again for massive increases in military spending for U.S. and
European forces, apart from needs in Korea.
Of course, there was no threat of war with the Soviet Union at all.
Truman attributed the Korean situation to the Russians in order to
create emotional hysteria, a false threat, and to get the leverage
over Congress needed for approval of the huge amounts of money that
Congress had refused. As we know, Truman's deceit worked. Congress
went along in its so-called bi-partisan spirit, like the sheep in the
same offices today. The U.S. military budget more than tripled from
$13 billion in 1950 to $44 billion in 1952, while U.S. military forces
doubled to 3.6 million. The Korean War continued for three more years,
after it could have ended, with the final casualty count in the
millions, including 34,000 U.S. dead and more than 100,000 wounded.
But in the United States, Korea made the permanent war economy a
reality, and we have lived with it for 40 years.
What are the parallels with the current Gulf crisis? First, Korea in
June 1950 was already a crisis of borders and unification demands
simply waiting for escalation. Second, less than six months before the
war began Secretary of State Dean Acheson publicly placed South Korea
outside the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia, just as Assistant
Secretary Kelly denied any U.S. defense commitment to Kuwait. Third,
the U.S. obtained quick UN justification for a massive military
intervention, but only for repelling the North Koreans, not for
conquest of that country. Similarly, the UN resolutions call for
defense of Saudi Arabia, not for military conquest of Iraq - contrary
to the war mongers who daily suggest that the U.S. may be "forced" to
attack Iraq, presumably without UN sanction or declaration of war by
Congress. Fourth, both crises came at a time of U.S. economic weakness
with a recession or even worse downturn threatening ahead. Fifth, and
we will probably see this with the Gulf, the Korean crisis was
deliberately prolonged in order to establish military expenditures as
the motor of the U.S. economy. Proceeding in the same manner now would
be an adjustment to allow continuation of what began in 1950. NSC-68
required a significant expansion of CIA operations around the world in
order to fight the secret political Cold War - a war against socialist
economic programs, against communist parties, against left social
democrats, against neutralism, against disarmament, against relaxation
of tensions, and against the peace offensive then being waged by the
Soviet Union.
In Western Europe, through a vast network of political action and
propaganda operations, the CIA was called upon to create in the
public mind the specter of imminent Soviet invasion combined with the
intention of the European left to enslave the population under Soviet
dominion. By 1953, as a result of NSC-68, the CIA had major covert
action programs underway in 48 countries, consisting of propaganda,
paramilitary, and political action operations - such as buying
elections and subsidizing political parties. The bureaucracy grew
accordingly: in mid-1949 the covert action arm of the CIA had about
300 employees and seven overseas field stations. Three years later
there were 2,800 employees and 47 field stations. In the same period
the covert action budget grew from $4.7 million to $82 million.
By the mid-1950s the name for the "enemy" was no longer just the
Soviet Union. The wider concept of "International Communism" better
expressed the global view of secret conspiracies run from Moscow to
undermine the U.S. and its allies. One previously secret document from
1955 outlines the CIA's tasks: "Create and exploit problems for
International Communism. Discredit International Communism and reduce
the strength of its parties and organization. Reduce international
Communist control over any area of the world... specifically such
operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda,
political action, economic warfare, preventive direct action,
including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, escape and invasion and
evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups,
including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas
and refugee liberation groups, support of indigenous and
anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world;
deception plans and all compatible activities necessary to accomplish
the foregoing."
Another document on CIA operations from the same period said, in
extracts: "Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply...
long-standing American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered...
we must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more
clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used
against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made
acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant
philosophy." And so, from the late 1940s until the mid-1950s, the CIA
organized sabotage and propaganda operations against every country of
Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union. They tried to foment
rebellion and to hinder those countries' effort to rebuild from the
devastation of World War II. Though unsuccessful against the Soviet
Union, these operations had some successes in other countries, notably
East Germany. This was the easiest target because, as one former CIA
officer wrote, before the wall went up in 1961 all an infiltrator
needed was good documents and a railway ticket.
From about 1949, the CIA organized sabotage operations against targets
in East Germany in order to slow reconstruction and economic recovery.
The purpose was to create a high contrast between West Germany, then
receiving billions of U.S. dollars for reconstruction, and the "other
Germany" under Soviet control. William Blum, in his excellent history
of the CIA, lists an astonishing range of destruction: "through
explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods, they damaged
power stations, shipyards, a dam, canals, docks, public buildings,
petrol stations, shops, outdoor stands, a radio station, public
transformation... derailed freight trains... blew up road and railway
bridges used special acid to damage vital factory machinery... killed
7,000 cows... added soap to powdered milk destined for East German
schools," and much, much more. These activities were worldwide, and
not only directed against Soviet-supported governments.
During 40 years, as the east-west military standoff stabilized, the
CIA was a principle weapon in waging the north-south dimension of the
Cold War. It did so through operations intended to destroy
nationalist, reformist, and liberation movements of the so-called
Third World, through political repression (torture and death squads),
and by the overthrow of democratically elected civilian governments,
replacing them with military dictatorships. The Agency also organized
paramilitary forces to overthrow governments, with the contra
operation in Nicaragua only a recent example. This north-south
dimension of the Cold War was over control of natural resources,
labor, and markets and it continues today, as always. Anyone who
thinks the Cold War ended should think again: the east-west dimension
may have ended with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, but
the north-south dimension, which is where the fighting really took
place, as in Vietnam, is still on. The current Persian Gulf crisis is
the latest episode, and it provides the Bush administration with the
pretext to institutionalize the north-south dimension under the
euphemism of a "new international order," as he calls it. The means
will be a continuation of U.S. militarism within the context, if they
are successful, of a new multi-lateral, international framework.
Already James Baker has been testing the winds with proposals for a
NATO-style alliance in the Gulf, an idea that William Safire aptly
dubbed GULFO.
The goal in seeking and obtaining the current stops short, I believe,
of a shooting war. After all, a war with Iraq will not be a matter of
days or even weeks. Public opinion in the U.S. will turn against Bush
if young Americans in large numbers start coming back in body bags.
And Gulf petroleum facilities are likely to be destroyed in the
process of saving them, a catastrophe for the world economy.
Nevertheless, press accounts describe how the CIA and U.S. special
forces are organizing and arming guerrillas, said to be Kuwaitis, for
attacking Iraqi forces. These operations provide the capability for
just the right provocation, an act that would cause Hussein to order
defensive action that would then justify an all-out attack.
Such provocations have been staged in the past. In 1964, CIA
paramilitary forces working in tandem with the U.S. Navy provoked the
Tonkin Gulf incidents, according to historians who now question
whether the incidents, said to be North Vietnamese attacks on U.S.
ships, even happened. But Lyndon Johnson used the events as a pretext
to begin bombing North Vietnam and to get a blank check resolution
from Congress to send combat troops and escalate the war.
I think the purpose is not a shooting war but a crisis that can be
maintained as long as possible, far after the Iraqi-Kuwait problem is
resolved. This will prolong the international threat - remember Truman
in 1950 - and allow Bush to prevent cuts in the military budget, to
avoid any peace dividend, and prevent conversion of the economy to
peaceful, human-oriented purposes. After all, when you count all U.S.
defense-related expenses, they add up to more than double the official
figure of 26 percent of the national budget for defense - some experts
say two-thirds of the budget goes for defense in one way or another.
The so-called national security state of the past 40 years has meant
enormous riches, and power, for those who are in the game. It has also
meant population control - control of the people of this and many
other countries. Bush and his team, and those they represent, will do
whatever is necessary to keep the game going. Elitist control of the
U.S. rests on this game. If anyone doubts this, recall that from the
very beginning of this crisis, projections were coming out on costs,
implying that Desert Shield would last for more than a year, perhaps
that large U.S. forces would stay permanently in the Gulf. Just
imagine the joy this crisis has brought to U.S. military industries
that only months ago were quaking over their survival in a post-Cold
War world. Not six weeks passed after the Iraqi invasion before the
Pentagon proposed the largest arms sale in history: $21 billion worth
of hardware for defense of the Saudi Arabian throne. Very clever when
you do the sums. With an increase in price of $15 per barrel, which
had already happened, Saudi Arabia stands to earn more than $40
billion extra dollars during the 14 months from the invasion to the
end of the next U.S. fiscal year. Pentagon calculations of Desert
Shield costs come to $18 billion for the same 14 months. Even if the
Saudis paid all that, which they won't because of other contributors,
they would have more than $20 billion in windfall income left over.
O.K., bring that money to the States through weapon sales. That, I
suppose, is why the Saudi Arms sale instantly became known as the
Defense Industry Relief Act of 1990.
As for the price of oil, everyone knows that when it gets above $25-30
a barrel it becomes counter-productive for the Saudis and the Husseins
and other producers. Alternative energy sources become attractive and
conservation again becomes fashionable. Saddam Hussein accepted $21 in
July, and even if, with control of Kuwait, he had been able to get the
price up to $25, that would have been manageable for the United States
and other industrial economies. Instead, because of this crisis, it's
gone over $35 a barrel and even up to $40, threatening now to provoke
a world depression. With talk of peaceful solutions, like Bush's
speech to the UN General Assembly, they will coax the price down, but
not before Bush and others in the oil industry increase their already
considerable fortunes.
Ah, but the issue, we're told, is not the price of oil, or
preservation of the feudal Gulf regimes. It's principle. Naked
aggression cannot be allowed, and no one can profit from it. This is
why young American lives may be sacrificed. Same as Truman said in
1950, to justify dying for what was then, and for many tears
afterwards, one of the world's nastiest police states. When I read
that Bush was putting out that line, I nearly choked.
When George Bush attacks Saddam Hussein for "naked aggression", he
must think the world has no knowledge of United States history - no
memory at all. One thing we should never forget is that a nation's
foreign policy is a product of its domestic system. We should look to
our domestic system for the reasons why Bush and his entourage need
this crisis to prevent dismantling the national security state.
First, we know that the domestic system in this country is in crisis,
and that throughout history foreign crises have been manufactured,
provoked, and used to divert attention from domestic troubles - a way
of rallying people around the flag in support of the government of the
day. How convenient now for deflecting attention from the S&L scandal,
for example, to be paid not by the crooks but by ordinary, honest
people.
Second, we know that the system is not fair, that about one in three
people are economically deprived, either in absolute poverty or so
close that they have no relief from want. We also know that one in
three Americans are illiterate, either totally or to the degree that
they cannot function in a society based on the written word. We also
know that one in three Americans does not register to vote, and of
those who register 20 percent don't vote. This means we elect a
president with about 25 percent or slightly less of the potential
votes. The reasons why people don't vote are complex, but not the least
of them is that people know their vote doesn't count.
Third, we know that during the past ten years these domestic problems
have gotten even worse thanks to the Reagan-Bush policy of
transferring wealth from the middle and poor classes to the wealthy,
while cutting back on social programs. Add to this the usual litany of
crises: education, health care, environment, racism, women's rights,
homophobia, the infrastructure, productivity, research, and inability
to compete in the international marketplace, and you get a nation not
only in crisis, but in decline as well. In certain senses that might
not be so bad, if it stimulates, as in the Soviet Union, public debate
on the reasons. But the picture suggests that continuation of foreign
threats and crises is a good way to avoid fundamental reappraisal of
the domestic system, starting where such a debate ought to start, with
the rules of the game as laid down in the constitution.
What can we do? Lots. On the Gulf crisis, it's getting out the
information on what's behind it, and organizing people to act against
this intervention and possible war. Through many existing
organizations, such as Pledge of Resistance, there must be a way to
develop opposition that will make itself heard and seen on the streets
of cities across the country. We should pressure Congress and the
media for answers to the old question: During that week between
Ambassador Glaspie's meeting with Hussein, "What did George know, when
did he know it, and why didn't he act publicly and privately to stop
the invasion before it happened?" In getting the answer to that
question, we should show how the mainstream media, in failing to do
so, have performed their usual cheerleading role as the government's
information ministry.
The point on the information side is to show the truth, reject the
hypocrisy, and raise the domestic political cost to Bush and every
political robot who has gone along with him. At every point along the
way we must not be intimidated by those voices that will surely say:
"You are helping that brute Saddam Hussein." We are not helping
Hussein, although some may be. Rather we are against a senseless
destructive war based on greed and racism. We are for a peaceful,
negotiated, diplomatic solution that could include resolution of other
territorial disputes in the region.
We are against militarist intervention and against a crisis that will
allow continuing militarism in the United States. We are for
conversion of the U.S. and indeed the world economy to peaceful,
people-oriented purposes. In the long run, we reject one-party elitist
government, and we demand a new constitution, real democracy, with
popular participation in decision-making. In short, we want our own
glasnost and restructuring here in the United States. If popular
movements can bring it to the Soviet Union, that monolithic tyranny,
why can't we here in the United States?
------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrections I made from last post:
-- "Assuming the U.S. was not indifferent to an invasion, one has to act"
Was changed to "..one has to ask"
-- The two paragraphs starting with "Why would Bush seek a world crisis?"
needed to be "filled", i.e., new-lines inserted.
-- "Truman attributed the Korean situation to the RUssians in order to
create emotinal hysteria, a false, threat, and to get the leverage..."
The comma after "false" was deleted.
-- "In Western Europe, through a vast network of political action and
propaganda operations, the CIA was called upon the create in the
public mind, the specter of imminent Soviet invasion combined with the
intention of the European left to enslave the population under
Soviet..." Was changed to "..CIA was called upon to create..." and the
comma after "mind" was deleted.
Please join the campaign to help Phil Agee regain his passport; don't
let Bush decide for us what's too "dangerous" for us to hear (namely
dirty deeds committed by the CIA, as only a former agent can reveal)
-Harel
------------------------------------------------------------------
Speak Out!
Dear Friends: San Francisco, CA
Speak Out! is organizing a national campaign on behalf of Philip Agee,
former CIA officer and internationally recognized author, lecturer, and
foreign policy critic.
On September 22, the Chamorro government revoked Philip Agee's
Nicaraguan passport. The impetus for this action in all likelihood came
from the U.S. State Department. The revocation came on the eve of his
trip to the U.S. to begin a 20-city speaking tour.
This is merely the latest in an on-going effort to silence Agee and to
prevent him from traveling freely to and from the U.S.
We are appealing to Philip's supporters to help us circulate this
information as widely as possible. The government must not be allowed
to limit U.S. citizens' right to travel and speak freely. If they
succeed in this campaign against Philip Agee there will be ramifications
for all of us.
We invite you to join Noam Chomsky, Margaret Randall, Ramsey Clark,
Michael Parenti, Holly Sklar and many others in sending a brief
statement of protest to:
Secretary of State James Baker
U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Washington, DC 20520
and
Judge Gerhard Gesell
U.S. COURT HOUSE
Third and Constitution NW
Washington, DC 20001
Please also send a copy to us at:
Speak Out! 2215-R Market Street, #520,
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 864-4451
Agee and Speak Out! staff thank you in advance for any
assistance you can provide in spreading the word.
In solidarity,
Jean Caiani
Speak Out! Coordinator
##################################################################
Statement from Agee
##################################################################
Following is an excerpted statement from Philip Agee in Madrid, Spain.
It is from a speech he intended to give during his U.S. speaking tour.
GREETINGS TO ALL OF YOU:
I'm very sorry I'm not able to be with you tonight. I am not with you
because the U.S. government, including the Federal Courts, has once
again taken measures to prevent exercise of a citizen's First Amendment
rights. Not that this is so unusual in a national security state. For
me it's familiar, the latest such action in nearly 20 years of efforts
to prevent my speaking, above all to people in the United States.
Two weeks ago I heard indirectly that my Nicaraguan passport, with which
I have travelled for years, was revoked by the Chamorro government. I
checked with friends in Managua, who confirmed the action.
Without a passport I am unable to travel to the United States because I
could not return to my wife and work in Spain where a valid passport is
required for entry. For almost four years I have been trying
unsuccessfully to get a U.S. passport but the State Department, at the
CIA's urging, has refused.
In June my lawyers filed suit in the District Court in Washington
demanding a court order requiring the State Department either to issue a
passport or to re-open a hearing that in its first phase, three years
ago, was conducted in clear and open violation of the Department's own
regulations.
Those regulations give me the right to "confrontation and
cross-examination" of William Webster, the CIA Director and only witness
against me. The State Department refused to produce Webster despite a
ruling by its Board of Appellate Review that it do so. Ultimate
resolution, perhaps in the Supreme Court, is no doubt years away. By
such delay the government wins its case de facto, without any legal
decision.
After revocation of my Nicaraguan passport, my lawyers asked Judge
Gerhard Gesell, who is presiding my case, for an emergency order
requiring issuance of a passport so that I could fulfill agreements to
speak in the U.S. during October and November, to attend hearings on my
case in his court, to participate in any re-opened State Department
passport hearing, and to visit my family. He refused, knowing full well
that without the passport I could not return to Spain.
Gesell refuses me the possibility to attend sessions on my case in his
court, or any re-opened State Department passport hearing that he might
order, let alone speaking at this meeting tonight. For this and his
past prejudice in a suit I brought under the FOIA ten years ago, I call
on him to disqualify himself from my case. And I ask you to support me
by demanding also that he either reconsider, and issue the order for the
passport, or quit the case.
The object of this exercise is education: to show how the federal court
system is the most undemocratic institution we have. Nobody elects
those judges, who are political appointees for life, and they answer to
no one. The result finds judges masking political decisions in pompous
legalese with total immunity from public reaction. But we should not
take such hypocrisy quietly.
However serious my problems are, they are certainly mild compared with
others. I urge you to support political prisoners like Leonard Peltier
of the American Indian Movement, and the many others deprived of
constitutional rights thanks to the racism and prejudice in what passes
for U.S. justice.
I regret that I cannot be with you. I thank you for whatever support
you can give to help me regain my right to come and go from the United
States, and to be with you on another occasion.
Best Wishes,
Philip Agee
##################################################################
PHILIP AGEE DEFENSE CAMPAIGN
On October 1, Speakout! launched a national campaign on behalf of one of
our speakers, Philip Agee. Agee was the first CIA officer to go public
in protest of the Agency's policies and remains its most controversial
critic since its founding in 1947. For fifteen years Agee has been a
leading American activist against CIA support of torture, political
assassinations, death squads, and destabilization of democratic
governments around the world. His bestselling book Inside the Company:
CIA Diary, was the first uncensored expose of CIA activities written by
one of its own. So that American citizens might know what crimes their
government is committing in their name, Agee has paid and is still
paying a high price: his freedom to travel and speak freely.
In 1979, Agee's U.S. passport was revoked for "national security"
reasons. He applied for the return of his passport in 1987. His
application was denied six months later by Secretary of State George
Shultz, alleging that Agee's activities (writing and speaking), "are
continuing to cause serious damage to the national security and foreign
policy of the United States." No evidence has ever been presented to
substantiate this charge however, and the US government has never
charged Agee with any crime.
Despite on-going efforts to stop him, Agee has traveled freely on an
honorary Nicaraguan passport he received in 1983. Twice a year he has
been touring the United States, speaking about CIA activity to overflow
crowds on hundreds of college campuses. In addition to his talks, he
always meets with students and community organizers to listen to and
advise them, explaining how to become involved in the CIA-Off Campus
Movement and linking them with other activists in the area.
He travels with dozens of books, journals, periodicals, and pamphlets,
encouraging and guiding his audiences to read and to think critically.
As a result of his most recent tour, book sales in the spring of 1990
totalled $10,000. His visits have been so successful that dozens of
CIA-Off Campus committees now exist and a national student newspaper
(Campus Watch) to monitor CIA activities on campuses enjoys a wide
circulation. As a result of his exposes, CIA recruitment has been
banned from many campuses. As Christine Kelley of Student Action Union
(national student organization) says, "If you want to get the CIA off
your campus, bring Phil Agee on."
On September 22, 1990, the eve of a Agee's 20-city US tour organized by
Speakout!, the Chamorro government revoked Agee's Nicaraguan passport,
evidently in response to pressure from the US State Department. This is
just the latest action in nearly 20 years of harassment and efforts to
silence him. State Department pressure has also prevented him from
obtaining a passport from any other country.
After revocation of his passport, Agee's lawyers asked Judge Gerhart
Gesell, who is presiding his case, for an emergency order requiring
issuance of a passport so that he could fulfill agreements to speak at
meetings scheduled in October and November, attend hearings on his case
in court, and visit his family. Judge Gesell refused, knowing full well
that without a passport Agee would be unable to return to his wife and
work in Spain.
Speakout! protests this violation of Philip Agee's first amendment
rights and believes that as an American citizen, he is entitled to
travel freely and to express dissent. It is unconstitutional for the US
government to suboordinate the rights of its citizens to some undefined
national security concern. Speakout! will work to ensure that Philip
Agee's voice continues to be heard in the United States.
Following the successful campaigns to stop the deportation of South
African exile Dennis Brutus and feminist Margaret Randall under the
Reagan Administration, Speakout! has launched a campaign to Agee regain
his passport. We are already receiving some radio and newspaper
coverage, and have mailed support packets to individuals and
organizations encouraging them to write protest letters to Judge Gesell.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: video on Agee speech
To: Multiple recipients of list ACTIV-L <ACTIV-L@UMCVMB>
/** pn.publiceye: 18.6 **/
** Written 7:23 pm Jan 29, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
------------------------------------------------------------------
To order a videotape of Philip Agee speaking on the Middle East and
the Gulf Crisis, send $10 (US) to:
Jean Caiani
SPEAK OUT
2215-R Market Street, #520
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 864-4561
Make checks payable to: Philip Agee Defense Campaign
** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **


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##### updated format
CLINTON/GORE ON AGRICULTURE
As farm state natives, Bill Clinton and Al Gore
appreciate how much American farmers have done for
their country. The commitment and sacrifice of
those who feed the United States and much of the
world must not go unnoticed. A Clinton/Gore
Administration will create an agriculture policy
that both recognizes the small-family producers who
have done so much to make America great and treats
consumers and taxpayers fairly.
Bill Clinton and Al Gore understand that
guaranteeing an adequate quality food supply is an
important strategic goal of the United States. Our
current farm programs, properly managed, can
achieve reasonable prices for producers and
guarantee a safe and stable food and fiber supply
for consumers. Bill Clinton and Al Gore believe
that American farmers are the most competitive and
efficient farmers in the world. A Clinton/Gore
Administration will help them stay that way.
THE CLINTON/GORE PLAN
Trade
Protecting our environment
Expand food aid
Research, development and new ideas
A department for agriculture
Trade
* Work hard to open new markets for American
agricultural products, particularly in Eastern
Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent
States.
* Support full use of federal export tools like
the Export Enhancement Program (EEP) to expand
trade and enter new markets.
* Act swiftly to level the playing field in
international trade when foreign competitors
use export subsidies to gain an unfair
advantage over American farmers -- instead of
sitting idly by as the Bush Administration has
done.
* Remove unfair trade barriers through tough
negotiation with our trading partners to pry
open closed markets, including the support of
reciprocal retaliation against the European
Community unless the E.C. removes its ban on
U.S. pork.
Protecting our environment
* Include farmers in the national debate on
environmental policy -- because farmers and
ranchers are among the best stewards of the
land; they pay taxes and bank notes on their
land and they ought to have a say in what is
done with it.
* Ensure that environmental decisions are based
on sound scientific data, not politics, and
that Americas farmers do not carry the costs
of environmental protection alone.
Expand food aid
* Expand food aid overseas to assist emerging
democracies and developing nations.
* Increase funding for the Food for Peace
program.
Research, development, and new ideas
* Provide American leadership in world
agriculture through modernization and
development of current farm programs, and
expansion of agriculture research and
development.
* Bring existing farm programs into the
communications age by equipping federal
agriculture offices with the most modern
communications and computer equipment
available.
* Consolidate forms and processes to cut down on
wasted time and delays.
* Utilize federal research funds to improve
cooperation among farmers and between states
in the same region.
A department for agriculture
* Give American farmers a friend and advocate at
the USDA by appointing a Secretary of
Agriculture who is respected by American
farmers and who will work tirelessly on their
behalf. The USDA must be a department for
agriculture, not an annex to the Office of
Management and Budget or the State Department.
THE RECORD
* Bill Clinton made numerous trade missions to
Europe and Japan to negotiate open markets for
Arkansas products.
* Created the Division of Agriculture
Development to work closely with farmers and
relay their concerns to the Governors office.
* Developed the Farm Mediation Program to assist
farmers and lenders in finding solutions to
debt payment problems.
* Created the Arkansas Linked Deposit Program,
which provides a new source of agricultural
and small business loans by allowing up to $50
million of state funds in lending institutions
to be loaned at lower-than-market rates.
* Aggressively addressed brucellosis, resulting
in a reduction by herd count of over 92% from
1983 to 1991, moving Arkansas from Class C to
Class A.
* Established the Small Business Revolving Loan
Fund to provide loans to small and minority
businesses primarily in rural areas.
* Established the Revolving Loan Fund for
Expansion of Fruit and Vegetable Cooperatives
to provide loans in rural areas to assist
agricultural co-ops in marketing their
produce.
* Implemented the Beginning Farmer Loan Program,
a tax-exempt bond program that assists farmers
in acquiring agricultural land at low interest
rates by enabling lending institutions,
individuals, partnerships and corporations to
receive tax-exempt interest for direct loans
or contract sales made to new farmers.
* Led a bipartisan effort to strengthen farm
finance through measures designed to refinance
the debts of productive farms as a meber of
the National Governors Association (NGA)
Agriculture Committee.
* Served on the NGA Task Force on Rural
Development, which issued strong, practical
recommendations to revitalize rural
communities.
* Senator Gore grew up on a farm in Carthage,
Tennessee, and now owns a farm in Carthage.
* Consistently supported the family farmer and
helped protect basic farm income.
* Fought for an Agriculture program that helps
agriculture producers move toward a profitable
and sustainable production system.
* Fought to provide adequate funding for
conservation programs requiring the nation's
farmers to meet numerous standards for
protection of soil and water resources.
* Cosponsored a 1987 act to reform and improve
the Farm Credit System.
* Led efforts to provide disaster relief to
farmers suffering from drought and flooding.
* Aggressively insisted that U.S. negotiators
focus on trade fairness and opening new
markets for American agricultural products.
* Coauthored legislation to reduce access
charges for residential and small business
telephone rate payers and increase support for
rural companies.

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***** Reformated. Please distribute.
CLINTON GORE ON AIDS
Fighting the AIDS epidemic will be a top priority of a Clinton/Gore
Administration. If we fail to commitour hearts and resources now to
fighting AIDS, we will pay a far greater price in the future, both in
deaths and in dollars. We need leaders who will focus national
attention on AIDS, to encourage compassion and understanding, to
promote education and to speak out against intolerance.
We can't afford another four years without a plan to declare war on
AIDS. We can't afford to have yet another President who remains
silent about AIDS or who puts the issue on the back burner.
THE CLINTON/GORE PLAN
Increase funding for desperately needed new initiatives in research,
prevention and treatment.
Appoint an AIDS policy director to coordinate federal AIDS policies,
cut through bureaucratic red tape and implement recommendations
made by the National Commission on AIDS.
Speed up the drug approval process and commit increased resources
to research and development of AIDS-related treatments and
vaccines, and ensure that women and people of color are included in
research and drug trials.
Fully fund the Ryan White CARE Act. Work closely with individuals
and communities that are affected by HIV to create a partnership
between the federal government and those with knowledge and
experience in fighting HIV.
Promote a national AIDS education and prevention initiative that
disseminates frank and accurate information to reduce the spread of
the disease, and educates our children about the nature and threat of
AIDS.
Provide quality health coverage to all Americans with HIV as part of
a broader national health care program; work vigorously to improve
access to promising experimental therapies for people with
life-threatening illnesses; and improve preventive and long-term care.
Combat AIDS-related discrimination and oppose needless mandatory
HIV testing in federal organizations such as the Peace Corps, Job
Corps and the Foreign Service; stop the cynical politicization of
immigration policies by directing the Justice Department to follow
the Department of Health and Human Services' recommendation
that HIV be removed from the immigration restrictions list; promote
legislation based on sound scientific and public health principles, not
on panic, politics and prejudice.
Prevention and education
Launch a strong and effective AIDS education campaign.
Reevaluate the AIDS prevention budget at the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control to ensure that education is a top priority.
Ensure that increased funding for prevention and services goes
directly to community based organizations that are on the frontline
of the battle against the HIV virus.
Promote AIDS education in American schools.
Provide drug treatment on demand to stop the spread of HIV by
intravenous drug users.
Increase funding for behavior and social science research so that we
can better understand the behaviors that put people at risk for HIV.
Support local efforts to make condoms available in schools.
Treatment and care
Provide health care for all Americans, including those with HIV,
through coverage they obtain either on the job or through
government-mandated programs, which will include:
- Comprehensive inpatient and outpatient services, including
frequent diagnostic monitoring, early intervention therapies, and
psychological care.
- Prescription drugs and improved access to experimental therapies.
Because treatments are not accessible unless they are affordable, a
Clinton/Gore Administration will support legislation that denies tax
breaks to companies that raise the cost of drugs faster than
Americans' ability to pay for them.
- Adequate options for long-term home and community-based care
that minimize unnecessary and wasteful hospitalizations.
- Voluntary, confidential, or anonymous testing and counseling for
AIDS and HIV for every American who wants it.
Encourage the Centers for Disease Control to review periodically
their definition of AIDS to ensure that symptoms and infections that
occur among women, people of color and drug users are included in
the federal definition, and promptly made eligible for all federal
benefit programs for people with AIDS.
Develop programs with the Department of Health and Human
Service to ensure that America's health care professional are kept fully
and regularly informed aobut diagnosing and treating HIV.
Have the National Institutes of Health (NIH) develop a formalized
mechanism to make sure that state-of-the-art informations is broadly
and rapidly disseminated to health professional and people with HIV
disease.
Treatment and drug development
Work vigorously to develop a vaccine against AIDS and to find
therapies that will destroy HIV, repair the immune system and
prevent and treat AIDS-related infections.
Increase funding for both AIDS-specific and general biomedical
research.
Expand clinical and community based trials for treatments and
vaccines, and raise the level of participation of under-represented
populations.
Reorganize the NIH infrastructure to streamline AIDS research
efforts and improve planning efficiency and communication.
Promote a more rapid review by the NIH of research grant
applications and a speedier distribution of funding for approved
studies.
Facilitate greater access to drugs and work to speed up the drug
approval process.
Ensure that the FDA has the resources to assist in the efficient design
of AIDS-related drug trials and to review their results rapidly. The
FDA will also make possible greater access to promising experimental
therapies without compromising patient safety.
Discrimination
Fight all AIDS-related discrimination and discrimination based on
race, gender and sexual orientation.
Fully implement the Americans with Disabilities Act and resist any
efforts to weaken its provisions.
The Department of Justice and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
must make it a high priority to monitor the occurrence of
AIDS-related discrimination and the enforcement of the ADA with
respect to HIV-related complaints.
Forbid health insurance companies form denying coverage to
HIV-positive applicants.
Prhohibit all health plans from adopting discriminatory caps or
exclusions that provide lower coverage for AIDS than for any other
life-threatening illnesses. No American will be denied health coverage
because he or she loses a job or has a pre-existing condition.
Oppose mandatory testing in federal organizations like the Peace
Corps and Foreign Service.
Lift the current ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by
foreign nationals with HIV.
The Record
As chairman of the National Governors' Association, Governor
Clinton formed the first working group of governors to develop an
AIDS policy. Clinton was a moving force in the creation of an AIDS
action plan adopted by the Governors' Association which called for
education and prevention efforts at the local, state and federal levels.
Governor Clinton supported teacher training for AIDS education and
a detailed study of the availability of HIV education at the local
level.
Since 1990, AIDS education has been required in all Arkansas
schools, and there has been a 40% increase in HIV counseling and
voluntary testing in Arkansas.
The Arkansas AIDS Advisory Committee was established in 1987.
This committee makes recommendations on HIV policy and
program services. HIV services in the state currently include
anonymous testing at two centers and confidential testing and
counseling at public health clinics in all 75 Arkansas counties.
Senator Al Gore voted to ban discrimination against people with
AIDS or HIV.
Voted for legislation to remove HIV from the immigration
restrictions list.
Supported funding for the Ryan White AIDS Act.
Voted to provide emergency relief to metropolitan areas hardest hit
by AIDS, to health care facilities serving many low-income
individuals and families with HIV and to states to assist in improving
the quality of treatment and support services for people with HIV.

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Why I Totally Oppose Al Gore as Candidate for
Vice-President of United States of America
1.) Term Limits for Congress:
May 22, 1991, voted against an amendment to limit Senators to two
consecutive terms if they fund their campaigns with tax dollars.
2.) Using Taxes To Promote Abortion:
July 16, 1991, voted against a bill to prohibit tax-funded family-
planning clinics from promoting abortion.
3.) Abstinence-Based Sex Education:
September 12, 1991, voted against an amendment to transfer $10 million
from surveys on adult sexual behavior to the abstinence-based Adolescent
Family Life Program, thus voting against abstinence-based sex education.
4.) Taxpayer Funding of Pornography:
September 19, 1991, voted against an amendment prohibiting the National
Endowment for the Arts from spending taxpayers funds on pornographic art.
Fortunately, amendment passed 68-28.
5.) School Prayer:
January 23, 1992, voted against amendment to state the sense for the
Senate that the Supreme Court should reverse its decisions prohibiting
voluntary prayer and Bible reading in public schools.
6.) Freedom of Choice In Education:
January 23, 1992, voted against an amendment to provide low-income parents
with money to enroll their children at the public or private school of
their choice, including religious schools, thus giving parents a choice
as to where to send their children to school.
7.) Line--Item Veto:
February 27, 1992, voted against an amendment which would give the
President line-item veto authority. With this ability, the President
could veto such items as pay raises, ridiculous regulations designed
to increase budget spending, and other items that get tacked on at
the end of a bill. Incidentally 47 of our 50 states now have such
authority.
8.) Taxes:
March 13, 1992, Gore voted for an amendment which had it passed, would
have been a motion to permit consideration to require 3/5 vote of the
Senate to raise taxes but to let a simple majority cut taxes. Motion
was fortunately rejected 37-58.
9.) Balanced Budget Amendment:
April 9, 1992, he voted against a motion to state the sense of the
Senate that it should adopt by June 5 a joint resolution proposing
a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Motion passed 63-32.
10.) Environment Issues (what's termed as his speciality):
Al Gore has pushed environment issues to the point of absurdity, fraud,
and deceit. He states and makes claims which lack proof, are based on
accusations of findings, misinterpretations, and glory reporting. For
every issue that you find he stands by with "firm" conviction stating
that he speaks and knows "the facts to be...", you can also find an equal
or greater source which contradicts his entire scope and basis for argument.
I do not think any one man can be so sure of an issue(s) which clearly has
so many unanswered questions, variables, and contradictions.
In fact, NASA has come forth recently stating that their findings
concerning ozone depletion (from which ALL current information concerning
ozone levels was derived from a report released by NASA), was taken out
of context, claiming the media misunderstood and/or misinterpreted the
reports. This recent information brought forth by NASA stating the need
for the public to know and understand the truth came about following an
article released by Time magazine which, according to NASA, was the point
at which they knew they must inform the public correctly. NASA reported
that what we refer to as ozone "depletion" is not depletion at all...
rather ozone has been found to act seasonally. The NASA reports released
were misinterpreted suggesting that depletion was occuring. NASA stated
that it did not correct these misinterpretations immediately because they
offered no threat, only a misunderstanding brought on by the medias own
ignorance and perceived as dangerous by the media. However, with all the
press on doom and gloom, they felt compelled to come forth and try to
straighten out the situation following the release of the Time issue which
featured a cover depicting an ozone hole on fire. (Their rebuke can be
found in Insight Magazine). How then, according to Al Gore, can there
positively be a hole in the ozone over Kenney Bunkport, Maine (funny how
coincidental that this is where George Bush's retreat is) when in fact it
was after these statements and the release of Al Gore's book, that NASA
came forth to confirm otherwise, that there is no depletion, and that their
findings only show ozone to be seasonal.
For more information on how ecology and environment deceit plays a role
in political platforms, I suggest you read Al Gore's book, then compare
it to Dixie Lee Ray's book entitled "Trashing The Planet". (Ray is former
governor of Washington, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, assistant
secretary of state in the U.S. Bureau of Oceans, and long-time member of
the Zoology faculty of the University of Washington.) The comparison will
be interesting even if you don't agree with me. ...but you will.
I present this evidence to show that Al Gore is not change, but rather
damaging to the beliefs of the majority of Americans, the needs for our
country, and the rights of individuals to hold on to the freedoms we so
dearly cherish, and to further give evidence that this election, although
construde by many as a chance for change, is really about much more. We
must find a way to inform the people so that we can return to the type of
government we now must envision. As Ross Perot said simply, "Our choices
should be Heads you win, or Tails you win". Unfortunately, I find myself
defending a candidate I too am unhappy with, but trying to point out the
absolute absurdity in thinking we have an opportunity for change. We don't!
So please consider the issues, and vote not about change, but for what is
best. Change is not always good. It is my hope that this may serve as a
prime example.

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The ALEMBIC
first edition / Spring 1989
a magazine for those who "think too much" and have a "bad attitude"
*The Power of Negative Thinking
*Language for Social Control
*The Coming Food Crisis
*Feminism as Fascism
*Religion as Rabies
...and more!
WARNING! Contains controversial material.
Parental discretion should be exorcised.
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Editorial: The Naming of Names
When I embarked upon the search for a worthy name for this new magazine, I recalled an experience I had in the early 1980's when I attended a meeting of liberals, left-wingers, artists and musicians who were trying to start a counter-culture magazine. One of the first questions we grappled with was what to call the thing, and I suggested "kaleidoscope." I got my first taste of liberals' hypocrisy when the ones present at that meeting said the poor working masses wouldn't know what a kaleidoscope is, and anyway it sounded too much like "collide" and therefore wasn't mellow enough. I immediately withdrew from that project and swore that someday I'd start a magazine with a really obscure word as its name, a magazine that wouldn't be crippled by compromise, committee thinking, or fear of controversy. And so, after many years of dicking around with various media experiments, I've finally gotten around to fulfilling this promise to myself.
An "alembic" is a type of mediaeval distillation apparatus used by alchemists and others interested in the refinement and purification of substances and ideas. An apt slogan might be, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of The Alembic. -RKH
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The ALEMBIC is published sporadically. No copyright. To receive the next four editions, send five dollars (cash currency please) to The Alembic, Box 547014, Orlando FL 32854 USA.
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Editor's Note: Choosing an appropriate lead-off article to set the tone for the rest of The Alembic's existence was a difficult task requiring months of reading and careful thought. I selected this essay by the most radical philosopher currently living on the earth, a man who finds most anarchists to be too conservative for his taste. Bob wrote the following article several years ago inspired by incidents in which fanatical feminists fire-bombed pornography dealerships in hopes of drawing attention to porn and getting the legal system to clamp down on the dealers. Although these "actions" were supported by some firmly-entrenched anarchist 'zines, notably the hideous Open Road and Kick it Over, Bob was one of the few writers in the anti-authoritarian world with the courage to point out that such actions and motivations have nothing to do with the quest for freedom. For exposing irrationalities and contradictions in spite of the social consequences, we award Mr. Black the lead-off position in our batting order.
Feminism as Fascism
by Bob Black
As the title of a childhood classic points out, Pigs Is Pigs - and this is regardless of the shape of their genitals. Ilse Koch was a Nazi, not a "sister." Love is not hate, war is not peace, freedom is not slavery, and book-burning is not liberatory. Anti-authoritarians who would be revolutionaries confront many difficult questions. First, though, they should answer the easy ones correctly.
All hyperbole and metaphor aside, what passes for "radical feminism" is fascism. It promotes chauvinism, censorship, maternalism, pseudo-anthropology, scapegoating, mystical identification with nature, apartheid, tricked-up pseudo-pagan religiosity, and enforced uniformity of thought and even appearance (in some quarters, Hera help the ectomorphic or "feminine" feminist!). Here is all of the theory and too much of the practice we should all be able to recognize by now.
An ominous tactical continuity with classical fascism, also, is the complementarity between private-vigilantist and statist methods of repression. Thus Open Road, the Rolling Stone of anarchism, applauded some anti-porn actions in Vancouver, not as direct action, hence understandable even if misdirected, but rather because they encouraged lethargic prosecutors to persecute. In post World War 1 Italy, fascist gangs attacked socialist and trade-union organizations with the tacit approval of the police, who never intervened except against the left. (The suppression of the IWW in America followed a similar pattern.) As I once wonderingly asked, "How come these women won't get in bed with any man except the DA?"
Not that I could care less about the porn-for-profit industry, for its "rights" of free speech or property. That is beside the point, which is: why single out this species of business? To target porn bespeaks planning and priorities, not elemental anti-capitalist spontaneity. Those who carry out a calculated policy can't complain if their reasons are asked for, and questioned.
Fascist ideology always incongruously asserts to its audience, its chosen people, that they really are at one and the same time oppressed and superior. The Germans didn't really lose the First World War (how could they? ex hypothesi they are superior) therefore, they were stabbed in the back. (But how could a superior race let such a situation arise in the first place?) Men alone, we are told in a feminist Anti-Pornography Movement diatribe in Toronto's Kick It Over, "have created the nature-destroying and woman-hating culture." If so, then either women have contributed absolutely nothing to culture, or there is something more or something else to this culture than destroying nature and hating women.
For their own purposes (some of which are as mundane as sexual rivalry with straight men for the women they both desire), self-styled radical feminists actually reduce women to nothing but helpless, cringing near-vegetables, passive victims of male contempt and coercion. This profoundly insults women in a way which the worst patriarchal ideologies - the Jewish notion of woman as a source of pollution, for instance, or the Christian nightmare of woman as temptress and uncontrollable sexual nature-force - fell short of. They defamed woman as evil but could hardly regard her as powerless. The new woman-as-victim stereotype is directly traceable to 19th century Victorian patriarchal attitudes reducing (bourgeois) women to inert ornaments. By denying to women the creative power inherent in everyone, it places women's demands on a par with those advanced for, say, baby seals.
Suppose instead what only the most demented feminists and misogynists deny, that things aren't quite that bad, that women have been subjects as well as objects of history. Then how can women - or any other subordinated group: workers, blacks, indigenous peoples - be entirely acquitted of all complicity in the arrangements which condemn them to domination? There are reasons for these accomodations. There is no excuse for denying their existence.
(Just a quick comment on a striking imbecility in the quoted comment which passed unquestioned in Kick It Over. It is generally supposed, and not only by the When God Was a Woman crowd, that women probably invented agriculture. Among the consequences of this discovery were - to say nothing of the state, class society, property, etc. - the destruction of most of the ecosystems which previously flourished. Agriculture has annihilated much of the diversity of the biosphere already, creating deserts and extinguishing the habitats not only of countless plants and animals but also of the last remaining stateless, classless human societies. What then of woman's innate affinity with nature? "When God was a woman" it was already necessary to abolish her.)
This isn't sour grapes. It has never bothered me that some women dislike men, even to the point of having nothing to do with them. I don't like most men myself, especially the archetypal "masculine" ones. I can't help but notice, though, that the vast majority of women feel otherwise. The radical feminists have noticed it too and it drives them to distraction. I would be the first to agree that vast majorities can be wrong. But then I criticize majorities, I don't pretend to speak for them. Radical feminists, in contrast, are vanguardists. As such they need to rationalize their animosities, and so they have, making a dick-determinist demonology out of their prejudices. As man-haters they can't help but be woman-haters also.
To equate pornography with rape - beneath the rancorous rhetorical froth, this seems to be the core APM axiom - is presumably intended to make porn seem more serious. And yet, if men call the shots and the system's built-in tendency is (as we're told) to denature oppositional initiatives of which the feminists' is the most revolutionary, then the likely result is rather to make rape seem more trivial. It's the old story of the womyn who cried wolf.
According to feminoid epistemology, men understand nothing of the real nature of women. One might logically suppose that the estrangement of the sexes resulting from disparate r les and discrimination would work both ways, and so most of us attending to our actual experience reluctantly conclude. But no: men don't understand women, but women (at least their radical feminist vanguard) understand men. Women - feminist experts, anyway - understand pornography and its meaning for men much better than the men who write and read it - and lesbian-separatists, who avoid men and decline to have sex with them, appreciate these verities best of all. The more remote your experience is from the real life of actual men, the better you understand them. Turning this around, isn't the Pope, as he claims, the ultimate authority on women and sexuality?
The asserted connection of porn with rape is allegorical, not empirical. As a correlation it compares with the recently revived "reefer madness" marijuana-to-heroin Rake's Progress line in its absurdity and in its suitability for the state's purposes. If feminism didn't exist, conservative politicians would have had to invent it. (Why, pray tell, did all-male legislatures ever criminalize "obscenity" in the first place? And why do all-male courts arbitrarily exclude it from constitutional protection?) APM harpies, should they ever deal with people instead of their own fevered projections, would discover that porn is of no interest to the majority of post-pubescent males - not because they are politically correct but because most males find porn gross, sleazy, and above all, inferior to the real thing.
The feminist book-burners are cowardly opportunists. If what they object to is the subliminal socialization of women into subservient r les vis-a-vis men (curiously, adopting the same r les vis-a-vis butch lesbians is harmless fun), their primary, near-pre mptive preoccupation would have to be Cosmopolitan, Barbara Courtland romances, and the vast cryptopornographic pop literature written for and snapped up by women. After all, the gore and violence are derivative: only victims can be victimized in any way. Fifteen years ago, the original women's liberationists (subsequently switched like changelings with today's priestesses, lawyers and upscale bureaucrettes) at least lashed out at influential enemies like Hugh Hefner and Andy Warhol. Nowadays they terrorize teenage punk anarchists whose collages insinuate, for instance, that Margaret Thatcher is a ruler, the "mother of a thousand dead," not a "sister." Such is the logic of this bizarre biological determinism: any animal equipped with a vagina is one of Us, any prick-privileged person is one of Them. One can only echo The Firesign Theatre: "Who am us, anyway?"
Male leftists are easy and often willing yes-men to feminist aggrandizement. They combine guilt at past improprieties (by and large, those who feel guilty - toward women, blacks, foreigners, whatever - usually are) with a present ambition to get into the leftist-feminists' pants. Thus Berkeley, California, where I used to live, is crawling with male "feminists" who converted, the easier to get laid. Much the same scam seems to be happening in Toronto and, doubtless, many other places. These ulterior ambitions don't in themselves discredit the ideologies to which they are appended - one can come to the right conclusion for the worst of reasons. But insofar as the opinions at issue certainly seem to be idiotic to anyone without an extraneous interest in embracing them, otherwise inexplicable paroxysms by (male) intellectuals seem to be most plausibly explainable as self-interested insincere rationalizations.
Possibly the ideology I've excoriated is something that some people had to work through in order to free themselves to the extent necessary to venture upon a project of collective liberation. Already a few alumnae of feminism have moved on to the common quest for freedom, and some are the better for what they've been through. We all have our antecedent embarrassments (Marxism, libertarianism, syndicalism, Objectivism, etc.) to put behind us. Had we not thought in ideological terms it's hard to believe we'd ever get to the point where we could think for ourselves. To be a Trotskyist or a Jesuit is, in itself, to be a believer, that is to say a chump. And yet a rigorous romp through any system might show the way out of the Master-System itself.
Not likely, however, when women critics are ostracized as renegades while male critics are ignored or defamed as a matter of principle. (A precisely parallel mechanism for maintaining a conspiracy of silence is worked by Zionists: Gentile critics are "anti-Semites," Jewish critics can only be consumed by "Jewish self-hatred.") Separatism may be absurd as a social program and riddled with inconsistencies (scarcely any separatists separate from patriarchal society to anything like the extent that, say, survivalists do - and nobody intervenes more to mind other people's business than separatists). But semi-isolation makes it easier to indoctrinate neophytes and shut out adverse evidence and argument, an insight radical feminists share with Moonies, Hare Krishna, and other cultists. It's fortunate that their doctrines and subculture as initially encountered are so unappetizing. Indeed, I've noticed a graying of radical feminism - as Sixties politics and culture continue to gutter out, less and less women have had the proper pre-soak preparing them for feminist brainwashing. Radical feminists (so-called) in their early twenties are rare, and getting scarcer.
Radical feminism (no point disputing title to the phrase with its present owners), then, is a ludicrous, hate-filled, authoritarian, sexist dogmatic construct which revolutionaries accord an unmerited legitimacy by taking seriously at all. It is time to stop matronizing these terrorists of the trivial and hold them responsible for preaching genocidal jive and practicing the very evil (even, if the truth be told, rape!) they insist has been inflicted on them. (Or, rather, as it usually turns out, some other suppositious "sister": the typical radical feminist has had it pretty good.) How to thwart femino-fascism? That's easy: just take feminists at face value and treat them as equals... then hear them howl! The Empress has no clothes...and that's what I call obscene.
Our thanks to the author for providing the current version of the above. A book of his collected essays is available for $6 postpaid: Bob Black, P.O. Box 2159, Albany NY 12220.
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Non-Voters Defeat Politicians
by Rick Harrison
The news media have been very quiet about the fact that half the population didn't vote on November 8th. They have also tried to avoid reporting that 29% of American adults refused to register this year in defiance of the increasingly shrill and emotional shrieking of newscasters, commentators and other clowns in the media circus. Once again the band of looters known as politicians have suffered a defeat at the hands of the non-voters. The growing number of abstainers are calling into question the phony form of democracy foisted off as "free and open elections" in this country. The false nature of elections and their irrelevance to our everyday lives are becoming so obvious that even ordinary people are starting to notice.
In Marxist nations' phony elections, the voter is given a ballot with the name of the Communist Party's candidate, a box labelled "yes" and a box labelled "no." The majority of voters mark the "yes" box because a "no" vote would be futile; the Party candidate would take office anyway.
In the United States, the voter is presented with an equally bleak choice: Republican or Democrat. And, thanks to the antics of pollsters and newscasters, the outcome of the election is equally pre-determined. The difference between the two "choices" is increasingly small. It is almost impossible for other political parties to get on the ballot, and even if they succeed in doing so, they cannot get serious media attention, and cynical commentators tell people that voting for a third party is like "throwing your vote away" - as if voting for the Republi-crats were any less futile.
In this year's Presidential race - and it is a 'race,' similar to a horse race - the "choice" was so distasteful that over four hundred newspapers across the country refused to endorse either candidate! The Democrats and Republicans are really just two branches of the same scurrilous party, the political mafia, which funnels tax dollars extorted by force from productive citizens into the pockets of defense contractors and other profiteering pirates.
Large advertising budgets and negative, selfishness-inducing TV commercials are what win elections. The candidate's personality, if any, is hidden behind a carefully built media image. Voters dutifully march off to the polls and select their favorite illusions. The apparent importance of the ceremony is propped up by the media who try to make themselves look important by rushing around to cover the masochistic farce. The true "bias" of the media - a leaning toward shallowness and conformity - is shown by their support of the electoral spectacle. It is widely conceded that only wealthy and influential persons can successfully run for a national political office. This situation bears no resemblance to true democracy, to say nothing of true liberty.
This year the non-voters have, once again, outnumbered the supporters of any political party. A significant number of people are moving toward real freedom by shrugging off the government-sponsored, duty-polluted ritual of voting. We frighten the establishment; this is obvious in the hysterical tones of their pro-voting advertisements. How long can they pretend to be running a legitimate government? These vermin should be ashamed to take office. What if they had an election and nobody came? With any luck, we'll find out pretty soon!
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Flush the Family!
by Carlos Eagle Smythe
Politicians and religion-pushers place great value on "the family" and use it as a basis for many of their absurd claims. They're in a frenzy to create a police state to "save our children from drugs;" we have to sacrifice our right to privacy and submit to searches and urine tests, they say, because "drugs are destroying our families." They want to reward promiscuous heterosexuals with tax credits for their irresponsible, uncontrolled production of noisy, repulsive babies because "the family is the foundation of our society." During campaign season - the most depressing aspect of autumn - flabby white men wearing suits parade their pale, ugly, beardless, wimpy faces in front of us and claim that we should vote for them because they're "family men." If authoritarians and moral tyrants are so bloody enthusiastic about "the family," it obviously must be one of the delusions from which their illegitimate power is derived.
The fantasy of the ideal family has been explored in TV shows like The Waltons and Leave it to Beaver. The hideous reality has been hinted at in movies like "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf." The dichotomy between the typical destructive family and the imaginary supportive family is a source of stress and distraction for many individuals leading dissipated lives. Phone-in talk shows, office gossip sessions and psychiatrists' couches are full of people wondering why their parents don't approve of them, why their children aren't obedient, or why they can't quite force themselves to love the more repugnant members of their families. Instead of trying in vain to realize the untenable ideal of "normal family life," these tormented souls should gleefully cast off that yoke of unfounded obligations and endeavor to become free individuals. The "family bond" is a noose!
Being part of a family is like having a job or being in prison - it forces you to associate with people you would never voluntarily go near. The idea that one should tolerate a tyrannical parent or an irritating sibling just because that person is related to you, through an accident of birth over which you had no control, is ludicrous. But today's apologists for authority support the family precisely because it is based on involuntary servitude. The obligatory nature of the traditional family puts it in direct opposition to the anti-authoritarian ideal of voluntary, face-to-face co-operation among agreeable individuals. Of course, if you have a relative to whom you feel favorably disposed, I'm not suggesting that you should tell him/her to take a flying leap. On the other hand, if any of your kinfolk are trying to obligate, coerce or manipulate you in some way, consider the liberatory possibilities of telling them to take a long walk on a short pier.
In those households where it's still intact enough to be recognizable, the family is the primary training ground for blind obedience and delayed (i.e. denied) gratification. The catch-phrases used by familial dictators include:
"Because I said so, that's why!" (brilliant example of authoritarian logic);
"As long as you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules!" (as if children have any choice about where they live);
and, who could forget, the barbarian's stand-by, "Do you want to get spanked?!" Authority is also maintained by various punishment-and-reward schemes which remind me of the way people train puppies not to crap on the carpet. It seems strange - not to mention morally questionable - that the average ignoramus who happens to have children uses methods of discipline that would be more suitable for dealing with pets. The traditional techniques of child-rearing, like sausages, are easy to swallow as long as you don't examine them too closely.
More often than not, families only succeed in passing on their worst characteristics to successive generations. Victims of child abuse frequently become child abusers. Likewise, alcoholism, ignorance, religion, military careers, vulgar accents, various physical diseases and other hideous traits are the repulsive legacies which many parents leave to their offspring.
The nuclear family has been so effectively merchandised that we may have difficulty imagining more ethical ways to deal with those little rascals known as children. For starters, maybe kids shouldn't be considered prisoners who always have to be in the custody of some parent, teacher, day-care drone or other self-appointed dictator. Sending children to school every morning prepares them to waste their lives going to work every day to perform tasks they consider meaningless, so the abolition of school is a top priority, and the high drop-out rate may be a hopeful sign that millions of untrained, uncontrollable people are entering the population. They are likely to be morons but at least they will have escaped a considerable amount of brainwashing.
As human beings, we have a duty to ourselves to consider the ways in which the irrational institution of the family has interfered with our freedom, and to formulate alternative ways of living. For starters, we can wipe our disagreeable relatives off our buttocks, drop them into the commode, and flush the family!
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The Power of Negative Thinking
anonymous
A particular form of social submission is very popular these days. Known as positive attitude, positive energy or positive thinking, this style of rolling over and playing dead is widely endorsed by bosses, psychologists, religious leaders and others who have an interest in controlling people. I am not suggesting that there's anything wrong with optimism if it fits the circumstances and your personality. However, the current promoters of positivity have taken phony optimism to an extreme and transformed it into a tool for dominating others.
I've experienced several workplaces where the people in charge considered a willingness to smile and hug more important than having the talent or intelligence to do one's job. One place went down the toilet financially because its customers and directors were more interested in exchanging "warm fuzzies" than in doing the things necessary to make a business survive. This particular case, the demise of the local health food co-op in 1986, serves as a vivid example of how pre-occupation with attitude and atmosphere can eclipse more significant concerns. Although the co-op financially self destructed by bending over backwards to project an aura of mellowness, for example by failing to sue or prosecute a former manager who allowed hundreds of dollars to "disappear," its collapse paradoxically created a lot of hard feelings when the members realized they would not be able to recover their "membership investments." There's no way you can win when you play the attitude game.
In most social circles, this positive stupidity is used bluntly to squash any opposition to the establishment. In certain "liberal" and even "anarchist" groups and publications, anyone who points out factual errors, flawed logic or questionable tactics is brushed off as "just being negative" or "engaging in a personal vendetta." The reactions of innumerable "radical" magazines to Bob Black's criticisms of their flaws serve as a glaring example of this tactic. On the local scene, professional activist Bruce Gagnon returns mail unopened when it comes from anarchists who've had the nerve to point out the silliness of his collaborating with earth-destroying corporations, the miserable masochism of his groups' choreographed marches and spectacular arrests, and other conspicuous contradictions. The anarchists are too negative and fanatical, he would say, which means they threaten his livelihood by revealing that he is a steam valve which protects the repressive machinery he pretends to resist.
In any organization, whenever someone points out the leadership's blunders, the affected bureaucrats throw up a smoke screen by wailing about negativity, bad attitude, sour grapes, personal attacks, etc. They try to divert attention away from their error by making it look like there's something wrong with the person who pointed it out. However, in most cases, the person accused of having a "bad attitude" is merely saying what everybody else is thinking.
I have a friend who works in a corporate environment where people are advanced or demoted mainly on the basis of their attitude. The people who run this company are something less than geniuses. Their letters and memos are full of spelling errors and flawed grammar; their speech reveals an inability to deal with complex thoughts or logical reasoning. It's amazing that other companies are willing to deal with an enterprise which so openly displays the subnormal intelligence of those who control it. On second thought, maybe it's not so amazing; maybe the clients hope to take advantage of these businessmen's stupidity.
Anyway, my friend was doing pretty well at this company; his hours and responsibilities were steadily increasing, and he was looking forward to a promotion to full-time status. Then, one Friday morning, the corporate brass suddenly asked him to work the next night, but he declined because he had long ago made plans to take his girlfriend to a party that evening.
Later, this friend of mine was discussing an upcoming event with one of his supervisors, a woman who leaves a trail of confusion and inaccuracy everywhere she goes but who manages to cling to her job by hugging and smiling a lot. Three times during the meeting, this spacey supervisor said that a certain event would occur at one location, and my friend pointed out that it was actually planned for a completely different location. The third time this happened, she glared at him and said through clenched teeth, "DON'T PUSH IT!"
Oops, her mask came off! For a moment the phony facade, the vacuous corporate smile, slipped away and revealed the insecure, confused, power-grasping bureaucrat that lies beneath the hugging and grinning disguise!
It is generally known throughout the corporation that, as a result of these two incidents, my friend is no longer considered to have a 100% positive attitude, and his chances of getting official full-time status with benefits are nil, even though he works six days a week! But this is typical of business shrouded in the fog of phony positivity; they'll smile at you, shake your hand or hug you while simultaneously passing judgement on you, exploiting you, violating contracts and union regulations and labor laws and anything else that might impede their profits. And, maybe even worse, they'll continue to make mistakes and stupid decisions that make your life harder, and then they'll fire or demote you if you lose control of yourself and blurt out the truth about their imbecility!
Those of us who are boldly negative (toward bureaucrats' lies) are feared and despised in every organization precisely because our bluntness has the potential to depose every nasty little authoritarian who relies on social sleight of hand to maintain power over others.
It should come as no surprise that every organization, company and
movement depends on dirty tricks to keep itself glued together. This is precisely why practitioners (as opposed to professors) of philosophy rarely if ever belong to any organizations. As one compulsive truth-teller observed, "Every organization has more in common with every other organization than it has with any of the unorganized."
If someone accuses you of being negative or having a bad attitude, what they really mean is you've given them an unwanted dose of reality, a shocking glimpse of truth which threatens to dislodge the makeshift mental structures with which they've propped themselves in an untenable position.
Being opposed to stupidity or negative toward irrationality is nothing to be ashamed of. Don't let the lying bureaucrats of the world get away with referring to honesty as negativity. When they offer you a chance to support their illusions, JUST SAY NO.
Post Scriptum. The friend mentioned above finally did get full-time status, but if he ever divides his salary by the number of hours he's working, I don't think he'll be too thrilled.
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The Coming Food Crisis in America
by Lawrence Livermore
excerpted from Lookout!, a sporadic leftwing magazine available for $1 per issue from Lookout!, P. O. Box 1000, Laytonville CA 95454.
Probably you don't give a whole lot of thought to where food comes from; it's one of those things like water or electricity or television that you can pretty much count on always being there, provided, of course, that you have the money to pay for it.
That's the way it's been as long as most of us can remember. In fact, for much of the 20th century, the industrialized countries of the world have been producing more food than they could possibly use. True, millions of people have starved to death during that time, not because of a shortage of food, but because a certain amount of hunger is deemed necessary to keep the food business profitable. In theory, if the world's harvest were distributed more or less equally, no one would lack adequate nutrition.
That may have been true up until now, but that same lack of enlightened leadership has produced a potentially disastrous situation. The United States has squandered its agricultural resources so badly that we may be forced in our lifetimes to deal with severe shortages of food, perhaps even outright famine.
Already the quality if not the quantity of what we eat is in doubt. A person from the 19th century set loose in a modern supermarket might well wonder where the food is kept. Except for one aisle of produce and one of meat, the rest of the store would present a bewildering array of cans and boxes with lists of ingredients that read more like a chemistry experiment than the components of a nutritious diet.
And it is an experiment, the results of which remain to be seen. Consider that throughout all of human existence, the things that people ate remained remarkably unchanged, being limited to what they could catch or what grew up out of the ground. Processed and refined foods are almost completely a development of the past century. Omnivorous man would appear to have adapted well to the many strange and bizarre foodstuffs that have emerged out of the lab and the factory, but perhaps it is still too soon to tell. Life expectancies are greater than at any time in recorded history, but so is the occurrence of diet-related illnesses like cancer and heart disease.
But regardless of whether we eat our food fresh from the ground or only after it has been packaged and sanitized, we can produce nothing without the basic raw materials. In the case offood, the raw materials are so simple that the temptation to take them for granted is overwhelming. Earth and water: two of the most common things in the world. And sunlight, of course, something of which we have a free and never-ending supply.
But with the earth's protective ozone layer being rapidly stripped away by pollution, even the sun threatens to become the destroyer rather than the giver of life. And soil and water are disappearing at a rate that should constitute a national, actually a global crisis. But there is a general sense of complacency, even among those actually engaged in agriculture, let alone those who know little or nothing about its workings. Technology has increased the efficiency and yield of the modern farm dramatically; why should we not assume that it can deal with any new problems that might emerge?
Part of the problem is that, as poet (and farmer) Wendell Berry points out, we have lost much of our sense of "culture" involved in agriculture: " the economy of money has infiltrated and subverted the economies of nature, energy, and the human spirit." In the same way that city dwellers have largely lost touch with the nature of the earth that sustains them, many farmers have, strange as it may seem, become alienated from the land that they cultivate.
Though there are other factors involved, by far the biggest one
is economics. As much of a disaster as collective farming has been in the Soviet Union, so has capitalism been in the United States, albeit
in a completely different way.
There is enormous pressure on the individual American farmer to continually expand at any cost. The average size of farms has grown while the number of individuals involved in farming has drastically shrunk. This is especially true in the western United States, where the costs of irrigating and fertilizing marginal land make it almost inevitable that the corporate farm will become dominant.
In traditional farming, a family might have had as little as 10 or 20 acres that would be passed down from generation to generation, and which would be that family's sole source of sustenance. It would obviously be in the farmer's interest to know that land as well as he knew his own children, and to take equally good care of it. He would not be inclined to casually experiment with some potion offered him by a city slicker with the promise that it would produce twice the crops in half the time.
But what is such a farmer to do when a large company buys up the adjacent 5000 acres, spikes the soil with potent fertilizers, plows out all the windbreaks and protective contours, and sinks deep wells that suck out ground water twice as fast as it can be replenished? In the long run such techniques will lead todisaster, but in the meantime they will produce large yields that will drive prices down, and if the smaller farmer doesn't adopt similar techniques to keep up with the competition, he's out of business.
At this point some sort of food crisis is nearly inevitable; even if we start today to make all the necessary changes in our agricultural practices (something which is really not likely to happen until some sort of obvious calamity shocks people into action), we are not going to be able to continue producing and consuming food so profligately. Those who stand to suffer the most are the ones who assume that they will always be able just to stroll into Safeway and pick up whatever they need, and those farmers who have mortgaged their futures to agricultural techniques that are rapidly becoming obsolete and self-defeating.
One absolute essential is that we reduce our agriculture to a manageable scale, not just back to the old-fashioned family farm, though that would be a step in the right direction, but to the point where back yards and vacant lots all over our cities begin producing things more useful than ornamental (and extremely wasteful) lawns and shrubberies. Our present system of mass-producing food in one location and then trucking it all over the place is insane; not only is the amount of energy thus squandered unconscionable, but it leaves us dangerously dependent on a system of transportation that could be rendered useless by even a brief interruption in our oil supply.
On a society-wide basis, we need to make major changes; there's no denying that. Among them are the elimination of all toxic herbicides and pesticides, a ban or a severe limitation on the production of non-biodegradable materials, mandatory recycling of all waste products, sustained yield management of our water resources, and the end of all subsidies to massive corporate-run farms. We also need to increase people's consciousness about what they put into their bodies and to help them realize that fresh, whole foods are better both for them and for society as a whole.
If we wait for the rest of the country to institute these changes, we're going to be in deep trouble. The best thing we can do is to begin learning how to provide for ourselves in a healthy, ecologically balanced manner, and in the process demonstrate to others how much better things work that way. But it's important that we get started now. Otherwise, things could get pretty hungry around here.
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Superceding Situationism
The following item appeared as a letter to the editor in SNARL, formerly known as SMILE (available for $1 plus postage from Box 3502, Madison WI 53704). Whether situationism is a valid form of political analysis or just a particularly oblique and obfuscatory style of writing is still a matter for debate, in our opinion...
I noticed that SMILE is very much influenced by the Situationist writings. Since they have been a major influence in the development of my own analysis and practice, I won t tell you that you are making a mistake, but be aware that Situationist thought is not beyond criticism. Its proponents seemed to try to make it appear so, as did the proponents of its predecessors Marxism and Hegelianism.
The failings of Situationist thought are as follows:
1) An inadequate investigation of the natures of technology and of organization, and of their relationships to work and to domination.
2) A continued, unadmitted adherence to humanism.
3) An inadequate analysis of the nature of use value and its place in the suppression of free play.
4) An inadequate analysis of self-management; non-recognition that it may, in fact, be the most efficient form of capitalism.
5) An inability to see the need to eroticize the world, not just the human race.
6) A continued willingness to suppress the immediacy of desire as shown by their attachment to high-tech fantasies which would require production.
7) From which follows, an inadequate analysis of the nature of production and economy.
-Feral Fawn
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Methods as Message, or, Religion as Rabies
by X. Rayburn
People who have political or religious beliefs usually try to convince others to share their beliefs, and their methods of persuasion can say a lot about the validity of their concepts. Factions which publish their ideas or share them face-to-face with others are contributing to the evolution of mankind's understanding of the universe. Factions which engage in bully tactics such as bombings, threats, hostage-taking, or having their opponents jailed or executed, are simply wrong. Their ideas are wrong and they instinctively know it, but they've become addicted to the adrenalin rush of fanaticism, so they cling to their beliefs and practically try to force others to adopt them.
Consider the religious conversion of Duffey Strode, a North Carolina schoolboy who has been suspended several times for disrupting school activities by shouting hateful, abusive, religious comments at people. A recent Washington Post article reveals how this boy was introduced to his inhumane faith.
His father David Strode came home from work one day when the boy was five years old and described the horrors of "hell" in graphic, terrifying terms. He then told his son, "You are a sinner and you are going to hell." {The Strodes' religion teaches that god is going to punish people for the imperfections which god himself created. The fact that this makes no sense at all never seems to dawn on them.}
David Strode describes the subsequent conversion of his son in these terms: "Man, those tears begun to run and he looked at me and he said, 'Daddy, I don't want to go to hell.' I said, 'I know somebody who will get you out of hell and his name is Jesus Christ.'" The young boy who had been scared out of his wits said, "Daddy, I want to be saved."
He needs to be saved, for sure - not from the imaginary deep fat fryer of "hell" but from his father, and the howling hobgoblins of dark-ages superstition.
Barry Weaver, another Carolina street preacher, similarly told his daughter that she was going to burn in "hell" when she was five years old. Weaver, in the hick dialect of English frequently used by such morons, brags, "I let my daughter lay and cry herself to sleep for a week straight about the flames of hell. I could have ran right in there and gave her the gospel and she could have made a profession of salvation, but I let it get deep into her memory...that there is a hell. And that will affect her whole life. That's why she's an obedient child."
Thanks, Mr. Weaver, for showing us the links between the inhumane institutions of religion, authority, and the traditional family. If there were a hell, it would be reserved for sadistic bastards like you who make themselves feel powerful by mentally torturing their own helpless offspring.
The fact that these whackos have to terrorize young children to get converts says something about their religion. These fanatics, who are hated by hundreds of their townspeople, cannot persuade adults through rational conversation and logical argument; instead, they shout about "hell," as if increased volume of voice could turn fantasy into fact, and they scare infants into submission.
As their methods of conversion show, their whole religion is based on fear, hence the phrase "god-fearing people." The fear in question is probably a fear of the unknown, and in the case of these rabid lunatics who terrorize children, "the unknown" includes practically everything.
Remember, this is the same religion that used to imprison, torture, hang and burn individuals who dared to be non-believers. The followers of this faith would do the same today if given the chance, but their power has been diluted somewhat by the forces of science, philosophy, and an increasing number of people who resist the moralistic meddling of wretched religionists. We must never cease to defend ourselves against the fanatically faithful.
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Language and Liberty
by Alfredo Bonanno
from the book From Riot to Insurrection, translated by Jean Weir, published by and available from Elephant Editions, B.M. Elephant, London WC1N 3XX, England. Bonanno points out that robots and automated devices are replacing workers at a rapid pace, creating a huge and permanent underclass of under-employed and un-employed persons whom he calls "the excluded." He asserts that the potentially dangerous hordes of the excluded will be pacified and controlled through, among other things, language
So what will the privileged try to do? They will try to cut the excluded off from the included. Cut off in what way? By cutting off communication. This is the central concept of the repression of the future, a concept which, in my opinion, should be examined as deeply as possible. To cut off communication means two things. To construct a reduced language that is modest and has an absolutely elementary code to supply to the excluded so that they can use the computer terminals. Something extremely simple that will keep them quiet. And to provide the included, on the other hand, with a language of "the included," so that their world will go towards that utopia of privilege and capital that is sought more or less everywhere. That will be the real wall: the lack of a common language. This will be the real prison wall, one that is not easily scaled.
This problem presents various interesting aspects. Above all there is the situation of the included themselves. Let us not forget that in this world of privilege, there will be people who in the past have had a wide revolutionary-ideological experience, and they may not enjoy their situation of privilege tomorow, feeling themselves asphyxiated inside the Teutonic castle. These will be the first thorn in the side of the capitalist project. The class homecomers, that is, those who abandon their class. Who were the homecomers of the class of yesterday? I, myself, once belonged to the class of the privileged. I abandoned it to become "a comrade among comrades," from privileged of yesterday to revolutionary of today. But what have I brought with me? I have brought my Humanist culture, my ideological culture. But the homecomer of tomorrow, the revolutionary who abandons tomorrow's privileged class, will bring technology with him, because one of the characteristics of tomorrow's capitalist project and one of the essential conditions for it to remain standing, will be a distribution of knowledge that is no longer pyramidal but horizontal. Capital will need to distribute knowledge in a more reasonable and equal way - but always within the class of the included. Therefore the deserters of tomorrow will bring with them a considerable number of usable elements from a revolutionary point of view.
And the excluded? Will they continue to keep quiet? In fact, what will they be able to ask for once communication has been cut off? To ask for something, it is necessary to know what to ask for. I cannot have an idea based on suffering and the lack of something of whose existence I know nothing, which means absolutely nothing to me and which does not stimulate my desires. The severing of a common language will make the reformism of yesterday - the piecemeal demand for better conditions and the reduction of repression and exploitation - completely outdated. Reformism was based on the common language that existed between exploited and exploiter. If the languages are different, nothing more can be asked for. Nothing interests me about something I do not understand, which I know nothing about. So, the realisation of the capitalist project of the future - of this post-industrial project as it is commonly imagined - will essentially be based on keeping the exploited quiet. It will give them a code of behavior based on very simple elements so as to allow them to use the telephone, television, computer terminals, and all the other objects that will satisfy the basic, primary, tertiary and other needs of the excluded and at the same time ensure that they are kept under control. This will be a painless rather than a bloody procedure. Torture will come to an end. No more bloodstains on the wall. That will stop - up to a certain point, of course. There will be situations where it will continue. But, in general, a cloak of silence will fall over the excluded.
However, there is one flaw in all this. Rebellion in man is not tied to need alone, to being aware of the lack of something and struggling against it. If you think about it, this is a purely illuminist concept which was later developed by English philosophical ideology - Bentham and co. - who spoke from a Utilitarian perspective. For the past 150 years our ideological propaganda has been based on these rational foundations, asking why it is that we lack something, and why it is right that we should have something because we are all equal; but, comrades, what they are going to cut along with language is the concept of equality, humanity, fraternity. The included of tomorrow will not feel himself humanly and fraternally similar to the excluded, but will see him as something other. The excluded of tomorrow will be outside the Teutonic castle and will not see the included as his possible post-revolutionary brother of tomorrow. They will be two different things. In the same way that today I consider my dog "different" because it does not "speak" to me but barks. Of course I love my dog, I like him, he is useful to me, he guards me, is friendly, wags his tail; but I cannot imagine struggling for equality between the human and the canine races. All that is far beyond my imagination, is other. Tragically, this separation of languages could also be possible in the future. And indeed, what will be supplied to excluded, what will make up that limited code, if not what is already becoming visible: sounds, images, colours. Nothing of that traditional code that was based on the word, on analysis and common language. Bear in mind that this traditional code was the foundation on which the illuminist and progressive analysis of the transformation of reality was made, an analysis which still today constitutes the basis of revolutionary ideology, whether authoritarian or anarchist (there is no difference as far as the point of departure is concerned).
We anarchists are still tied to the progressive concept of being
able to bring about change with words. But if capital cuts out the word, things will be very different.
We all have experience of the fact that many young people today do not read at all. They can be reached through music and images (television, cinema, comics). But these techniques, as those more competent than myself could explain, have one notable possibility - in the hands of power - which is to reach the irrational feelings that exist inside all of us. In other words, the value of rationality as a means of persusasion and in developing self-awareness that could lead us to attack the class enemy will decline, I don't say completely, but significantly.
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Announcing Lojban
excerpted with the permission of the Logical Language Group
Lojban is a constructed language: the culmination of a project first described in the article "Loglan" in Scientific American, June, 1960. The language has been built over three decades by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters. There are many artificial languages, but Lojban has been engineered to make it unique in several ways.
Lojban was originally designed for the purpose of supporting research on a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Simply expressed, this hypothesis states that the structure of a language constrains the thinking of people using that language. Lojban allows the full expressive capability of a natural language, but differs in structure from other languages in major ways. This allows its use as a test vehicle for scientists studying the relationships between language, thought, and culture. Since it was intended for scientific research, several constraints were imposed on the Lojban design that are not found in other languages.
Like computer languages, Lojban can be parsed by automated algorithms. Unlike natural languages, Loglan has no syntactic ambiguity. Yet, unlike computer languages, Lojban can be spoken naturally by people in everyday communication. Examples of this type of ambiguity in English include the phrase "pretty little girls school." There are no English rules that dictate the grouping of modifiers in the phrase. Lojban has unique ways of expressing each of the twenty logical interpretations of this phrase.
Lojban's grammar is simpler than any natural language. Most of the syntax was tested on a CP/M-based personal computer. (Computers played a vital role in developing and testing the language. Tools used to design computer languages were used to prove that the syntax is unambiguous.) Lojban has none of the standard parts of speech with which you may be familiar. Lojban's predicates (gismu and their compounds) are all of the same part of speech. Each can serve as the equivalent of a noun, verb, adjective or adverb, simultaneously and interchangeably.
Lojban developers have emphasized the early development of computer-aided teaching tools to further enhance learning of the language. You can learn Lojban at home with the help of your personal computer. The orientation in the Lojban community towards computer-based instruction is unique among constructed languages, and solves the problem of how to rapidly spread the language from a small initial base of speakers.
The perceptions of those who have worked on Lojban are that it has already changed our thinking in significant ways. Even those who have never successfully learned other languages have found that we see new meanings in everyday speech, new ways of expressing ideas, and new ideas to express. When the Sapir-Whorf experiment is finally conducted, we have no doubt that Lojban will verify the hypothesis.
Lojban has been developed almost totally by volunteer labor and small donations of money. Like science fiction conventions and computer software development, Lojban attracts people who are willing to devote a lot of time to seeing their dreams become reality. You can register to receive Lojban newsletters and materials by contacting: The Logical Language Group, Bob LeChevalier, 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031, phone (703) 385-0273.
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Alembic trigram #1: College
"How has your college education helped you? Can't you make a cup of tea without understanding osmosis, brownian motion, capillary action, the meniscus, the laws of thermodynamics and the principles of fluidics? You'd probably make better tea, better in flavor and spiritually more honest, if you'd never studied those academic abstractions."
-Eric Fahrender in conversation, 1979
"I can only say that for my own part I've come to the conclusion that almost every single moment I spent in authoritarian educational systems was wasted, and I wish now that I'd managed to get myself kicked out when I was 15 instead of 25. Education and learning are good things, but not the way they're conducted at present... Learn whatever you want to learn by reading books and magazines, and thus educate yourself without becoming a mental slave."
-Fred Woodworth in The Match!, 1988
"If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practiced but the art of life; - to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not know how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar."
-Henry David Thoreau in Walden, chapter one
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Connections
by the Alembic staff
This column is a compendium and encapsulation of recent receptions.
"Mormonoids from the Deep" is a highly unusual adventure game for the Macintosh computer. The player has to navigate through the surreal town of Mormonville, Utah without being killed, converted, or sobering up. On two diskettes for $10 from Robert Carr, c/o Smurfs in Hell, 2210 North 9th Street, Boise ID 83702.
Possessed is a quarterly magazine of poetry, collage, and radical commentary; sample for $1 from P. O. Box 20545, Seattle WA 98102.
Chalcedon Report is a magazine of Christian commentary. A recent edition celebrates a British law mandating that state-sponsored schools have a Christian slant and suggests that Nature itself and human-kind's natural condition are basically devilish and desparately in need of salvation. Bizarre and erroneous. Available for a donation from Box 158, Vallecito CA 95251.
Homocore is a magazine of poems, comics, photos and snide comments for gay punk rockers and other "social mutants." $1 from P.O. Box 77731, San Francisco CA 94107.
"Radio Free America," not be confused with the RFA being done in California or the RFA that transmitted from a ship in the Atlantic, is an audible anarchist magazine on cassette tape assembled by your humble editor. $5 from Rick Harrison, Box 7014, Orlando FL 32854.
Sound Choice is 96 pages of reviews and ads for independently published musical recordings, $3 from Audio Evolution Network, Box 1251, Ojai CA 93023. Indispensible for those who produce or consume unusual musical commodities.
Dream World by Kent Winslow is the autobiography of a contemporary anarchist, detailing his hassles with cops, run-ins with bullies, landlords, religious nuts, and other elements of a world that doesn't appreciate his attempts to improve it. $8 from Fred Woodworth, Box 3488, Tuscon AZ 85722.
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Coming up in future editions of The Alembic: merciless attacks on automobiles, New Ageism, copyright laws, television, and everything else that the average ignoramus takes for granted. Relevant contributions are welcome. Letters to the editor will also be published, providing they are sufficiently concise, controversial and somehow related to past or future articles in this magazine.
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Footnote to the Electronic Edition
by Rick Harrison
At one point in history, the development of paper made the use of clay tablets seem ridiculous. We're entering a time when the development of electronic data transfer is likely to make the use of paper and ink seem equally clumsy and absurd.
Computers make it possible to electronically transmit text and graphics over ordinary phone lines almost instantly; to store an amount of text equal to 12 hardcopy editions (240 pages) of The Alembic on one small diskette; and to encrypt text so that it can only be read by the desired audience. Computers can read text aloud to visually handicapped readers, can display text in your choice of type style and size, and make it easy to correct mistakes or otherwise re-work written material.
Electronic data transfer can accomplish all this and more without requiring the slaughter of oxygen-producing trees; without requiring anyone to work around noisy, sometimes dangerous printing presses that have to be cleaned with toxic, volatile chemicals; and without providing print shop owners and post office cretins an opportunity to suppress or mangle material they don't approve of.
Paper-and-ink publishing is a dinosaur. High quality printing may continue to exist as a fine art, as calligraphy has, but periodical publishers and audiences who cling to hardcopy too long will eventually come to be regarded as selfish, backward, tree-murdering neanderthals.
That's why I have taken advantage of Mike Gunderloy's bold offer of an opportunity to leave this magazine on the Factsheet Five electronic bulletin board. This form of distribution makes The Alembic freely available to everyone who has the wits and good taste to download it, at no cost other than the long distance phone line (and of course the cost of the computer equipment, but many people can get free access to computers from friends or at their workplaces). This completely solves many of the problems that I faced as an ultra-small-press publisher, problems like: how to pay for the postage, how to find potentially appreciative readers, how to physically mail various sizes of magazine without having them get chewed up by the postal service. I was never able to afford to advertise, purchase mailing lists and/or mail many free samples of my hardcopy publications to people, so it was impossible for me to build up a readership of financially self-sustaining size; here in the ethereal world of electronic data transfer, I can make a magazine available to a potentially infinite number of readers for the cost of one upload.
Since all of my print-media publications have operated at a financial loss, as is usually the case with the very small press, I'm not going to bother trying to extract money from the audience. If you feel that reading The Alembic was worthwhile, you could send me a small financial donation to help me recover the long distance charges I incurred while uploading it, but I would just as soon have you leave a written response on this BBS or on CompuServe's E-mail service, which has the embarrassingly silly name of "Easyplex" (my user ID there is 72537,1203). Audience feedback is the main reward sought by small-press publishers, and I am no exception.
Until we meet again, thank your for your attention. Have a good time.
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The Alembic is a Tangerine Network production. [EOF]
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AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Amendment I (1791)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II (1791)
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security
of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear
arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III (1791)
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house,
without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but
in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV (1791)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V (1791)
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand
jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces,
or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war
or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the
same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI (1791)
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state
and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which
district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and
to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;
to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have
compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,
and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII (1791)
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall
exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be
preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise
reexamined in any court of the United States, than according
to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII (1791)
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines
imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX (1791)
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall
not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X (1791)
The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Amendment XI (1798)
The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed
to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by citizens of another state,
or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.
Amendment XII (1804)
The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote
by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at
least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with
themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person
voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person
voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct
lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons
voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for
each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit
sealed to the seat of the government of the United States,
directed to the President of the Senate;--The President of
the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of
Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall
then be counted;--the person having the greatest number of
votes for President, shall be the President, if such number
be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and
if no person have such majority, then from the persons having
the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those
voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall
choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing
the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the
representation from each state having one vote; a quorum
for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from
two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states
shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of
Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the
right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day
of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act
as President, as in the case of the death or other
constitutional disability of the President. The person
having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall
be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the
whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a
majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the
Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the
purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of
Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary
to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the
office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President
of the United States.
Amendment XIII (1865)
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except
as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any
place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XIV (1868)
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But
when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors
for President and Vice President of the United States,
Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers
of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied
to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one
years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way
abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime,
the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age
in such state.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in
Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold
any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under
any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member
of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a
member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial
officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United
States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against
the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But
Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove
such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States,
authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of
pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection
or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United
States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation
incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United
States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave;
but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held
illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Amendment XV (1870)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XVI (1913)
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on
incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment
among the several states, and without regard to any census
of enumeration.
Amendment XVII (1913)
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two
Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for
six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors
in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for
electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the
Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs
of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, that the
legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof
to make temporary appointments until the people fill the
vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the
election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes
valid as part of the Constitution.
Amendment XVIII (1919)
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this
article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating
liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation
thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the
jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent
power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall
have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the
legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution,
within seven years from the date of the submission hereof
to the states by the Congress.
Amendment XIX (1920)
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on
account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
Amendment XX (1933)
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall
end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of
Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January,
of the years in which such terms would have ended if this
article had not been ratified; and the terms of their
successors shall then begin.
Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every
year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of
January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term
of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice
President elect shall become President. If a President shall not
have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his
term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify,
then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a
President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law
provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a
Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall
then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act
shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until
a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the
death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives
may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have
devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the
persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever
the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day
of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall
have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within
seven years from the date of its submission.
Amendment XXI (1933)
Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the
Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2. The transportation or importation into any state,
territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or
use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws
thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall
have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by
conventions in the several states, as provided in the
Constitution, within seven years from the date of the
submission hereof to the states by the Congress.
Amendment XXII (1951)
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the
President more than twice, and no person who has held the
office of President, or acted as President, for more than two
years of a term to which some other person was elected President
shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office
of President when this article was proposed by the Congress,
and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office
of President, or acting as President, during the term within
which this article becomes operative from holding the office of
President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall
have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven
years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.
Amendment XXIII (1961)
Section 1. The District constituting the seat of government
of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the
Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to
the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to
which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in
no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in
addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be
considered, for the purposes of the election of President and
Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they
shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided
by the twelfth article of amendment.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXIV (1964)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote
in any primary or other election for President or Vice President,
for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or
Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any
poll tax or other tax.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXV (1967)
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office
or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall
become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the
Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President
who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of
both Houses of Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President
pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of
Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he
transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary,
such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice
President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of
either the principal officers of the executive departments
or of such other body as Congress may by law provide,
transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the
Speaker of the House of Representatives their written
declaration that the President is unable to discharge the
powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall
immediately assume the powers and duties of the office
as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro
tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of
Representatives his written declaration that no inability
exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office
unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal
officers of the executive department or of such other body as
Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the
President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the
House of Representatives their written declaration that the
President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his
office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling
within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session.
If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the
latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session,
within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble,
determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President
is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,
the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as
Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the
powers and duties of his office.
Amendment XXVI (1971)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who
are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation.
-------------------------------------
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)
Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
Permission is hereby granted to download, reprint, and/or otherwise
redistribute this file, provided appropriate point of origin
credit is given to the preparer(s) and the National Public
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The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, by John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC
80-112, titled "What's Wrong with America." A copy of the tape can be
obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or
by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.
I have made every effort to ensure that an accurate transcription of the
original tape was made. Please note that at times sentence structure may
appear to vary from accepted English conventions. This is due primarily to
the techniques involved in preaching and the obvious choices I had to make in
placing the correct punctuation in the article.
It is my intent and prayer that the Holy Spirit will use this transcription
to strengthen and encourage the true Church of Jesus Christ.
Tony Capoccia
What's Wrong with America
(Romans 1:18-32)
by
John MacArthur
Tonight we are going to be considering a subject that I think is on all of
our hearts. I want, as I always would want to do--to take you to the Word of
God and not just give you some kind of political, or theological,
philosophical speech. I want to address the subject of, "What's Wrong with
America." In order to do that I find myself drawn to Romans, chapter one,
and I would like to read for you, starting at verse 24 and reading down
through verse 32,
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to
impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For
they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and
served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
forever. Amen.
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for
their women exchanged the natural function for that which is
unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the
natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward
one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving
in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer,
God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which
are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness,
wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit,
malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent,
arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and
although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice
such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but
also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Three times in those verses you have the statement "God gave them over:"
verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28. Another way that phrase would be,
[translated is] "Abandoned by God."
One of the most tragic scenes on the pages of Scripture involves the
strongest man who ever lived--the mighty man Samson: the original and
legitimate, and real, genuine "Superman." In Judges 16, verses 18-20, this
is what we read,
When Delilah saw that he had told her all that was in his heart,
she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, "Come
up once more, for he has told me all that is in his heart."
Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her, and brought
the money in their hands.
And she made him sleep on her knees, and called for a man and
had him shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began
to afflict him, and his strength left him. And she said, "The
Philistines are upon you, Samson!" And he awoke from his sleep
and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself
free." (Then this line) But he did not know that the Lord had
departed from him.
Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and
they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains,
and he was a grinder in the prison.
He didn't know that the Lord had departed from him; abandoned by God because
of his sins--what a tragedy.
To the Sons of Israel God said in Judges 10, "You have forsaken Me and served
other gods: therefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the
gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your
distress." Not only was Samson abandoned by God, but so was Israel.
Proverbs, chapter 1, verses 24 to 31, records similar sentiment,
Because I called, and you refused; I stretched out my hand, and
no one paid attention; and you neglected all my counsel, and did
not want my reproof; I will even laugh at your calamity; I will
mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm,
and your calamity comes on like a whirlwind, when distress and
anguish come on you.
Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek
me diligently, but they shall not find me, because they hated
knowledge, and did not chose the fear of the Lord.
They would not accept my counsel, they spurned all my reproof.
So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be satiated
with their own devices.
To all, not only Samson, not only Israel, but to all who turn their back on
the wisdom of God, they are left abandoned by God to eat the fruit of their
own ways. In Hosea, chapter 4, and verse 17, it is recorded that God said
this frighting sentence, "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone."
Abandoned by God was Ephraim. Ephraim made its choice--God said let him go.
In the New Testament, I think of all the things that Jesus ever said about
the Pharisees, this was the most frighting, He said to His disciples (in
Matthew 15:14) this, "Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And
when the blind lead the blind, everybody falls into the pit." "Let them
alone!"
There comes a point in God's dealing with men and nations, groups of people,
when He abandons them. The consequence of that abandonment is: they will eat
the fruit of their own choices. If I were to simply answer the question,
"What's wrong with America?" I would say, "God has abandoned America, and
America is now feeding on its own choices."
Chosen to sin--they have; chosen to turn their back on God--they have; chosen
to reject the gospel--they have; chosen to reject a Biblical morality--they
have; chosen to disobey the clear commandment of God--they have; and God
says, "Let them alone." This isn't anything new for nations. In Acts 14:16,
listen to these words: Paul said, "In the generations gone by God permitted
all the nations to go their own way." To go their own way.
C. S. Lewis, writing in his book, "The Problem of Pain," wrote, "The lost
'enjoy' forever the horrible freedom they have demanded and are therefore
self-enslaved." But when you consider all of the Scriptures that talk about
being abandoned by God, none of them is as dramatic as the one I just read
you. Here is the most graphic and comprehensive discussion of being
abandoned by God anywhere in Scripture. And it is this concept of being
abandoned by God that best explains the moral chaos and the moral confusion
that we are experiencing in America. I will go a step further and say, we
are not waiting for God's wrath--we are now experiencing it. God's wrath in
its initial form is simply to allow men to live with the result of their own
choices, to take the restraint off, the protection. That's what's happening
right before you in Romans 1.
Three times, as I told you, in verses 24 to 32, you have the phrase, "God
gave them over." Now that word can have a judicial sense, that is, making a
judgment on a criminal and handing him over for execution or punishment, and
I think that is its intention here, because the whole scene here is "Man
found guilty before God, and God's wrath released (back in verse 18) against
guilty man." The wrath of God then acts judicially to sentence sinners, and
the first phase of that sentence is to just let the restraints go, and let
them go the way of their own choices, turning them over to the uninterrupted
course and its effect that their sinful choices will produce. To put it
another way, they are deprived of "restraining grace."
Sin is so rampant in our country, it is so widespread, it is so tolerated by
people in leadership and even people in the church, it is so widely tolerated
it is pandemic: it is endemic; that is, it is in the very fabric of our life
that I believe God has just taken away the restraining grace that might
preserve our nation, and has let our nation run to its own doom.
Sin is both the cause and the effect. Sin and more sin, and more sin, and
more sin, results in more sin, and more sin, and more sin. Sin causes it:
sin is the result of it. Wrath means that sinning people are allowed the
freedom to sin more blatantly as restraining grace is taken away.
Now lets look more closely; the first statement is in verse 24, and you will
see a progression, "Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them." The
first thing God does in expressing wrath on a sinning society is to just let
them go to their lusts. The first evidence of the wrath of God is not
earthquakes, tidal waves, mass executions, it is just letting people go to
operate in the lusts of their hearts to impurity. Moral perversion, sexual
deviation, pornographic desire allowed not only to exist but becoming
popular, tolerated, being serviced by the society itself. Here what you have
is pornographic hearts, lustful hearts. Man now abandoned by God operates
only out of the passions of his impure heart. It doesn't stop there (verse
24 says), it goes to the body. The heart in its impurity and its driving
lusts will ultimately end up in the dishonoring of the body. It can't stop
on the inside, it has got to show up on the outside--the heart is wicked and
the heart is unrestrained, and the body follows, because as Jesus said, "What
comes out of the heart of man is what defiles him."
Alan Johnson wrote, "In their freedom from God's truth they turn to
perversion. In the end their humanism, or man-centeredness results in
dehumanization of each other." We have already seen that: sex, alcohol,
drugs, abuse, abortion, euthanasia, a low view of everyone else's life that
leads to killings and murders, knifings, shootings, no sense of man being
created in the image of God. No sense of humility, just egos gone wild to
fulfill uncontrolled and unrestrained passion that leads to dishonoring
bodies in every direction.
Look at the second statement in verse 26, "For this reason God gave them over
to degrading passions." Now we go a little deeper into the level this
corruption reaches, "For their women exchanged the natural function for that
which is unnatural." First, there is sort of this general category of
unrestrained vice, and we know that's a part of our culture. Right? That is
the driving force of our culture. That is the dominating force of our
culture. You hate to admit it, but the great cities of America are populated
by men and women who live for nothing but the fulfillment of their lusts.
The second level is the degrading passion. He shows you how far it goes:
vile desires, gross affections so perverted, so degenerate, and so
unrestrained is the heart, that it takes over the body and uses the body to
do an unthinkable thing at the very depth of sin, and that thing is called
homosexuality. Isn't it interesting that it starts with women here, who
really are the minority in homosexuality. A very small percentage of women
are lesbians compared to how many men are Sodomites, or homosexuals. But he
starts with the women. Why? Because, he wants you to see how deep the
plunge is. You see, usually the last to be affected in the decline of the
culture are the women, and that's his point--proof that absolutely all virtue
is gone, that the women have come to this base level.
In verse 27, he adds, "In the same way also the men abandoned the natural
function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men
with men committing indecent acts (and listen to this) and receiving in
their own persons the due penalty of their error." Can you see AIDS there?
Of course you can--among other things. See, that base inversion of God's
created order (there is that principle again) abandons them to the
consequence of their own iniquity. That's what it does: they are abandoned
by God. God pulls back all restraining grace. There will be no mitigation
of the consequence of their sin, and their lives are destroyed morally,
mentally, emotionally, medically, and ultimately physically, and eternally.
Look at the third level that this abandoning by God plunges men towards,
verse 28, "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer,
(here's the third time this phrase is used) God gave them over to a
depraved (or reprobate) mind, to do those things which are not proper." What
is a depraved mind? A mind tested and found (are you ready for this?)
useless! In other words, a mind that is disqualified for its intended
purpose. In other words, they are so wicked and they are so base that their
reasoning factually is so corrupt it must be rejected. Their intellectual
faculty, their conscience, is so destroyed that they do those things which
are not, a better word than proper, moral, which are not fitting for men to
do. The point is that the depth of their sin has reached the point where it
has rendered their brains useless. They are not rational; they are not
reasonable; they don't think straight.
When Phil Manley, who is the chaplain at the County USC Medical Center, goes
over there and sees that AIDS ward he has to be startled by what he sees
there. There must be many shocking things to see; none more shocking than
when I was told that one of the problems they have in the ward is keeping the
homosexual males nurses out of the beds of the AIDS patients. All
rationality is gone at that point, and all ability to reason about life and
choices and morality is gone; those are the kind of people in our culture who
are fast rising into positions of leadership, and the Bible says that they
have a mind that is useless.
What comes out of this when it stretches across our culture, and it isn't
just homosexuality, look how broad it goes--verse 29, "They are filled with
unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit,
malice, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful,
inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding,
untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful." That sounds like a description of South
Central Los Angeles or any other city. You could take the time to go through
all of that: unrighteous, wicked, greedy, envious, murderous, fighting,
deceitful, filled with hate, an intention to do evil to people, and so forth.
That's how you define our culture.
The epitome in verse 32, "And they know the ordinance of God." They know
that. How do they know that? Because, "The law of God is written. . . ."
Where? "In their hearts." They know the ordinance of God; they know what's
right, "That those who practice such things are worthy of death, but they
not only do the same, but they give hearty approval to those who practice
them." They have no conscience; they have no fear; they are without reason;
they are without understanding; they are like beasts--mindless. There is the
lowest point of human descent.
That's all the way from the people living on drugs, and living for "sex in
the street," and the homosexuals, to the sophisticated yuppies who sit on the
Phil Donahue Show and laugh at sexual deviation and moral perversion. You
see, abandonment by God leads to all of this, and I believe what we
experiencing in our country is nothing more than God just letting us go the
way the nation has chosen to go. They chose their leadership, a man who
advocates sin of this proportion: murder and homosexuality. They get what
they ask for. This I see for the time, God taking off His restraint and
saying, "You want it--you got it!"
Why is it that God abandons a society? Couldn't we say, "Well, all societies
are like this?" I mean, "You've got to expect this; this is the way people
are. Why would God abandon us in this situation when we need Him most?" The
answer comes in verses 18 to 23, listen to this, "For the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who
suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Verse 19, "Because that which is
known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them." You
see, that's the problem. The problem is they had the knowledge of God and
they rejected it.
I have to conclude that the wrath of God is already at work in our society,
and I would suppose that I would have to say that there is no surer, no
clearer token of a society under the wrath of God then when that society
refuses to define and hate sin, and on the other hand, when it tolerates sin
and sinners completely. Listen, when a society reaches the point where it
will not define sin, where it will not hate sin, where it will tolerate sin
and tolerate sinners, but will not tolerate anger towards sin--that's a
society under God's wrath. And that's the society we live in.
It isn't new; Schiller wrote, "The history of the world is the judgment of
the world." Great statement: "The history of the world is the judgment of
the world." What does he mean? Nations rise and fall, they come and go, and
that is the chronicle of God's operative wrath. The plunge into unrestrained
iniquity is especially offensive to God because verse 18 says, "They suppress
the truth." Literally it says, "Who are constantly attempting to suppress
the truth by their ungodliness."
There is God: God is, God exists, and God has divinely authored a spiritual,
moral, and ethical standard that must be obeyed or there will be wrath in the
future (we all know about that wrath, we are learning it in
Revelation--aren't we?), but also in the present. In the future, spiritually
and eternally, and in the present--temporarily. But look at our society: we
assault that standard, we ignore that standard, we reject that standard, we
mock that standard, we do everything to suppress that standard, whether it's
in the legislative branch, or the judicial branch, or the executive branch.
They now have joined the movement, haven't they, to suppress God's standard,
God's truth.
We want to tell every man that he is free to do anything he wants to do. The
only morality we have is egalitarianism and that is the right for everybody
to do what everybody wants to do. That's the one moral value that our world
would define. Paul says the problem with this is it is a blatant rejection
of the law of God given to man. It is not man in his ignorance--it is man in
his rejection that brings the wrath of God. Expanding on that reality then
in verse 18, Paul lays out four specific reasons for God's wrath, and I will
just give them to you. I think that you will find them absolutely
fascinating.
Four specific reasons for God's wrath:
1. REVELATION
Reason number one is revelation. In verse 19 it says, "That which is known
about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them." In other
words, God (listen to this) has inlaid the evidence of spiritual and moral
truth what is right and what is wrong, in the very nature of man's being. He
has inlaid also in the nature of man's being the awareness that there must be
a God, and that God must be powerful, and wise, and good, and just. Man is
not without the witness of divine reality and divine morality. Men can't
plead ignorance because entirely apart from Scripture which is "Special
Revelation," God has through "General Revelation" made Himself known. Notice
the phrase there in verse 19, "That which may be known of God," that simply
means "What is knowable."
What is knowable about God, what we can know about Him is made available to
us. Where is this knowledge available? Within them: in the mind; in the
soul; in the reason; in the conscience. You see, the very fabric of
reasoning and understanding is made from the strands of the revelation of
God. That's what Paul means over in chapter two of Romans, in verse 14, when
he says, "The Gentiles who don't have the written Law do instinctively the
things of the Law, because though they are not having the Law they are a law
to themselves." Why? They show (verse 15) "the work of the Law written in
their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately
accusing or else defending them." Conscience, guilt, reason, a rational mind,
those are faculties by which the proper conclusion is: there is right and
there is wrong and there is God.
It is not obscure to believe in God, it's innate; it's readily apparent.
It's not obscure to believe in right and wrong, it's innate; and just like
when you wound your body you feel pain, when you wound that moral, rational
soul you feel guilt. It's normal to believe in God; it's common sense. The
mind dictates there must be a God and this is what He must be like.
Over in the Book of Acts, and verse 15 of chapter 14, just a very important
word there: Acts 14:15, Paul and Barnabas, having an interesting time
preaching in Lystra, "Men, why are you doing these things? (they say when
these people want to come and grab them and make them gods) We are also men
of the same nature as you, and we preach the gospel to you in order that you
should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and
the earth and the sea, and all that is in them." Now listen to this: "And in
the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways;
and yet He did not leave Himself without. . . ." What? "Witness, in that He
did good and He gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying
your hearts with food and gladness."
I mean, reason would tell you that there is:
Somebody sending the rain
Somebody painting the sunsets
Somebody making the flowers grow
Somebody providing this plethora of foods
Somebody making life happy
Somebody bringing a precious, sweet, soft, tender, little baby
into the world
Somebody inventing those immense and overwhelming palpitations
of love from a man to a woman
Somebody bringing the joy of music
The mind and the reason, the very fabric of the soul says there is a God, and
He is a Creator, and He is powerful, and He is good, and He is beautiful, and
He is wise. I mean, that's just woven into the very fabric of reason.
In Acts 17, verse 23, we find Paul on Mars Hill talking to some philosophers
and he follows the same path, he says, "You got this altar here inscribed 'TO
AN UNKNOWN GOD', well, (he camps on that and says) let me tell you who He
is, (verse 24) the God who made the world and all things in it, since He is
the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands." You
see, he assumes something, he is going to evangelize a bunch of pagan
philosophers, but he assumes one thing: their rational minds must require a
creator--that's his assumption; that's where he starts. He knows that they
believe that somebody made everything because not to believe that is
irrational. Nobody times nothing equals everything is the equation of a
moron!
So the assumption is that they believe that the effect has a cause, and so he
assumes that and he starts with the God who made everything: "Look at the
effect--let me tell you about the One who made it." He says, "He isn't
served with human hands (verse 25), as though He needed anything, since He
Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; and He made from one,
every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. He designed
the world and created everything in it; sorted out the nations as to where
they are to be, and their boundaries and their times, in order that they
should seek Him." In other words, the very existence of a universe and an
earth, and boundaries and nations, creation, should drive people to seek Who
it is. "If they would grope for Him and find Him though He is not far from
each one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist. As even some of your
own pagan poets have said, 'We are also His offspring.'"
See, even pagan theology said, "Somebody made us!" That points out again the
idiocy of evolution that "nobody made us!" That's his point, "Being then
(verse 29) the offspring of God we ought not to think the Divine Nature is
like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of
man." Now think about it gentlemen, he's saying to these philosophers, you
look at this entire universe and are you assuming that rock over there with a
face on it made this? You chiseled it! Are you assuming that wooden statue
over there made it? You formed it! You must assume that whoever made it is
greater that it! Pretty powerful stuff. That's just reason.
He approaches those pagans on a rational basis, because in the fabric of
human reason is the obvious reality that this world demands a creator and it
reflects something of His person in the creation. That is why (go back to
Romans 1) Paul says at the end of verse 20, "That men are without excuse."
Because verse 20 says, "Since the creation of the world (since the very
beginning when creation was first done, way back then--since the very start)
the invisible attributes of God: His eternal power, something about His
divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been
made." In other words, it's the creation that tells the reason there is a
Creator, so that men are absolutely without excuse.
Do you realize that this is in ancient times even before the microscope and
the telescope? Men weren't even able to comprehend the macrocosm and the
microcosm like we are today. That is what is so blatant about evolution. It
is "flat-out" blatant rejection of God. It has nothing to do with science.
It defies the single greatest scientific principle, cause and effect, and it
reflects an evil intent to pursue sin without responsibility. Even in those
days they could look at the stars; they could look at the incredible
arrangement of the petals on a flower; they could look at leaves on a stem;
they could look at the cycle of water; they could see the mystery of human
birth; the mystery of growth; they could see the glory of a sunrise and the
glory of a sunset; they could understand the roaring and the rolling of the
seas; they could understand the rush of the rivers and the trickle of a
brook; the flight of a bird; they could understand that incredible
transformation of a worm, a caterpillar into a butterfly. Even then the
heavens were declaring the glory of God and the firmament was showing them
His handiwork. Even then the beasts of the field were giving Him glory.
But, today it is even more potent isn't it? I mean, think about it. We now
know that birds navigate by the stars while they migrate. Birds with this
little tiny brain. Birds raised from eggs inside a building where they have
never seen the sky can be released to flight and instantly orient themselves
towards home. They can even be shown an artificial sky representing a place
their species has never been and orient themselves to it in flight. Archer
fish shoot drops of water with great accuracy at insects for no other reason
than the fun of it. They get their food like all the rest of the fish and
nobody has yet figured out why God had them doing that just for the fun of
it.
Do you know that mites occupy only one ear in a moth? Because if they
occupied both ears the moth couldn't fly. How do the mites know if somebody
is over in the other one? I love the Bombardier Beetles. They produce
chemicals which mix perfectly and at the right moment explode in the face of
their enemy, but the explosion never occurs prematurely to blow the beetle
up. Think about water. Water is lifted against gravity thousands of feet
into the air, suspended until carried inland where it is needed. It's
incredible; no earthly agency can lift water like that. God equipped the Sun
to do it; it's the Sun that does it through the process of evaporation and
the Sun is 93,000,000 miles away! And so it goes.
The very essence of a Creator and something of His character is absolutely
everywhere, and for human reason to reject that goes against the grain of
everything, and must be the blatant act of willful sin, and because of that
God gives them over. The mind they refused to use becomes the mind that is
useless--that is judgment. I believe that we are experiencing that kind of
movement in our culture. Men have experienced God, they have experienced His
wisdom, His power, His goodness in every moment of their existence, and He
says they rejected Him. They suppressed the truth.
Look at the second of these four reasons why God's wrath falls:
2. REJECTION
Men had the truth, men turned from the truth: verse 21, "For even though they
knew God, they didn't honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile
in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened." There it is
again: they didn't use their minds right and instead of thinking wisely,
profoundly, sensibly, their thoughts became futile or empty and useless, and
their foolish heart became black--the light went out!
Man finds God in creation, he finds God in reason, he suppresses it, he
rejects God, he loves darkness, he plunges into darkness and the light goes
out. Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote this,
Will God give man brains to see these things, and will man then
fail to exercise his will towards that God? The sorrowful
answer is that both of these things are true. God will give a
man brains to smelt iron and to make a hammerhead and nails.
And God will grow a tree and give man strength to cut it down
and brains to fashion a hammer handle from its wood. And when
man has the hammer and the nails, God will put out His hand and
let man drive those nails through it and place Him on a cross in
the supreme demonstration that men are without excuse.
"They," Paul says, "did not honor Him as God or give thanks." Man's problem
is not that he can't recognize God, it is that he won't recognize God! For
all the joy of life and all the beauty of life, and all the life, laughter,
all the pain of life, all the tears of life, all the thrills, the pleasures,
the talent, sexual fulfillment, all the children, all the families--for all
the things that God fills life with He gets no thanks and "they become futile
in their speculation." They get nothing but empty human ideas, and they are
running wild in our culture. Aren't they? Isaiah said in Isaiah 47:10, "You
felt secure in your wickedness and said 'No one sees me.' Your wisdom and
your knowledge, they have deluded you, for you have said in your heart, 'I am
and there is no one besides me'" (boy, does that sound familiar).
I am the center of my world, no one sits in judgment on me--that's how stupid
men have become. Because they would not allow their rational mind, where God
had planted the knowledge of Himself and the knowledge of good and evil in
their conscience, they would not allow themselves to follow that path; they
rejected that, they have now become foolish in their speculations. They are
empty, useless, self-gods, and they have been sucked into the vacuum of their
own emptiness and nothing is there but darkness. Their foolish heart was
darkened. Now they can't know God because the light went out.
Wrath, because men received revelation; they had the opportunity. Wrath,
because they rejected it. Thirdly,
3. RATIONALIZATION
This is the third cause--rationalization: men insist they are doing fine.
Verse 22, "They profess to be. . . ." What? "Wise." They don't say, "Oh,
woe is me, I'm in a pit. I've become an idiot. I've lost my sense. I can't
find my way." No, they have convinced themselves that they are erudite. The
major rationalizations today are egalitarianism, freedom, and psychology.
You know they think they are wise. It reminds me of the guy lying in the
hospital bed (he was in the mental ward) and he kept saying "I'm Napoleon,
I'm Napoleon!" And the guy in the next bed, after about three days of this
said, "Who told you you're Napoleon?" And he said, "God did." And the guy
said, "Oh no I didn't." It reminds me of the lady who walked into the
psychiatrist's office with a duck on a string, and said, "You've got to help
my husband, he thinks he's a duck!" What they assume they perceive isn't
remotely related to reality.
When he says (verse 22), "Professing to be wise they became fools," he uses
the word "moraino" (Greek), moron we get from it. That's what it means, they
think they are wise and they are morons.
There is a fourth cause, in spite of the fact that man rejects revelation,
and fully rejects the God and the truth revealed because he wants no
compunctions in his life. And in spite of the fact that he rationalizes that
he is really very wise and everything is fine, he still will inevitably
invent something that becomes the fourth cause:
4. RELIGION
He can't exists without some sense of religion. He has got to believe in
something or someone. He has got to have some shrine he bows to, so he
creates his own God to accommodate his useless mind. Voltaire says, "God
made man in His own image and man returned the favor." Verse 23, "They
exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for (here's their religion) an
image in the form of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and
crawling creatures." Look at verse 25, same statement, "they exchanged the
truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the
Creator, who is God blessed forever. Amen." Look at verse 28, "And just as
they didn't see fit to acknowledge God any longer."
So, all of those say they wanted to get rid of the true God, the
incorruptible God, the real God and the truth of God, and in the place of
God they wanted to make their own religion full of lies. They wanted to
worship the creature rather than the Creator. They did not see fit to
acknowledge God. You see, what you have to understand is, man does not rise,
he does not ascend from the muck of paganism and ignorance to the truth of
God. He falls from the truth of God into the slime of religion. Religion is
not man at his highest; religion is man at his lowest. He is down at the
bottom when his willful rejection of the true God is allowed to invent false
gods to accommodate his own life.
In Second Kings 17, verse 14, it says, "The people didn't listen, they
stiffened their neck like their fathers, who didn't believe in the Lord their
God. And they rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their
fathers, and His warnings which He warned them. They followed vanity (or
emptiness) and became vain and went after the nations which surrounded them,
concerning which the Lord commanded them not to do like them. And they
forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves
molten images."
That's exactly what happens, you start at the truth of God and you descend
into the muck of religion. Religion is man at the pits. It is the ultimate
insanity. Religion is the ultimate insanity. It is the wickedness of man
rejecting God and creating non-gods. They may be unsophisticated idols; they
may be the Gods of our culture: humanistic gods, materialistic gods,
evolutionary gods. Maybe the gods of self and sex. It maybe the goddess of
"mother nature," or the new religion "Ecofeminism" (sp.). Everything from
the Roman Eagle in ancient time to the spotted owl; from the golden bulls of
Egypt to the whale and dolphin gods of today; from the worship of a stick to
the worship of the earth, from aboriginals to environmentalists; pantheistic
worship to some little tiny god that a man holds in his hand; from
Ecofeminism (sp.) to Islam.
So, is it any wonder that as a society we are struggling with an ethical
moral system? How can we have an ethical moral system when there is only one
in the universe and we have abandoned it? And when you abandoned it as verse
18 to 23 describe, then verses 24 to 32 tells you. "If you abandon
God. . . ." What? "He'll abandon you," and just take off restraining grace.
You say, "Is there any hope for America?" Well, the hope for America would
be the same as the hope for any people. First of all, a return to God as
Creator, God as Creator and Law giver. And if this nation does not return to
God as Creator and Law giver--the wrath will continue.
I want to close with a text of Scripture and then an illustration. The text
is in Psalm 81, verse 11, "But My people didn't listen to My voice and Israel
did not obey Me. So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart to
walk in their own devices." That's it isn't it? They wanted it and they got
it. But then this, verse 13, "Oh that My people would listen to Me, that
Israel would walk in My ways! I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn
My hand against their adversaries. Those who hate the Lord would pretend
obedience to Him." In other words it would become so popular that people
would fake being spiritual. Then verse 16, "But I would feed you with the
finest of the wheat; and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."
There's a promise, isn't that? God says, "I let you go, but I could come
back if you'll turn to me." The first point of turning is to turn to God as
Creator and Law giver, and once you affirm that then His law becomes your
standard.
One of the fascinating things that I saw in Africa, when I visited there, was
huge ant colonies. When I say huge, I mean you can't believe how big these
anthills are. You think of an anthill as a little deal like this; I'm
talking 15 yards long, 20 feet high! Huge, all over everywhere, massive
things. There is a species of ant that lives in some parts of Africa that
lives in these subterranean tunnels and they go way down into the earth and
they go way up. They usually pile them up around some kind of a tree. Down
in the subterranean part of these things I understand is where they put the
young ants, and that's where they shelter them there, and that's where the
queen is housed. The queen is in charge of this massive millions of little
insects. They tell us that the workers go on their way and they have to
forage for food, and they go out to distant places and they come back with
all the stuff the whole colony needs to eat.
It is said that if when the workers are away the queen is molested, the
workers, even though they are far away from the nest become immediately
nervous and uncoordinated because there is some kind of connection between
them and the queen. If she is killed it says they would become frantic and
rush around aimlessly and die out in the field somewhere. What they have
concluded is that there is some kind of radar device that works between this
one queen and everyone of these ants. If she is killed they are instantly
disoriented and a frenzy takes place that ends in death.
Frankly, I can't think of a better parallel to what we have seen in Romans 1.
When man believes there is no God, all sense of orientation is lost and he is
in a mad frenzy that ultimately will end in death. There's hope. You have
to pray for that. If our nation will turn back to the Creator and the Law
giver who is the true God and submit to His Word He will bless us. If not
the wrath will continue to unfold.
Father, we are so grieved as we look around us at this time in our history.
We can think back, it must have been so different in the early days of the
founding fathers who wanted so much to make sure that everyone knew there was
a God and that God had given a Law, and His Law alone could govern man. And
here we are something over 200 years later and the whole nation is plunging
into an abyss of blackness with minds that are absolutely useless, trying to
solve massive far reaching problems of iniquity without a standard, and
really being given the curse of their own sin: more sin, and more sin, and
more sin, unrestrained.
We see Your wrath and all we can do is plead with You that You would be
gracious to Your people and that You would open their hearts to saving truth.
That You would save our leaders. That you would save them from their sins
and bring them to the foot of the cross. That they would bow the knee to
Jesus Christ. And that the Word of God could again become the authority in
this land as it reflects the Word of the Creator, for Father, unless that
happens many shall continue the plunge into the darkness from which they
cannot recover.
We remember what you said to the society before the flood, "My Spirit will
not always strive with man." There comes a time when grace runs out. Lord,
before that happens in this land, we can only ask that in Your mercy You
would call out a remnant of such proportion and devotion that they might
begin to bring a new sense of direction by turning the hearts of this people
towards God, towards You.
We pray tonight Lord for any one in this congregation who is in that death
frenzy and disorientation because they are alienated from You, that You
would turn them; that they would look and see You the Creator, the Law giver,
the Redeemer, who in Christ has purchased their life for time and eternity.
We ask this only that You may be glorified in Your Son's Name. Amen.
Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of
BIBLE BULLETIN BOARD MODEM (318)-949-1456
BOX 130 300/1200/2400/9600/14400 DS HST
SHREVEPORT, LA 71110


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THE ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION:
Proceedings of the Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the
Federal Government, Annapolis in the State of Maryland.
September 14, 1786
To the Honorable, The Legislatures of Virginia, Delaware,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York -
The Commissioners from the said States, respectively
assembled at Annapolis, humbly beg leave to report.
That, pursuant to their several appointments, they met, at
Annapolis in the State of Maryland on the eleventh day of
September Instant, and having proceeded to a Communication
of their Powers; they found that the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia, had, in substance, and nearly
in the same terms, authorized their respective Commissions
"to meet such other Commissioners as were, or might be,
appointed by the other States in the Union, at such time and
place as should be agreed upon by the said Commissions to take
into consideration the trade and commerce of the United States,
to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial
intercourse and regulations might be necessary to their common
interest and permanent harmony, and to report to the several
States such an Act, relative to this great object, as when
unanimously by them would enable the United States in
Congress assembled effectually to proved for the same."...
That the State of New Jersey had enlarged the object of their
appointment, empowering their Commissioners, "to consider how
far a uniform system in their commercial regulations and other
important matters, mighty be necessary to the common interest
and permanent harmony of the several States," and to report such
an Act on the subject, as when ratified by them, "would enable
the United States in Congress assembled, effectually to provide
for the exigencies of the Union."
That appointments of Commissioners have also been made by the
States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North
Carolina, none of whom, however, have attended; but that no
information has been received by your Commissioners, of any
appointment having been made by the States of Connecticut,
Maryland, South Carolina or Georgia.
That the express terms of the powers of your Commissioners
supposing a deputation from all the States, and having for
object the Trade and Commerce of the United States, Your
Commissioners did not conceive it advisable to proceed on
the business of their mission, under the Circumstances of
so partial and defective a representation.
Deeply impressed, however, with the magnitude and importance
of the object confided to them on this occasion, your
Commissioners cannot forbear to indulge an expression of
their earnest and unanimous wish, that speedy measures be
taken, to effect a general meeting, of the States, in a
future Convention, for the same, and such other purposes,
as the situation of public affairs may be found to require.
If in expressing this wish, or in intimating any other
sentiment, your Commissioners should seem to exceed the strict
bounds of their appointment, they entertain a full confidence,
that a conduct, dictated by an anxiety for the welfare of the
United States, will not fail to receive an indulgent construction.
In this persuasion, your Commissioners submit an opinion, that
the Idea of extending the powers of their Deputies, to other
objects, than those of Commerce, which has been adopted by the
State of New Jersey, was an improvement on the original plan,
and will deserve to be incorporated into that of a future
Convention; they are the more naturally led to this conclusion,
as in the course of their reflections on the subject, they have
been induced to think, that the power of regulating trade is
of such comprehensive extent, and will enter so far into the
general System of the federal government, that to give it
efficacy, and to obviate questions and doubts concerning its
precise nature and limits, may require a correspondent
adjustment of other parts of the Federal System.
That there are important defects in the system of the Federal
Government is acknowledged by the Acts of all those States,
which have concurred in the present Meeting; That the defects,
upon a closer examination, may be found greater and more
numerous, than even these acts imply, is at least so far
probably, from the embarrassments which characterize the
present State of our national affairs, foreign and domestic,
as may reasonably be supposed to merit a deliberate and candid
discussion, in some mode, which will unite the Sentiments and
Councils of all the States. In the choice of the mode, your
Commissioners are of opinion, that a Convention of Deputies
from the different States, for the special and sole purpose
of entering into this investigation, and digesting a plan for
supplying such defects as may be discovered to exist, will be
entitled to a preference from considerations, which will occur
without being particularized.
Your Commissioners decline an enumeration of those national
circumstances on which their opinion respecting the propriety
of a future Convention, with more enlarged powers, is founded;
as it would be a useless intrusion of facts and observations,
most of which have been frequently the subject of public
discussion, and none of which can have escaped the penetration
of those to whom they would in this instance be addressed.
They are, however, of a nature so serious, as, in the view
of your Commissioners, to render the situation of the United
States delicate and critical, calling for an exertion of the
untied virtue and wisdom of all the members of the Confederacy.
Under this impression, Your Commissioners, with the most
respectful deference, beg leave to suggest their unanimous
conviction that it may essentially tend to advance the interests
of the union if the States, by whom they have been respectively
delegated, would themselves concur, and use their endeavors
to procure the concurrence of the other States, in the
appointment of Commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia on the
second Monday in May next, to take into consideration the
situation of the United States, to devise such further
provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the
constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the
exigencies of the Union; and to report such an Act for that
purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as when
agreed to, by them, and afterwards confirmed by the Legislatures
of every State, will effectually provide for the same.
Though your Commissioners could not with propriety address
these observations and sentiments to any but the States they
have the honor to represent, they have nevertheless concluded
from motives of respect, to transmit copies of the Report to
the United States in Congress assembled, and to the executives
of the other States.
------------------------------------
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)
Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
Permission is hereby granted to download, reprint, and/or otherwise
redistribute this file, provided appropriate point of origin
credit is given to the preparer(s) and the National Public
Telecomputing Network.
V R T


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Antistatism: An Eye For An Eye . . .
Clarification:
All "words inside quotation marks" mean that those words were used "for
lack of a better word."
Summary Of Political Ideology (Autonomy):
Decision Making:
- No government exists to make decisions for the Antistate (as a single
entity) or the people within it.
- Territorial, professional, and trade resolutions are made through free
agreements between individuals or groups of individuals out of
necessity.
- Every individual or group of individuals in the Antistate can make
free contracts (agreements) with any other individual or group of
individuals anywhere. This is not an "ensured right," but a
necessary means of survival.
- The "free agreements" or "contracts" are open-ended arrangements (not
written binding deals). They provide services or produce
(material items) in return for services or produce between
individuals or groups of individuals.
- Example of a contract: Farmer Joe will give one third of his crop to
Doctor Bob if Doctor Bob takes care of all Farmer Joe's medical
concerns.
- The contracts can be created, altered, or ended at any time.
Political Rights:
- There are no restrictions (no law, government, police, prisons, etc.)
regulating what an individual can or cannot do in the Antistate.
The individual has complete and total freedom.
- This absolute liberty creates a balance that reacts with, and
counteracts every action in the Antistate.
- Example of balance of action: Farmer Joe breaks both his legs. Doctor
Bob takes half Farmer Joe's crop and refuses to set Farmer Joe's
broken legs. Farmer Joe either dies (unable to do anything) or
makes contracts with Butch Thug and Orthopedic Surgeon Mary for
protection and care.
- Anyone can believe anything and say anything they please in the
Antistate, but nobody has to listen.
- Anyone can leave or enter the Antistate.
- Political dissent is useless, an individual may try to implement a
"true" political system, but with few followers this is futile.
Minority Rights:
- Once an individual is within the Antistate they have the complete
freedom to do anything despite who the individual is.
- It is impossible to "be a citizen" of the Antistate, this requires the
recognition of an absent government.
Leaders & Government Involvement In Society:
- To clarify: The government is nonexistent, therefore it cannot have
any leaders and cannot involve itself with anything.
- If any social leaders (religious, etc.) arise (such as Ghandi) the
extent of their "power" is limited to the number of individuals
that choose to follow them.
Education And Professionals:
- As previously said, services are a commodity for barter, the more rare
the service, the more desired it becomes.
- Education is a valuable service; those people being taught are trading
other items and services to the person who is educating them.
- Services (medical, construction, just about anything, etc.) are given
in exchange for items or other services.
- The more educated one becomes in a trade (skill), the more they can
rely on their knowledge to provide goods and services for them.
- Education is a key tool in teaching people to survive independently.
Defence Of Political Ideology:
Major Advantages Of Antistatism (Autonomy):
Equality: Every person in the Antistate has equal opportunity. Since
individual rights are absolute and unconditional in the Antistate, anybody can
do anything. The same opportunities are available to everybody, and the
ultimate goal of society is constant, survival.
Autonomy: It may seem that in our "democracy" we have almost complete
freedom, this is not true. In Canada, there is a modest document (Bill of
Rights) that attempts to "guarantee" the Canadian public a certain set of
rights and freedoms. There is another document (the written law) that
contains thousands upon thousands of restrictions and regulations placed on
Canadian citizens. In short, there are more things we cannot do than things
that we can do. Not only are we restricted in what we can do, we can also
have our remaining rights involuntary removed (arrests and imprisonment,
minors have few rights, questionable mental faculties, etc.). Finally, we pay
(taxes) for the privilege of having our rights taken away. It's not a big
secret that police, lawyers, and politicians cost money. These problems are
avoided in the Antistate where the legal system, government, and law
enforcement are forsaken.
Individualism & Collectivism: In the world today there are few who could
survive completely independent of others. This is a basic principle of
Antistatism. Within the Antistate an individual is free to be just that, an
individual. The individual is bound by no laws other than necessity to merge
with others. If an individual is forced to join others for any reason, the
person loses their identity as an individual and becomes a group entity. The
loss of individual identity and merger into a group entity forces unnecessary
restrictions on the person, hindering progress. Necessity draws the individuals together (collects the individuals) and drives them to work for
the good of each other, themselves included. From these mutual junctions of
distinct individuals in an immense collection, progress is spawned. There is
no other society, but the Antistate, in which an individual can work
progressively with others and not lose their distinct identity.
Attacks On Antistatism:
Attack #1: "Wouldn't the stronger people take advantage of the weaker
people? How can this be justified?"
Defence #1: Yes, the stronger, faster, and smarter people would take
advantage of the weaker people. There is nothing wrong with this. Those
people most capable of survival will live and develop and have children with
the same characteristics of survival. The weak will be weeded out, sometimes
by the strong and sometimes by the environment, and the weak characteristics
that they possess will disappear from mankind. In this way, human beings will
progress naturally as organisms, and socially as more hardy beings capable of
independent survival. It is only within the last hundred years that human
beings have become the only organisms to deviate from this natural state of
things.
Attack #2: "What would stop another country from invading the Antistate
and claiming all the territory?"
Defence #2: As was stated before, very few people are capable of
independent survival. Therefore the individuals make contracts out of
necessity for various things such as nourishment, shelter, and protection.
One of the most common contracts that would arise among the people would be
those of defence. In return for some commodity or service, protection would
be given to the providing individual. Enough of these contracts would give
way to a huge, self-governing army protecting each other, benefiting
everybody.
Attack #3: "If the Antistate isn't really a state, how can it have
political borders?"
Defence #3: If the Antistate can keep other countries from claiming it's
territory, then the borders of the Antistate are defined as any territory
unclaimed by any country.
Summary Of Economic Ideology (Private Enterprise):
Position On Economic Spectrum:
- The economic system in the Antistate is similar to extreme capitalism.
- State enterprise, state involvement in the economy, and taxation is
impossible without a state and therefore absent in the Antistate.
- There is no currency; there is no state to produce it, and no need to
represent large amounts of items.
Production:
- Everyone produces (for themselves) what is needed for survival and any
"luxury items" desired.
- Anything needed or desired by an individual (which the individual
cannot produce) is taken from or traded for with goods or services
with other individuals.
- It is foolish to produce excess amounts (more than is needed for
comfortable survival) of goods unless they are to be used for
trade.
- "Disposable income" (meaning excess "luxury items") depends on how
hard the individual in question works to produce or trade for it.
Classless Society:
- Everyone has the same job, to get what is needed for survival (there
are many means of doing this).
- Without currency it is difficult to determine who is rich and who
isn't (a monetary value cannot be given).
- The "winners" (in an economic sense) are those who get what they need
to survive and get the "luxury items" they want.
- The "average" person gets what they need to survive plus a few "luxury
items."
- The "loser" dies, unable to get what is needed for survival.
- Education is essential to maintain a "profitable" lifestyle.
Social Problems (If the Antistate is installed somewhere in the modern world):
- Poverty would run rampant until all those who could not learn to
survive independently quickly enough are dead.
- Crime would become commonplace until it becomes unprofitable (why
murder the only doctor in town, etc.).
- An extreme drop would occur in the economy for a long period until the
above points are resolved.
Defence Of Economic Ideology:
Major Advantages Of Private Enterprise:
Liberty: Within a system of complete private enterprise, a person has
the greatest possible amount of freedom to produce anything they want to (or
nothing). Also, they can trade for (or take) any items they choose. An
individual has the independence to pursue any activity they prefer (no working
nine to five). You can take a vacation, give yourself a raise, or take that
BMW anytime!
No Taxes, No Welfare: Who can argue with such a fine idea? No taxes, no
welfare. No welfare means those who cannot or will not produce die. The
people who need welfare die, the problem is erased. Great idea!
No Excess: The greatest amount of items being produced are those that
people need. Producing these items requires time, effort and materials.
Therefore, nothing is being produced and not used. The system becomes
tailored to the needs of society, those who produce what everyone needs will
be successful.
Attacks On Private Enterprise:
Attack #1: "You claimed earlier that all people in the Antistate would
be equal. How can this be so when some people are bound to be better at
producing things that everybody needs?"
Defence #1: What was claimed earlier was that all people in the
Antistate have equal opportunities. Yes, some people will be "more
successful" than others by producing things that everyone needs. There is a
healthy balance created in private enterprise where the "winners" end up
producing necessary things and get what they need while the "losers" produce
plastic cows or fuzzy dice and end up with nothing. If everyone ends up
producing the same vital, but now abundant item, it is only logical that some
of them will get "business" while others won't. The others who aren't getting
any "business" either find new items to produce or become "losers."
Attack #2: "How can you possibly leave those people who cannot produce
without any assistance? It's inhumane to let them just die."
Defence #2: If you want to take care of them, you can do it, but to
force me to do it is equally inhumane. Those people who cannot survive should
die. They carry genetic traits (blindness for instance) that will pass on if
they reproduce. I am in no way advocating that we should go out and destroy
these people (nature does that just fine), I'm just saying to go out of our
way and do the surviving for them is unnatural. This is another self-
correcting problem that will take care of itself if left alone in a natural
state.
Attack #3: "How do I stop Butch Thug or Sid Crook from stealing my BMW?"
Defence #3: Either let your BMW get stolen, or get a big gun and defend
it. An eye for an eye. Why do we need cops when we can do the job better?
Rationale Behind Political/Economic Combination:
The ideology of Antistatism is the combination of three distinct
political ideologies and two economic ideologies: democracy, anacro-communism,
autonomy, private enterprise and capitalism. These ideologies express freedom
for the people. Their merger into one system provides freedom in a plausible
form.
Antistatism is the best possible 21st century ideology. Marx and Lenin
have both claimed that final stage in a perfectly evolved society is autonomy.
That is what the Antistate is, a perfectly evolved society. Within it is
found independent, autonomous individuals who are producing and progressing to
the benefit of everyone. The self-governing people are completely free to
persue their personal goals and ideals within the confines of their survival.
Without a government, there are no problems arising from powerful leaders,
apathetic politicians and of course, no taxes. Let the people control
themselves and the people will be content.
If government exists to serve the people, and it doesn't do this, then
it doesn't work. When something doesn't work, you either fix it, or rid
yourself of it for good.
Bibliography:
Alinsky, Saul D. 1972. Rules For Radicals. Vintage Books (Random House Inc.)
Cohen, Carl, ed. 1972. Communism, Fascism, And Democracy: The Theoretical
Foundations. Random House Inc.
Dalton, George. 1974. Economic Systems & Society. Penguin Books Ltd.
Jacker, Corinne. 1968. The Black Flag Of Anarchy. Charles Scribner's Sons.
Laski, Harold J. 1955. "Anarchism." Encyclopedia Britannica. Ed. Walter Yust.
vol. 1. William Benton. pp. 873-878.
Lehning, Arthur. 1968. "Anarchism." Dictionary Of The History Of Ideas:
Studies Of Selected Pivotal Ideas. vol. 1. Charles Scribner's Sons.
pp. 70-76.
Lenin, Vladimir. 1916. Imperialism, The Highest Stage Of Capitalism. Progress
Publishers
Lenin, Vladimir. "State And Revolution." Essential Works Of Marxism. Ed.
Arthur P. Mendel. Bantam Books, Inc. pp. 103-198.
Stalin, Joseph. "The Foundations Of Leninism." Essential Works Of Marxism. Ed.
Arthur P. Mendel. Bantam Books, Inc. pp. 209-296.
Ward, Colin. 1973. Anarchy In Action. Harper & Row, Publishers.
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1645
ANOTHER ON THE SAME
by John Milton
ANOTHER_ON_THE_SAME
Another on the Same
-
Here lieth one who did most truly prove,
That he could never die while he could move,
So hung his destiny never to rot
While he might still jogg on, and keep his trot,
Made of sphear-metal, never to decay
Untill his revolution was at stay.
Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time:
And like an Engin mov'd with wheel and waight,
His principles being ceast, he ended strait.
Rest that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm
Too long vacation hastned on his term.
Meerly to drive the time away he sickn'd,
Fainted, and died, nor would with Ale be quickn'd;
Nay, quoth he, on his swooning bed out-stretch'd,
If I may not carry, sure Ile ne're be fetch'd,
But vow though the cross Doctors all stood hearers,
For one Carrier put down to make six bearers.
Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,
He di'd for heavines that his Cart went light,
His leasure told him that his time was com,
And lack of load, made his life burdensom,
That even to his last breath (ther be that say't)
As he were prest to death, he cry'd more waight;
But had his doings lasted as they were,
He had bin an immortall Carrier.
Obedient to the Moon he spent his date
In cours reciprocal, and had his fate
Linkt to the mutual flowing of the Seas,
Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:
His Letters are deliver'd all and gon,
Onely remains this superscription.
-
-THE END-

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THE AMERICAN PRIVACY FOUNDATION
Charter: WHEREAS millions of American citizens are presently having
their privacy violated through electronic, chemical, and
physical techniques, and,
WHEREAS many groups with authority, such as business and
government, are increasingly utilizing these techniques
in the continuing invasion of privacy, and,
WHEREAS these groups are increasingly coercing citizens to
be subjected to these invasions, be denying employment,
loans, benefits, or other required monetary incomes to
those individuals who refuse to be monitored, tested, or
investigated, and,
WHEREAS technological innovations are continuously making
such violations more prevalent, less expensive, and easier
to perform,
WITNESS THAT The American Privacy Foundation is hereby
formed to counter the trends of increasing privacy
violations in the United States of America.
The American Privacy Foundation is opposed to:
1) Collection, by any organization, of information showing
what a citizen purchases on a day-to-day basis.
2) Genetic testing for purposes of determining if a citizen
possesses 'defective' or undesirable genes, and the
subsequent distribution of this information to various
organizations.
3) Drug testing or monitoring by any of the following
techniques; urine, blood, or hair follicle analysis;
skin patches; or electronic devices meant to monitor
legal or illegal substance useage of an individual.
4) Sharing of information between the business community and
government.
5) Compilation of 'medical profiles' by data collection from
various sources, for submission to business or insurance
companies.
6) Any electronic device which is used for tracking the
location of a given individual on a continuous basis.
7) Imbedded electronic devices intended to monitor and enforce
legislation.
8) Any attempt by the government to ban or eliminate cash
currency, or to impose further controls or monitoring of
currency.
1) DAY-TO-DAY TRANSACTION COLLECTION:
a) Concern: A large amount amount of information about
the lifestyle, eating habits, and medical conditions
can be inferred from these records.
b) Example: Several businesses, most notably high-
technology grocery stores, have begun collecting
day-to-day transaction information on individuals.
This is accomplished by enticing a customer into using
a 'Shopping Club'-type card, which indicates the
identity of the purchaser as well as demographic
information. The purchases are recorded against the
customers' name, and a log of purchases can be
compiled.
c) Exceptions: The A.P.F. recognizes the necessity of
business to keep records about credit and payment
history, in order to determine eligibility for the
privilidge of credit.
2) GENETIC TESTING:
a) Concern: In a few short years, many human genes will be
identified. If a person is discriminated against due to
genetic abberations, this person is 'prosecuted before
the fact'.
b) Example: If you are found to have a gene predisposing you
to alcoholism, you could be denied a job, loan, or
insurance, even if you have never touched a drink in your
entire life.
c) Exceptions: A person might request genetic testing for his
own knowledge or for overwhelming medical necessity. If the
test is requested and desired by the person, and if the
information is specifically prohibited from being shared
with any other group, the APF has no objection to this
practice.
3) DRUG TESTING:
a) This patently offensive practice presupposes guilt,
and violates the 5th Amendment to the Constitution by
requiring a person to undertake an action that may be
self-incriminating. A person should be judged on their
performance at work, only. If the person performs well,
then they should be rewarded. If they perform poorly,
they should be removed. What intoxicants are ingested
by a person in their own time is in no way the business
of any company or any government entity.
b) Example: A patch has been developed that would be worn
for up to one month, that is capable of detecting every
drink, every cigarette, every substance ingested during
that period.
c) Exceptions: The APF does not object to standard drug
tests for individuals in certain jobs that put other
individuals at serious physical risk (e.g., jobs in
the transportation industry or in nuclear power plants).
Additionally, if a test is someday developed that tests
present levels of intoxication, much like a Breathalyser
does now, the APF has no objection to use of this test in
any and all employment situations. (An employer, when he
pays for your hours, has the right to expect you to be
sober during those paid hours.)
4) BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT SHARING OF DATA:
The government has an strong need to possess certain
information on individuals (for administration of income
taxes and social security benfits, as an example).
Because of this, they possess powerful informational
tool. If this information is leaked to companies or
individuals, a serious breach of privacy occurs.
Additionally, your geographic location and lifestyle
can be inferred by the records collected by business.
If this information is shared with the government, the
stage is set for serious abuses, all the way up to
Bosnian-style 'Ethnic Cleansing'.
5) COMPILATION OF MEDICAL PROFILES:
A group known as the Medical Information Bureau, from
Boston, Massachusettes, is rapidly becoming the 'TRW'
of the medical community. They draw information from
every source possible, including some that have been
legally challenged as unethical.
There is a legitimate need for credit-reporting companies,
since they provide information allowing a lender to make
intelligent decisions on the granting of something that
is clearly a privilege (the granting of credit).
There is not nearly as much reasonable rational as
credit histories, since this is not an area in which
special privileges are granted. All people have the right
to work SOMEwhere. All people have the right to be granted
medical care. With MIB records, these rights may soon
be denied.
6) LOCATION MONITORING:
There is absolutely no reason why an employer or a
government agency has the right to keep tabs on a
persons' location on a continuous basis (excepting
those individuals on probation or parole).
There is a few businesses who have started using POSILOCK,
a system in which an employee wears a badge that enables the
employer to determine and track physical location of
an employee in its' building throughout the day.
7) ELECTRONIC LAW ENFORCEMENT:
In a few short years, electronic microchips may be imbedded
in a variety of common objects. In fact, recent developments
will allow toll-road users to speed through toll-booths
while an electronic device monitors their travel, and
the tollsystem would automatically deduct amounts from
a 'toll account' paid for by the traveller. In short
order, software could be programmed to note your entry
point, your exit point, and your average speed. If your
average speed exceeded the speed limit, you could ALSO
automatically receive a speeding ticket for your
'transgression'. This concept can be carried to an
extreme - with every object monitoring your every move,
and issuing citations for any transgressions.
8) THE CASHLESS SOCIETY:
The government would truely love to make cash disappear
entirely. If all transactions were electronic, many
wonderous things would occur: Taxes could be collected on
EVERY transaction you make, automatically deducted.
And EVERY monetary transaction could be monitored, and
the government would then know every little thing there
is to know about us. This is perhaps the most insiduous and
most dangerous of the potential dangers, but it is also the
least likely to occur any time soon.

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A HISTORY OF THE ARAB PEOPLES OF THE MIDEAST
ARABS
The term Arabs refers to the people who speak Arabic as their
native language. A Semitic people like the Jews (see SEMITES),
Arabs form the bulk of the population of Algeria, Bahrain,
Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab
Emirates, Yemen (Aden), and Yemen (Sana). In addition, there
are about 1.7 million Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli
rule in the WEST BANK and GAZA STRIP, territories occupied by
Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (see ARAB-ISRAELI
WARS), and more than 700,000 Arab citizens of Israel.
Estimates of the total Arab population of the countries above
range from 175 to 200 million. The great majority of Arabs are
Muslims, but there are significant numbers of Christian Arabs
in Egypt (see COPTIC CHURCH), Lebanon, and Syria and among
Palestinians. In geographical terms the Arab world includes
North Africa and most of the Middle East (excluding Turkey,
Israel, and Iran), a region that has been a center of
civilization and crossroads of trade since prehistoric times.
ARAB HISTORY
References to Arabs as nomads and camel herders of northern
ARABIA appear in Assyrian inscriptions of the 9th century BC.
The name was subsequently applied to all inhabitants of the
Arabian peninsula. From time to time Arab kingdoms arose
across on the fringes of the desert, including the Nabataeans
at PETRA in southern Jordan in the 2d century BC and PALMYRA in
central Syria in the 3d century AD, but no great Arab empire
emerged until ISLAM appeared in the 7th century AD and provided a
basis for Arab tribal unity.
Although a majority of Muslims today are not Arabs, the
religion was born in the Arabian peninsula and Arabic is its
mother tongue. MECCA, a place of religious pilgrimage for
tribes of western Arabia and a trading center on the route
between southern Arabia and the urban civilizations of the
eastern Mediterranean and Iraq, was the birthplace of the
prophet of Islam, MUHAMMAD Ibn Abdullah (c.570-632 AD); the
Muslim calendar begins with his flight to MEDINA in 622 because
it marked the founding of a separate Muslim community. By the
time of Muhammad's death, Mecca and nearly all the tribes of
the peninsula had accepted Islam. A century later the lands of
Islam, under Arab leadership, stretched from Spain in the west
across North Africa and most of the modern Middle East into
Central Asia and northern India.
There were tow great Islamic dynasties of Arab origin, the
UMAYYADS (661-750), centered in Damascus, and the ABBASIDS
(750-1258), whose capital was Baghdad. Most Umayyad rulers
insisted on Arab primacy over non-Arab converts to Islam, while
the Abbasid caliphs (see CALIPHATE) accepted the principle of
Arab and non-Arab equality as Muslims. At its height in the
8th and 9th centuries, the Abbasid caliphate was
extraordinarily wealthy, dominating trade routes between Asia
and Europe. Islamic civilization flourished during the Abbasid
period (see ARABIC LITERATURE; ISLAMIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE)
even though the political unity of the caliphate often
shattered into rival dynasties. Greek philosophy was
translated into Arabic and contributed to the expansion of
Arab-Persian Islamic scholarship. Islamic treatises on
medicine, philosophy, and science, including Arabic translation
of Plato and Aristotle, greatly influenced Christian thinkers
in Europe in the 12th century by way of Muslim Spain. The
power of the Arab Abbasid family declined from the 10th century
onward due to internal political and religious rivalries and
victories by Christian European Crusaders (see CRUSADES;
MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY OF THE) seeking to recapture territory
lost to Islam. The Mongol invasion of the 13th century
(see MONGOLS) led to the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in
1258 and opened the way for the eventual rise of a great
Turkish Muslim empire known as the OTTOMAN EMPIRE. The
Ottomans took Constantinople (Istanbul) from the Byzantines in
1453 and had taken control of the Arab Middle East and most of
North Africa by the end of the 16th century. Arabs remained
subjects of the Ottoman Turks for over 300 years.
The Arab world of today is the product of Ottoman decline,
European colonialism, and Arab demands for freedom from
European occupation. At the beginning of World War I all of
North Africa was under French (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco),
Italian (Libya), or British (Egypt) domination. After World
War I the League of Nations divided the Arab lands that had
remained Ottoman during the war between Britain and France with
the understanding that each power would encourage the
development of the peoples of the region toward self-rule.
Iraq and PALESTINE (including what is now Jordan) went to
Britain, and Syria and Lebanon to France. Britain had
suggested to Arab leaders during the war that Palestine would
be included in areas to be given Arab self-determination, but
British officials then promised the region to the Zionist
movement, which called for a Jewish state there (see ZIONISM).
The Arab lands gained their independence in stages after World
War II, sometimes, as in Algeria, after long and bitter
struggles. Much of Palestine became the state of Israel in May
1948, setting the stage for the Arab-Israeli conflict, in which
five wars have occurred (1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982),
and contributing to the rise of the PALESTINE LIBERATION
ORGANIZATION (PLO), which gained prominence after the
humiliating Arab losses in the 1967 war.
PEOPLE AND ECONOMY
Arabs have traditionally been considered nomads, epitomized by
the BEDOUIN of Arabia. Stereotypical portrayals of Arabs today
use the image of the nomad or tribal sheik, usually with
prejudicial intent. In fact, it is difficult to generalize
about Arabs in terms of appearance or way of life. Bedouins
are less than 10 percent of the total Arab population. Most
Arab societies are heavily urbanized, particularly the oil-rich
states of the Arabian Peninsula. This reversal of the
stereotype of the desert Arab owes much to the fact that there
is little if any agriculture in such societies. Major peasant
populations are found in countries such as Egypt (see
FELLAHIN), Syria, Algeria, and Iraq, where there is water for
irrigation, but even there generalizations are difficult. All
these nations have heavy urban concentrations; Cairo, for
example, has a population of 14 million and is still expanding.
As a whole, then, Arab society today is more heavily urban than
rural, as a result of major political, economic, and social
changes that have occurred in the last century. In addition,
there are important variations in political and religious
outlooks among Arabs.
In the midst of such diversity the two basic elements uniting
most Arabs are the Arabic language and Islam. Though spoken
Arabic differs from country to country, the written language
forms a cultural basis for all Arabs. Islam does the same for
many, with Arabic being the language of the KORAN, the revealed
word of God delivered through the prophet Muhammad. Most Arabs
are Sunni Muslims (see SUNNITES). A minority are SHIITES. The
division of Islam into two main branches is the result of a
dispute over succession to the caliphate that goes back to the
7th century and has led to certain doctrinal differences
between the two branches. The major Shiite country is non-Arab
Iran, but there are large numbers of Shiites in Iraq (where
they form a majority) and in Lebanon (where Shiites are now the
biggest single religious group). Shiite tensions are due
partly to Iranian efforts to promote Shiite Islam in the
aftermath of the 1979 revolution that brought Ayatollah
Ruhollah KHOMEINI to power and partly to the fact that Shiites,
who form the economic underclass in many Arab nations, feel
that they have been discriminated against by the Sunnite
majority.
Although traditional tribal life has nearly disappeared, tribal
values and identity retain some importance, especially when
linked to Islam. Descent from the clan of the prophet Muhammad
or from one of the first Arab tribes to accept Islam still
carries great prestige. Many villages and towns contain
prominent families with common links to tribal ancestors.
Blood ties contribute to the formation of political factions.
These types of relationships are less prevalent in cities;
even there, however, leading families may seek to intermarry
their children to preserve traditional bonds, and many urban
families retain patronage ties to their villages.
Nevertheless, the importance of kinship has been weakened by
the rapid expansion of urban society, by modern educational
systems, and by the creation of centralized governments whose
bureaucracies are often the major source of employment for
university graduates. Many educated young people choose
spouses from among fellow classmates, a development that
reflects especially the expansion of educational and
professional opportunities for women. It is not uncommon for
young people to become engaged and then wait a year or two to
marry because they cannot find or afford suitable housing
immediately. In the past the bride would have become part of
the husband's family household, a custom still followed in many
villages.
This rapid pace of urbanization and social change has been
encouraged by economic constraints found in many Arab
societies. Except for oil, there are few natural resources to
be exploited for industrial development. Agricultural
productivity is generally high in Arab countries, but
productive land is scarce in some regions because of the lack
of water, and droughts and rising demand have increased the
possibility of conflicts over water resources shared by
neighboring countries. Fewer opportunities in agriculture,
coupled with social modernization, have caused young people to
flock to major cities seeking education and employment. This
has placed serious strains on governmental abilities to respond
to social needs.
This process has been exacerbated by another factor--the rapid
rate of population growth in many Arab countries. Most have a
rate of increase near 3% annually, as compared to rates of
growth in Western Europe of under 1%. These growth rates
reflect the impact of modern medicine and social services that
have lessened infant mortality. The tendency to smaller
families found in Western urban societies has not occurred
because of the prevalence of traditional attitudes favoring
large families, particularly among the poor and in areas where
tribal values prevail. The United Arab Emirates has a growth
rate approaching 9%, and even a rate of 2.7% for Egypt means
that a million Egyptians are born every 9 months in a country
where agricultural land comprises only 12% of the total land
area, forcing further urban congestion and the need to import
more food to maintain subsistence levels. This inability to
feed one's population from indigenous resources leads to
increased indebtedness and a diversion of funds needed for
development.
One final element in this equation is the large number of young
people in these expanding populations. For example, 6% of all
Tunisians are under 20 years of age, a not unrepresentative
statistic suggesting that future problems of unemployment and
food shortages will be greater than they are now. These
population indices suggest great potential for social unrest,
and the failure of many secular Arab regimes to fulfill their
promises of economic prosperity and national strength have
contributed to the increasing adherence to Islam by young
people in some Arab countries. Among the young, in particular,
Arab inability to regain the territories lost in the 1967 war
with Israel led to questioning of the secular ideologies that
had dominated regional politics during the post-World War II
era, while a growing gap between rich and poor and the spread
of education increased demands for greater participation in
largely undemocratic political systems.
MODERN POLITICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES
The men who led the Arab independence movements after World War I
were usually secularists. Although many of them, such as
Egypt's Gamal Abdul NASSER, were Pan-Arab nationalists who
advocated the creation of a single Arab nation, they believed
it essential that their countries adopt many aspects of Western
civilization, such as secular laws, parliamentary government,
and the like. These views challenged the primacy of Islam in
everyday life. Islamic law (see SHARIA) makes no distinction
between religious and temporal power. Muslims believe that all
law derives from the Koran, and that God's word must therefore
apply to all aspects of life. The gradual relegation of Islam
to the realm of personal status, a process that began during
the period of Western dominance, continued as Arab nations
gained independence under nationalist leaders who believed that
Islam lacked answers to the problems confronting modern society
and national development.
Many devout Arab Muslims disagreed. The Muslim Brotherhood,
for example, was formed in Egypt as early as 1929 to meet the
needs of Egyptians uprooted by modern economic and cultural
inroads into traditional Egyptian life. A central tenet of all
such Muslim groups is the belief that Western economic and
social values cannot restore past Arab greatness, and that
Muslim societies must be based on principles derived from their
own roots. Beyond this, such groups often differ on the type
of society they envisage and how to achieve it. Some
organizations advocate overthrow of existing regimes, others
the spread of their views by peaceful means. The call to Islam
has special appeal to those who are unemployed and have little
hope of a secure future, people who are the victims rather than
the beneficiaries of modernization. Many others who have
rejected membership in such groups have returned to the private
religious duties of Islam, such as praying five times daily,
fasting during the holy month of RAMADAN, and making a
pilgrimage to Mecca.
Muslim organizations see the West as the real threat to Islamic
stability. Most see Israel as an agent of the West in the
Middle East, depriving Palestinian Arabs of their rightful
homeland. Even secular Arabs who admire the West and fear
reintroduction of a Muslim theocracy nevertheless often feel
angered at what they perceive as Western and especially
American ignorance of and unconcern for Arab concerns. The
Palestinian uprising (intifada) launched in December 1988 has
created new awareness of the problem.
On the other hand, anti-Israel pronouncements have often served
to create a false impression of unity when real agreement was
lacking. The ARAB LEAGUE, formed in 1945, has been more a
forum for Arab infighting than a framework for cooperation.
Arabs genuinely feel common bonds based on language and a
shared historical and cultural legacy, but they also identify
themselves as Egyptians, Iraqis, and so on. Their ideological
differences reflect the wide range of governing systems in the
Arab world, from socialist regimes to oil-rich monarchies.
Complicating factors for the region have been the GULF WAR
(1980-88) between Iran and Iraq and increased tensions between
Iran and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. These conflicts
focused attention on the major oil-producing region of the
world. As of 1987, more than 69% of the proved oil reserves of
the globe could be found in the Middle East, particularly in
Saudi Arabia, which contains nearly half of the world's
reserves. Oil has been exported from the Arab world since the
1930s, but only with the creation of the ORGANIZATION OF
PETROLEUM EXPORTING COUNTRIES (OPEC) in 1960 and the Libyan
revolution of 1969 did these countries begin to determine oil
prices themselves. Although only eight Arab nations are
substantial oil producers and OPEC has several non-Arab
members, the organization is usually associated with Arab oil;
the oil shortages of 1973-74 resulted from Saudi anger at U.
S. policy during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Overproduction
drove down prices in the 1980s, weakening OPEC's clout and the
ability of the oil-producing Arab states to provide aid and
jobs for the poorer Arab nations. Oil experts believe,
however, that the Arab world will remain the strategically
significant center of world oil production well into the 21st
century, a fact that has contributed to the involvement of
foreign powers in the region.
FUTURE PROSPECTS
The Arab world holds potential for both growth and conflict. A
solution to the Palestinian problem would defuse the likelihood
of another Arab-Israeli war and permit allocation of resources
to domestic sectors rather than to military outlays. Arab
states, however, need to settle their own differences as well.
Some efforts to promote more unified approaches to problems of
common interest have been made in recent years, including the
formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) in 1981 and
the Arab Maghrib Union (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and
Tunisia) and the Arab Cooperation Council (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan,
and Yemen [Sana]) in 1989. The major inter-Arab rivalry is
that between Syria and Iraq, the principal internal problem
that of Lebanon, where communal strife has involved its
neighbors and destabilized the region. The impact of
population growth on economic development and the appeal of
Islamic revolutionary factions to the disaffected will remain
crucial to Arab prospects into the next century. CHARLES D.
SMITH
MEMBERS OF THE ARAB LEAGUE
---------------------------------------------------------------
COUNTRY AREA POPULATION PER CAPITA INFANT PERCENT
(km sq.) (1989 EST.) INCOME MORTALITY URBAN
(1986) (per 1,000
live births)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Algeria * 13,600 24,900,000 2,570 81 43
Bahrain 678 500,000 8,530 26 81
Djibouti 23,200 400,000 1,067 127 74
Egypt 1,001,449 54,800,000 760 93 45
Iraq * 458,317 18,100,000 2,400 69 68
Jordan 97,740 4,000,000 1,550 54 69
Kuwait* 17,818 2,100,000 13,890 16 94
Lebanon 16,000 3,300,000 1,000 50 80
Libya * 1,759,540 4,100,000 7,170 74 76
Mauritania 1,030,700 2,000,000 440 132 35
Morocco 446,550 25,600,000 590 90 43
Oman 212,457 1,400,000 4,990 100 9
Qatar * 11,000 400,000 12,520 31 88
Saudi 2,149,690 14,700,000 6,930 71 73
Arabia
Somalia 637,457 8,200,000 280 137 33
Sudan 2,505,813 24,500,000 320 113 20
Syria 185,180 12,100,000 1,560 48 50
Tunisia 163,610 7,900,000 1,140 77 53
United Arab 83,600 1,700,000 14,410 32 81
Emirates*
Yemen 332,968 2,500,000 480 132 20
(Aden)
Yemen 195,290 6,900,000 950 113 40
(Sana)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
* Member of OPEC


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Arafat's Speech in Johannesburg
May 10, 1994
The following is the complete text of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's
address to a Islamic gathering in a mosque in Johannesburg on May 10,
as broadcast by Israel Radio, Kol Yisrael:
Brothers, I have to thank you to give me this opportunity to come here
to pray together, and Insh'Allah, we will pray together very soon in
Jerusalem, the first shrine of Islam.
Excuse me for my poor language in English, but I try to do my best.
My brothers, after the signing of the agreement, and we have to
understand that after the gulf war, the real conspiracy is to demolish
completely the Palestinian issue from the agenda of the international
new order. This is where the main conspiracy and it was not easy,
because our people as you know had paid the price of this gulf war. As
you know our community in Kuwait which was the biggest and richest
community in Kuwait had been kicked out of Kuwait.
Not only that, after that we had been placed by this initiative
declared by President Bush for Madrid Conference. And it wasn't easy,
how we had accept to go to Madrid Conference. Why? Not to give them
the reason and an excuse to exclude the cause of Jerusalem, the cause
of Palestine. This has to be understood. And long after this agreement
which is the first step and not more than that, believe me. There are
a lot to be done.
The Jihad will continue and Jersualem is not for the Palestinian
People. It is for all the Muslim Uma, all the Muslim Uma. You are
responsible for Palestine and for Jerusalem before me.
(Verse from the Koran in Arabic) And we saved him (Abraham) and Lot,
and we brought him to the land which is blessed for ever.
This blessing, to Abraham, for the land which had been blessed for the
whole world. While after this agreement, you have to understand, our
main battle is not to get how much we can achieve from them here or
there. Our main battle is Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the first shrine of
the Muslims.
This has to be understood for everybody and for this I was insisting
before signing to have a letter from them, from the Israelis, that
Jerusalem is one of the items which has to be under discussion. And
no, the permanent state of Israel- no! It is the permanent state of
Palestine. Yes, it is the permanent state of Palestine.And in this
letter it is very important for everybody to know, I insist to mention
and they have written it and I have this letter. I didn't declare - I
didn't publish it till now. In this letter we are responsible for all
the Christian and Muslim and the Islamic holy sacred places, and I had
insisted to mention the Christian holy sacred place before the Islamic
holy sacred place because I had to be faithful to the agreement
between the Calipha Omar and the Patriarch Saphrona.
You remember this agreement between the Calipha Omar and the Patriarch
Saphrona. For this I was insisting to mention in this letter the
Christian holy places beside the Islamic holy places.
And here we are, I came and I have to speak frankly. I can't do it
alone, without the support of the Islamic Uma, I can't do it alone.
And what to say like the Jews, go and you will have to fight alone.
No! You have to come, and to fight and to start the Jihad to liberate
Jerusalem your first shrine.
And this is very important. And for this, in the agreement, I insist
with my colleagues, with my brothers to mention that not exceeding the
beginning of the third year and directly after signing the Cairo
agreement to start discussions for the future of Jerusalem. The future
of Jerusalem.
And you saw me on TV while I was hesitating...you remember the
picture? Becuase I was insisting to mention Jerusalem. And I said OK,
I don't want only from Rabin this promise. No! I want this promise
from the co-sponsors, Christopher and Kosyrev, and as a witness,
President Mubarak. And this has been done, which is very important for
everbody to know.
Now, here we are. And everybody has to understand that there is a
continuous conspiracy against Jerusalem. During the next two years,
which have been mentioned, not exceeding the beginning of the third
year, they will try to demolish and to change the demographics of
Jerusalem. It is very important, unless we have to be very cautious
and to put it in our priority as nothing worth to be priority than
Jerusalem. To put it in our first priority not only as Palestinians,
not only as Arabs, but as Muslims and as Christians too. I have
mentioned this to the Pope and to the Patriarch of Istanbul and the
Archbishop of Canterbury. To those I told them, if you want to make
your holy sepulchre, your holy, sacred Christian places. OK. Carry on
with the Israelis, with the Jews.
We are not against the Jews. We have to remember what has been
mentioned in our Koran, (quotation in Arabic from the Koran) And in
English, that among the nations of Musa there is a nation, or a part
of the nation, which they believe in just, and by just they control.
And for your information, there are two Jewish sects, in Palestine.
Samaritans in Nablus and Natorei Karta in Jersualem. They are refusing
to recognize the state of israel and they are considering themselves
as Palestinians. I'm saying this to give you proof that what they are
saying that it is their Capital - no! It is not their capital, it is
our capital, it is your capital. It is the first Shrine of the Islam
and the Muslims.
But we are in need of your support. Everywhere. This is a message for
the people, of Palestine from our populations in Jerusalem. Calling to
you, everybody here, not only here, everywhere, and I'm sure sooner or
later, we'll pray in Jerusalem.Together.
This agreement I am not considering it more than the agreement which
had been signed between our prophet Muhhamud and Quraysh. And you
remember, Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and considering the
agreement of the very low class. But Muhammud had accepted it and we
are accepting now this peace accord.
But to continue our way to Jerusalem, to the first shrine, together
and not alone. And we have to say clearly and honestly, that there is
a very, very, very difficult circumstances that face us. I'll give one
quote - one example. You remember after the massacre took place in the
Mosque in Hebron? You remember? Twenty two days the security council
was hesitating to accept the resolution to condemn this massacre. You
remember? Twenty two days. Do you know why? For one way I was
insisting to put in this resolution "throughout the occupied
Palestinian land and territories, including Jerusalem." They were
trying to bargain with me, to cancel Jerusalem. I refused. And I got
it in the end, and you remember.
Again, I have to thank you, I have to thank you from my heart, from my
heart, and I am telling you frankly from brother to brother, we are in
need of you, we are in need of you as Muslims, as Mujadin.
And on this occasion, I have to tell my old friend, my old brother,
Nelson Mandela, to thank him for give me this invitation to come, to
visit South Africa for the first time as a part of your struggle, I am
here. And I am telling again by your names and by the name of the
Islamic Uma that we will be beside him and we are sure that you will
continue to be beside us.
(Verses from the Koran in Arabic) We will enter the Mosque (El Aksa),
like we entered the first time.. God doesn't break his promise. .And
together, shoulder to shoulder, until victory, until victory, till
Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem.
They will help us more than they ever did before.

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***** Reformatted. Please distribute.
CLINTON/GORE ON ARMS CONTROL
The end of the Cold War leaves two great tasks for
American arms control policy: to halt the spread
of nuclear, chemical, biological and missile
technologies to countries that do not have them;
and to turn the legacy of the Cold War into
effective strategy for the post-Cold War era.
The Clinton/Gore Plan
Stop nuclear proliferation
* Bolster the International Atomic Energy
Agency's capacity to inspect suspect
facilities through surprise inspections in
member countries.
* Lead a strong international effort to impose
sanctions against companies or countries that
spread dangerous weapons.
* Demand that other nations tighten their export
laws and strengthen enforcement of policies
regarding nuclear weapons.
* Never again subsidize the nuclear ambitions of
a Saddam Hussein.
* Ensure that agricultural and other non-
military loans to foreign governments are used
as intended.
* Strengthen safeguards to ensure that key
nuclear technology and equipment are kept out
of dictators' grasp.
* Ratify the START Treaty and the follow-on
agreement of June, 1992.
Pursue and strengthen international agreements
* Make non-proliferation the highest priority of
our intelligence agencies.
* Press more nations to sigh and abide by the
Missile Technology Control Regime.
* Conclude a chemical weapons convention banning
the production, stockpiling, or use of
chemical weapons.
* Lead the effort to achieve a Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty through a phased approach.
Nuclear weapons plans for the 21st century
* Maintain a survivable nuclear deterrent,
consistent with our needs in the post-Cold War
era.
* Develop effective defenses to protect our
troops from short and medium range missiles.
* Support research on limited missile defense
systems to protect the U.S. against new long-
range missile threats.
* Conduct all such activities in strict
compliance with the Anti-Ballistic Missile
(ABM) Treaty.
The Record
* Al Gore has gained an international reputation
as an innovative and hard working expert on
arms control issues.
* Advocated sharp reductions in weapons and
shift from destabilizing land-based multiple-
warhead missiles to single warhead missiles -
now core objectives of the American
negotiating position.
* Wrote legislation to stop proliferation of
ballistic missiles capable of delivering
nuclear weapons, and is advocating new
legislation to block the spread of chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons to Iraq.
* Resisted weakening of the ABM treaty and
worked to keep SDI form violating from U.S.
obligations.
* Fought efforts to scrap SALT II limits and
preserved them as the foundations for START.
* Favored a ban on short-time of flight or
depresses trajectory missiles - a year before
US negotiators adopted the position.
* Advocated special treatment for nuclear armed
sea-launched cruise missiles because of their
unusual nature.
* Monitored Geneva arms control talks as one of
ten Senate observers.

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Abraham Lincoln And Abortion
In November 1781, Lucy Hanks was a young beautiful servant girl
employed by a wealthy plantation owner. Her employer was a
bachelor who was educated in England at Oxford. When he migrated
to America he brought with him his favorite books.
Like many young poor people during the 18th century, Lucy Hanks was
illiterate. One day, as she was doing her housekeeping, her employer
caught her looking at the pictures in one of his books. He could tell
she was fascinated, so he read the captions of each picture to her.
From that time on, after hours of work, he privately tutored her and
successfully taught her to read and write.
They became romantically involved and she became very pregnant.
During those days, when a girl got into trouble, she was treated like
a dog. The bachelor employer wouldn't marry her, so he gave her some
money and sent her away.
Abortion wasn't a choice in 1782, so Lucy Hanks gave birth to a
daughter whom she named Nancy Hanks. Nancy Hanks grew up and married
a drifter named Thomas Lincoln, and in 1809 Abraham Lincoln was
born.
By today's standards Nancy Hanks could have easily been swept away by
abortion, along with one of the greatest presidents of all time.
A million and a half babies are robbed every year of being an Abe
Lincoln, Sister Theresa or a Joe Montana, but more importantly they
are being robbed of just being.
From Visalia Times Delta 1/29/90 by Duane Phelps


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From: sean@dranet.dra.com (Sean Donelan)
Subject: Year 1990: computer users rights and the popular press
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 90 22:19:53 EST
The year 1990 in review. Here is a list of some of the articles that have
appeared in the "popular" press in the last year. There were some 800+
articles on computer crime, "hackers" (in the negative sense), and viruses.
For comparison there were about equal number of articles on those topics
in each of the preceeding four years. However in the preceeding four years
I couldn't find a single article in 1300+ periodicals that mentioned
protecting rights of people who use computers. Note the slight difference
from the rights of people in a computerized society (lots of articles on
privacy, computer (mis)matching, and various computer snafu's).
Perhaps the EFF should have hired a advertising firm before a lawyer? :-)
Actually for only six months it is a pretty impressive showing.
-------------
1 High-tech witch-hunting vs. First Amendment. (Electronic Frontier
Foundation protecting legal rights of computer users) (editorial), PC
Week, Oct 8, 1990 v7 n40 p87(1)
Article No. 09485051 *** Full-text article (2566 characters) ***
2 Can invaders be stopped but civil liberties upheld?; Industry executives
have joined to stimulate debate over computer users' rights. (computer
hackers, The Executive Computer), The New York Times, Sept 9, 1990 v139
pF12(N) pF12(L) 21 col in
Article No. 08822456
3 EFF: bringing Bill of Rights into the computer age. (Electronic Frontier
Foundation), Byte, Sept 1990 v15 n9 p28(2)
Article No. 08819820
4 Slow push to judgement. (computer hackers)(Viewpoint) (column),
Computerworld, August 27, 1990 v24 n35 p21(1)
Article No. 08791012
5 Group to address computer users' rights. (Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility) (Business) (company profile), PC Week, August 13,
1990 v7 n32 p117(1)
Article No. 08748606 *** Full-text article (2745 characters) ***
6 Fighting back against Fed's BBS crackdown. (heavy-handed approach of
federal government toward operators of computer bulletin boards) (The
Wide View) (column), PC Week, July 23, 1990 v7 n29 p53(1)
Article No. 08670228 *** Full-text article (5156 characters) ***
7 Crackdown on hackers 'may violate civil rights.' (computer hackers), New
Scientist, July 21, 1990 v127 n1726 p22(1)
Article No. 09300107
8 Rights Advocate. (Mitchell Kapor; Newsmaker) (column),
CommunicationsWeek, July 16, 1990 n309 p2(1)
Article No. 08638928
9 Kapor group lines up for rights fight. (entrepreneur Mitch Kapor's
Electronic Frontier Foundation) (includes related article on three
hackers pleading guilty to documentation theft), Computerworld, July 16,
1990 v24 n29 p6(1)
Article No. 08639188
10 Group to defend civil rights of hackers founded by computer industry
pioneer. (Mitchell Kapor), The Wall Street Journal, July 11, 1990 pB4
pB4 16 col in
Article No. 08619396
11 High-tech crime fighting: the threat to civil liberties., The Futurist,
July-August 1990 v24 n4 p20(6)
Article No. 09177465 *** Full-text article (22737 characters) ***
12 Hacker raids stir up battle over constitutional rights., Computerworld,
June 25, 1990 v24 n26 p1(2)
Article No. 08583448
13 Drive to counter computer crime aims at invaders; legitimate users voice
worries over rights., The New York Times, June 3, 1990 v139 p1(N) p1(L)
36 col in
Article No. 08498074
True, I'm not working on the clock, and it is sunday night, so this isn't as
complete as professional research should be, but you get what you pay for...
--
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO 63132-1806
Domain: sean@dranet.dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100

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***** Reformatted. Please distribute.
CLINTON/GORE ON THE ARTS
Bill Clinton and Al Gore believe that the arts
should play an essential role in educating and
enriching all Americans. The White House should
help the arts become an integral part of education
in every community, helping broaden the horizons of
our children and preserve our valuable cultural
heritage. A Clinton/Gore Administration will
ensure that all of our citizens have access to the
arts for all of our citizens.
As President and Vice President, Bill Clinton and
Al Gore will defend freedom of speech and artistic
expression by opposing censorship or "content
restrictions" on grants made by the National
Endowment for the Arts. They will continue federal
funding for the arts and promote the full diversity
of American culture recognizing the importance of
providing all Americans with access to the arts.
The Record
* Governor Bill Clinton initiated sweeping
educational reforms in the 1980s. The new
standards which the state adopted in 1983
include art and music in the curriculum for
all K-12 students and require one-half unit of
fine arts instruction for high school
graduation. As a result:
! Arkansas is among only a few states that
have included the arts in the basic,
required high school curriculum.
! Student participation in arts programs
has increased 30 percent and funding for
positions for music and art teachers has
increased 35 percent since 1983.
! A "Survey of Fine Arts" course at the
high school level, with curriculum
guidelines for art and instrumental and
vocal music classes in elementary and
secondary schools.
* Governor Clinton has enthusiastically
supported the state's commitment to programs
for the general public. In 1991-92, in the
face of shifting priorities and declining
grant awards from the National Endowment for
the Arts, Governor Clinton strongly sustained
the state's support for touring programs and
local arts agencies.
! While many states' arts agency budgets
dropped as much as 40 percent, Governor
Clinton's budget for the Arkansas Arts
Council increased funding for arts
programs. In 1992, grants from the
Arkansas state Arts Council supported 393
performances, exhibitions and arts
classes in 138 cities and communities in
Arkansas.
! Arkansas has a strong folk arts tradition
and is home to a regional repertory
theater, the nationally recognized
Children's Theater, the Arkansas Symphony
Orchestra, Ballet Arkansas, and numerous
local theater and performing arts
programs.
* Senator Gore has supported funding to bring
operas, symphony orchestras, playhouses, and
educational arts programs to all of America.
* Opposed measures which would cut funding for
the National Endowment for the Arts and place
content restrictions on federally funded
artists.
* Led the fight to preserve funding for public
television programs like Sesame Street that
enrich the lives of million of American
families.

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Monday January 31, 1994
YOU WANNA KNOW HOW TO HANDLE CRIME? ASK A COP
By MIKE ROYKO
THEY'RE ALL over TV and the papers talking about crime: the president of the
United States, his aides, members of Congress, lawyers, professors. They are
promising this and that and vowing to do such and such.
But I've noticed the absence of one group that might be expected to have some
opinion on crime and what, if anything, can be done to reduce it.
Cops.
Oh, once in a while you might get a high-ranking police official, a chief of
some big city department. But police brass sound like the politicians, since
they deal with budgets, manpower charts and other administrative matters.
By cops, I mean the men and women who go out on the street every day and try to
solve crimes and arrest criminals.
In all the blather coming out of Washington about crime, and what the
big-spenders will do about it, the invisible man is the street cop.
So the morning after President Clinton blew hot air at the nation, I called a
friend who has been a cop for many years. He's worked on homicides, robberies,
rapes, just about every form of foul behavior.
Because he aspires to higher rank, and clout still means something in the
Chicago Police Department, it wouldn't help his career to be known as my
friend. So his name can't be used.
But he's real. And when I asked him what his reaction was to the current
anti-crime frenzy in the White House and Congress, he said: ''It's a lot of
bull----.''
He elaborated. ''There's nothing we haven't heard before. Three strikes and
you're out. We already send up three-time losers in Illinois. Hasn't done
anything to the crime rate. Build more prisons. We can't build enough prisons
to hold all the bad guys. Tougher gun laws. Look, the only people the gun laws
affect are honest people. Frankly, I wish every decent family in America had a
gun and knew how to use it.
''Besides, federal crime laws don't mean a damn thing to me because about 95
percent of the crimes in this country are local, not federal. The feds aren't
dealing with shootings in saloons or guys going nuts and killing their wives
and kids or the neighbors. Most of their busts are white-collar. So federal
laws don't mean squat when it comes to everyday crime.
''Now, I'm in a minority, but a lot of cops agree with me on this. And that's
the drug laws. We're wasting our time trying to control that crap. We're
wasting billions of dollars and throwing people in jail who are just
self-destructive goofs.
''We'd be better off doing what we do with liquor and cigarettes. Tax them and
license the sale. Sure, people abuse booze and they smoke. But smoking is way
down because most people know it's bad for them. The same thing with booze.
More white wine and light beer and fewer boilermakers.
''It's the same thing with drugs. Right now, most people don't use drugs. If
you legalize it, most people still won't use drugs.
''But you take away the illegal profit motive, there go the drug peddlers, the
gangs and the other serious crime. And most of the police and political
corruption.
''Then you wouldn't have thousands of cops wasting their time trying to bust
some small-time dealer. You wouldn't have them clogging up the courts and
filling up cells that somebody dangerous should be in.
''But you don't hear the politicians say that because they're afraid of the
people who say: 'I don't want my kids buying drugs.' Hey, lady, if your kid
wants to buy drugs right now, he can do it. And maybe he already is.
''Look back 20 years. Anybody who said we ought to legalize gambling in
Illinois was treated like a nut. The Mafia will take it over. Where there's a
casino there will be murder and prostitution, and families are going to fall
apart because the old man is blowing his paycheck at the blackjack table.
''Now we got gambling boats all over Illinois. We're going to have them in
Chicago and the suburbs. And it's no big deal. The sky isn't falling.
''Same thing with drugs. What, somebody is going to smoke some marijuana at
home, listen to music, then go out and shoot everybody he sees? No, he's going
to fall asleep and get up the next morning with less of a hangover than if he
drank three boilermakers.
''Now, if you legalize the stuff, and tax it, you save billions of dollars that
we're wasting now, and you bring in a lot of extra money from the taxes.
''Then you take that money and use some of it for rehabbing the junkies.
''But you also find ways to invest it in places like the West Side, in public
works projects or to help start private businesses that will create jobs.
Because that's where it all started, the craziness and the higher crime rate.
When the low-skill jobs disappeared, the husbands were out of work and they
disappeared. And that's why we have all these one-parent or no-parent families
that turn out the street criminals.
''Hey, but what do I know? I only go out there and arrest them, fill out the
paperwork and go to court.
''It's not like I'm some expert in Washington and get on C-Span.''

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Asset Forfeiture: Civil Forfeiture
- Part 2 -
IV. Common Factors of Circumstantial Proof
''Close Proximity''
Despite recent decreased emphasis on seizures of cash and/or cars that
occur during the arrest of drug violators, such seizures nevertheless
continue to account for many civil forfeitures. The courts recognize
that the location of assets in "close proximity" to narcotics is a
relevant factor. Such evidence helps establish that the property
constitutes drug proceeds or was intended to be exchanged in a narcotics
transaction.(18) In each case, of course, the courts also examine the
circumstances of the seizure for evidence of narcotics trafficking.
Cash Hordes
Courts often regard cash hordes as strongly indicative of narcotics
trafficking. As one court has noted, "[a] large sum of cash, in and of
itself, is evidence of its use for the purpose of an illegal drug
transaction."(19)
In situations involving a cash horde, the government ordinarily seeks to
forfeit the horde as money obtained directly in exchange for narcotics.
By itself, the presence of cash will not justify forfeiture. However,
the attendant circumstances frequently provide additional proof linking
the horde to narcotics trafficking. For example, as stated above, the
money may have been found in close proximity to narcotics. In addition,
as one court recently observed: Of particular significance is the nature
of the currency itselfQthe way it was packaged, the mixed denominations
of the bills, and the sheer amount of currency consisting of a large
number of small billsQ which in this court's own experience . . .
appears to be a common thread running through cases involving controlled
substances and the proceeds therefrom.(20)
Thus, the circumstances of each cash horde should be carefully analyzed
for indications of drug dealing.
Concealment Efforts and Commingled Funds
Efforts to conceal the true ownership of property or to disguise the
manner in which it was purchased constitute significant evidentiary
factors. For example, in United States v. Parcels of Land
(Laliberte),(21) the court noted: Laliberte attempted to shield this
money from the attention of the government, which is a further
indication of drug trafficking . . . Laliberte instructed [his partner]
not to make deposits of . . . money in amounts greater than $10,000 in
order to avoid scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. Laliberte also
told his accountant not to itemize his personal investments . . .
despite the tax benefits he could have realized from doing so.(22)
Likewise, in United States v. Haro,(23) the court based its decision to
allow a criminal forfeiture of a defendant's property, in part, on his
efforts to conceal the property's true ownership.(24) The defendant, an
attorney, undertook extensive measures to conceal narcotics proceeds in
order to buy real estate. Such proof, albeit circumstantial, obviously
serves to link assets to narcotics activity.(25)
Commingled funds pose special difficulties for the government. Although
commingling may be evidence of narcotics activity, the government's
recovery is limited to the percentage of the property proven to be
tainted.(26) Courts will carefully scrutinize allegedly commingled
funds, however, to ensure that they are partially derived from
legitimate sources.(27)
Extensive Cash Expenditures
Another factor often cited by the courts is the tendency of drug
traffickers to engage in numerous large cash transactions. This pattern
is so well recognized that the Fourth Circuit recently reversed a
district court decision that failed to give such evidence proper weight:
The district court found that during a nine-month stretch . . . [the
claimant] made cash expenditures totaling $137,000.... The court failed
to note the significance of this evidence, namely that the possession of
unusually large amounts of cash . . . or the making of uncommonly large
cash purchases . . . may be circumstantial evidence of drug
trafficking.(28)
Likewise, the Second Circuit, after recounting a claimant's various cash
expenditures, recently concluded that "[t]he district court could
reasonably infer that it was unusual to pay for expensive property such
as real estate and heavy construction equipment with cash it could also
find even more unusual [the claimant's] payments for some of the
purchases with five, ten, and twenty dollar bills."(29)
Informal Net-Worth Analysis
The tendency of drug traffickers to engage in large cash transactions is
frequently accompanied by the absence of legitimate means of employment
capable of supporting such large expenditures. Accordingly, courts often
consider an apparent discrepancy between an individual's lifestyle and
his or her employment income as indicative of narcotics trafficking and
its proceeds.
In most cases, courts note this conflict without conducting the type of
formal "net worth" analysis typical of tax prosecutions. For example,
one leading commentator has observed: In the typical proceeds case, the
government shows that a drug trafficker has acquired substantial assets,
often purchased with cash, but has no legitimate or declared source of
income that could account for more than a fraction of his wealth.
Frequently, he has filed no tax returns for several years, and, of
course, there is always the strong evidence of a "likely source from
which [the trier of fact] could reasonably find that the net worth
increases sprang." Such evidence is usually enough to show probable
cause to believe that all of the trafficker's more valuable property is
subject to forfeiture....(30)
Thus, after quoting the above excerpt, one district court stated:
Under a net worth theory, the government could survive a motion to
dismiss by alleging, with sufficient particularity, that [the claimant]
is a drug trafficker, that he has no other known source of income, and
that he has accumulated substantial assets during the period in which he
had no known source of income.(31)
Accordingly, even an informal net worth analysis provides a strong
evidentiary basis for finding that targeted assets constitute narcotics
proceeds.
Formal Net-Worth Analysis
On occasion, the government has resorted to a more formal presentation
of "net worth" proof. This process involves establishing an individual
target's income during a designated period and comparing this figure
with his expenditures or increased net worth during the same period.
Given proof of substantial narcotics trafficking, the difference between
these amounts suggests that the proceeds are illicit.
Before 1988, the government rarely relied on this method of proof in
forfeiture cases. Since then, however, law enforcement has learned that
this highly effective method of tracing proceeds can be accomplished
relatively easily and without the complexities of a tax prosecution. As
a result, net-worth proof has become more common in civil forfeiture
cases. More important, numerous appellate courts have relied on this
mode of proof to sustain forfeitures.
For example, in United States v. Parcels of Land (Laliberte)(32) the
First Circuit initially noted that the claimant's average annual
adjusted gross income was $27,690, and then set forth his numerous
expenditures during this period. Based on a comparison of these figures,
the court stated: The sheer magnitude of Laliberte's expenditures
supports an inference that his property acquisitions were funded with
the proceeds of drug trafficking. Laliberte's millions of dollars in
purchases far exceeded his reported average annual income, . . . and
there was no other apparent legitimate source of money to account for
the magnitude of the expenditures.(33)
Similarly, in United States v. Thomas,(34) the Fourth Circuit observed:
Here the undisputed cash expenditures vastly exceeded Thomas' legitimate
income. During this period, Thomas' only source of income was his
business .... Records ... show that Thomas reported only $13,964 in
gross income on his business license applications for the years 1983
through 1986 .... Thomas' tax returns ... report an income of
approximately $11,000 in 1985 and $1,300 in 1986. According to testimony
of his wife, Thomas also had significant obligations during this period:
two separate households with a woman and five children in each. Evidence
that cash expenditures by ThomasQa suspected drug traffickerQhugely
exceeded any verifiable income suggest that the money was derived
illegally.(35)
Given the persuasive effect of net-worth analysis, this methodology has
been repeatedly endorsed by federal appellate courts.(36) For this
reason, although forfeiture can generally be achieved without such
proof, net-worth analysis should be considered in major civil forfeiture
actions aimed at narcotics proceeds.
Failure to Account for Income; Inherently Incredible Testimony and
Affirmative Misrepresentations
Another circumstantial factor applied by the courts focuses on an
individual's inability to account for the targeted asset and/or an
individual's tendency to misrepresent how the property was obtained. The
special nature of civil forfeiture proceedings provides the government
with unique opportunities to develop this line of evidence.
Because forfeiture actions under $881 are civil proceedings,
individual's cannot take complete refuge under the privilege against
self incrimination. The privilege does apply to civil proceedings, of
course, but within that context judges may draw an adverse inference
about individuals asserting the privilege.(37) As a result, owners of
seized property are potentially exposed to scrutiny either through
pretrial discovery or by cross-examination at trial. This exposure
places pressure on those owners to explain how they obtained their money
or other property.
Accordingly, when property owners have failed to provide a satisfactory
explanation, courts have cited this failure as indicative of a
connection between narcotics trafficking and the asset(s) in question.
For example, in United States v. 228 Acres of Land,(38) the Second
Circuit based its probable cause finding, in part, on the following
analysis: [The Claimant] failed to account adequately for his possession
of such large sums of cash. He made no claim of prior gifts or of
earlier investments. Instead, he claimed that the funds were after-tax
profits from his jewelry business, but he failed to offer any bills,
receipts or other records to prove that his . . . businesses were
actually capable of generating such large sums of cash.(39)
Most claimants resort to asserting that the money in question
constitutes gambling winnings or cash that had been stored at home. This
position has been almost universally rejected. For example: In trying to
prove that the large sum of money in question is not subject to
forfeiture, claimant asserts that he won the majority of the money
gambling . . . He is unclear, however, as to the amounts he won and when
he won the money. Also, for the years he claimed he won the money, his
tax returns do not show any gambling winnings.... Claimant testified
that he kept the money in a large wooden box in the utility room
attached to his house; however, his wife testified . . . that she never
recalled seeing a large wooden box .... The court also finds it highly
unlikely that a person would keep such a large sum . . . in a box in a
utility room accessible only from the outside . . . of the house.(40)
Similarly, in other cases, courts have found the testimony of the owner
in question to be contradictory, non-credible, or outright false. Such
evidence, therefore, is considered indicative of a connection between an
asset and narcotics trafficking.(41)
Proof of Narcotics Trafficking
A threshold requirement in this general context is proof of narcotics
trafficking during a specified time period. Absent such proof, none of
the factors set forth above would warrant forfeiture. In addition,
however, courts are more likely to find that assets constitute narcotics
proceeds when the government proves extensive narcotics activity. In
other words, the more evidence of drug dealing, the more likely the
assets will be deemed narcotics proceeds.
Proof of trafficking is regarded indicative of illicit proceeds because
judges recognize that the drug trade typically generates large profits.
Thus, extensive proof of trafficking increases the likelihood of tainted
assets. Such proof may consist of prior convictions and arrests for drug
dealing as well as evidence that did not result in prosecution.(42) In
addition, courts may consider the purity of the drugs in question as
suggestive of both the claimant's role in the distribution chain and of
the length of time he has been in the trade.(43) Thus, when the purity
of the drugs is high, the violator is probably both high up in the
distribution chain and likely to have been dealing drugs for a
substantial period.(44)
Statements by Informants
In federal prosecutions, courts also have recognized the potential value
of informant statements set forth in affidavits. Though generally not a
major part of the government's case, such evidence is viewed as
suggestive. For example, such evidence recently was used to help
establish an individual's involvement in drug trafficking and to
identify his illicit proceeds.(45) Therefore, its potential value ought
to be kept in mind.
Expert Opinions
The significance of circumstantial evidence presented by the
government's case may be explained to the court by an expert witness.
For example, in United States v. 228 Acres of Land,(46) the court
allowed a DEA agent to give an expert opinion on several matters,
including the proposition that the purity of the claimant's heroin was
indicative of both his role in the narcotics enterprise and his
connection to the supply source.(47) Because an expert witness can
explain the importance of facts that otherwise may appear innocuous or
insignificant, such testimony can make a crucial difference in close
cases. Moreover, because expert opinion affords the government a key
opportunity to explain and summarize its case, expert testimony should
be used whenever a forfeiture case is based on circumstantial evidence.
Conclusion
Asset forfeiture continues to be a critical weapon in the war on
narcotics trafficking. Fortunately for law enforcement, the case law has
developed in a manner that both interprets the term "proceeds" broadly
and facilitates the tracing of such proceeds to narcotics trafficking.
Thus, law enforcement need not rely only on direct evidence, which is
rarely available, to establish a strong forfeiture case. Circumstantial
evidence is often sufficient. To maximize the potential afforded by
asset forfeiture, however, prosecutors and investigators must make every
effort to present in court the array of circumstantial proof outlined in
this monograph.
Endnotes
1. See M. Goldsmith, Asset ForfeitureQCivil Forfeiture: Tracing the
Proceeds of Narcotics Trafficking (BJA 1988).
2. D. Smith, The Prosecution and Defense of Forfeiture Cases, $4.03[4]
(1990 Supp.) [hereinafter Smith, Forfeiture].
3. 675 F. Supp. 645 (D. Fla. 1987).
4. Id. at 645-46; see United States v. One 1980 Rolls Royce, 905 F.2d
89, 91 (5th Cir. 1990).
5. See, e.g., United States v. Monkey, 725 F.2d 1007, 1012 (5th Cir.
1984). An expansive view of proceeds was addressed in the dicta, the
issue itself was not brought up on appeal.
6. Wood v. United States, 863 F.2d 417, 419 (5th Cir. 1989).
7. United States v. $4,250,000 in Currency, 808 F.2d 895, 897 (5th Cir.
1987); United States v. A Single Family Residence, 803 F.2d 625, 628
(11th Cir. 1986).
8. United States v. One 56 Foot Motor Yacht, 702 F.2d 1276, 1282 (9th
Cir. 1987), United States v. One 1964 Beechcraft, 691 F.2d 725, 728 (5th
Cir. 1982).
9. United States v. $4,255,625.39 in Currency, 762 F.2d 895, 904 (11th
Cir. 1985); United States v. $13,000 in Currency, 733 F.2d 581, 585 (8th
Cir. 1984).
10. United States v. Banco Cafetero Panama, 797 F.2d 1154, 1160 (2d Cir.
1986); United States v. $4,265,000 in Currency, 762 F.2d 895, 904 (11th
Cir. 1985).
11. United States v. One 1980 Red Ferrari, 875 F.2d 186, 188 (8th Cir.
1989); see also United States v. Thomas, 913 F.2d 1111, 1114 (4th Cir.
1990).
12. United States v. Edwards, 885 F.2d 377, 390 (7th Cir. 1989), see
also United States v. Thomas, 913 F.2d 1111, 1114 (4th Cir. 1990).
13. 913 F.2d 1111 (4th Cir. 1990).
14. Id. at 1115.
15. Id. at 1117.
16. 903 F.2d 36 (1st Cir. 1990).
17. Id. at 38-39 (emphasis added).
18. See, e.g., United States v. Pace, 898 F.2d 1218, 1235-36 (7th Cir.
1990); United States v. $91,960, 897 F.2d 1457, 1462 (8th Cir. 1990)
19. United States v. One Lot of $99,870, 1988 Dist. Lexis 15415 (D.
Mass.) (noting, however, that such proof alone does not necessarily
constitute probable cause).
20. United States v. $103,025, 741 F. Supp. 903, 905 (M.D. Ga. 1990).
21. 903 F.2d 36 (1st Cir. 1990).
22. Id. at 40.
23. 685 F. Supp. 1468 (E.D. Wisc. 1988), aff'd. sub. nom. United States
v. Herrero, 893 F.2d 1512, 1543 (7th Cir. 1990).
24. Id. at 1470-71 & 1475.
25. See also United States v. 228 Acres of Land and Dwelling, 916 F.2d
808, 813 (2nd Cir. 1990) (effort to conceal income a factor in probable
cause determination), United States v. 1.678 Acres of Land, 684 F. Supp.
426, 427 (W.D. N.C. 1988) (payments for property made in the name of
third parties; violator deeded property to third party shortly after
seizure of drugs and currency).
26. See, e.g., United States v. One Rolls Royce, 905 F.2d 89, 90-91 (5th
Cir. 1990) (citing other authority); United States v. Certain Real
Property at 2323 Charms Rd., 726 F. Supp. 164, 169 (E.D. Mich. 1989).
Once this percentage has been determined, however, the government will
likely benefit from a favorable accounting procedure to maximize the
amount subject to forfeiture. United States v. Banco Cafetero Panama,
797 F.2d 1154, 1159 (2d Cir. 1986).
27. United States v. One Rolls Royce, 905 F.2d 89, 91 (5th Cir. 1990).
28. United States v. Thomas, 913 F.2d 1111,1115 (4th Cir. 1990).
29. United States v. 228 Acres of Land, 916 F.2d 808, 813 (2nd Cir.
1990); see also United States v. Parcels of Land (Laliberte), 903 F.2d
36, 40 (1st Cir. 1990); United States v. $215,300 United States
Currency, 882 F.2d 417, 419 (9th Cir. 1989).
30. Smith, Forfeiture, supra note 2, $4.03, at 450 (1990 Supp.). This
observation, however, is qualified by the following appropriate
commentary:
A problem of proof, however, arises where the government makes the
mistake of trying to forfeit literally everything owned by the drug
trafficker, including a great many items of small value. If the
trafficker can show any non-drug income, fairness dictates that he ought
to at least be able to keep a portion of his total assets corresponding
to the proportion his non-drug income bears to his drug derived income.
Id. at 451, cited with approval in United States v. Property at 2323
Charms Rd., 726 F. Supp. 164, 169 (E.D. Mich 1989)
31. United States v. Property at 2323 Charms Rd., 726 F. Supp. 164, 169
(E.D. Mich. 1989); see also United States v. Miscellaneous Property, 667
F. Supp. 232, 239-41 (D. Md. 1987).
32. 903 F.2d 36 (2d Cir. 1990).
33. Id. at 39-40.
34. 913 F.2d 1111 (4th Cir. 1990).
35. Id. at 1115 (citing other authority).
36. See United States v. One 1987 Mercedes 560 SEL, 919 F.2d 327, 331-32
(5th Cir. 1990); United States v. 228 Acres of Land, 916 F.2d 808, 813
(2nd Cir. 1990); United States v. Edwards, 885 F.2d 377, 390 (7th Cir.
1989), United States v. Nelson, 851 F.2d 976, 980 (7th Cir. 1988).
37. See, e.g., United States v. Thomas 913 F.2d 1111, 1115 (4th Cir.
1990) (citing Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308 318 (1976)).
38. 916 F.2d 808 (2nd Cir. 1990).
39. Id. at 813.
40. United States v. $103,025 in U.S. Currency, 741 F. Supp. 903, 906
(M.D. Ga. 1990); see also United States v. Thomas, 913 F.2d 1111, 1118
(4th Cir. 1990).
41. United States v. 228 Parcels of Land, 916 F.2d 808, 813 (2nd Cir.
1990) (false statements); United States v. Haro, 685 F. Supp. 1468,
1470-71 & 1475 (E.D. Wisc. 1988) (testimony incredible and perjurious),
aff'd. sub. nom. United States v. Herrero, 893 F.2d 1512, 1543 (7th Cir.
1990); United States v. One Lot of $99,870 in U.S. Currency, 1988 U.S.
Dist. Lexis 15415 (D. Mass.) (contradictory testimony); United States v.
11348 Wyoming, 705 F. Supp. 352, 355-56 (E.D. Mich. 1989); cf. United
States v. One 1987 Mercedes SEL, 919 F.2d 327 332 (5th Cir. 1990)
(claimant unable to meet burden of proof); United States v. Parcels of
Land (Laliberte), 903 F.2d 36 41-42 (1st Cir. 1990) (same).
42. See, e.g., United States v. Thomas 913 F.2d 1111, 1116 (4th Cir.
1990); United States v. One Lot of $99,870 in U.S . Currency, 1988 U.S.
Dist. Lexis 15415 (D. Mass.) (arrest resulting in nolle prosequi still a
probative factor).
43. United States v. 228 Acres of Land and Dwelling, 916 F.2d 808, 812
(2d Cir. 1990).
44. Id.
45. See id. at 41; United States v. Thomas, 913 F.2d 1111, 1117 (4th
Cir. 1990).
46. 916 F.2d 808 (2d Cir. 1990).
47. Id. at 812 and 814 (2d Cir. 1990)
End of article 20 (of 37)--what next? [npq] alt.society.resistance #21 (8 more) [1]
From: kiddyr@gallant.apple.com (Ray Kiddy)

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ASSET FORFEITURE TAKES A BIG HIT IN CALIFORNIA!
Thank you, folks, for helping in this endevor:
LAWMAKERS REVOKE COPS' ASSET-SEIZING POWERS
WIDESPREAD ABUSE LEADS LEGISLATURE TO LET THE LAW REVERT TO 1988 RULES,
WHICH REQUIRE A CONVICTION.
By GARY WEBB
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
SACRAMENTO -- Stung by evidence of widespread abuse, the California
Legislature decided Friday night to kill the state's asset-forfeiture law,
which for four years has allowed police to take money and property from people
who were merely suspected of dealing drugs.
Starting next year, police will be required to obtain drug-trafficking
convictions in most cases before they can keep seized property.
``The way the asset forfeiture law was being applied was an assault on
individual property rights and not necessarily on drug dealers,'' said
Assemblyman John Burton, D-San Francisco, who led the fight to reform the
forfeiture law. ``I think we have solved a significant problem here.''
With the repeal, California becomes only the second state in the nation to
revoke the vast seizure powers police agencies were granted in the 1980s when
the ``war on drugs'' was at its height. Missouri lawmakers scaled back their
forfeiture laws this spring after evidence of police abuses surfaced.
The outcome was a stunning defeat for California law enforcement agencies, who
until a few weeks ago were almost assured of getting the controversial law
made permanent. Last year, police said keeping the law -- which has produced
at least $180 million for police and prosecutors since 1989 -- was their No. 1
political priority.
But lobbyists and lawmakers said a recent Mercury News series on forfeiture
abuses changed everything.
``I think the accuracy and the detail of the series outlining the abuses was
the turning point in the negotiations,'' said Margaret Pena, a lobbyist for
the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been pressing for reform of the
forfeiture statutes for several years. ``For once the Legislature has put the
concerns of innocent people who have been abused by the police above the
interests of law enforcement.''
Some lawmakers complained their telephone lines were tied up for hours by
callers urging forfeiture reforms.
Attorney General Dan Lungren, in a news conference early Friday, accused the
press of being duped by drug lawyers. He described lawmakers who supported
forfeiture reforms as advocating a ``cease-fire'' in the drug war.
REPORTS CALLED `DISTORTED'
``Unfortunately, the white powder bar has done a great job of getting this
issue represented in the press in very distorted fashion to suggest that
somehow there are wide-scale problems with this law,'' Lungren said. ``That
is, in fact, inaccurate. That has not been true since the law took effect.''
Lungren, who favors expanding the forfeiture laws, said there were few
``troublesome'' cases among the 16,000 forfeiture actions filed by state
prosecutors in the last four years -- less than one-thousandth of 1 percent,
he said.
The Mercury News investigation, which examined more than 250 court cases in
five counties, found dozens of instances in which property was taken from
people who had never been convicted of drug trafficking or who had their cases
dropped. The law was intended to take profits away from major drug dealers,
but records show property seizures were often aimed at the poor, casual drug
users and people who speak no English.
Burton, chairman of the Assembly Rules Committee, attempted to change the law
to allow forfeiture claimants access to up to $10,000 of their own funds to
hire a lawyer. Since forfeiture is a civil, not criminal, proceeding,
claimants have no right to have a court-appointed lawyer. The Mercury News
found that many people whose assets were seized were forced to represent
themselves.
Burton's bill, AB 114, also would have prohibited police from seizing items
worth less than $1,500 and required law enforcement to file criminal charges
before assets could be seized.
Law enforcement agencies objected strongly to allowing forfeiture claimants
access to money to hire lawyers, saying it would give ``millions of dollars to
drug lawyers'' and allow drug dealers to keep $40 million a year.
By early this morning, Burton's bill, backed by an unusual coalition of
conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, had not come up for a vote.
Because no new forfeiture bill was approved, the current law expires Dec. 31,
and forfeitures will then be governed by a 1988 law that requires criminal
convictions in most cases.
``I tried to work with (law enforcement) on it, but they kept saying they'd
rather let the (current law) die,'' Burton said. After reading the 1988 law
that will govern asset forfeitures if the current law isn't renewed, Burton
said he was happy to oblige.
``The '88 law doesn't have some of the protections that mine does, but at
least they've got to get a criminal conviction before they can take
anything,'' Burton said. ``I couldn't get my bill out of committee with a
conviction requirement in it.''
Only cases involving the seizure of more than $25,000 in cash will not require
convictions. But in those cases, prosecutors must provide clear and convincing
evidence that the cash is drug-tainted -- a much higher level of proof than
what is currently required.
Negotiations between Burton and law enforcement broke down Wednesday after
anonymous leaflets written by prosecutors began circulating through the halls
of the statehouse, depicting Burton as a friend of drug dealers. Burton
stormed out and told reporters he wouldn't continue the talks until he got a
public apology.
`OVERZEALOUS COPS' BLAMED
Assemblyman Richard Katz, the Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the 1989 bill
that gave rise to many of the abuses, acknowledged the law had caused some
unintended problems, which he blamed on ``overzealous cops.''
Katz said the 1992 killing of Donald Scott, a Ventura County millionaire who
was gunned down by police during an asset forfeiture raid that found no drugs,
was ``a prime example'' of law enforcement gone awry.
``But I think generally asset forfeiture has been one of the most successful
weapons in the war on drugs,'' Katz said. ``Rather than lose the law, I think
the problems could have been worked out.''
Sen. Ken Maddy, R-Fresno, one of the Legislature's staunchest supporters of
asset forfeiture, said Friday that he would try again next year -- an election
year -- to get the forfeiture law reinstated.
But Burton said that as long as he runs the Assembly Rules Committee, which
decides the fate of thousands of bills every year, that is unlikely to happen.
``They're not going to get anything else on this for as long as I'm here,''
Burton vowed.
San Jose Mercury News

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GOVERNMENT SURPLUS AUCTIONS 1994
GOVERNMENT SURPLUS AUCTIONS
MISCELLANEOUS
August 9 -------------------- Hereford
August 17 ------------------- Southampton
August 24 ------------------ Carlisle/Catterick
September 7 ----------------- Telford
September 12 ---------------- Banbury
September 13 ---------------- Banbury
October 20 ------------------ Stirling
November 8 ------------------ Hereford
November 16 ----------------- Southampton
November 21 ----------------- Banbury
November 22 ----------------- Banbury
November 30 ----------------- Carlisle/Catterick
December 7 ------------------ Telford
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ASTON DOWN - All Types ADT
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At What Price Peace
An Editorial by Robert Hoffman, Editor
The Bear Valley Voice
Big Bear Lake, CA USA
February 23, 1994
(c) 1994 - Posted with Permission
On Singapore TV last night, the Muppets sang a song urging
toleration among the various types of monsters, a lesson in
which kids here don't need much instruction. This tiny
island, floating in the South China Sea and blown by hot,
wet winds off the Straights of Jahore, is home to 2.5
million natives and another 3 million foreign workers.
There are Malays, Tamils, Chinese, Indians, Europeans and
a few other ethnic groups here who live in peace (mostly)
under the watchful eye of a paternalistic government.
Toleration --- of religious, cultural and linguistic
differences --- is not merely a consumation devoutly to
be wished. It is a necessity of life.
One is struck by this, and by the almost total lack of
violent crime. And one is tempted to wish that America
could be run this well. Until, of course, a deeper look
reveals the cost of peace and relative safety.
It is illegal in Singapore to chew gum, smoke indoors, spit
anywhere and to fail to flush the toilet. Infractions can
cost you a hefty fine, although we have yet to see any police
patrolling the men's rooms. The penalty for trafficking in
drugs is the ultimate one --- the gallows. Two years ago, a
couple of Australians found out the government was not
kidding about this.
Those unwise enough to commit crimes are subjected to another
punishment that most Americans would also find cruel and
unusual --- caning. A man who killed a prostitute, rather
inadvertently, got five years --- and 12 strokes.
If a newspaper publishes something the government takes
exception to, the authorities simply ban it from the stands.
And the system works. There is no gum on the sidewalk, no
foul smell of smoke in the restaurants, and so far all the
toilets appear to be duly flushed. There are not homeless
beggars squatting on the sidewalks, and if drug addiction
exists, it does so behind tightly closed doors. Newspapers
tow the line.
The price? An almost tangible lack of jay -- not content-
ment or security, but happiness. These folks are somber
and businesslike. They are dutiful, responsible, frugal,
obedient, compliant, polite --- and humorless. And even
in this sultry tropical setting, the people of Singapore are
as buttoned up and as frightfully modern as a businessman
from Phoenix or a computer nerd from Silicon Valley.
This may have come from Singapore's history as a Crown
colony --- 150 years under rule from London. The Japanese
arrived one morning on bicycles and rousted the British
garrison (which was, unaccountably, waiting for the invasion
on the wrong sde of the island), and the Singaporeans were
visited with one of the most brutal occupations in history.
In the early '60s, they became their own masters --- flirting
with communism, dallying with Malaysia and Indonesia, and
finally striking out on their own under the heavy-handed but
avuncular leadership of Oxford-educated former prime minister
Lee Kwan Yew.
The result is a country steeped in Western ways (English is
the dominant language and will be probably forever) with an
Asian soul. Individual freedom is not an Oriental virtue,
and the average Singaporean is amused that Americans are
aghast at the control the government has over the people's
lives. They point to their low crime rate and their clean
streets and wonder how we can put personal freedoms over such
blessings.
We don't bother to explain.
Dennis R. Hilton <drhilton@kaiwan.com>

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Danielle Crittenden - Wall Street Journal - March 31, 1994
(Ms. Crittenden recently moved back to her native Toronto)
----------------------------------------------------------
Recently I spoke to a friend who had given birth to her second
child a week after I did in November. My child's birth was
covered by private insurance in New York; my friend gave birth
here, under Canada's much-lauded, state-funded, universal health
care plan.
"Did you have an epidural?" she asked suspiciously, referring to
the local anesthetic injected into the lower spine, a common
painkiller for childbirth.
"Of course," I said (neither of us romanticize the pain of
"natural" labor). "It was wonderful. My husband and I played
Scrabble in the birthing room right up until I had to push. I
won," I added.
A cold silence.
"How did yours go?" I asked.
"It was awful," she said bitterly. "When I got to the hospital, I
asked for an epidural. The nurse said I had to wait - there were
three people ahead of me. Soon, I was feeling sick with pain. The
nurse told me to take a hot shower. I couldn't stand it anymore,
and begged for the anesthetic. It still wasn't my turn. I was
rocking back and forth in agony. Then the doctor arrived and said
the baby was coming out and it was too late for anything.
Afterward he apologized o me - he said I looked in terrible pain
and it was horrible to watch."
It seemed astonishing to me, listening to my friend's story, that
in late 20th century North America a woman would have to give
birth the old-fashioned way - in pain. It's true incidents like
this do sometimes occur in the U.S., yet in Ontario - Canada's
richest and most populous province - government control of
medicine has made the exceptional the norm.
My friend, who is an editor at a national magazine and married to
a partner in a major law firm, give birth at St. Michael's, a
bustling central Toronto hospital. The hospital's head of
anesthesia confirms that from 4 P.M. to 8 A.M., as well as on
weekends and holidays, there is only one anesthetist on duty for
the entire hospital; for traffic-accident and burn victims,
everyone. If he's busy, tough luck.
St. Michael's isn't unique, either. I checked with other large
hospitals in the city. Few had more than a single anesthetist on
duty off-hours. At North York General, in the midst of Toronto's
most affluent suburbs, 3,500 babies are born a year, 60% of them
to women who request epidurals - and there is still only one
anesthetist on duty off-hours.
Outside of Toronto, the situation is even worse. Ontario's
socialist government, desperately seeking to control its runaway
health budget, has announced that epidurals will no longer be
available to women in Thunder Bay, a community of 125,000 in the
northwest of the province. Thunder Bay women needn't feel picked
on. According to Richard Johnston, a spokesman for the Ontario
Medical Association, the availability of epidurals is sporadic
everywhere outside Toronto, because few small hospitals have the
budget for anesthetists trained to give epidurals, especially
during off-hours. Many women end up going to their general
practitioners for delivery and doing it "naturally," whether they
like it or not.
Apologists for the Canadian health system blame greedy doctors
for its chronic shortages and queues. But an Ontario doctor
receives only US$100 to administer an epidural. His U.S.
counterpart usually collects about US$1,000 (a figure that,
unlike the Canadian, takes into account overhead and equipment).
Epidurals are vanishing from Ontario, not because doctors are
overpaid but because hospitals' fees per birth are capped at very
low rates by a debt-burdened government. And, as many argue would
happen under the Clinton health plan, it is illegal for either
the doctor or the hospital to charge even willing patients more
than the state-prescribed fee.
The result? As Dr. Johnston says: "In the case of an anesthetist
trained to give epidurals, it is not lucrative for him to offer
his services all night. Why bother staying up, if you don't get
paid extra for it?"
Some American women have already gotten a whiff of the cruelties
of Canadian medicine. In California, the Midwest, and Florida,
according to Nancy Oriol, director of obstetric anesthesia at
Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, some large HMOs refuse to pay for
epidurals unless a patient has a medical condition thought to
warrant it, such as a history of heart disease. And of course it
is the intention of the Clinton health plan to drive ever large
numbers of Americans into HMOs.
My friend did have one choice that the users of HMOs do not - the
freedom to choose her own doctor. But her choice was an empty
one. For while she might pick an obstetrician, she had no way to
be sure that he would in the end deliver her baby. Most Canadian
obstetricians now work in groups, and a patient gets whichever of
them happens to be on call at the time she goes into labor, or
the intern on duty at the hospital (again, why bother to work
late ...). Further, few Canadian doctors can afford to have
ultrasound machines or other sophisticated machinery in their
offices. Those tests have to be booked weeks in advance.
My New York doctor, on the other hand, was there for me at any
hour, even for a false labor at 2 A.M., because he is an
old-style fee-for-service man. He also had an ultrasound in his
examining room. In the end, my friend's baby was delivered by her
family GP, because he promised to be present.
Pregnant women, of course, are not the only Canadians suffering
as provinces across the country seek to hold down health care
costs. Americans are by now familiar with tales of Canadians
queuing for heart bypasses and chemotherapy, or crossing the
border for surgery. But what my friend's nasty experience reveals
is that the system can no longer cope with an event as
straightforward as birth. It is as if medical practice in Canada
is reeling backward in time; in the case of birth, as much as a
century.
As part of this drive toward ever more primitive medicine, the
Ontario government has set up three free-standing "birth
centers," staffed by midwives. It is hoped that these centers, so
much less costly to run than high-tech maternity wards, will
attract "low-risk" pregnant women away from hospitals. Midwifery
became a licensed profession in Ontario last year. These
graduates of a three-year community college program will earn, on
average, as much as $300 more per birth than obstetricians (who
are paid $250 per delivery, and $18 per pre- and post-natal
visit). The government has committed $8 million to the program.
The ministry of health claims that its sudden munificence toward
midwives is all the in the spirit of promoting "choice" for
women. But given the difficulty women who do not want to suffer
pain in childbirth face in exercising their right of choice, the
gesture smacks of cynicism. It is health bureaucrats who are
making the real choices. They have decided that epidurals are an
"elective," even an extravagance, and that women who anticipate
normal labors should have their babies without anesthesia, and
better still, in someplace other than a costly hospital ward.
You might expect that Ontario's anti-anesthetic policy would face
charges of sexism. No one is suggesting, for instance, that men
have hernia surgery without painkillers, under the knife of a
"caring professional" who did not graduate from med school. When
the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists last year
found out that some U.S. insurers were refusing to pay for
epidurals, they issued a report pointing out "there is no other
circumstance where it is considered acceptable for a person to
experience severe pain amenable to safe intervention while under
a physician's care."
But in Canada, the very feminist groups who ought to be outraged
by the policy have, in fact, lobbied for it. These organizations
have long complained about the male-dominated medical profession,
its insistence on delivering babies in sterile hospital
facilities, it enthusiasm for technology. One of the most
important local advocacy groups is even proposing that five
maternity wards in Toronto be shut down once the midwife program
is up and running.
A free-market health system, including one with HMOs, might not
include insured epidurals; but it might create a relatively
undistorted market in which people are to purchase this procedure
themselves. A health system that is run by politicians is,
however, subject to political pressure. This is especially true
when a group's ideologic agenda coincides with the government's
need to save money. In this instance, it actually puts women and
their babies in the sort of danger and pain they have not known
since their great-grandmother's day.

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Bank 3/20* <---+----- Original: by Unnkown Author ---*
*--- Reformatted: by James P. Leonard ----> 7/10/92
Representativess Knew of Overdrafts
If the major media has been full of the developing scandal of an
imperial Congress abusing its own bank for Members' private benefit,
it has also been full of the excuses these members have made to
whitewash their malfeasance.
Prime among these are various versions of blaming the bank for bad
record keeping and notification procedures.
However, according to the Report of the Committee on Standards of
Official Conduct of the House of Representatives, released March 10,
(Report # 102-452), every member who wrote a check which overdrew
his account by more than the amount of his next month's salary was
notified of the fact by telephone and asked to cover the overdraft.
So for most of the offenders, this excuse simply will not wash.
According to the report, "The daily accumulation of Member overdrafts
was so routine that one Bank employee spent much of her time tele-
phoning Members..."
Ms. Klemp, a Bank employee testifying before the Committee is quoted
by the report as follows:
Mr. McHugh (Chairman of the Committee): "...did you tell them that
they had to make their checks good but at the very least they had to
bring them below the next month's salary?"
Ms. Klemp: "That is basically what I said_you have x number amount
of overdrafts. You are over your next month's salary, and I
would always give their salary figure and ask them to please make a
deposit.
"I didn't always say make the exact deposit, but I said please, make
a deposit. In a lot of cases, the Member would clear up the whole
amount. In other cases, they would just drop themselves back below
the next month's salary."
Mr. McHugh: "In terms of what you communicated to them...should they
have known that their overdrafts should never exceed their next
month's salary?"
Ms. Klemp: "Yes, I did make that very clear. In fact, when I would
call and again often talk to a staff person I would say at that time,
if I started to see a lot of overdrafts coming in all of a sudden,
sometimes a lot came in, sometimes it was a trickle all month, if a
lot came in and I could see there was going to be a problem, I would
always say, you are not to exceed your next month's salary or checks
will start to be returned."
But, according to the Report, they seldom, if ever were returned.
So many Members were allowed to write checks while vastly exceeding
their monthly salaries. In addition to the telephone calls alerting
members to their overdrafts, the Report quotes a 1928 letter
from the then Sergeant-at-Arms boasting, that the House Bank was
one of the first in Washington "to install up-to-date methods of
returning monthly statements to its depositors."
While the Report makes no mention of whether that practice still
obtains, there is every reason to expect that it would, and that
Members would demand no less, although some of their statements
raise the question of whether or not it does.
Furthermore, the practice of allowing members to write overdraft
checks for the amount of their next month's wages, was in itself,
not officially sanctioned, other than, by custom.
But the Report states that the General Accounting Office, the
investigative branch of Congress, expressed misgivings about the
overdrafts. It at first, beginning in the 1950s, repeatedly
requested the Sergeant-at-Arms to rectify the situation and either
not allow overdrafts or to establish hard and fast guidelines.
The practice ultimately became sanctioned by custom, however, when
the succeeding Sergeants-at-Arms defended the practice as being an
allowable draft against the next month's salary, rather than as
an overdraft. Thus, by a semantic game, did the Members and
their employee, the Sergeants-at-Arms, extend their privilege.
Criticism of the practice by the GAO, apparently ended in the 1970s,
when the GAO audits were made public. But it did make lists of
suggested regulations which were never adopted, and it did note
with horror that in a ten year period ending in 1968, the number
of unpaid checks had tripled.
It did not mention the matter again until the two reports that
triggered the closure of the House Bank and the disclosure of those
who had abused their privileges, covering the two fiscal years from
July 1, 1988 to June 30, 1990.
The Committee had some difficulty in defining what constituted
"abuse of banking privileges." Its assigned task was to consider
whether Members had "routinely and repeatedly" written overdraft
checks in a "significant" amount.
It decided that any amount up to one month's advance was not
"significant," and ultimately settled on defining "significant"
as being overdrawn in excess of one month's salary.
It acknowledged that anyone unfamiliar with the House Bank "will
find this definition of 'significant amount' generous." It then
went on to say that "In common parlance, the term 'repeated' means
more than once, and 'routine' suggests a pattern of conduct."
But the Committee decided that "repeated" and "routine" meant that
the conduct was engaged in for more than 20 percent of the
39 months under review. So the Committee of Members was still in
fact trying to protect its prerogatives.
But the Minority Report, or that of Republican members of the
Committee challenged this by stating, "we find it impossible to
defend a definition of 'abuse' that is so narrow that it excludes
an individual who wrote over 850 NSF checks totaling over $150,000
with seven separate months of negative balance exceeding next
month's salary deposit."
A late breaking report in The Washington Times, which has been the
first to break and keep on the story, said that finally the Justice
Department is investigating the scandal to determine whether Income
Tax regulations and campaign finance regulations had been violated
with an eye to criminal proceedings. _ADR

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The Immorality of the State
by Mikhail Bakunin [1814-1876]
Transcribed by The Dak
Holiday Inn, Cambodia BBS 209/456-8584
=======================================
The existence of a single limited State necessarily presupposed the
existence, and if necessary provokes the formation of several States, it
being quite natural that the individuals who find themselves outside of this
State and who are menaced by it in their existence and liberty, should in
turn league themselves against it. Here we have humanity broken up into an
indefinite number of States which are foreign, hostile, and menacing toward
one another.
There is no common right, and no social contract among them, for if such a
contract and right existed, the various States would cease to be absolutely
independent of one another, becoming federated members of one great State.
Unless this great State embraces humanity as a whole, it will necessarily
have against it the hostility of other great States, federated internally.
Thus war would always be supreme law and the inherent necessity of the very
existence of humanity.
Every State, whether it is of a federative or a non-federative character,
must seek, under the penalty of utter ruin, to become the most powerful of
States. It has to devour others in order not to be devoured in turn, to
conquer in order not to be conquered, to enslave in order not to be enslaved
- for two similar and at the same time alien powers, cannot co-exist without
destroying each other.
THE STATE THEN IS THE MOST FLAGRANT NEGATION, THE MOST CYNICAL AND
COMPLETE NEGATION OF HUMANITY. It rends apart the universal solidarity of
all men upon earth, and it unites some of them only in order to destroy,
conquer, and enslave all the rest. It takes under its protection only its
own citizens, and it recognizes human right, humanity, and civilization only
within the confines of its own boundries. And since it does not recognize
any right outside of its own confines, it quite logically arrogated to itself
the right to treat with the most ferocious inhumanity all the foreign
populations whom it can pillage, exterminate, or subordinate to its will.
Since international law does not exist, and since it never can exist in a
serious and real manner without undermining the very foundations of the
principle of absolute State sovereignty, the State cannot have any duties
toward foreign populations. If then it treats humanely a conquered people,
if it does not go to the full length in pillaging and exterminating it, and
does not reduce it to the last degree of slavery, it does so perhaps because
of considerations of political expediency and prudence, or even because of
pure magnanimity, but never because of duty - for it has an absolute right to
dispose of them in any way it deems fit.
This flagrant negation of humanity, which constitutes the very essence of
the State, is from the point of view of the latter the supreme duty and the
greatest virtue: it is called PATRIOTISM and it constitutes the TRANSCENDENT
MORALITY of the State. We call it the transcendent morality because
ordinarily it transcends the level of human morality and justice, whether
private or common, and thereby it often sets itself in shard contradiction to
them. Thus, for instance, to offend, oppress, rob, plunder, assassinate, or
enslave one's fellowman is, to the ordinary morality of man, to commit a
serious crime.
In public life, on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism,
when it is done for the greater glory of the State in order to conserve or to
enlarge its power, all that becomes a duty and a virtue. And this duty, this
virtue, are obligatory upon every patriotic citizen. Everyone is expected to
discharge those duties not only in respect to strangers but in respect to his
fellow-citizens, members and subjects of the same State, whenever the welfare
of the State demands it from him.
The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since
all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned
to perpetual struggle - a struggle against their own populations, whom they
oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which
can be strong only if the others are weak - and since the States cannot hold
their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their
power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States -
- it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its
power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.
Such is in its stark reality the sole morality, the sole aim of the State.
It worships God himself only because he is its own exclusive God, the
sanction of its power and of that which it calls its right, that is, the
right to exist at any cost and always to expand at the cost of other States.
Whatever serves to promote this end is worthwhile, legitimate, and virtuous.
Whatever harms it is criminal. The morality of the State then is the
reversal of human justice and human morality.
The State has to recognize in its own hypocritical manner the powerful
sentiment of humanity. In the face of this fainful alternative there remains
only one way out: and that it hypocrisy. The States pay their outward
respects to this idea of humanity; they speak and apparently act only in the
name of it, but they violate it every day. This, however, should not be held
against the States. They cannot act otherwise, their position having become
such that they can hold their own only by lying. Diplomacy has no other
mission.
Therefore what do we see? Every time a State wants to declare war upon
another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to
its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that
right and justice are on its side, and it endeavors to prove that it is
actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous
and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the
mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time
it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any
increase in territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is
reestablished. And its antagonist answers with a similar manifesto, in which
naturally right, justice, humanity, and all the generous sentiments are to be
found respectively on its side.
Those mutually opposed manifestos are written with the same eloquence,
they breathe the same virtuous indignation, and one is just as sincere as the
other; that is to say both of them are equally brazen in their lies, and it
is only fools who are deceived by them. Sensible persons, all those who have
had some political experience, do not even take the trouble of reading such
manifestoes. On the contrary, they seek ways to uncover the interests
driving both adversaries into this war, and to weigh the respective power of
each of them in order to guess the outcome of the struggle. Which only goes
to prove that moral issues are not at stake in such wars.
Perpetual war is the price of the State's existence. The rights of
peoples, as well as the treaties regulating the relations of the States, lack
any moral sanction. In every definite historic epoch they are the material
expression of the equilibrium resulting from the mutual antagonism of States.
So long as States exist, there will be no peace. There will be only more or
less prolonged respites, armistices concluded by the perpetually belligerent
States; but as soon as the State feels sufficiently strong to destroy this
equilibrium to its advantage, it will never fail to do so. The history of
humanity fully bears out this point.
Crimes are the moral climate of the States. This explains to us why ever
since history began, that is, ever since States came inmto existence, the
political world has always been and still continues to be the stage for high
knavery and unsurpassed brigandage - brigandage and knavery which are held in
high honor, since they are ordained by patriotism, transcendent morality, and
by the supreme interest of the State. This explains to us why all the
history of ancient and modern States is nothing more than a series of
revolting crimes; why present and past kings and ministers of all times and
of all countries - statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors - if
judged from the point of view of simple morality and human justice, deserve a
thousand times the gallows of penal servitude.
For there is no terror, cruelty, sacrilege, perjury, imposture, infamous
transaction, cynical theft, brazen robbery or foul treason which has not been
committed and all are still being committed daily by representatives of the
State, with no other excuse than this elastic, at times so convenient and
terrible phrase REASON OF STATE.

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From _American Firearms Industry_, September 1993
BATF and the Night of Terror
by Bob Lesmeister
Bold face: "What are you doing in my house? Get out of my house!"
This is what Janice Hart screamed as she witnessed agents of the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms (BATF) literally tearing her home apart.
What had Janice Hart done to have her house destroyed? NOTHING. BATF had the
wrong house and the wrong suspect. In what has become the rule instead of
the exception, BATF agents blatantly and knowingly violated Hart's 1st, 2nd,
3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th Amendment rights. In addition, agents once again
forcefully abused children in the "pursuit of their duties."
As related by Margie Boule in the Washington OREGONIAN, in the evening of
February 5th Janet [sic] Hart had just returned home to her house outside of
Portland, Oregon, from the grocery store with her two young daughters when
she noticed law enforcement agents swarming in and out of her home. Little
did she realize that they had literally torn the inside of her house apart
in the search for guns that didn't exist. When she stormed up to the side
door (it had been torn off its hinges and then nailed back on) demanding an
answer a BATF agent yanked her inside telling her she was going to jail. In
typical BATF fashion, Hart was not informed of the charges against her, she
was not read her rights, nor was she allowed to see after her children.
The children were terrified. Both daughters heard the BATF agent say Mrs.
Hart was headed for jail and they became horrified. As Hart's daughter told
THE OREGONIAN, "I was crying. They (BATF agents) say, 'Shut up and get back
in the car.' So, I put up my knee like to get out, and he shut the door on
my knee." BATF may call this act of child abuse an "accident" or something
that happened in "the heat of confrontation" but the truth is, agents have
been engaging in this sort of behavior since the inception of the BATF as a
bureau. The most blatant case being the storming of the Branch Davidian
compound with automatic weapons, knowing full well that children would be
caught in the crossfire. Another incident was the case of Del and Melisa
Knudson. During a raid on the Knudson home (no illegal firearms were found),
Mrs. Knudson was handcuffed and forced to leave her 21-month old daughter
unattended in a bathtub. Luckily, the baby didn't drown. Evidently, the
agents were not concerned with the baby's welfare nor that of the parents.
As the daughters were being held outside the home, Hart was forced
inside. In what must have seemed like a scene from a Gestapo raid in Nazi
Germany, Janice Hart witnessed the destruction of her personal property by
the "secret police." As she related to THE OREGONIAN, "I'm screaming, 'Oh my
God, what are you doing to my house?' They told me to shut up. They said I
could talk later. And they kept saying, 'You're going to prison, Janice.'
The whole house was totally destroyed."
BATF agents in the kitchen were throwing plates and dishes on the floor.
In the bedroom agents were ripping clothes off hangers and dumping them on
the floor. Dresser drawers were overturned and strewn all about. Hart's life
was terrorized, her children were abused, her house destroyed, and her
personal belongings ravaged. During the Gestapo-style raid, while Mrs. Hart
was in custody, BATF agents did not bother to insure that Hart was indeed
the subject of their warrant. They simply didn't bother to check. And what's
worse, when it was obvious the had the wrong person, they continued to
terrorize Hart and her family.
In a complete violation of Hart's civil and constitutional rights, BATF
agents herded her into the basement of the house and interrogated her. Like
a scene from some cheap detective move, agents gave her the "third degree."
"There's about eight of them down there," she told the OREGONIAN, "and
they're asking my over and over my name, my Social Security number, my
birthdate. On and on, over and over. And I'm saying, 'What did I do?'"
Hart was forced to answer questions for over an hour before she was read
her rights and then agents refused to allow her to call an attorney, both
serious violations of Hart's Constitutional rights knowingly violated by
BATF. George Kim, main investigator, should have known better. The person
cited in the warrant was Janice Marie Harrell, who had used "Hart" as an
alias, but that's where the similarity ends. The Janice the BATF was in
search of had a scar on her face. Janice Hart did not. Harrell was a street
woman, while Hart was a working-class homeowner with two children. Hart's
eyes were a different color than Harrell's, her hair was different and she
was heavier than the real suspect. There was nothing in Hart's background or
physical appearance that matched Janice Marie Harrell.
"They pulled up my sleeves, looking for scars," said Hart. Of course,
they weren't there. "I say, 'How do I remove scars? Scars don't disappear.'
That's when he (Kim) started getting this expression on his face like 'I
think I messed up.' But of course, they don't admit that to you."
So, when it's obvious that Agent Kim and his bumbling agents have the
wrong person, do they release Hart? No, they arrest her. They read Hart her
rights and take her to the Portland slammer. It was at the Portland police
station when things finally turned around. The Portland police, professional
and conscientious, treated Hart as a person, without intimidation and
threats. Immediately upon being fingerprinted, they released her because it
was obvious that Kim and his Keystone Cops had arrested the wrong person. It
took Portland police 30 seconds to recognize that Janice Hart was not Janice
Harrell and they released her, while Kim and his agents were standing nearby
scratching their heads.
OREGONIAN reporter, Margie Boule recounted Hart's story for local
Portland BATF resident agent in charge, Pete McLouth and he basically said
that his agents did indeed pick up the wrong person. He couldn't deny it
because Harrell was picked up shortly after the terrorist raid on Hart's
home. That's about all he said, however, because McLouth took the standard
BATF line of "I can't talk about it because it's an ongoing investigation."
The search warrants used by the BATF in the Hart case were much like the
ones used in the Branch Davidian case. Someone, with hearsay knowledge,
tipped BATF off. There was no evidence that Janice Hart was Janice Harrell
and absolutely no evidence or even the slightest indication that Hart was
illegally dealing firearms.
The raid was conducted simply because of one person's gossip. Even though
Janice Hart no longer faces criminal charges, she is still feeling the
harassment of BATF. She now suffers both sleep and eating disorders. She and
her older daughter visit a psychiatrist to deal with the stress and her
4-year-old daughter has had related problems in school. Added to that,
Hart's neighbors are no longer the friendly sort. To them, Hart is still a
criminal subject of a police raid.
What is evident once again from this raid is the fact that BATF agents
did not feel that violent behavior, destruction of property, violation of
rights and child abuse would be challenged. It shows once again that silence
from the top, read that to mean BATF Director Stephen Higgins' office, is
taken as a green light to commit atrocities in the name of the law. Director
Higgins is well aware that violations are being committed on a daily basis
by his agents, yet he has done nothing and continues to do nothing about it.
He once again has proved himself to be an eneffectual and incompetent law
enforcement officer. Over the past year it has been shown that sexual
harrassment and intimidation even within the ranks of the BATF has gone
unabated and violent terrorist raids on innocent citizens continue at an
alarming rate. This continues because the Director allows it. One word or
one directive from Higgins could prevent future Constitutional and civil
rights violations by BATF agents, but so far, he denies there is a problem.
Unless citizens get involved and pressure the White House to appoint a
professional person with integrity and respect for the Bill of Rights to
head BATF, the abuses will continue.
Tom Cloyd, writing an editorial to THE OREGONIAN in response to the raid,
sums it up best. "But the horror and violence go even beyond this, for child
abuse was apparently involved in this case. Three children, ages 12, 9 and 4
were in the car when Hart arrived home to find it being trashed by federal
agents. The children had to watch this act of incomprehensible violence and
the 12-year-old was physically abused when and agent closed a door on her
leg to keep her from getting out of the car. I hope others will join with me
in demanding that federal law enforcement agents of all sorts be briefed on
the Bill of Rights, be held accountable to the public for their actions and
be prosecuted when they take our society's legitimate and law-driven pursuit
of justice into their own hands."
Unfortunately, it seems that Director Higgins is unconcerned with the
Bill of Rights as he permits his agents to violate the law time and again
without censure or reprimand. I try hard not to draw parallels to the
Gestapo of the 1930's and 40's and Stalin's ruthless NKVD, but breaking down
of doors, the destruction of property, illegal interrogations etc. of
innocent people by BATF are so close to "secret police" tactics that they
could be right out of the KGB manual. Russia's first secret police was
formed by Ivan the Terrible in 1565 and they were every bit as cruel as
their descendants in the Cheka and the KGB. French biographer and historian
Henri Troyat describes some of Ivan's secret police tactics: "Husbands were
tortured in front of wives, mothers in front of children." I'm sure
12-year-old Nina Hart and 4-year-old Randi Hart know the feeling.

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Reprinted from: Compuserve's Online Today
FEDERAL PRIVACY SUIT AGAINST BBS OPERATOR (March 26)
An electronic bulletin board system user has filed a $112,000 lawsuit
against a BBS and its system operator claiming that the sysop did not properly
safeguard private electronic mail. The lawsuit could prove to be a landmark
since a court ruling would be the first one handed down under the federal
Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. The ECPA mandates privacy
protection of electronic communications, including the electronic mail found
on commercial services and bulletin board systems.
Linda Thompson filed a pro se complaint in the US District Court for the
Southern District of Indiana. The civil action alleges that Bob Predaina,
doing business as the Professional's Choice Bulletin Board, violated federal
or Indiana state law on 10 counts.
According to the complaint obtained by Online Today, during December of 1987,
Predaina allowed others to access and view the contents of all electronic
communications in a private message portion of the subscription BBS.
Previously deleted private messages were also restored so that others could
read them. Apparently, Thompson`s private e-mail was among the messages made
available to others.
Again, in January, 1988, the sysop "intentionally or recklessly intercepted
and restored to the public portion of the board," a private message of
Thompson's that she had previously deleted. In subsequent action, the sysop
denied Thompson access to the board even though she had paid one year
subscription to the BBS. When Thompson requested that the sysop refrain from
actions that "were contrary to the law," Predaina refused.
The last two counts of the complaint could be the most damaging and state
that on January 6, the sysop "intentionally, maliciously or with reckless
disregard for the truth, made statements which on their face are damaging to
the professional and personal reputation of [Thompson] in public and to another
person, subjecting the Petitioner to humiliation, personal anguish and
ridicule." In the suit, Predaina is charged with making similar statements in
the form of publicly posted BBS messages.
Predaina did not respond to phone calls from Online Today for a reaction to
the lawsuit. However, callers to Predaina's BBS are greeted with a public
apology to Thompson.
"Generally sysops are good at policing themselves and their boards," Thompson
told Online Today. "The reason for the lawsuit was that there apparently was
going to be no resolution between [Predaina and myself]. I think that if you
have a board that has a facility for private mail, you have a right to expect
that private mail stays private and is not spread all over."
--James Moran

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This file contains a short article on the impact one Bulletin Board
system (BBS) can have in the local enviroment. Be sure to read if you
are a SYSOP or travel the bulletin boards.
THE IMPACT BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS AND LOCAL INFORMATION EXCHANGE
SYSTEMS CAN HAVE ON THE POLITICAL PROCESS.
The following message was left by Fred McCamic on the RECYCLENET Bulletin
board in New Jersey, Jan 85.
Do you wonder what difference a computer bulletin board could make? Beg,
borrow or steal the March 1985 issue of "Whole Earth Review", turn to
page 89, and read "The Neighborhood ROM": Computer Aided Local Politics".
It's an interview of Dave Hughes, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who runs a
bulletin board in Colorado Springs.
Two years ago, it seems, Hughes spotted a small legal notice regarding
an ordinance that would have regulated working at home. He attended the
planning commission meeting, and was alone in speaking against the ordinance.
The commission agreed to table the ordinance for 30 days, during which time
he posted the text on his BBS, and wrote just two letters to editors
suggesting that people could dial his BBS. In the next 10 days, over 250
people called the board.
Some 175 aroused citizens attended the next city council meeting. At least
one person submitted revised ordinance text to the BBS. The planning board
made four successive revisions of the ordinance; each one was posted on the
BBS. When the final version came up for a vote, no one had anything to say
-it had already been said on the BBS.
ed on the
BBS. When the final version came up for a vote, no one had anything to say
-it had already been

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|
| From: MIKE SWARTZBECK Refer#: NONE
| To: ALL Recvd: NO
| Subj: Rodney King beaten AGAIN! Conf: (160) ANEWS
| from Computer Underground Digest, 12.03.92:
| Date: 02 Dec 92 11:49:08 EST
| From: David Lehrer <71756.2116@COMPUSERVE.COM>
| Subject: File 8--Akron BBS trial update!
|
| Akron BBS trial update: Dangerous precedents in sysop prosecution
|
| You may already know about the BBS 'sting' six months ago in Munroe
| Falls, OH for "disseminating matter harmful to juveniles." Those
| charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Now a trial date of 1/4/93
| has been set after new felony charges were filed, although the
| pretrial hearing revealed no proof that *any* illegal content ever
| went out over the BBS, nor was *any* found on it.
|
| For those unfamiliar with the case, here's a brief summary to date.
| In May 1992 someone told Munroe Falls police they *thought* minors
| could have been getting access to adult materials over the AKRON
| ANOMALY BBS. Police began a 2-month investigation. They found a small
| number of adult files in the non-adult area.
|
| The sysop says he made a clerical error, causing those files to be
| overlooked. Normally adult files were moved to a limited-access area
| with proof of age required (i.e. photostat of a drivers license).
|
| Police had no proof that any minor had actually accessed those files
| so police logged onto the BBS using a fictitious account, started a
| download, and borrowed a 15-year old boy just long enough to press the
| return key. The boy had no knowledge of what was going on.
|
| Police then obtained a search warrant and seized Lehrer's BBS system.
| Eleven days later police arrested and charged sysop Mark Lehrer with
| "disseminating matter harmful to juveniles," a misdemeanor usually
| used on bookstore owners who sell the wrong book to a minor. However,
| since the case involved a computer, police added a *felony* charge of
| "possession of criminal tools" (i.e. "one computer system").
|
| Note that "criminal tool" statutes were originally intended for
| specialized tools such as burglar's tools or hacking paraphenalia used
| by criminal 'specialists'. The word "tool" implies deliberate use to
| commit a crime, whereas the evidence shows (at most) an oversight.
| This raises the Constitutional issue of equal protection under the law
| (14'th Amendment). Why should a computer hobbyist be charged with a
| felony when anyone else would be charged with a misdemeanor?
|
| At the pretrial hearing, the judge warned the prosecutor that they'd
| need "a lot more evidence than this" to convict. However the judge
| allowed the case to be referred to a Summit County grand jury, though
| there was no proof the sysop had actually "disseminated", or even
| intended to disseminate any adult material "recklessly, with knowledge
| of its character or content", as the statute requires. Indeed, the
| sysop had a long history of *removing* such content from the non-adult
| area whenever he became aware of it. This came out at the hearing.
|
| The prosecution then went on a fishing expedition. According to the
| Cleveland Plain Dealer (7/21/92)
|
| "[Police chief] Stahl said computer experts with the Ohio Bureau
| of Criminal Identification and Investigation are reviewing the
| hundreds of computer files seized from Lehrer's home. Stahl said it's
| possible that some of the games and movies are being accessed in
| violation of copyright laws."
|
| Obviously the police believe they have carte blanche to search
| unrelated personal files, simply by lumping all the floppies and files
| in with the computer as a "criminal tool." That raises Constitutional
| issues of whether the search and seizure was legal. That's a
| precedent which, if not challenged, has far-reaching implications for
| *every* computer owner.
|
| Also, BBS access was *not* sold for money, as the Cleveland Plain
| Dealer reports. The BBS wasn't a business, but rather a free community
| service, running on Lehrer's own computer, although extra time on the
| system could be had for a donation to help offset some of the
| operating costs. 98% of data on the BBS consists of shareware
| programs, utilities, E-mail, etc.
|
| The police chief also stated:
|
| "I'm not saying it's obscene because I'm not getting into that
| battle, but it's certainly not appropriate for kids, especially
| without parental permission," Stahl said.
|
| Note the police chief's admission that obscenity wasn't an issue at
| the time the warrant was issued.
|
| Here the case *radically* changes direction. The charges above were
| dropped. However, while searching the 600 floppy disks seized along
| with the BBS, police found five picture files they think *could* be
| depictions of borderline underage women; although poor picture quality
| makes it difficult to tell.
|
| The sysop had *removed* these unsolicited files from the BBS hard
| drive after a user uploaded them. However the sysop didn't think to
| destroy the floppy disk backup, which was tossed into a cardboard box
| with hundreds of others. This backup was made before he erased the
| files off the hard drive.
|
| The prosecution, lacking any other charges that would stick, is using
| these several floppy disks to charge the sysop with two new second-degree
| felonies, "Pandering Obscenity Involving A Minor", and
| "Pandering Sexually Oriented Matter Involving A Minor" (i.e. kiddie
| porn, prison sentence of up to 25 years).
|
| The prosecution produced no evidence the files were ever "pandered".
| There's no solid expert testimony that the pictures depict minors. All
| they've got is the opinion of a local pediatrician. All five pictures
| have such poor resolution that there's no way to tell for sure to what
| extent makeup or retouching was used. A digitized image doesn't have
| the fine shadings or dot density of a photograph, which means there's
| very little detail on which to base an expert opinion. The
| digitization process also modifies and distorts the image during
| compression.
|
| The prosecutor has offered to plea-bargain these charges down to
| "possession" of child porn, a 4th degree felony sex crime punishable
| by one year in prison. The sysop refuses to plead guilty to a sex
| crime. Mark Lehrer had discarded the images for which the City of
| Munroe Falls adamantly demands a felony conviction. This means the
| first "pandering" case involving a BBS is going to trial in *one*
| month, Jan 4th.
|
| The child porn statutes named in the charges contain a special
| exemption for libraries, as does the original "dissemination to
| juveniles" statute (ORC # 2907.321 & 2). The exemption presumably
| includes public and privately owned libraries available to the public,
| and their disk collections. This protects library owners when an adult
| item is misplaced or loaned to a minor. (i.e. 8 year olds can rent
| R-rated movies from a public library).
|
| Yet although this sysop was running a file library larger than a small
| public library, he did not receive equal protection under the law, as
| guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Neither will any other BBS, if this
| becomes precedent. The 'library defense' was allowed for large
| systems in Cubby versus CompuServe, based on a previous obscenity case
| (Smith vs. California), in which the Supreme Court ruled it generally
| unconstitutional to hold bookstore owners liable for content, because
| that would place an undue burden on bookstores to review every book
| they carry, thereby 'chilling' the distribution of books and
| infringing the First Amendment.
|
| If the sysop beats the bogus "pandering" charge, there's still
| "possession", even though he was *totally unaware* of what was on an
| old backup floppy, unsolicited in the first place, found unused in a
| cardboard box. "Possession" does not require knowledge that the person
| depicted is underage. The law presumes anyone in possession of such
| files must be a pedophile. The framers of the law never anticipated
| sysops, or that a sysop would routinely be receiving over 10,000 files
| from over 1,000 users.
| _______________________
|
| One comment: If a computer is a 'criminal tool' my local
| public library and most of the schools in this area are in -BIG-
| trouble...

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COUNTING ANIMALS, ONE BY ONE
Will Babbitt's Bio Survey Violate Property Rights?
By Charles Oliver
In Los Angeles
Investor's Business Daily
October 22, 1993, Page 1
========================================================================
"Essentially, what they are proposing is that the government permanently
keep track of almost every living thing in the United State. That isn't
physically possible."
Robert Gordon, Executive Director of the National Wildlife Institute.
========================================================================
Have you every wondered how many living things ther are in the U.S.?
How many plants and animals -- trees, squirrels, cockroaches, etc. --
share our homeland?
There are perhaps 500,000 species in the U.S., and there are easily
billions of living creatures. No one knows for sure how many.
But if Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has his way, we may one day
know. Not soon, certainly, but eventually.
Later this year, after Congress approves its final budget, the Interior
Department will begin the National Biological Survey, an ambitious, some
say impossible, attempt to catalog every nonhuman living organism in the
U.S. The plan excludes only bacteria and other microorganisms.
That mammoth undertaking has already generated quite a bit of
controversy.
Babbitt claims that the survey will both enrich our stock of knowledge
of the natural world and make application of the nation's environmental
laws more efficient.
But critics of the survey worry about that second point. They fear
that, in order to conduct the survey, government researchers may invade
the privacy of private citizens.
And they also are concerned that the data generated by the survey will
make it easier for the federal goverment to take away the property
rights of landowners under the guise of environmental protection.
The National Biological Survey has sometimes been referred to as
an enviromental census.
But that label may not be quite right.
The survey will not be a singular event or even a recurring count taking
place evey 10 years like the census that counts the number of persons in
the U.S.
Rather, the more correct analogy would be to the National Geological
Survey. Just as the geological survey is an ongoing effort to provide
ever more acurate maps of the nation's natural resources, the biological
survey will, its backers hope, be a perpetual effort to map the nation's
ecosystems.
Hope is the key word. The survey will be funded as an administrative
effort of the Interior Department, operating at the discretion of the
secretary.
A bill that would make the survey a permanent federal agency with a
presidentially appointed head was approved by the House of
Representatives earlier this month. But the Senate is unlikely to act
on the proposal until next year.
Babbitt has indicated that he considers the survey possibly to be the
most important program that he will initiate.
Some in the environmental community agree.
"Everyone stands to benefit from a more coordinated, more complete
database," said David Wilcove, senior ecologist at the Environmental
Defense Fund.
"We will get a much better picture of which species are in decline and
which are not," he said.
"We'll be more able to devote resourses to those that are endangered and
we can do so at an earlier stage when we have more options."
The survey will begin with a budget of about $170 million and 1,700
employees. The bulk of its funding and most of its employees will come
from absorbing existing research projects from various Interior
Department agencies.
The first stage of the survey will involve compling and analyzing the
data already collected by the federal government, state governments,
universities and other private researchers and preparing a preliminary
inventory of living things in the U.S.
But eventually, the project will expand to count every organism on all
U.S. public and private lands.
With only one researcher for every 300 species, survey officials say
they will have to rely upon outside sources -- universities, state
agencies and various other think tanks -- for much of the actual
legwork.
Still, the task remains daunting.
"We can't begin to overestimate the enormity of this project," said
Robert Gordon, executive director of the National Wilderness Institute.
Gordon contends that whatever data are gathered will be snapshots of
particular moments in time -- not a comprehensive, good-for-all-time
census.
"The number of a given species in a given area is constantly changing.
It's influenced by so many different things -- the weather, the presence
of species that feed upon it or that it feeds upon. Point data are
meaningless; what counts is direction," said Gordon.
ONGOING EFFORT
But that, say the survey's supporters, is exactly why it should be an
ongoing effort, not a one-time count.
"Essentially, what they are proposing is that the government permanently
keep track of almost every living thing in the United States. That
isn't physically possible," Gordon said.
The EDF's Wilcove concedes that it will be "a long, long time before we
have an accurate inventory of every plant and animal."
"But we'll be learning more and more about more and more species as we
go along, and that will be enormously helpful. Information can be
significant, even when it isn't complete," Wilcove said.
Opponents of the survey worry about what that information will be used
for.
"A lot of people are concerned that the survey will be used as a cover
for national land-use planning," said Ike Sugg, an environmental analyst
at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Not so, said Trudy Harlow, a spokesperson for the Interior Department.
"The survey is nonadvocacy and nonregulatory. All it will do is collect
information.," she said.
REGUALTION NIGHTMARE?
But even something as benign as information is generated within a
context, says Robert Gordon.
"And the context of the national Biological Survey is a vast array of
federal environmental rules -- the Endangered Species Act, wetlands
regulations, the national Natural Landmark Program and other rules. The
survey is obviously intended to strengthen the enforcement of such
regualtions," Gordon said.
"Ignorance isn't a tool," countered David Wilcove. "The survey is
taking a lot of heat from people upset with the nation's environmental
laws. But if those laws are their real concern, they should address
those laws and try to change what they think is wrong with them, not
attack information gathering."
In any event, Babbitt and the survey's supporters say, there's no reason
to suppose that the survey will lead to greater environmental regulation
until the data are collected.
In fact, they say, the data could lead to a relaxation of environmental
rules in some cases.
"It's certainly possible that we could learn that more species are
endangered than we thought and that they need protection, but it's also
possible that we could learn that some species aren't in as much trouble
as we thought," Wilcove said.
COUNTERING CRITICS' SUSPICIONS
But the suspicions of the survey's opponents were strengthed by two
suggestions made by Interior Secretary Babbitt.
The first was that the survey be exempt from the Freedom of Information
Act. The second was that those collecting data for the survey not have
to get written permission from private property owners before venturing
onto their lands.
Interior's Harlow says Babbitt's intent isn't secrecy at all costs.
"We want an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act simply because
it's difficult to protect a very limited species if people know where it
is," Harlow said.
"For example, if we announced that the last few members of, say, a given
species of cactus could be found in a certain location, someone would
try to dig them up. We wanted to prevent those kinds of situations,"
harlow said.
And the survey has no plans to violate anyone's property rights, she
contends.
"We would abide by the same requirements that other researchers must,
and that's oral permission of landowners," Harlow said.
TRACKING SPECIES
"Tracking some species can involve crossing numerous parcels of land. I
know of one case in which researchers tracking a parrot species had to
cross 1,500 (individual private) parcels," she said.
"If you tell people what you want, they'll usually give you permission
and the work can be done quickly," she added. "But having to get
written persmission fromeach and every property owner would slow things
down too much."
Earlier this month, a bill that would make the National Biological
Survey a permanent federal agency came to the floor of the House, where
members succeeded in adding several amendments addressing landowners'
fears.
One amendment requires the survey to catalog all federal lands before
looking at private property.
Another requires researchers to get written permission from landowners
before surveying private property.
And a third amenment forbids the survey from using volunteers to collect
field data on private lands.
While these amendments made the bill more palatable to those concerned
about protecting property rights -- enough so that it passed in teh
House -- they don't completely allay their fears.
Critics of the survey point out that they still have no idea what the
Senate version of the bill -- or more important the final law -- will
look like. It may not incorporate the protections placed in the House
bill.
Moreover, their central concern -- that the data gathered by the
National Biological Survey will be used as the basis for further
restrictions on private property -- cannot be remedied by anything short
of defunding the survey.

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PENTAGON BIOWARFARE RESEARCH CONDUCTED IN UNIVERSITY LABORATORIES
Overshadowed by Star Wars and overlooked by the media, the push
toward biowarfare has been one of the Reagan administration's best
kept secrets. The research budget for infectious diseases and toxins
has increased tenfold since fiscal '81 and most of the '86 budget of
$42 million went to 24 U.S. university campuses where the world's most
deadly organisms are being cultured in campus labs.
The amount of military money available for biotechnology research
is a powerful attraction for scientists whose civilian funding
resources dried up. Scientists formerly working on widespread killers
like cancer now use their talents developing strains of such rare
pathogens as anthrax, dengue, Rift Valley fever, Japanes encephalitis,
tularemia, shigella, botulin, Q fever, and mycotoxins.
Many members of the academic community find the trend alarming,
but when MIT's biology department voted to refuse Pentagon funds for
biotech research, the administration forced it to reverse its
decision. And, in 1987, the University of Wisconsin hired Philip
Sobocinski, a retired Army colonel, to help professors tailor their
research to attract Pentagon-funded biowarfare research to the school.
Richard Jannaccio, a former science writer at UW, was dismissed from
his job on August 25, 1987, the day after the student newspaper, THE
DAILY CARDINAL, published his story disclosing the details of Colonel
Sobicinski's mission at the University.
Since the U.S. is a signatory to the 1972 Biological and Toxic
Weapons Convention which bans "development, production, stockpiling
and use of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts
necessary for protective and peaceful research," the university-based
work is being pursued under the guise of defensive projects aimed at
developing vaccines and protective gear. Scientists who oppose the
program insist that germ-warfare defense is clearly impractical; every
person would have to be vaccinated for every known harmful biological
agent. Since vaccinating the entire population would be virtually
impossible, the only application of a defensive development is in
conjunction with offensive use. Troops could be effectively vaccinated
for a single agent prior to launching an attack with that agent.
Colonel David Huxsoll, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research
Institute of Infectious Diseases admits that offensive research is
indistinguishable from defensive research even for those doing it.
Each of the sources for this synopsis raised ethical questions
about the perversion of academia by military money and about the U.S.
engaging in a biological arms race that could rival the nuclear
threat, yet none mentioned the safety or the security of the labs
involved. The failure to investigate this aspect of the issue is a
striking omission. Release of pathogens, either by accident or
design, would prove tragic at any of the following schools: Brigham
Young, California Institute of Technology, Colorado State University,
Emory, Illinois Institute of Technology, Iowa University, M.I.T.,
Purdue, State University of N.Y. at Albany, Texas A&M, and the
Universities of California, California at Davis, Cincinnati,
Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah.
SOURCES: ISTHMUS, 10/9/87, "Biowarfare and the UW," by Richard
Jannaccio, pp 1, 9, 10; THE PROGRESSIVE, 11/16/87, "Poisons from the
Pentagon," by Seth Shulman, pp 16-20; WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/17/86,
"Military Science," by Bill Richards and Tim Carrington, pp 1, 23.


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THE BILL OF JURY RIGHTS
The following six points were approved for inclusion in the
Bill of Jury Rights by voting delegates at the St. Louis "BJR"
Conference. Time ran out before several other items proposed for
the Bill could be debated and voted upon.
Conference participants were subsequently asked to send us
their signatures if they wanted us to attach them to the six
points that were approved, for publication in this issue of the
FIJActivist. The "signed" Bill, then, is to date as follows:
1. The inherent right of jurors to be informed of their duty
to judge the law as well as the facts in all cases shall not be
infringed.
2. In all criminal trials, a jury of at least twelve persons
must be seated unless declined by the defendant.
3. The jury must be told that unanimity is not required, but
if not achieved, a retrial is possible.
4. A guilty or innocent verdict must be established
unanimously by the jury.
5. Jurors must be randomly selected from the widest
possible base.
6. Jurors may not be disqualified from service except by
reason of conflict of interest.
Signatures of those who've signed to date will be reproduced
in the next FIJActivist. So far, we've received signatures from:
David S. Curland, NH; Toni L. Black, SC; Frank Nugent, MO;
Red Beckman, MT; Honey Lanham Dodge, TX; Ken Bush, MO; Godfrey D.
Lehman, CA; Sasha D. Kennison, SC; Marjorie C. Davies, OH;
Richard B. Boddie, CA; Dick Sunderman, WY; Norma D. Segal, NY;
Dave Dawson, WY; Paul Carroll, AZ; Eon Marshall, CA; Barbara
Anderson, NH; Bro. Jim Lorenz, CA; Dennis Kurk, MN; Beatrice
Kurk, MN; Walter A. Murray, Jr. WY; Richard Tompkins, AZ; Darlene
Span, AZ; Jerry Span, AZ; Larry Dodge, MT; Don Doig, MT.
BJR Conferees and Speakers note: If you haven't done so
already, you can still "sign" the Bill of Jury Rights, as
presented above. Just send us your signature. We'll cut it out
and paste it up with the others. We'll send you a master copy of
the signed document, and print it in the next FIJActivist!
"DRAFTERMATH"
Since the St. Louis conference, Texans for FIJA met to draft
a "Texas version", which proposes item 1 of the Bill of Jury
Rights as an amendment to the section of that state's
constitution dealing with trial by jury, and includes BJR items
2-5 as part of a list of proposed statutes by which to implement
and supplement that section, as amended.
The Texas version also divided the statutes into those which
would apply to all trials, and those which would apply only to
criminal trials. After discussing the Texas version with FIJA
activists in Colorado and Wyoming, collecting from them still
more suggestions, Larry Dodge brought the accumulated commentary
to FIJA HQ in Montana, where he and Don Doig added still a third
battery of statutes, applicable only to civil cases, and rewrote
the entire document, using as many suggestions as possible.
After some debate over whether some of the items in the list
should be separated out as "rights of the defendant", as opposed
to "jury rights" (resolved by deciding that all rights of the
jury are derivative of the right of defendants to trial by jury,
so that it makes no sense to separate them), a more-or-less
comprehensive Bill of Jury Rights was developed:
Proposed Constitutional Amendment, (either by legislative
referendum or citizen initiative) to the state constitutional
section on Trial by Jury:
"The inherent right of jurors to be informed of their duty
to judge the law as well as the facts in all cases shall not be
infringed."
Proposed statutes to implement the above amendment, and to
supplement state constitutional sections dealing with Trial by
Jury or with Rights of the Accused:
1. In all trials:
a. a jury of at least twelve persons must be seated
unless declined by the defendant.
b. jurors must be selected randomly, from the widest
possible base.
c. jurors may not be disqualified from service except
by reason of conflict of interest.
d. no evidence which either side wishes to present to
the jury may be withheld, provided it was lawfully obtained.
e. jurors may take notes in the courtroom, have
questions posed to witnesses, and take reference materials into
the jury room.
f. during selection, jurors may refuse to answer
questions which they believe violate their right of privacy,
without prejudice.
2. In all criminal trials:
a. the court must inform the jury of its right to judge
both law and fact in reaching a verdict, and failure to so inform
the jury is grounds for mistrial. The jurors must acknowledge by
oath that they understand this right, no party to the trial may
be prevented from encouraging them to exercise it, and no
potential juror may be disqualified from serving on a jury
because he expresses a willingness to judge the law or its
application, or to vote according to conscience.
b. the jury must be told that it is not required to
reach a unanimous verdict, but that failure to do so will produce
a hung jury, and a retrial will be possible.
c. A unanimous vote of the jury is required in order
for it to render a verdict of guilty or innocent.
d. the jury must be informed of the range of
punishments which can be administered if the defendant is found
guilty, and what, if any, exceptions to that range may be
available to the convict.
e. the court may grant no motions which limit the
individual rights of the defendant, most particularly his right
to have the jury hear whatever justifications for his actions the
defense may wish to present.
3. In all civil trials:
a. civil trial jurors also retain the traditional power
to judge the law, and must be so told by the court whenever the
government or any agent of the government is a party to the
trial, and where the amount in dispute exceeds $20.
b. agreement by three-quarters of the jury constitutes
a verdict.
c. no judge may overturn the verdict of the jury.
Appeals may be made only to another jury, and if these juries
disagree, the case shall be decided by a third jury.
"PLUS THREE"
The St. Louis conference produced three independent
proposals for wording which we would like to reproduce here as
additional food for thought.
FORMER JUSTICE JOHN I. PURTLE'S PROPOSAL
Trial juries shall be composed of 12 or more citizens chosen
at random from a pool consisting of all persons in the judicial
district over the age of 18 years. In criminal cases the verdict
must be unanimous and in civil cases, 75% must agree on the
verdict. Jurors shall be allowed to take notes during the trial
and may take the notes and all evidence into the deliberation
room.
Grand juries shall consist of 16 or more members selected
from the same pool and an indictment must be signed by 75% of the
panel. The grand jury shall have the right to select independent
counsel.
The inherent rights of jurors to be informed of their duty
to judge the law and the facts in all cases shall not be
infringed.
GODFREY DAVIDSBURG LEHMAN'S PROPOSAL
The inherent right of jurors to be informed of their duty
to judge the law and facts by general or special verdicts at
their discretion in all cases shall not be infringed.
Trial juries shall be composed of 12 or more citizens
selected at random from the widest possible community base in the
judicial district without peremptory challenge; challenges for
cause shall be limited only to cases of direct partisan interest.
Verdicts in all criminal trials shall be unanimous and in
civil trial shall be by 75%. Jurors shall be informed of their
options to select the third verdict of "Not Proven" when they are
dissatisfied with the limitations by either an outright acquittal
or conviction.
The court shall not withhold from the jury any evidence
which any of the litigants wish to bring before the jury, except
for evidence illegally obtained. In the case of evidence
obtained under questionable circumstances, the court shall
explain to the jury how the evidence was obtained without
revealing the evidence itself and the judge may express his
opinion as to proper admissibility.
But the evidence shall be allowed only if one-third (?) or
more of the jury so desire provided that a ruling of illegality
by the jury shall constitute an automatic indictment of the
persons who obtained such evidence, and who shall be tried
immediately under the criminal statutes of this state concurrent
with the originating trial.
Should defendants be acquitted in said trial, the suppressed
evidence shall be made immediately available to the jury in the
originating trial; but if said trial be already completed, the
freed evidence shall constitute grounds for a new trial upon the
request of either party.
The Seventh Amendment's proscription that "no fact tried by
a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United
States, than by the rules of the common law," shall be understood
that no appellate court in any case may evaluate the jury verdict
neither to overrule nor uphold, being limited only to determine
if the trial was conducted fairly per Constitutional mandate.
If a question appears to the court or in the case of new
evidence, the court shall send the case back to the trial court
for a new trial before a second jury, equal in sovereign rank to
the first jury, which can deliver a new verdict or uphold the
first verdict. If the second jury overrules the first, a third
trial may be held, the final determination being the two agreeing
juries.
FRANK NUGENT'S PROPOSAL
ADMISSIBILITY OF EVIDENCE 1. It being the natural right and
ability of each and every citizen of this state to judge for
himself or herself as to the relevance of evidence, and it being
the natural right and ability of each and every citizen to resist
pre-judging any issue, no evidence shall be declared inadmissible
or otherwise kept from the jury on the grounds of relevance or
irrelevancy, nor on the ground that such evidence would be
prejudicial.
2. Should any judge rule that any evidence being submitted
was obtained illegally, the question of admissibility of such
evidence shall be turned over to arbitration consisting of the
following persons: prosecuting attorney, defense attorney or the
pro se defendant, and three jurors from the general jury pool.
If the arbiters decide by an 80% vote that such evidence was
obtained legally, then such evidence shall be placed before the
jury. A less than 80% vote shall constitute a finding that the
evidence was obtained illegally, and then it shall not be
admitted nor revealed to the jury; provided however, that such a
ruling of illegality shall constitute an automatic indictment of
the persons who obtained such evidence, and who shall be tried
immediately under the criminal statutes of this state concurrent
with the originating trial. Should defendants be acquitted in
said trial, the suppressed evidence shall be made immediately
available to the jury in the originating trial; but if said trial
be already completed, the freed evidence shall constitute grounds
for a new trial upon the prayer of either party.

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1841696
In California, a Question of Abuse; An Excess of Child Molestation
Cases Brings Kern County's Investigative Methods Under Fire.
The Washington Post, May 31, 1989, FINAL Edition
BY: Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer
SECTION: Style, p. d01
STORY TYPE: News National
LINE COUNT: 314 WORD COUNT: 3456
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - Only two of the children at the trial could even
identify Gina Miller. She was Colleen Forsythe's friend, the only
nonrelative in Bakersfield's infamous Pitts family child molestation and
pornography ring.
Identified or not, the jury found her guilty with the others in 1985 and
sent the soft-spoken, auburn-haired fast-food worker to prison for 405
years, forcing her to end abruptly the breast-feeding of her fourth child,
10-month-old Tammra.
After hearing the lurid allegations made during the seven-month trial,
the 12 jurors from this San Joaquin Valley city of oil wells and fruit
trees may have felt even the most severe punishment was insufficient.
Children testified that several adult members of the Pitts family gathered
regularly to sodomize and molest their own sons, daughters, nephews or
nieces, often after forcing drugs or alcohol on them. Children said they
saw cameras apparently filming the sexual acts.
There had never been anything like it here, and in a city full of
families from Oklahoma and the South who prided themselves on their
Christian values and adherence to law and order, the reaction was horror
and outrage. Children could not make up such stories, prosecutors
repeatedly reminded the jurors and the public. "I can't conceive of a
reason for something like this," said Superior Court Judge Gary T. Friedman
as he pronounced sentences. "I doubt if our friends in the animal kingdom
would treat their young in such a fashion."
A few defense attorneys raised objections to the extraordinary prison
terms. The total of 2,619 years for the seven defendants set a child abuse
case record for California and probably the whole country. Defense
attorneys noted that no adults had testified to witnessing the crimes, that
there was no sign of the alleged pornographic films or videotapes and that
the medical evidence was controversial. But such objections were buried in
an outpouring of disgust at the trial testimony and a growing concern about
mass child abuse cases materializing in many other parts of the country.
Then, as months went by, a few Bakersfield residents began to wonder
about the Pitts case and several other sexual abuse investigations that had
been carried out for several years by a number of very active officials in
the Kern County district attorney's and sheriff's offices. One analysis
showed that in 1982 the county's rate of arrests for child molesting was
twice the state average. Investigations that initially focused on just one
or two children seemed to grow to include many more.
Finally, a county investigation of an alleged satanic cult, a group that
made the Pitts defendants appear kindly by comparison, careened irrevocably
out of control. Child witnesses who had been repeatedly interviewed, much
like the witnesses in the Pitts and several other cases, told investigators
that the cult had not only molested children but conducted blood rites and
even killed babies. Frantic efforts to discover the bodies proved
fruitless, and then three young witnesses went one crucial step further.
They identified as members of the satanic ring a sheriff's deputy, a social
worker and a deputy district attorney--persons with impeccable reputations
who could not possibly have been where the children said they saw them.
This was the turning point. The credibility of both witnesses and
investigators in the series of molestation cases began to come into serious
question. Gina Miller, obsessed with thoughts of her children, said she
felt her spirits lifting for the first time. Perhaps she had a chance to
get out soon.
Within months a special investigative team from the state attorney
general's office had descended on Bakersfield and produced one of the most
damning reports one California agency had ever written about another. The
80-page document concluded that a county child sexual abuse coordinator and
sheriff's deputies overinterviewed and pressured child witnesses, gave them
opportunities to share accounts of the case, and assumed anything a child
said was true. The report said this prompted investigators "to accept the
children's statements without question, to neglect to verify those
statements through additional questions of the victim and others close to
the victim, and to fail to seek additional corroborative evidence to
support the children's claims."
The county's investigation, the report concluded, "foundered in a sea of
unproven allegations, insufficient corroborative evidence, and bizarre
allegations that in some instances were proven to be false and raised
serious questions about the victims' credibility."
The state's highest law enforcement officials had decided that, in
Bakersfield at least, horribly detailed stories of abuse and molestation
told by innocent children might not always be true. Not only did the report
challenge an article of faith in the conviction of the Pitts family and
other defendants here, but it was directly critical of methods used by
investigators who had participated, at least in part, in gathering
testimony used against the Pitts family and many others.
The resulting furor has not drawn much attention outside California's
San Joaquin Valley. Notable molestation cases like the McMartin Preschool
trial in Los Angeles have preempted most national media attention. But the
attorney general's report on Bakersfield paints a picture of what has to be
considered one of the clumsiest and most destructive child abuse
investigations in American history. The report leaves unanswered many
questions about how to deal with such tragedies, and what to do about many
other Kern County residents left in prison whose cases have not attracted a
full-scale second look.
For the attorney general's report said nothing directly about the Pitts
defendants. Miller said she experienced a sinking feeling that the state's
exposure of investigative clumsiness might not help them after all, and
others raised the same concerns.
Glenn Cole, a retired accountant who led the county grand jury from 1983
to 1985, said he believes "innocent people are in jail right today" because
children were "questioned to the point where they could not tell truth from
fiction." He said he thinks the initial investigators were not properly
trained and the attorney general's office should have done more to right
the wrongs. "I try to put it out of my mind," Cole said, "but I get very
emotional about it."
Some attorneys, particularly those defending the Pittses, are beginning
to compare many of the Bakersfield child abuse investigations to the Salem
witch trials. They say they fear that instinctive loathing over unusually
egregious accounts of child molestation has subverted the rule of law and
due process and unnecessarily shattered dozens of lives, including those of
several children.
In some minds the parallels across three centuries are very close.
Michael Snedeker, a San Francisco attorney representing one of the Pitts
defendants, said the Salem trials began in 1692 with two children who,
after repeated questioning, identified many local people as witches. "The
Salem witchcraft fever did not break until the children made absolutely
unbelievable accusations, pointing their damning fingers at the governor's
wife," he said. "They also accused those most eager in the prosecution of
witches. Once disbelieved in a few particulars, they lost the power to
condemn they undoubtedly never sought."
Bitter arguments have broken out here over the guilt or innocence of the
Pitts defendants and several others jailed after investigations similar to
the discredited satanic case. At the very least, the turmoil shows how
damaging a misstep in a child abuse case can be, and how it may take years
to erase the effects of overzealous interviewing and an unshakable belief
in the veracity of children, even those under severe emotional pressure.
In the last several months two of the alleged child victims in the Pitts
case have recanted, saying nothing at all happened in the green house on
Sycamore Street where the molestations were supposed to have occurred.
The sudden shift in the cases sparked unusual tensions between many
leading Bakersfield citizens. Andrew Gindes, a former prosecutor who
handled the Pitts case, has sued Alfred T. Fritts, former
co-publisher/editor of the Bakersfield Californian, for libel after the
newspaper printed a story about one witness's recantation. Gindes'
complaint alleged that Fritts was hostile toward him because Fritts feared
his "own activities would be disclosed if a vigorous policy was pursued by
law enforcement against child molesters." Dennis Kinnaird, an attorney
representing Fritts and other defendants in the case, called the allegation
"totally incorrect" and said, "We don't think it has any basis in fact."
Gindes, in an interview, expressed outrage that the results of a lengthy
jury trial were now being questioned, and accused attorneys for the Pitts
defendants of organizing a "media hype." "I don't think the media should be
used to conduct a public relations campaign to attempt to prejudice the
judicial system," he said.
Investigators and prosecutors here who handled most of the cases say
that their evidence stands up, and bitterly denounce the decision to drop
the satanic cult case. Kern County District Attorney Edward R. Jagels, who
refused to prosecute the satanic case, still defends the investigative
methods and lengthy prison sentences in the Pitts and other cases.
Arguments against them, he said, "just don't hang together."
Although some attorneys with the state attorney general's office
privately express doubts about the evidence in the Pitts and other cases
brought during the widespread molestation investigations of 1982 to 1985,
they say they can do nothing to overturn jury verdicts. Deputy Attorney
General Thomas Gede, who was assigned to the Pitts case on appeal, said
that after reading all 14,000 pages of trial transcript he is convinced of
the guilt of all seven defendants.
While those verdicts are being appealed, the Pitts defendants and many
others remain in prison with multiple life sentences, wondering if they
will ever leave prison and, if they do, ever restore a semblance of their
previous lives.
Colleen Forsythe, sentenced to 373 years in the Pitts case, said her
13-year-old daughter Windy, one of the two witnesses who have recently
recanted, has been through several foster homes and returned more than once
to the custody of juvenile authorities.
During trial, Forsythe, now 30, insisted on her innocence. "There was no
way I was going to say that I did something like that when I didn't," she
said during an interview at the California Institution for Women in
Frontera.
Miller rejected an early offer of a lighter sentence in exchange for
testifying against the others. "People think I was crazy for not taking
that deal, but how could I take responsibility for all these people?" she
said.
Bakersfield tree surgeon Roy Nokes, who spent $50,000 in a successful
fight to clear his son and daughter-in-law of molestation charges in
another case, said he thinks some innocent people who lacked the necessary
financial resources accepted shorter jail terms after seeing the huge jury
verdicts against those in the Pitts case and others. His son,
daughter-in-law and others are suing a prosecutor and an investigator for
the alleged harm done them and their families.
"They should be hit hard enough that they never do anything like this
again," he said.
The Pitts case began in 1984 when Ricky Lynn Pitts, now 36 and a former
truck driver and bartender, and his wife Marcella were accused of molesting
Marcella's three sons by a previous marriage. The new wife of Marcella's
ex-husband told authorities the boys had reported being molested during
weekend visits to the Pittses' house on Sycamore Street.
Marcella Pitts, 34, serving a 373-year sentence in the case, said the
wife of her ex-husband made false charges because "she knew I was going to
fight for custody of those kids and she knew I'd win." But the boys'
account led authorities to take custody of them as well as eight other
children and, after weeks of interviews with the 11 children, to file
molestation charges against the Pittses, Forsythe, Forsythe's husband Wayne
(they have since divorced), Forsythe's mother Grace Dill, 55, Dill's son
Wayne Dill Jr., 33, and Miller.
At the trial, some children said they were injected with drugs, forced
to drink urine and alcohol and to engage in sex acts with adults and other
children while as many as three cameras recorded the scene. In some cases,
Ricky Pitts was accused of threatening children with being tied to a board
hanging on the wall.
The seven defendants all insisted on their innocence, and four took and
passed lie detector tests. But the prosecution produced testimony from a
physician, Bruce Woodling, that there were signs of molestation in two
children. The prosecution said it produced medical testimony on only these
two because they were the only ones who denied being molested.
Many child witnesses were interviewed repeatedly by Carol Darling, the
district attorney's child sexual abuse coordinator, before telling stories
of abuse and agreeing to testify. Darling, who declined to comment on the
case, retired on a disability pension last year for excessive mental and
emotional stress.
Andrew Rubin, an attorney who represented Ricky Pitts, said he saw many
inconsistencies in the children's testimony and thought it sounded as if it
came from an outside source, but the jury seemed impressed by the medical
testimony and one moment of courtroom drama.
A 6-year-old girl witness, whom Pitts said he had disciplined in the
past, began screaming hysterically, "Don't let him get me! Don't let him
kill me!" when she was asked to identify him at the defendants' table.
Uncontrollable, she ran into the arms of Judge Friedman, who said after the
trial he felt "she was definitely traumatized, as were the other children."
At that point in the trial, Rubin said, "I realized I was in serious
trouble in this case."
The defendants began serving their sentences in the summer of 1985.
Their continued protestations of innocence were largely ignored until
Christina Hayes, now 14, Ricky Pitts' niece and the eldest of the child
witnesses, had a conversation with her guardian's wife during the 1986
Christmas season.
The wife, Mary Isabell, said she was concerned about the girl's hostile
attitude and poor study habits. After a visit by Christina's grandfather,
who firmly believed in the innocence of the Pitts defendants, Isabell
invited Christina into her bedroom to discuss the trial.
"I said, 'We have to talk about it,'" Isabell said in a taped interview
with private investigator Denver Dunn, which is now part of the court
record. "I told her, 'You have to tell me the truth. Good God, if it
happened a little bit, not at all, a whole bunch, whatever happened, I need
to know so that I can help you.'"
After thinking about it for a moment, Christina changed her story and
said that nothing had happened. In the course of several days of talk with
Robert Hayes, the guardian she refers to as her father, and with Isabell,
she said her trial testimony had emerged from hours of interviews with
social worker Carol Darling and other investigators, in which she was told
accounts of what other children were saying. She said Darling told her some
potentially violent friends of the Pitts family were out to do her harm.
"They told me that if I didn't cooperate they would take me away from my
dad (Hayes) and put me in a foster home," Christina said in an interview
conducted during a walk in her Bakersfield neighborhood with no other
adults present. Her natural mother, Clovette Pitts, disappeared when the
others were arrested.
Hayes said he believes Christina is now telling the truth and noted that
her grades and general attitude have improved. But Jagels, the county
district attorney, and other county investigators said her new story is
false, perhaps concocted to relieve tension in the family. They emphasized
her lengthy, detailed testimony on the stand, which defense attorneys point
out consisted mostly of short, affirmative answers to detailed prosecution
questions. Jagels said he thought it significant that she could not specify
precisely where and when she heard the details of the molestations she
testified to. Jagels also noted her recantation came shortly after she
learned her grandmother, Grace Dill, had broken her leg in prison.
Three weeks after Christina Hayes changed her story, district attorney's
investigator Tam Hodgson interviewed Windy Betterton, Forsythe's daughter,
producing a transcript that is now in the court record:
Hodgson: "Okay. Those things that you testified to, are all of them
true, some of them true, none of them true?"
Betterton: "None of them are true."
Her cousin, Sherril Boyd, told Hodgson that she had informed the girl of
Christina Hayes' recantation and cautioned Windy to be sure she was telling
the truth. Boyd said the girl began to cry, and then said "the people at
the DA's office had kept asking, or saying over and over and over that they
knew she had been molested. She had finally just made up something to keep
them from questioning her anymore."
In the satanic cases, the attorney general's report criticized Kern
County investigators for interviewing "victims repeatedly, covering old
ground, reiterating other victims' statements, failing to question the
children's statements, and urging them to name additional suspects and
victims." Despite state guidelines against multiple interviews, one child
in the satanic case "was interviewed 24 times by sheriff's deputies and a
total of 35 times in the investigation," the report said.
Critics of the Kern County investigations, citing the attorney general's
report, have focused on several other cases investigated about the same
time by some of the same Kern County officials or by other officials using
similar methods:
Scott and Brenda Kniffen and Alvin and Deborah McCuan, two couples with
two small children each, were given prison terms of 240 to 268 years for
molesting their children, despite evidence that some of the children had
falsely accused other adults and had come under the influence of a mentally
disturbed relative who resented some of the defendants. Prosecutors used
testimony from Woodling that was challenged by David Paul, an
internationally recognized child abuse expert.
David A. Duncan, a 39-year-old former oil field worker, was sent to
prison for 60 years in 1984 on a molestation charge. Duncan was accused by
child witnesses discovered during a sweep of a neighborhood in another
investigation. The children were repeatedly interviewed before they
testified, and testimony by a jail-house informant was also used against
Duncan. He was released in late January after an appeals court reversed his
conviction and the prosecutor dropped the charges.
Howard L. Weimer, a 65-year-old former automobile repair shop owner, has
been in prison for a year after a woman he and his wife cared for as foster
parents years before accused him of molesting her. Eventually sheriff's
deputies, in part through lengthy interviews, found four other former
foster children of the couple who made similar accusations. The trial judge
imposed a 42-year sentence.
John A. Stoll, a 45-year-old former gas plant foreman, received a
40-year sentence after being convicted of molestation on testimony from his
son and some other children, including some who later recanted.
Many investigators and attorneys who handled Bakersfield child abuse
cases in the early 1980s vigorously defend their actions and ridicule the
attorney general's report. "It was just junk," former deputy district
attorney Gindes said in an interview. He said he still believed the satanic
cult accusations might have merit.
In a follow-up interview, Gindes denied criticizing the attorney
general's attack on the satanic case investigation or saying he thought the
satanic case might still have merit. He declined to say what his attitude
toward the case was.
Carol Darling's husband Brad, a lieutenant in the Kern County sheriff's
office, has continued to speak to church groups about his belief in some of
the satanic charges. He told one group, according to a transcript, that his
witnesses "described things that I can't fathom a child knowing about or
learning on television." The Darlings declined to be interviewed.
Snedeker said an expert witness, University of California Irvine
gynecologist R. David Miller, has concluded that the medical evidence used
at the trial was meaningless. But appeals and new trials take time. Despite
the widespread doubt about many of the Bakersfield molestation cases, the
people sent to prison expect to be there for some time.
Gina Miller said she is certain she will be free some day and thinks she
can start a new life with her children in another state. Her friend Colleen
Forsythe is less hopeful. When she is freed, she said, she may not try to
retrieve her children from their new homes.
"I'm scared of kids. I'm scared to death of kids," she said. "I'm glad I
can't have any more."
CAPTIONS: Gina Miller, of the defendants in the Bakersfield trial.
Grace Dill, Marcella Pitts and Colleen Forsythe in prison.
Christina Hayes, eldest of the child witnesses, has since recanted her
testimony. LV witnesses, has since recanted her testimony. LV
NAMED PERSONS: MILLER, GINA; FORSYTHE, COLLEEN; PITTS, RICKY LYNN;
PITTS, MARCELLA
DESCRIPTORS: Child molestation; Trials; California ;^ \ PMODEM FON ^   ABALON TXT   9* FORCE TXT
 

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The following is a collection of quotes by BLACK Americans:
ROBERT C. MAYNARD (black, syndicated columnist)
"The underclass is a lawless, illiterate minority with zero
regard for the common decencies of those more fortunate than
they. (It is categorized by) masses of illiterate, untrained
youth on the streets with abundant access to drugs and guns.
(This is) our nation's future. Unless we begin to re-channel
the energies and reshape the values of the youth of that
underclass, none of us is safe. The burgeoning underclass is
the social dynamite that threatens the stability of the entire
society."
...
WILLIAM HOUGH (black, retired Army sergeant)
"We have been accusing whites of the very same offense for years.
No there is no other ethnic group in America that seems more
prejudiced than us blacks. And it is virtually destroying us as
a race. The black media, the black leaders and our parents must
share in the blame for this. What started out as black pride
eventually turned into black racism. How can we see racism and
prejudice in other races but fail to recognize it among ourselves?
We are constantly bombarded with negativism by our black press. For
instance, we are fed depressing information about this wicked, one-
sided society that we live in and that our chance of making it is
almost nil.
We hear this same kind of negativism from family, friends, and
neighbors. No wonder so many young blacks are turned off. We end
up with an embittered and confused individual.
Black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, when he was chairman
of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged that black
leaders 'are sitting there watching the destruction of our race
while they bitch, bitch, bitch about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan
isn't the problem. Jimmy Carter was not the problem. The lack of
black leadership is the problem."
...
WALTER WILLIAMS (black professor at George Mason University)
"Civil rights organizations, once part of a proud struggle, have
now squandered their moral authority. They are little more than
race hustlers championing a racial spoils system. They no longer
seek fair play and a color blind society. Their agenda is one of
rights, where quota is king and colorblindness is viewed with
contempt. Today's civil rights organizations differ only in degree
,but not in kind, from white racist organizations past and present."
...
SHELBY STEELE (a black professor)
"A generation after the Watts riot and the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, it is time for blacks to drop the crutch of
racial victimization and rely on their own efforts to gain access
to the American mainstream."
"The opportunities are there. Blacks have only to stop hiding
behind racism and take advantage of them. While racism still exists,
it is not what is holding back America's black people. Instead, the
specter of racism has become a crippling fixation of blacks, a way
not just to excuse failure but to avoid dealing with real problems.
Victimization views white people as omnipotent. It is as though
white people are in charge of our fate rather than ourselves. The
sense of victimization has led blacks to rely on programs like
affirmative action that both stem from and perpetuate their sense
of being victims."
"The insistence on black victimization and white guilt sets in motion
a never-ending and ultimately futile, inter-racial battle . . . that
leaves us with an identity (as a victim) that is at war with our best
interests, that magnifies our oppression and diminishes our sense of
possibility."
"It did blacks no good to ignore their real fears and blame racism
for all their failings. Blacks have tremendous possibilities, but
if you think you're up against a white racism and your just a total
victim of it, then you can't do anything except be mad."

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Censored Books
Responding to the Meese commission's official approval of pressure-group
censorship, Waldenbooks staged a promotion featuring 52 volumes that had been
"challenged, burned or banned somewhere in the United States in the last 15
years." The titles and the reasons for outrage against these books are so
astounding that we decided to publish the complete list.
THE BASTARD, by John Jakes.
Removed from Montour (Pennsylvania) High School library, 1976.
BLOODLINE, by Sidney Sheldon.
Challenged in Abingdon, Virginia, 1980;
Elizabethton, Tennessee, 1981.
BRAVE NEW WORLD, by Aldous Huxley.
Removed from classroom, Miller, Missouri, 1980.
Challenged frequently throughout the U.S.
CARRIE, by Stephen King.
Considered "trash" that is especially harmful for "younger girls."
Challenged by Clark High School library, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1975.
Placed on special closed shelf in Union High School library, Vergennes,
Vermont, 1978.
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, by J.D. Salinger.
Considered "dangerous" because of vulgarity, occultism, violence and sexual
content.
Banned in Freeport High School, DeFuniak Springs, Florida, 1985.
Removed from
Issaquah, Washington, optional high school reading list, 1978;
required reading list, Middleville, Michingan, 1979.;
Jackson-Milton school libraries, North Jackson, Ohio, 1980;
Anniston, Alabama, high school libraries, 1982.
Challenged by Libby (Montana) High School, 1983.
CATCH-22, by Joseph Heller.
Considered "dangerous" because of objectionable language.
Banned in Strongsville, Ohio, 1972 (overturned in 1976).
Challenged by Dallas, Texas, Independent School District high school
libraries, 1974,
Snoqualmie, Washington, 1979.
THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, by Jean M. Auel.
Challenged by numerous public libraries.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, by Anthony Burgess.
"Objectionable" language.
Removed from
Westport, Rhode Island, high school classrooms, 1977;
Aurora, Colorado, high school classrooms, 1976;
Anniston, Alabama, high school libraries, 1982.
THE COLOR PURPLE, by Alice Walker.
Considered inappropriate because of its "troubling ideas about race relations,
man's relationship to God, African history and human sexuality."
Challenged by Oakland, California, high school honors class, 1984;
rejected for purchase by Hayward, California, school trustees.
THE CRUCIBLE, by Arthur Miller.
Considered dangerous because it contains "sick words from the mouths of
demon-possessed people."
Challenged by Cumberland Valley High School, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
1982.
CUJO, by Stephen King.
Profanity and strong sexual content cited as reasons for opposition.
Banned by Washington County, Alabama, Board of Education, 1985;
challenged by Rankin County, Mississippi, School District, 1984;
removed from Bradford, New York, school library, 1985;
rejected for purchase by Hayward, California, school trustees, 1985.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN, by Arthur Miller.
Cited for profanity.
Banned by Spring Valley Community High School, French Lick, Indiana,
1981;
challenged by Dallas, Texas, Independent School District high school
libraries, 1974.
THE DEVIL'S ALTERNATE, by Frederick Forsyth.
Removed by Evergreen School District, Vancouver, Washington, 1983.
THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL, by Anne Frank.
Objections to sexually offensive passages.
Challenged by Wise County, Virginia, 1982;
Alabama State Book Committee, 1983.
EAST OF EDEN, by John Steinbeck.
Considered "ungodly and obscene."
Removed from Anniston, Alabama, high school libraries, 1982;
Morris, Manitoba, school libraries, 1982.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS, by Ernest Hemingway.
Labeled as a "sex novel."
Challenged by Dallas, Texas, Independent School District high school
libraries, 1974;
Vernon-Verona-Sherill, New York, School District, 1980.
FIRESTARTER, by Stephen King.
Cited for "graphic descriptions of sexual acts, vulgar language and violence."
Challenged by Campbell County, Wyoming, school system, 1983-1984.
FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, by Daniel Keyes.
Explicit, distasteful love scenes cited among reasons for opposition.
Banned by Plant City, Florida, 1976;
Emporium, Pennsylvania, 1977;
Glen Rose (Arkansas) High School library, 1981.
Challenged by Oberlin (Ohio) High School, 1983;
Glenrock (Wyoming) High School, 1984.
FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, by V.C. Andrews.
Considered "dangerous" because it contains "offensive passages concerning
incest and sexual intercourse."
Challenged by Richmond (Rhode Island) High School, 1983.
FOREVER, by Judy Blume.
Detractors cite its "four-letter words and [talk] about masturbation, birth
control and disobedience to parents."
Challenged by Midvalley Junior-Senior High School library, Scranton,
Pennsylvania, 1982;
Orlando, Florida, schools, 1982;
Akron, Ohio, School District libraries, 1983;
Howard-Suamico (Wisconsin) High School, 1983;
Holdredge, Nebraska, Public Library, 1984;
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Public Library, 1984;
Patrick County, Virginia, School Board, 1986;
Park Hill (Missouri) South Junior High School library,
1982.
THE GRAPES OF WRATH, by John Steinbeck.
Considered "dangerous" because of obscene language and the unfavorable
depiction of a former minister.
Banned in Kanawha, Iowa, 1980; Morris, Manitoba, 1982.
Challenged by Vernon-Verona-Sherill, New York, School District, 1980;
Richford, Vermonth, 1991.(?)
HARRIET THE SPY, by Louise Fitzhugh.
Considered "dangerous" because it "teaches children to lie, spy, back-talk
and curse."
Challenged by Xenia, Ohio, school libraries, 1983.
HUCKLEBERRY FINN, by Mark Twain.
Considered "dangerous" because of objectionable language and "racist" terms
and content.
Challenged by Winnetka, Illinois, 1976;
Warrington, Pennsylvania, 1981;
Davenport, Iowa, 1981;
Fairfax County, Virginia, 1982;
Houston, Texas, 1982;
State College, Pennsylvania, area school district
1983;
Springfield, Illinois, 1983
Waukegan, Illinois, 1984.
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, by Maya Angelou.
Considered "dangerous" because it preaches "bitterness and hatred against
whites."
Challenged by Alabama State Textbook Committee, 1983.
GGIE'S HOUSE, by Judy Blume.
Challenged by Caspar, Wyoming, school libraries, 1984.
IT'S OKAY IF YOU DON'T LOVE ME, by Norma Klein.
Considered "dangerous" because it portrays "sex as the only thing on your
people's minds."
Banned in Haywood County, California, 1981.
Removed by Widefield (Colorado) High School, 1983;
Vancouver, Washington, School District, 1984.
THE LIVING BIBLE, by William C. Bower.
Considered "dangerous" because it is "a perverted commentary on the King James
Version."
Burned in Gastonia, North Carolina, 1986.
LORD OF THE FLIES, by William Golding.
Considered "demoralizing inasmuch as it implies that man is little more than
an animal."
Challenged by Dallas, Texas, Independent School District high school
libraries, 1974;
Sully Buttes (South Dakota) High School, 1981;
Owen (North Carolina) High School, 1981;
Marana (Arizona) High School, 1983;
Olney, Texas, Independent School District, 1984.
LOVE IS ONE OF THE CHOICES, by Norma Klein.
Removed from Evergreen School District, Vancouver, Washington, 1983.
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, by Ray Bradbury.
Profanity and the use of God's name in vain sparked opposition to this novel.
Challenged by Haines City (Florida) High School, 1982.
MATARESE CIRCLE, by Robert Ludlum.
"Unnecessarily rough language and sexual descriptions" caused opposition to
this novel.
Restricted (to students with parental consent) by Pierce (Nebraska)
High School, 1983.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, by William Shakespeare.
Objections to purported anti-Semitism.
Banned by Midland, Michigan, classrooms, 1980.
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, by George Orwell. Objections to pro- Communist material
and explicit sexual matter.
Challenged by Jackson County, Florida, 1981.
OF MICE AND MEN, by John Steinbeck.
Considered "dangerous" because of its profanity and "vulgar language."
Banned in Syracuse, Indiana, 1974;
Oil City, Pennsylvania, 1977;
Grand Blanc, Michigan, 1979;
Continental, Ohio, 1980l
Skyline High School, Scottsboro, Alabama, 1983.
Challenged by Greenville, South Carolina, 1977;
Vernon-Verona- Sherill, New York, School District, 1980;
St. David, Arizona, 1981;
Telly City, Indiana, 1982;
Knoxville, Tennessee, School Board, 1984.
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Objectionable language.
Removed by Milton (New Hampshire) High School library, 1976.
Challenged by Mahwah, New Jersey, 1976;
Omak, Washington, 1979;
Mohawk Trail Regional High School, Buckland, Mass, 1981.
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, by Ken Kesey.
Removed from required reading list by Westport, Massachusetts, 1977.
Banned by Freemont High School, St. Anthony, Idaho. (Instructor was
fired.)
Challenged by Merrimack (New Hampshire) High School, 1982.
ORDINARY PEOPLE, bu Judith Guest.
Called "obscene" and "depressing."
Banned (temporarily) by Merrimack (New Hampshire) High School, 1982.
OTHERWISE KNOWN AS SHEILA THE GREAT, by Judy Blume.
Challenged by Caspar, Whyoming, school libraries, 1984.
THE PIGMAN, by Paul Zindel.
Considered "dangerous" because it features "liars, cheaters and stealers."
Challenged by Hillsboro, Missouri, School District, 1985.
THE RED PONY, by John Steinbeck.
Called a "filthy, trashy sex novel."
Challenged by Vernon-Verona-Sherill, New York, School District, 1980.
THE SEDUCTION OF PETER S., by Lawrence Sanders.
Called "blatantly graphic, pornographic and wholly unacceptable for a high
school library."
Burned by Stroudsburg (Pennsylvania) High School library, 1985.
A SEPARATE PEACE, by John Knowles.
Detractors cite offensive language and sex as dangerous elements in this novel.
Challenged by Vernon-Verona-Sherill, New York, School District, 1980;
Fannett-Metal High School, Shippensburg, Pa, 1985.
THE SHINING, by Stephen King.
Considered dangerous because it "contains violence and demonic possession and
ridicules the Christian religion."
Challenged by Campbell County, Wyoming, school system, 1983.
Banned by Washington County, Alabama, Board of Education, 1985.
SILAS MARNER, by George Eliot.
Banned by Union High School, Anaheim, California, 1978.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Considered "dangerous" because of violent, irreverent, profane and sexually
explicit content.
Burned in Drake, North Carolina, 1973;
Rochester, Michigan, 1972;
Levittown, New York, 1975;
North Jackson, Ohio, 1979;
Lakeland, Florida, 1982.
Barred from purchase by Washington Park High School, Racine, Wi, 1984.
Challenged by Owensboro (Kentucky) High School library, 1985.
SUPERFUDGE, by Judy Blume. Disapproval based on "profane, immoral and
offensive" content.
Challenged by Caspar, Wyoming, school libraries, 1984;
Bozeman, Montana, school libraries, 1985.
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW, by S.E. Hinton.
Objections to "graphic language, subject matter, immoral tone and lack of
literary quality."
Challenged by Pagosa Springs, Colorado, 1983.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, by Harper Lee.
Considered "dangerous" because of profanity and undermining of race relations.
Challenged (temporaily banned) in Eden Valley, Minnesota, 1977;
Vernon-Verona-Sherill, New York, School District, 1980;
Warren, Indiana, township schools, 1981;
Waukegan, Illinois, School District, 1984;
Kansas City, Missouri, junior high schools, 1985;
Park Hill (Missouri) Junior High School, 1985.
Protested by black parents and NAACP in Casa Grande (Arizona)
Elementary School District, 1985.
ULYSSES, by James Joyce.
"Given its long history of censorship, ULYSSES has rarely been selected for
high school libraries." -- Judith Krug, director, Office for Intellectual
Freedom, American Library Association, 1986.
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, by Harriet B. Stowe.
Use of the word nigger caused opposition.
Challenged by Waukegan, Illinois, School District, 1984.
WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, by Shel Silverstein.
Considered by opponents to undermine parental, school and religious authority.
Pulled from shelves for review by Minot, North Dakota, public school
libraries, 1986.
Challenged by Xenia, Ohio, school libraries, 1983..
Sources for all of the above information: American Library Association
RESOURCE BOOK FOR BANNED BOOK WEEK 1986 and the NEWSLETTER ON INTELLECTUAL
FREEDOM, published by the Office for Intellectual Freedom. Complete
documentation is available from the American Library Association.
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Feel free to copy this article far and wide, but please
keep my name and this sentence on it.
The Bill of Rights, a Status Report
by Eric Postpischil
4 September 1990
6 Hamlett Drive, Apt. 17
Nashua, NH 03062
edp@jareth.enet.dec.com
How many rights do you have? You should check, because it
might not be as many today as it was a few years ago, or
even a few months ago. Some people I talk to are not
concerned that police will execute a search warrant without
knocking or that they set up roadblocks and stop and
interrogate innocent citizens. They do not regard these as
great infringements on their rights. But when you put
current events together, there is information that may be
surprising to people who have not yet been concerned: The
amount of the Bill of Rights that is under attack is
alarming.
Let's take a look at the Bill of Rights and see which
aspects are being pushed on or threatened. The point here
is not the degree of each attack or its rightness or
wrongness, but the sheer number of rights that are under
attack.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.
ESTABLISHING RELIGION: While campaigning for his first
term, George Bush said "I don't know that atheists should
be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered
patriots." Bush has not retracted, commented on, or
clarified this statement, in spite of requests to do so.
According to Bush, this is one nation under God. And
apparently if you are not within Bush's religious beliefs,
you are not a citizen. Federal, state, and local
governments also promote a particular religion (or,
occasionally, religions) by spending public money on
religious displays.
FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION: Robert Newmeyer and Glenn
Braunstein were jailed in 1988 for refusing to stand in
respect for a judge. Braunstein says the tradition of
rising in court started decades ago when judges entered
carrying Bibles. Since judges no longer carry Bibles,
Braunstein says there is no reason to stand -- and his
Bible tells him to honor no other God. For this religious
practice, Newmeyer and Braunstein were jailed and are now
suing.
FREE SPEECH: We find that technology has given the
government an excuse to interfere with free speech.
Claiming that radio frequencies are a limited resource, the
government tells broadcasters what to say (such as news and
public and local service programming) and what not to say
(obscenity, as defined by the Federal Communications
Commission [FCC]). The FCC is investigating Boston PBS
station WGBH-TV for broadcasting photographs from the
Mapplethorpe exhibit.
FREE SPEECH: There are also laws to limit political
statements and contributions to political activities. In
1985, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce wanted to take out
an advertisement supporting a candidate in the state house
of representatives. But a 1976 Michigan law prohibits a
corporation from using its general treasury funds to make
independent expenditures in a political campaign. In
March, the Supreme Court upheld that law. According to
dissenting Justice Kennedy, it is now a felony in Michigan
for the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union, or
the Chamber of Commerce to advise the public how a
candidate voted on issues of urgent concern to their
members.
FREE PRESS: As in speech, technology has provided another
excuse for government intrusion in the press. If you
distribute a magazine electronically and do not print
copies, the government doesn't consider you a press and
does not give you the same protections courts have extended
to printed news. The equipment used to publish Phrack, a
worldwide electronic magazine about phones and hacking, was
confiscated after publishing a document copied from a Bell
South computer entitled "A Bell South Standard Practice
(BSP) 660-225-104SV Control Office Administration of
Enhanced 911 Services for Special Services and Major
Account Centers, March, 1988." All of the information in
this document was publicly available from Bell South in
other documents. The government has not alleged that the
publisher of Phrack, Craig Neidorf, was involved with or
participated in the copying of the document. Also, the
person who copied this document from telephone company
computers placed a copy on a bulletin board run by Rich
Andrews. Andrews forwarded a copy to AT&T officials and
cooperated with authorities fully. In return, the Secret
Service (SS) confiscated Andrews' computer along with all
the mail and data that were on it. Andrews was not charged
with any crime.
FREE PRESS: In another incident that would be comical if
it were not true, on March 1 the SS ransacked the offices
of Steve Jackson Games (SJG); irreparably damaged property;
and confiscated three computers, two laser printers,
several hard disks, and many boxes of paper and floppy
disks. The target of the SS operation was to seize all
copies of a game of fiction called GURPS Cyberpunk. The
Cyberpunk game contains fictitious break-ins in a
futuristic world, with no technical information of actual
use with real computers, nor is it played on computers.
The SS never filed any charges against SJG but still
refused to return confiscated property.
PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY: The right to assemble peaceably is no
longer free -- you have to get a permit. Even that is not
enough; some officials have to be sued before they realize
their reasons for denying a permit are not Constitutional.
PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY: In Alexandria, Virginia, there is a
law that prohibits people from loitering for more than
seven minutes and exchanging small objects. Punishment is
two years in jail. Consider the scene in jail: "What'd
you do?" "I was waiting at a bus stop and gave a guy a
cigarette." This is not an impossible occurrence: In
Pittsburgh, Eugene Tyler, 15, has been ordered away from
bus stops by police officers. Sherman Jones, also 15, was
accosted with a police officer's hands around his neck
after putting the last bit of pizza crust into his mouth.
The police suspected him of hiding drugs.
PETITION FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES: Rounding out the
attacks on the first amendment, there is a sword hanging
over the right to petition for redress of grievances.
House Resolution 4079, the National Drug and Crime
Emergency Act, tries to "modify" the right to habeas
corpus. It sets time limits on the right of people in
custody to petition for redress and also limits the courts
in which such an appeal may be heard.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State, the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS: This amendment is so commonly
challenged that the movement has its own name: gun
control. Legislation banning various types of weapons is
supported with the claim that the weapons are not for
"legitimate" sporting purposes. This is a perversion of
the right to bear arms for two reasons. First, the basis
of freedom is not that permission to do legitimate things
is granted to the people, but rather that the government is
empowered to do a limited number of legitimate things --
everything else people are free to do; they do not need to
justify their choices. Second, should the need for defense
arise, it will not be hordes of deer that the security of a
free state needs to be defended from. Defense would be
needed against humans, whether external invaders or
internal oppressors. It is an unfortunate fact of life
that the guns that would be needed to defend the security
of a state are guns to attack people, not guns for sporting
purposes.
Firearms regulations also empower local officials, such as
police chiefs, to grant or deny permits. This results in
towns where only friends of people in the right places are
granted permits, or towns where women are generally denied
the right to carry a weapon for self-defense.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered
in any house, without the consent of the Owner,
nor in time of war, but in a manner to be
prescribed by law.
QUARTERING SOLDIERS: This amendment is fairly clean so
far, but it is not entirely safe. Recently, 200 troops in
camouflage dress with M-16s and helicopters swept through
Kings Ridge National Forest in Humboldt County, California.
In the process of searching for marijuana plants for four
days, soldiers assaulted people on private land with M-16s
and barred them from their own property. This might not be
a direct hit on the third amendment, but the disregard for
private property is uncomfortably close.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
RIGHT TO BE SECURE IN PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS AND EFFECTS
AGAINST UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES: The RICO law
is making a mockery of the right to be secure from seizure.
Entire stores of books or videotapes have been confiscated
based upon the presence of some sexually explicit items.
Bars, restaurants, or houses are taken from the owners
because employees or tenants sold drugs. In Volusia
County, Florida, Sheriff Robert Vogel and his officers stop
automobiles for contrived violations. If large amounts of
cash are found, the police confiscate it on the PRESUMPTION
that it is drug money -- even if there is no other evidence
and no charges are filed against the car's occupants. The
victims can get their money back only if they prove the
money was obtained legally. One couple got their money
back by proving it was an insurance settlement. Two other
men who tried to get their two thousand dollars back were
denied by the Florida courts.
RIGHT TO BE SECURE IN PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS AND EFFECTS
AGAINST UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES: A new law goes
into effect in Oklahoma on January 1, 1991. All property,
real and personal, is taxable, and citizens are required to
list all their personal property for tax assessors,
including household furniture, gold and silver plate,
musical instruments, watches, jewelry, and personal,
private, or professional libraries. If a citizen refuses
to list their property or is suspected of not listing
something, the law directs the assessor to visit and enter
the premises, getting a search warrant if necessary. Being
required to tell the state everything you own is not being
secure in one's home and effects.
NO WARRANTS SHALL ISSUE, BUT UPON PROBABLE CAUSE, SUPPORTED
BY OATH OR AFFIRMATION: As a supporting oath or
affirmation, reports of anonymous informants are accepted.
This practice has been condoned by the Supreme Court.
PARTICULARLY DESCRIBING THE PLACE TO BE SEARCHED AND
PERSONS OR THINGS TO BE SEIZED: Today's warrants do not
particularly describe the things to be seized -- they list
things that might be present. For example, if police are
making a drug raid, they will list weapons as things to be
searched for and seized. This is done not because the
police know of any weapons and can particularly describe
them, but because they allege people with drugs often have
weapons.
Both of the above apply to the warrant the Hudson, New
Hampshire, police used when they broke down Bruce Lavoie's
door at 5 a.m. with guns drawn and shot and killed him.
The warrant claimed information from an anonymous
informant, and it said, among other things, that guns were
to be seized. The mention of guns in the warrant was used
as reason to enter with guns drawn. Bruce Lavoie had no
guns. Bruce Lavoie was not secure from unreasonable search
and seizure -- nor is anybody else.
Other infringements on the fourth amendment include
roadblocks and the Boston Police detention of people based
on colors they are wearing (supposedly indicating gang
membership). And in Pittsburgh again, Eugene Tyler was
once searched because he was wearing sweat pants and a
plaid shirt -- police told him they heard many drug dealers
at that time were wearing sweat pants and plaid shirts.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital,
or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a
presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except
in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or
in the Militia, when in actual service in time of
War or public danger; nor shall any person be
subject to the same offence to be twice put in
jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled
in any criminal case to be a witness against
himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor shall
private property be taken for public use without
just compensation.
INDICTMENT OF A GRAND JURY: Kevin Bjornson has been
proprietor of Hydro-Tech for nearly a decade and is a
leading authority on hydroponic technology and cultivation.
On October 26, 1989, both locations of Hydro-Tech were
raided by the Drug Enforcement Administration. National
Drug Control Policy Director William Bennett has declared
that some indoor lighting and hydroponic equipment is
purchased by marijuana growers, so retailers and
wholesalers of such equipment are drug profiteers and
co-conspirators. Bjornson was not charged with any crime,
nor subpoenaed, issued a warrant, or arrested. No illegal
substances were found on his premises. Federal officials
were unable to convince grand juries to indict Bjornson.
By February, they had called scores of witnesses and
recalled many two or three times, but none of the grand
juries they convened decided there was reason to criminally
prosecute Bjornson. In spite of that, as of March, his
bank accounts were still frozen and none of the inventories
or records had been returned. Grand juries refused to
indict Bjornson, but the government is still penalizing
him.
TWICE PUT IN JEOPARDY OF LIFE OR LIMB: Members of the
McMartin family in California have been tried two or three
times for child abuse. Anthony Barnaby was tried for
murder (without evidence linking him to the crime) three
times before New Hampshire let him go.
COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: Oliver North
was forced to testify against himself. Congress granted
him immunity from having anything he said to them being
used as evidence against him, and then they required him to
talk. After he did so, what he said was used to find other
evidence which was used against him. The courts also play
games where you can be required to testify against yourself
if you testify at all.
COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: In the New York
Central Park assault case, three people were found guilty
of assault. But there was no physical evidence linking
them to the crime; semen did not match any of the
defendants. The only evidence the state had was
confessions. To obtain these confessions, the police
questioned a 15-year old without a parent present -- which
is illegal under New York state law. Police also refused
to let the subject's Big Brother, an attorney for the
Federal government, see him during questioning. Police
screamed "You better tell us what we want to hear and
cooperate or you are going to jail," at 14-year-old Antron
McCray, according to Bobby McCray, his father. Antron
McCray "confessed" after his father told him to, so that
police would release him. These people were coerced into
bearing witness against themselves, and those confessions
were used to convict them.
COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: Your answers to
Census questions are required by law, with a $100 penalty
for each question not answered. But people have been
evicted for giving honest Census answers. According to the
General Accounting Office, one of the most frequent ways
city governments use census information is to detect
illegal two-family dwellings. This has happened in
Montgomery County, Maryland; Pullman, Washington; and Long
Island, New York. The August 8, 1989, Wall Street Journal
reports this and other ways Census answers have been used
against the answerers.
COMPELLED TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST HIMSELF: Drug tests are
being required from more and more people, even when there
is no probable cause, no accident, and no suspicion of drug
use. Requiring people to take drug tests compels them to
provide evidence against themselves.
DEPRIVED OF LIFE, LIBERTY, OR PROPERTY WITHOUT DUE PROCESS
OF LAW: This clause is violated on each of the items life,
liberty, and property. Incidents including such violations
are described elsewhere in this article. Here are two
more: On March 26, 1987, in Jeffersontown, Kentucky,
Jeffrey Miles was killed by police officer John Rucker, who
was looking for a suspected drug dealer. Rucker had been
sent to the wrong house; Miles was not wanted by police.
He received no due process. In Detroit, $4,834 was seized
from a grocery store after dogs detected traces of cocaine
on three one-dollar bills in a cash register.
PRIVATE PROPERTY TAKEN FOR PUBLIC USE WITHOUT JUST
COMPENSATION: RICO is shredding this aspect of the Bill of
Rights. The money confiscated by Sheriff Vogel goes
directly into Vogel's budget; it is not regulated by the
legislature. Federal and local governments seize and
auction boats, buildings, and other property. Under RICO,
the government is seizing property without due process.
The victims are required to prove not only that they are
not guilty of a crime, but that they are entitled to their
property. Otherwise, the government auctions off the
property and keeps the proceeds.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall
enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by
an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed,
which district shall have been previously
ascertained by law, and to be informed of the
nature and cause of the accusation; to be
confronted with the witnesses against him; to
have compulsory process for obtaining Witnesses
in his favor, and to have the assistance of
counsel for his defence.
THE RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Surprisingly, the
right to a public trial is under attack. When Marion Barry
was being tried, the prosecution attempted to bar Louis
Farrakhan and George Stallings from the gallery. This
request was based on an allegation that they would send
silent and "impermissible messages" to the jurors. The
judge initially granted this request. One might argue that
the whole point of a public trial is to send a message to
all the participants: The message is that the public is
watching; the trial had better be fair.
BY AN IMPARTIAL JURY: The government does not even honor
the right to trial by an impartial jury. US District Judge
Edward Rafeedie is investigating improper influence on
jurors by US marshals in the Enrique Camarena case. US
marshals apparently illegally communicated with jurors
during deliberations.
OF THE STATE AND DISTRICT WHEREIN THE CRIME SHALL HAVE BEEN
COMMITTED: This is incredible, but Manuel Noriega is being
tried so far away from the place where he is alleged to
have committed crimes that the United States had to invade
another country and overturn a government to get him. Nor
is this a unique occurrence; in a matter separate from the
Camarena case, Judge Rafeedie was asked to dismiss charges
against Mexican gynecologist Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain
on the grounds that the doctor was illegally abducted from
his Guadalajara office in April and turned over to US
authorities.
TO BE INFORMED OF THE NATURE AND CAUSE OF THE ACCUSATION:
Steve Jackson Games, nearly put out of business by the raid
described previously, has been stonewalled by the SS. "For
the past month or so these guys have been insisting the
book wasn't the target of the raid, but they don't say what
the target was, or why they were critical of the book, or
why they won't give it back," Steve Jackson says. "They
have repeatedly denied we're targets but don't explain why
we've been made victims." Attorneys for SJG tried to find
out the basis for the search warrant that led to the raid
on SJG. But the application for that warrant was sealed by
order of the court and remained sealed at last report, in
July. Not only has the SS taken property and nearly
destroyed a publisher, it will not even explain the nature
and cause of the accusations that led to the raid.
TO BE CONFRONTED WITH THE WITNESSES AGAINST HIM: The courts
are beginning to play fast and loose with the right to
confront witnesses. Watch out for anonymous witnesses and
videotaped testimony.
TO HAVE COMPULSORY PROCESS FOR OBTAINING WITNESSES: Ronald
Reagan resisted submitting to subpoena and answering
questions about Irangate, claiming matters of national
security and executive privilege. A judge had to dismiss
some charges against Irangate participants because the
government refused to provide information subpoenaed by the
defendants. And one wonders if the government would go
to the same lengths to obtain witnesses for Manuel Noriega
as it did to capture him.
TO HAVE THE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL: The right to assistance
of counsel took a hit recently. Connecticut Judge Joseph
Sylvester is refusing to assign public defenders to people
ACCUSED of drug-related crimes, including drunk driving.
TO HAVE THE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL: RICO is also affecting
the right to have the assistance of counsel. The
government confiscates the money of an accused person,
which leaves them unable to hire attorneys. The IRS has
served summonses nationwide to defense attorneys, demanding
the names of clients who paid cash for fees exceeding
$10,000.
Amendment VII
In Suits at common law, where the value in
controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the
right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no
fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise
reexamined in any Court of the United States,
than according to the rules of common law.
RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY IN SUITS AT COMMON LAW: This is a
simple right; so far the government has not felt threatened
by it and has not made attacks on it that I am aware of.
This is our only remaining safe haven in the Bill of Rights.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor
excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
punishments inflicted.
EXCESSIVE BAIL AND FINES: Tallahatchie County in
Mississippi charges ten dollars a day to each person who
spends time in the jail, regardless of the length of stay
or the outcome of their trial. This means innocent people
are forced to pay. Marvin Willis was stuck in jail for 90
days trying to raise $2,500 bail on an assault charge. But
after he made that bail, he was kept imprisoned because he
could not pay the $900 rent Tallahatchie demanded. Nine
former inmates are suing the county for this practice.
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: House Resolution 4079
sticks its nose in here too: "... a Federal court shall
not hold prison or jail crowding unconstitutional under the
eighth amendment except to the extent that an individual
plaintiff inmate proves that the crowding causes the
infliction of cruel and unusual punishment of that
inmate."
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS: A life sentence for selling
a quarter of a gram of cocaine for $20 -- that is what
Ricky Isom was sentenced to in February in Cobb County,
Georgia. It was Isom's second conviction in two years, and
state law imposes a mandatory sentence. Even the judge
pronouncing the sentence thinks it is cruel; Judge Tom
Cauthorn expressed grave reservations before sentencing
Isom and Douglas Rucks (convicted of selling 3.5 grams of
cocaine in a separate but similar case). Judge Cauthorn
called the sentences "Draconian."
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain
rights, shall not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people.
OTHER RIGHTS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE: This amendment is so
weak today that I will ask not what infringements there are
on it but rather what exercise of it exists at all? What
law can you appeal to a court to find you not guilty of
violating because the law denies a right retained by you?
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.
POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES OR THE PEOPLE: This
amendment is also weak, although it is not so nonexistent
as the ninth amendment. But few states set their own speed
limits or drinking age limits. Today, we mostly think of
this country as the -- singular -- United States, rather
than a collection of states. This concentration of power
detaches laws from the desires of people -- and even of
states. House Resolution 4079 crops up again here -- it
uses financial incentives to get states to set specific
penalties for certain crimes. Making their own laws
certainly must be considered a right of the states, and
this right is being infringed upon.
Out of ten amendments, nine are under attack, most of them
under multiple attacks of different natures, and some of
them under a barrage. If this much of the Bill of Rights
is threatened, how can you be sure your rights are safe? A
right has to be there when you need it. Like insurance,
you cannot afford to wait until you need it and then set
about procuring it or ensuring it is available. Assurance
must be made in advance.
The bottom line here is that your rights are not safe. You
do not know when one of your rights will be violated. A
number of rights protect accused persons, and you may think
it is not important to protect the rights of criminals.
But if a right is not there for people accused of crimes,
it will not be there when you need it. With the Bill of
Rights in the sad condition described above, nobody can be
confident they will be able to exercise the rights to which
they are justly entitled. To preserve our rights for
ourselves in the future, we must defend them for everybody
today.

814
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Voila. Une miracle formidable! ;)))
Issue number two of Breakaway is here!
And this time, my Internet account won't make any trouble, 'cause
I've got a brand new account. So be sure to test it by submitting to
<vidarh@powertech.no> ;-)
By the way, a notice about the trouble with my account went out
to about half of the subscribers. To those who didn't receive it:
- If you have asked me questions, and didn't get any replies,
please mail me again.
- If you still haven't received issue #1, notify me.
Vidar Hokstad
Editor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BEGIN BREAKAWAY.002
B R E A K A W A Y
Debates on modern marxism
-+*+-
Issue no. 2, volume no. 1
June/July 1994
=======================================================================
CONTENTS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(00) EDITORIAL
(01) column: WHAT'S UP?
Some informal notes on issues we want to tell you about
(02) FIRST VICTIM OF THE REVOLUTION
Another poem...
(03) AUGUST MEETING
Red Forum needs a platform.
(04) column: A SEARCHLIGHT ON INTERNET
Revolutionary resources on the information highway
(05) column: READERS COMMENTS
got anything to say? do it here.
(06) series: FOR A NEW BEGINNING (1 of 2)
a critique of secterianism
(07) GENERAL INFORMATION
How and what to submit, how to contact us, etc.
=======================================================================
(00) EDITORIAL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally. Summer's coming. At least it gets hotter in the air here
up north.
So. Time to liven up. But where are we heading? How will we work
to get a step or two closer towards our goals the last half of 1994?
For we can't just sit back and dream. Revolution won't grow on
dreams.
Submissions might be one way to do something. Because unity can
only be achieved if we know what other people think; if we know what
we think ourselves.
By submissions, I'm naturally fishing for articles for Breakaway,
but not only that. In general: Write, submit, make noise. If you write
well, even bourgeois papers might occasionally print. And when they
don't: Complain, call the editor, resubmit your piece to another,
more progressive newspaper and tell them who didn't want to print it,
and what excuse they gave.
It's worth a try. Even if the only result is that *one* reader
takes the trouble of learning more about socialism.
It's up to you. Overflow your local newspaper with articles and
comments. And if they don't publish, maybe we will...
Keep writing!
Vidar Hokstad
Editor
BTW: I may not have made this clear enough before, so I make sure
I do this time. The contents of this zine need not reflect the policy
of Red Forum, even when I it's written by me. Unless an expressivly
say so, the views presented are those of the author.
=======================================================================
(01) column: WHAT'S UP?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Thursday 20th May, a meeting in the executive committee of the
Norwegian Communist Party's (NKP) section in Oslo and Akershus
declared to be in favor of supporting a computer project suggested
by Red Forum / IC economically.
Suggested investments went up to 50.000 NOK (7500 USD), with
RF/IC paying an additional 4000 USD over a 5 year period,
allowing RF / IC to start it's own BBS with UUCP connection to
USENET, in addition to using the system for DTP.
Unfortunately, on a meeting the 15th of June, the final decision
were postponed until August. However, it is clear that RFIC will
probably set up a UUCP site whatever the NCP decides.
On the meeting on the 15th, critique against the project was
mainly directed towards the emphasis on information gathering
through electronic media, and the role of RFIC. An important
argument for the project is that the NCP will be unable to
provide the same facilities for producing it's party news-
paper without cooperation with RFIC.
- Breakaway #1 was advertized in three rounds in a series of USENET
conferences, and by June 28th, it had been distributed to
subscribers from USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Australia, France,
Spain, South-Africa, Ireland and Germany. I continued getting
responses to one of the posts for more than 6 weeks after it
was posted.
- Bourgeois censorship? The postal strike[1] in northern Germany
throughout this month was barely mentioned in Norwegian media. It
was if the whole thing wasn't happening, and our only source for
updated info turned out to be GermNews <germnews@vm.gmd.de> (news
from Germany in German, edited by some guy in Berlin).
But really, we should've expected this. Telling people about
the suggested "Postreform II", which in essence is the bourgeois
forces in the Bundestags attempt at selling the entire German
postal service to the highest-bidder, would certainly not
increase the popularity of the European Union which our social-
democratic government continues to insist is the best way to
secure social-democratic values (Notice that they stopped saying
"socialist values" about 15 years ago...).
Breakaway welcomes your comments on this and similar matters.
Do you find news on the net or elsewhere which is ignored by
bourgeoise newspapers and TV-stations? Tell us about it.
- Norwegians: In a short time, if everything turn out the way we
want to, we will be able to distribute selected articles from
"Friheten" through e-mail. Mail me if you want to subscribe.
This is meant to be the first step in providing material from
leftist newspapers through e-mail, and in a few weeks several
other revolutionary newspapers in Norway will receive the
same offer.
Be sure to specify whether you only want to receive the index
(to request selected articles later), or the full text.
We also welcome initiative from our subscribers when it
comes to providing material from newspapers outside Norway.
- Information about membership in Red Forum / IC can now
be obtained from me. Request the file info/Membership.
- Request submission guidelines by asking for the file
info/Submissions
----
[1] The German "postal" service includes the divisions "Postbank" and
"Telecom" in addition to mail delivery, and have about 670.000
employees.
=======================================================================
(02) FIRST VICTIM OF THE REVOLUTION
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I saw a glimpse
of our future tonight.
Misery were thrown toward my eyes,
opression like today,
but most of all a spark
of hope.
In each and every
socalled "home"
man discussed his future.
Misery forced him
into action.
And as days went by in pain,
there were each and every day
another one
that whispered in the dark
a little,
long forgotten,
word.
But fear
it brought
when someone
in broad daylight
stood up straight and
dared to scream
- Revolution
and was shot.
=======================================================================
(03) AUGUST MEETING
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It is quite some time since Red Forum was formed, and it was
decided to prepare a basic platform. Not much have been done, and now
summer's threatening :-) Meetings close to summer vacation have to
many times proved _impossible_... So, final decision concerning our
platform have been postponed until August.
But that does not mean that we won't do any work before that.
Presented here are some of the results of what have been done, with
explanations of the circumstances under which it has been done.
We hereby invite all RF / IC members, as well as Breakaway readers,
and others, to send us comments, alternative platforms (or just the
platform of _your_ favorite organization), criticism etc. We promise
that any input will be discussed at our meeting (unless we are drowning
in documents...), and at least an extensive summary of what we receive
will be published in Breakaway.
Since we plan to include as much as possible in Breakaway, and
to make as much of what we can't include in Breakaway publicly
accessibly by other means (from this autumn hopefully a series of
listserv / mailserver services), to as wide a public as possible,
we would prefer to receive documents in English, but if a) you have
printed documents you think would be of interest, or b) you feel
unable to express your ideas clear enough in English, we will at least
read, and quite possibly also translate, documents received in French,
German, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.
Vidar Hokstad <vidarh@powertech.no>
Red Forum / Internationalists Committee
PS: Unfortunately, it has during my work on issue #2 of Breakaway
become clear that the person that were supposed to provide us with a
draft for discussion haven't been able to do so in time. The
mauscript, or another draft, will therefore make it to Breakaway at
earliest in time for Breakaway #3.
Because of this, this section may seems a litle strange. It was
meant to include the draft, in addition to two or three other short
pieces with comments, which all have been left out.
VIDAR HOKSTAD: On the "Oslo meeting" in February
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It was still winter, and cold. Colder than the last years. The
streets were filled with snow, and walking out of the train station, I
think we all wished we'd lived somewhere warmer.
We were fewer than expected as we reached the offices of the
Norwegian Communist Party, where our meeting were to be held. Still
the meeting was attended by members from a broad range of
organisations.
The agenda of the meeting was nothing less than to form a new
revolutionary organisation. It wasn't a new party we wanted to build,
but an organisation that could try to unify through open debate, and
to spread information about marxism to new people, outside our
movement, and especially youth.
As in many other industrialized countries, the revolutionary left
have since long been dying in Norway. After the maoist movement stopped
attracting new youth in the middle of the seventies, almost no more
members came, and the old ones literally started dying.
However, with Gorbachev, new hopes strated growing. Even though
many of us, looking back, believe that Gorbachev was a lousy leader,
he should still be admired for freeing the revolutionary movement of
the curse which the Soviet union, and the "socialist" countries in
eastern Europe have been.
Finally it was possible for us to talk freely about the sacred
dogmas, the fanatical love directed towards the October revolution
1917, the admiration of Stalin because of his warfare against Hitler
(how could he not fight Hitler, a man who treatened his reign, a
competitor for the "crown"?), without being insulted; being called
petty-bourgeois, traitor, or "worse": Trotskyite.[1]
The main part of our meeting consisted of avoiding "difficult"
matters. Red Forum was never meant to be an organisation with views
about everything - the different parties and groups have thos views.
Too many of them. We wanted an organisation open to everyone,
everywhere, that accepts a basic platform, that consider themselves
marxists and revolutionaries, that are consequent internationalists.
The firm programme, the strong party line, is not something that
can be voted on by a small group. The revolutionary party, in my
opinion an international party, can only be formed by uniting the
existing movement, by bringing at least the majority of existing
groups and tendencies together.
It will take years, but continuous debates internally in the
movement will sooner or later bring the unity that is neccesary;
an unity that will be forced upon us as the threat from capitalist
regimes in crisis, scared capitalists, grow stronger.
One of the results of these principles were that we decided to
wait before creating a thorough program. We agreed that instead,
for a few months, giving us time to discuss, and to bring more
people into the forum, the following would do:
- Red Forum is a forum for the discussion of Marxist theory and
politics based on a revolutionary, internationlist foundation.
This is the foundation on which we invite new people to join
Red Forum / IC (so let me se some new members now ;), and which
provide a minimal basis for the work we have started doing. It is
not a foundation that can give us easy solutions to the daily
political struggle, but for this we have our respective parties.
It is a foundation which we hope will bring together, at first,
a small, geographically and politically, widespread group of people
to discuss new ways for the Marxist movement to escape from the
secterianism that have polluted the left for decades.
Applications for membership are encouraged. No fees are charged
at present, but expect this to change after the August meeting.
V.H.
----
[1] But secteric organisations still claim to be a guiding light for us
all here too. It's less than a month ago a member of "the ML group
Revolution" published an article covering an entire A3 page in the NCP
party newspaper, trying to insult me by calling me a "pettybourgeois
trotskyite" after I had criticized Stalin in the same newspaper on the
1st of May.
=======================================================================
(04) column: A SEARCHLIGHT ON INTERNET
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* Pathfinder Press
GOPHER: ftp.std.com in '/Book Sellers'
Pathfinder Press specializes in publishing revolutionary and
working-class leaders in their own words, including Malcolm X, Nelson
Mandela, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
It should be noted that Pathfinder is closely related to Militant
if I'm not mistaken...
* Book Stacks Unlimited Inc.
TELNET: books.com
Even though they're certainly not "progressive", it is possible
to find quite a lot of books by leftist writers among their 270.000
titles, even Marx. From my position, with the prices of books here
in Norway, it seemed cheap.
* Agora BBS
TELNET: agora.stm.it
BBS of the Italian Radical party, supporting 7 different languages.
(English, French, German, Italian, Esperanto, Russian and Spanish If
I remember correcly, It's a long time since I tested it). Even though
the interface is cumbersome, the system might contain some useful
information.
=======================================================================
(05) READERS COMMENTS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Notice that I will not usually reply to critique on political
issues in the same issue as the letter is published. Replies will be
published at _earliest_ the issue after the letter, however admin-
istrative questions and comments, as well as direct questions to me
will be answered at once.
Also, when you write to me, please state clearly whether your
comment is a submission or not. If you don't, don't blame me if I
don't treat them as you intended.
Ed.
----
To: Vidar
From: Jack Hill <mlbooks@mercury.mcs.com>
Dear Vidar,
I still haven't had time to work up any real thorough critique of the
first issue of Breakaway. However, I do have a few thoughts and
comments that I would like to share with you.
Let me say first of all that roughly speaking I agree with your
analysis of what is the situation facing Marxist theory and those who
want to apply it to the current political and economic struggles. What
I mean is that we agree that Marxism is essential for the liberation of
the working class and all the oppressed; that it has been trampled on,
distorted, and mutilated by a wide variety of forces who claimed to be
communists; that we face a huge struggle to restore the good name of
communism.
One place where I think we don't see completely eye to eye, is in how
to characterize the regimes in Russia, Eastern Europe, China and
elsewhere which abandoned Marxism (or in some cases, never followed
it). You seem to want to call all these bureaucratic regimes
"Stalinist". I'm not sure that is an adequate characterization. I do
think they were all state capitalist regimes, but they varied quite a
bit among themselves in terms of how they came to power, how they
maintained it, to what extent they had popular support. Maoism is a
revisionist theory but it is not the same as Stalinism. There are a
lot of varieties of revisionism in the world and we have to look at all
of them carefully. Another related point is that I think the evidence
is clear that the Chinese revolution in particular produced substantial
advances for the Chinese masses. In other words I think the Chinese
revolution was a genuine popular revolution although the party which
led it was not a proletarian Marxist-Leninist party. So that when we
denounce Maoism, we are not denouncing the epic revolutionary struggle
of the Chinese people.
Anyway, there is a lot of theoretical sorting out to do get rid of the
mountains of historical garbage and re-establish a genuine, scientific
and revolutionary Marxist theory. The Marxist-Leninist Party, in my
opinion, did some very good historical research into some of these
questions, but there are a lot more questions yet to be cleared up. As
one example, comrades in Chicago did very extensive research into the
women's movement and the struggles for women's liberation in early
Soviet Russia. We will be publishing a book bringing together our
articles and research in the next couple of months.
There is a lot more to be said on this but I don't have time right now.
I have a couple other less political comments. Personally I didn't
care much for the poem you published. I prefer literature which more
directly attacks the "system" in one way or another. Have you heard of
Struggle magazine? I'll send you a copy in the mail. The editor and I
have been politically associated for over 25 years.
The other point is not major and I'm not sure if I should ever mention
it but I will. I don't want to sound too harsh or overly critical, but
my point is that there were some spots in that first issue where the
English could have been improved. All your main points came through
clearly enough, so I don't want to make too big a deal out of this.
But for maximum clarity, it could probably use a little more work.
So, good job! Hang in there. I'm looking forward to the next issue.
While I'm at it I will send you a couple other things that I didn't
send you before. There is a May First leaflet we put out, an exchange
I had on PNEWS Conferences about the dissolution of the MLP, and the
editorial of Struggle magazine which I posted to PNEWS.
Keep up the struggle,
Jack Hill
----
Editors comments:
- When it comes to fiction, we'll probably annoy quite a few of you,
because a lot of what we publish will be experimental in a lot of ways,
and very much of it related to Cyberpunk. The reason? The taste of
the editor, and the people I relate to, and "steal" material from.
The only way to change this is by actually submitting...
So: All of you that write fiction, submit. That's the only way of
increasing the diversity of this zine.
- When it comes to improving grammar and style, please feel free to
comment. Especially help on which terms to use etc. will be
appreciated, as translating texts on politics in general, and marxism
in particular, demands quite a lot of terms that certainly can't be
translated directly, and were it often is little help in a dictionary.
The problem is certainly not reduced by the fact that we have to
rely on translations done entirely by people with English as their
second language.
If anyone feel they can contribute: I would be extremely grateful
if someone offers to read through material to check the language every
now and then, or, even better, volunteer to help translating when (if)
we get hold of material in languages you master.
Apart from that? Well, I _will_ give my views with regards to Jack's
other comments in the next issue, so watch out... ;)
=======================================================================
(06) FOR A NEW BEGINNING (1 of 2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I received the following article from Dave Hollis some time ago, and
even though the article is quite long, I decided to edit it only
slightly. The unedited text is available on request. To let Dave
himself tell you about the background (quoted from the message he
sent me):
" The following article was written by myself for a conference of
people who came out of a trotskyist organisation. Over 1.5 years ago I
did so myself. The article is an attempt to elaborate experiences made
in German and the UK on the questions of sectarianism and democratic
centralism. "
FOR A NEW BEGINNING
Written by Dave Hollis <ln_dho@pki-nbg.philips.de>
Co-authored by Maggie McQuillan
Please contact the author before republishing the article.
It is lamentable that he [Ted Grant] has allowed his political
authority to be used by people whose main concern is not to
clarify ideas but to cause the maximum damage to Militant.
One unfortunate feature of political life is the spiteful urge
of former activists to justify their defection by hurling
allegations of heinous political crimes at their former
comrades.
(Militant, 24/1/1992)
The action to spread these lies outside the organisation, is a
despicable attempt to sabotage our work, which arises from
pure spite ...
(A Reply to PBy, RWe, JG)
The current developments in England come as no surprise to us. The
decision we took to leave over a year and a half ago was based on the
understanding that the new organisation was not fundamentally different
from the old one. We realised and said then that it was only a
question of time until a new split would take place. The formation of
the "Democratic Platform" days after the world conference was only an
harbinger of the events that were to follow.
I have avoided commenting up to now on the events taking place in the
"Socialist Appeal". Although a pamphlet was dedicated to us and we
were used as a stick to beat the "Democratic Platform" with, I chose to
remain silent. It was not a case of being unable to answer the
accusations and the points made, it was quite simply that I, and
others, had put this sect behind us.
Given that a discussion is now beginning to take place on how one
should go forward, I feel that the time is now appropriate to comment
on the current events, relate our experiences and put forward what I
consider has to be done. I recommend all Comrades to read the document
Bruno wrote shortly after we left, "How and what must be Discussed".
It contains a concise explanation of the state of thinking in Germany
at that time and what we considered to be the next steps.
Before I go into details, I would like to put the question of Pat's
role in Germany straight. Despite what the leaders of sect number two
think or want to believe, there was no secret activity between the
"Democratic Platform" and the German group. There was no one pulling
our strings. In addition, anyone with a degree of political
understanding could have seen that there were (and most probably are) a
number of political disagreements between us.
An author is often betrayed by the language used when writing or
speaking. This is very much case in the article "answering" Pat,
Julian and Roy. For instance, why does the second sect talk about a
"conspiracy"? Why do comrades act "in spite", and so on? It is
necessary to look into the reasons why people react in such a way. For
instance, why do members of such an organisation view those who leave
as "betrayers" who, to add insult to injury, are also considered to be
acting "in spite"?
The answer to these questions lies in understanding that we are dealing
here with a typical behaviour of a sect.
SECTS
One thing that strikes me when thinking back to the definition of a
sect in the Militant and Socialist Appeal, is the fact that a sect is
defined by its inability to build a mass base. At best, this
definition is only half the truth and at worse, it is totally false.
What characterises a sect is not its inability to build but its
internal workings - how the members relate to each other, how they
react to "outsiders", etc. A sect is a group of people who follow a
particular teaching and consider every other teaching to be wrong and
dangerous. To put it another way: a sect is the belief of a group of
people that their "model" of how society is to be interpreted is the
one and only truth.
This definition does not quite capture the real nature of a sect. What
is also important is that psychological factors play the main role. A
sect is held together by beliefs. Either you accept them and you are a
member, otherwise you have no place within it. The loyalty to the
organisation is not based on a conscious understanding of its aims, it
is loyalty to the group. The members "function", they mostly do not
act consciously. The smaller the organisation the greater the part
played by psychological factors. It is no accident that such
organisations have their idols and "great leaders". It is also no
accident that the feeling of "us" and "them" was nurtured in Militant
and Socialist Appeal. The "family feeling" is a prerequisite for the
functioning of a sect.
The Jehovah Witnesses have their bible, a Marxist organisation has the
works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky or whoever.
This way of thinking leads unavoidably its members to considering those
who disagree with their point of view to be "not loyal", "spiteful",
out to cause damage, etc. Those who become "dissidents" are countered
in the main by insults and not by arguments. For most of the members
of Militant it was only necessary to put us into a particular
compartment, accuse us of departing from Marxism and that was that -
and it worked! In both sects we experienced this, I don't think I have
to elaborate further.
One particular analogy that springs to mind is that of looking at
membership of a sect as being like a marriage. To leave a sect is like
getting divorced. It is neither easy, nor is it without pain.
As is the case with other subjects, there is still a lot that needs to
be written on this. In passing, I would just like to mention the
following aspects not discussed in this article: martyrdom, sacrifices
for the cause and assimilation. They are worth an article in
themselves. Unfortunately, time is pressing - I want to finish this
article before your conference and not afterwards. One of the most
painful but most interesting revelations for me was the discovery that
the workings of a political and a religious sect are more less
identical and that all "cadre" organisations I have met up to know
operate in the same way.
At first I found it hard to believe this. Since leaving the second
sect, however, I have spoken with a number of people who were also
members of "cadre" organisations and have found out that the behaviour
experienced was always strikingly similar.
I can imagine the howls of rage at such statements. I hope, however,
that no one was offended. Whoever feels offended should think over
very carefully why this is the case.
There are many obvious behaviours that indicate the presence of a
political sect. A few examples: The inability to think for oneself,
the repetition of the "line", blind loyalty, the inability to question
a point of view, the "functioning" of the members, the inability to
understand someone else's point of view.
Comrades who do not believe this should ask themselves a few questions:
Did not the old organisations talk about their faith in the working
class? What place does "faith" have for people who consider themselves
to be "Marxists"? Either we are talking about a science or we are
talking about a religion. It is necessary to decide which of the two
possibilities we want. Why does the resolution on the founding of the
new (old) International talk about being based on the first four
congresses of the Communist International? Is it not obvious to anyone
who claims to be a Marxist that resolutions passed over seventy years
ago are very unlikely to have any bearing on the economical and
political situation of today? The references to the writings of the
'great teachers' are just as bad.
In passing, the attempt by such organisations to justify their program
and actions by reference to such things or people is religious activity
at its purest.
As we only know too well (see the resolution on the founding of the
"International" passed at Tarrogona), an attempt is made to build a
line of tradition backwards to particular "gurus" or whatever. The
organisation stands at the front of this line as the natural
continuation of the best traditions of the past. However, it is
overseen that this is religion. Religion is re-ligio - a backwards
connection to a mystical beginning.
Once a political organisation has laid claim to this "revolutionary
continuity", the question of a programme's content is also solved.
Either the timeless validity of programmes out of the past are insisted
upon or parts of various programmes are eclectically thrown together.
I remember very clearly Ted not being happy with our idea in Germany of
writing a new political program, i.e. a manifesto. "What do you need
it for, you have the Transitional Programme" -as if the world had stood
still for the past fifty years! It is no wonder that in such
organisations practices characteristic of religious sects quickly
manifest themselves ...
...continued in Breakaway #3
=======================================================================
(07) GENERAL INFORMATION
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A reduced "General Information" column from now on, not to use
all the space repeating the same info...
Breakaway will be published as often as we have enough material.
"Enough" is at present about 30kb of text, but this might increase
if we get enough submissions. Under any circumstances we'll limit
ourselves to 30kb until we reach one issue every two weeks. (Probably
won't happen in your lifetime ;-)
The format is, as you can see, pure 7-bit ASCII.
Do you:
- want to subscribe?
- have an idea?
- have a question?
- want to submit, and want to know how?
Just send us a message, preferably by e-mail, and we'll send you
appropriate information as soon as possible. To ensure that we can
reply, please include your e-mail address in the body of the message.
SOME BRIEF NOTES ON SUBMISSIONS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* BREAKAWAY will accept articles from people belonging to all trends
or ideologies related to marxism, or from people who are simply
interested in marxist theory or practice.
* You should limit yourself to articles between 100 and 300 lines if
possible (shorter pieces will naturally also be accepted). If you
find that difficult, try to divide your article into shorter
sections suitable for publishing over two to four issues.
* We will publish most articles or news reports we receive concerning
marxist ideology, the actions of marxist organisations, or
information of importance to the average revolutionary. Also
fiction might be accepted (contact us for more info)
* We accept anonymous submissions. However, if you choose to do so,
we would prefer if you give us a pseudonym to use as your
signature.
How to contact Red Forum / Internationalists Committee:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor : Vidar Hokstad
E-mail : <vidarh@powertech.no>
Snailmail : Boks 30, N-2001 Lillestroem, NORWAY
Tel. : +47 638 170 35 (5pm to 9pm GMT)
=======================================================================
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
=======================================================================
END BREAKAWAY.002

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@ -0,0 +1,909 @@
Again delayed...
This time partly on purpose. Finally we've gotten a listserver to
take care of mailing out Breakaway, and I wanted to wait until it was all
set up, so that I didn't have to mail out hundreds of issues manually
again...
Vidar Hokstad <vidarh@powertech.no>
Editor
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BEGIN BREAKAWAY.003
B R E A K A W A Y
Debates on modern marxism
-+*+-
Issue no. 3, volume no. 1
August/September 1994
=======================================================================
CONTENTS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(00) EDITORIAL
(01) column: WHAT'S UP?
Some informal notes on issues we want to tell you about
(02) STATE CAPITALISM AND STALINISM
An attempt at a reply to Jack Hills letter in issue #2
(04) column: A SEARCHLIGHT ON INTERNET
Revolutionary resources on the information highway
(05) column: ANNOUNCEMENTS
Red Orange ?!? What's that?
(06) series: FOR A NEW BEGINNING (2 of 2)
a critique of secterianism
(07) GENERAL INFORMATION
How and what to submit, how to contact us, etc.
=======================================================================
(00) EDITORIAL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you!
The last two months my mailbox have been overflowing. Allthough
the number of submissions still is low, the amount of subscription
requests, interesting info, and positive feedback mailed to me have
been overwealming.
It is certainly enough socialists out on the net to justify this
publication.
The beauty of the net, is the lack of distribution-problems due to
geographical issues. For a truly international movement, the net is a
blessing of similar importance today, as the railroad was when Marx and
Engels wrote their famous _Manifesto_[1]. What before took years, can
today be done in weeks - the human factor being the last barrier...
We are as users of the net witnessing capitalism create the
ultimate tool for the working class to use. The final weapon to turn
against them. An anarchic structure where the number of voices crying
out their opinions into cyberspace is finally more important than the
money of the bourgeoisie.
Watch the drama unfold, as capitalist companies struggle to make
net access available to us all at low cost, so that we can turn it
against them even more easily, or wither away as loosers in an ever
hardening competition.
Look around you, and see virtual worlds, empires, of information,
be created, live and die, in an accelerating cycle of "living
knowledge" - the net is a medium in which a creation will never be
finished, never will be finite, but always lies open for new
exploration and new enhancements.
Enter the age of the virtual commune...
Vidar Hokstad
Editor
----
[1] "And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages,
with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern
proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years."
=======================================================================
(01) column: WHAT'S UP?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
- After a few series of adverts on a series of USENET conferences
and mailing-lists the numbers of subscribers practically went
through the roof. On 1th of July, shortly after my first round of
advertising for issue #2, 15 subscription requests arrived
during my less than an hour online that day (and several more had
arrived before I logged on), and that was only the beginning...
Breakaway is now distributed to subscribers in (sorted after
numbers of subscribers) USA, UK, Canada, France, Norway, Germany,
Ireland, Australia, South-Africa, Spain, Finland, New Zealand,
Sweden and South-Korea!
Most of our subscribers (approx. 60%) comes from the US. Breakaway
has also been uploaded to a few local BBS's around the world.
I would especially like to welcome our first subscriber in
South-Korea, who, in spite of the political oppression, still
takes the chance involved with subscribing to Breakaway. The
South-Korean government have, as naby of you will know, a
reputation for imprisoning revolutionaries, and I doubt they'd
like Breakaway very much...
- Breakaway is now archived in the ftp archive at
etext.archive.umich.edu in the directory /pub/Zines/Breakaway.
Another archive is expected soon...
- Red Forum have recently gotten it's own gopher archive at the
EDIN gopher. In addition to general information about Red Forum,
the archive also contains material from Breakaway, and a pointer
to the archive mentioned above. Try gopher to garnet.berkeley.edu,
port 1520, 1521 or 1522, and select "13. Political Movements and
Theory/", then "2. Socialist Political Groups/", and finally
"3. Non-US Socialist Organizations/" to find us.
- I've adjusted the size of Breakaway up to approx. 40kb from this
issue.
- The Red Forum meeting will be in late September or early October
instead of August.
- Two mailing-lists have been set up. One for Breakaway, and another
one as a discussion list for Breakaway subscribers and RFIC
members.
The address is "majordomo@powertech.no". Send a message with
"help" in the body to retrieve informations about the commands
at your disposal, or use "lists" to get a list of all the lists
administrated by Powertech (our service provider).
The discussion list may possibly not be set up correctly when you
read this. I'll post a short notice to the Breakaway mailing list
as soon as it is working. You will *NOT* be automatically
subscribed to this list even if you subscribe to Breakaway.
- Breakaway is now also available on WWW. Select the URL
"http://www.ifi.uio.no/~vidarh/" (my homepage) from Mosaic or Lynx,
or go directly to the Breakaway archive by adding "Breakaway/" to
the above URL. Starting with issue #4, most material will be
available on the web before it is being mailed out, since it
will be written in a custom SGML format, and converted to HTML
(for WWW), ASCII, and AmigaGuide.
For more info about World Wide Web, send mail to info@cern.ch
(automatic mailer)
The WWW editions will be _updated_ with current addresses, more
links etc. However, no new entries will be added.
=======================================================================
(02) STATE CAPITALISM AND STALINISM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
An attempt at a reply to Jack Hills letter in issue #2, and more... [1]
I agree that naming all regimes "Stalinist" without a closer
examination, is to simple. But let me try to explain this
simplification.
Jack stated, in my opinion correctly, that the Chinese revolution
originated as a popular revolution despite the degeneration that
followed it, and the party that led it. This is an assertion that
seems to provide us with a major difference between the development in
China and Russia, as there are differences between Stalinism, defined
strictly as _Stalins theory and practice_, contrary to using Stalinism
in a broad sense for denoting any state capitalist regime using
communist symbolism, and Maoism.
And yes, Maoism is revisionistic where stalinism is reactionary.
While Stalinism were in effect, with it's bureaucratic system, trying to
reverse the process of building capitalism, Maoism was, at the time,
a force of liberation.
Even the Russian revolution was a popular revolution, allthough the
_October revolution_ did not have the support of the majority. In the
same way as the great French revolution of 1789 didn't consist of just
one attack on the establishment, but a series of struggles, the Russian
revolution was a process that at least must be said to include the
overthrowing of the Czar regime in February 1917, and later the October
Revolution, but which could be extended in both directions: Towards
the uprisings in 1905, and throughout the end of of Lenins life.
Or even further...
Some would even claim that the Russian revolution didn't finish it's
task before the State-Capitalist regime was overthrown, and Russia
finally got to experience the curse of developed capitalism in a
"free market" environment.
My opinion is that this is going too far. As always, history has
shown us some of it's innumerable variations, by providing us with a
series of "socialist" revolutions which all degenerated into state
capitalism. State capitalism has earned a position as an independent
stage in the development of our world at a place where we before only
knew the direct transition from feudalism to capitalism, as it had
happened in the developed countries.
State capitalism has earned a position as an intermediate step on
the underdeveloped countries way to capitalism, as socialism[2] by most
communists are seen as an intermediate step on our way towards
communism.
Again roughly simplified, Maoism played the role equivalent to the
role of Leninism in Russia. In the same way as Leninism, Maoism was an
adaption of Marxism to a severly underdeveloped, perhaps even non-existent
capitalism. It meant the inclusion of the poor peasants into the proletariat,
even though we have been able to witness how large parts of these peasants
didn't share the interests of the proletariat.
There's a lot to criticize about both Lenin and Mao, but there's little
doubt about their intent.
I don't feel I can say the same about Stalin. And it would be highly
unfair to call Mao China's Stalin.
True, good intent is no excuse for oppression, but there _is_ a
difference between unwillingly causing death by starvation, and organized,
well planned, executions. There _is_ a difference between causing the
creation of an oppressive regime by not foreseeing the consequences of
what you do, and actually intentionally strenghtening oppression.
Still the errors of Mao _and_ Lenin must be openly discussed, and
the crimes they _did_ commit condemned, as the actions of any revolutionary
must be constantly under attack by ourselves - we can't expect to win a war
against capitalism, if we don't dare to fight minor battles with our
comrades of fear that we might be wrong.
But we must also we very aware about what we are doing, and be careful
not to throw away the experiences, and ideas, that actually are worth using,
and developing.
What about state capitalism, then?
Certainly there must be valuable experiences to be extracted from the
state capitalist regimes, and conclusions to be made?
In opposition to some trends, I do not see state capitalism as a
highly developed capitalism, ready for the socialist revolution, but
as a backward regime created out of combining the political inheritance
from a feudalist past with the awakening capitalist economic structures.
As such, the development in China, towards a market economy controlled
by a highly totalitarian government is no surprise. Similar tendencies
could be seen in Europe during the early years of capitalist economy.
We just hadn't a good word for it until recently[3]
History always repeats itself, but it has a bad memory. It never
replicates the exact same patters over and over again. Like the
Mandelbrot set of fractals: the further you move from your point of
origin, the larger the differences, but changes never appear suddenly -
the patterns seems to go through a slow metamorphosis.
The revolutions of China and Russia have many differences. But
these are minor, cosmetic, differences. The main tendencies, the
radicalisation, and then degenerisation, of a bourgeoisie revolution,
are the same.
This tendency we find in every bourgeoisie revolution, but only
in the underdeveloped countries the bourgeoisie is weak enough to let
this radicalisation continue to a point where it causes the seizure
of state power by a vanguardist minority _strong enough to keep it_.
We remember from the French Revolution of 1789 a phase of
radicalisation. But this phase was ended by reactionary forces,
creating another dictature, and thus it isn't suitable for the
capitalists when they look for ways to fight communism.
They find their weapons in the "socialist" revolutions - the
revolutions where the bourgeoisie finds regimes that looks like
their visions of communism. For can their reign be ended without
replacing it with _another_ oppressive force? And won't this force
be the _state_? This is the nightmare the capitalists envision.
Their reign _will_ be replaced by new oppression. Not the state,
or rather not the state as in bourgeoisie terminology. It will by
neccessity be the dictatorship of the majority, of the proletariat.
But it will also be the democracy of the many instead of the few.
Here lies the problems of the "socialist revolutions". Until
now, they have been seizure of power by an elite - a minority - that
haven't understood that the time had not yet come for socialism.
To build socialism in countries that lack most fundamental goods,
that can't fulfill the basic needs of their populations, will
inevitably end in oppression:
The vanguardist parties will always be haunted by people in search
of power, by people that want more than their share. In a country
where poverty rules, how can you escape poverty? By seizing power
for yourself, by becoming emperor...
In a country with ONE party, or at least only one party with
power, which party do you turn to if power is what you want?
Vidar Hokstad <vidarh@powertech.no>
----
[1] Please note that the inclusion of Jack's letter in issue #2 was an
error on my behalf - the letter was not meant to be published. However
I've chosen still to comment on the issues he mentioned, because I find
the problems he rises interesting. I would like to hear more opinions
on these questions. Submissions are especially welcome, but write even
if you don't want to submit (just make sure you state that clearly,
so I don't mess up again...).
[2] That is, the political system, not the ideology or ideologies.
[3] It should also be noted that while early western capitalism
certainly showed remarkable resemblances to state capitalism as the
term is used here, there were also distinct differences - again the
natural variations of history? Or are the differences more fundamental?
I won't go into that now. Any comments?
=======================================================================
(04) column: A SEARCHLIGHT ON INTERNET
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* CPUSA
E-MAIL: communistpty@igc.apc.com,
pww@igc.apc.com (Peoples Weekly World)
timwheeler@igc.apc.com (PWW editor Tim Wheeler)
Communist Party of USA. Publishes Peoples Weekly World, and the
theoretical journal Political Affairs. Their youth organization is
YCL - Young Communist League.
* Marxism (mailing-list)
E-MAIL: marxism-request@world.std.com (majordomo)
marxism-approval@world.std.com (the list moderator)
The Marxism list have had a steady stream of messages, and have
established itself as one of the more high-volume leftist lists.
It's highly focused on academic questions, but should still provide
interesting reading for others - at least you'd probably have no
problems getting enough suggestions for what to read ;)
* Marxist Leninist Bookstore
E-MAIL: <mlbooks@mcs.com>
Jack Hill writes:
" Actually, this is just an e-mail address that
the Chicago Workers' Voice (a small Marxist-Leninist political group
in Chicago, formerly the Chicago branch of the Marxist-Leninist Party
(USA) ) uses to exchange views and information on political issues.
We publish two periodicals: an agitational newsletter _The Chicago
Workers' Voice_/_Voz Obrera_ in English and Spanish, and _The Chicago
Workers' Voice Theoretical Journal_. I would certainly be willing to
send anyone who requests it the text of our agitational articles. I
can also inform anyone who asks what are the contents of our
theoretical journal. Each issue runs about 240-250K so it would be hard
to sent out the whole journal by e-mail, but I might be able to send
individual articles if someone is really interested. Of course, if I
start getting hundreds of requests, I may have to reconsider this offer.
M-L Books is an actual bookstore located in a storefront in the
Mexican community of Chicago. We have been in this community for 15
years. We have a wide variety of titles of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in
English and Spanish. Our prices are generally low, since much of our
stock was acquired years ago at low prices. I don't have a complete
listing of our current stock with current prices, but if there is a
title you want, let me know. We can probably help you.
Keep up the struggle.
Jack Hill <mlbooks@mcs.com>"
* Committees of Correspondence
GOPHER: See the EDIN gopher below.
LIST: cocdiscuss@garnet.berkeley.edu (The CocDiscuss list)
newman@garnet.berkeley.edu (the list moderator)
* EDIN gopher
GOPHER: garnet.berkeley.edu (ports 1520/1521/1522)
E-MAIL: newman@garnet.berkeley.edu (Nathan Newman)
The EDIN gopher is one of the main resources for revolutionary and
other progressive groups on the Net. Apart from pointers to a wide range
of leftist organization on the Internet, it contains massive information
about human rights organizations, economics etc., and pointers to tons
of other info. An absolute _must_. Red Forum can also be found here.
The maintainer, Nathan Newman, is highly active on Usenet, and also
moderates the Committees of Correspondence discussion list - CocDiscuss.
* Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus
GOPHER:
USENET: cl.gruppen.pds
E-MAIL: PDS-BLV@IPN-B.comlink.de (PDS Landesvorstand Berlin)
Notice that this entry is by no means complete. The PDS have an
extensive list of e-mail addresses to a long range of local sections and
members of their party. The few addresses mentioned here have been taken
from the newsgroup "cl.gruppen.pds".
* Archiv fuer marxistische Theorie
EMAIL: CHRONIK@LINK-S.cl.sub.de
=======================================================================
(05) ANNOUNCEMENTS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
RED ORANGE
A Marxist Triquarterly of Theory, Politics, and the Everyday
Robert A. Nowlan, Chief Editor
Robert J. Cymbala, Managing Editor
The inaugural issue of Red Orange will be published in the spring
of 1995. Red Orange will contribute to the positive development of
revolutionary Marxist knowledges of contemporary capitalist economics,
politics, society, and culture. Red Orange will include critical,
theoretical, and pedagogical articles of sustained length, as well as a
dossier of briefer writings which deal with developments in popular
consciousness and mass culture. Red Orange will produce work that is
engaged in systematic investigation and explanation, and which is
concerned with extending and developing revolutionary Marxist critical
theory of capitalist society and culture. Red Orange will argue for the
necessary theoretical and political priority of such concepts as class,
class conflict and struggle, class consciousness, history, materiality,
mode of production, forces and relations of production, labor,
proletariat, revolution, socialism, communism, dialectics, ideology,
theory, and critique.
The first issue of Red Orange will begin to investigate the broad
topic of "Late Capitalism at the Fin-de-Siecle." This focus will
continue throughout the first year as the second and third issues of Red
Orange will (tentatively) focus upon the specific topics of market and
commodity culture (issue two) and globality, globalism, and global
post-ality (issue three) in fin-de-siecle late capitalism. We invite
submissions for this first and for the subsequent second and third
issues of Red Orange that focus on the development of revolutionary
Marxist critical theory of, and intellectual-pedagogical intervention
within, various institutions, discourses, practices, and social
relations of fin-de-siecle late capitalism. We invite submissions from
across the full range of traditional academic-intellectual
"disciplines." We are also particularly interested in articles which
will address the related question -- in the course of their
investigation of fin-de-siecle late capitalist economics, politics,
society, and culture -- of How and Why, on the Advent of the
Twenty-First Century, the Revolutionary Socialist Transformation of
Capitalism into Communism is -- Still -- Possible and -- Still --
Necessary.
Texts and inquiries should be addressed to Red Orange, Post Office
Box 1055, Tempe, AZ, 85280-1055, U.S.A.
=======================================================================
(06) FOR A NEW BEGINNING (2 of 2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Dave Hollis <ln_dho@pki-nbg.philips.de>
Co-authored by Maggie McQuillan
Please contact the author before republishing the article.
... continued from Breakaway #2
Democratic Centralism
Democratic centralism is usually justified by saying that it originates
out of the organisation the workers give themselves in struggle.
Leaving aside for a moment that its historical roots were completely
different, let me try and examine the concept as such.
Instinctively, the idea of democratically deciding and then acting
together is very appealing - at least in the cases when one is fighting
the class enemy. For a revolutionary organisation, however, democratic
centralism has meant and means something else.
Democratic centralism is usually defined as being "freedom of
discussion and unity of action". This definition, taken from Lenin
himself, doesn't tell the whole story. A democratic centralist
organisation is based on a separation of the task of leadership from
the task of carrying out the decisions. This separation takes the
form, in the best case, of a yearly election of a central or national
committee.
Whatever name this committee may have, I think that no one will
contradict me in saying that it has the right to lead the organisation
and take decisions in its name which are then binding on the members.
Before going into the ramifications of such powers, it is very
important to note that such a division of labour is nothing more than a
reproduction of the capitalist model of parliamentary democracy in a
workers' organisation. Instead of the majority leading the
organisation we have the majority drawing up the leaders. As is the
case with parliamentary elections when electing MPs, the rank and file
does not lead an organisation and the people do not lead parliament
because the leaders are elected at regular intervals.
The effects of the separation described above are not at first glance
apparent. To understand them it is necessary to not only investigate
the practical consequences of democratic centralism on the workings of
a political organisation, but also to look into what effects it has on
the minds of the members.
As experienced in the previous two sects, democratic centralism
required of the members that they put forward its programme and
policies when working within the movement. This makes it very
difficult for the members to question and develop differing ideas to
those internally agreed.
One could of course counter by saying that one can discuss anything
with anyone. However it should be obvious that members will feel
"obliged" to put forward the "line" in public and not develop ones
ideas in a dialogue with the workers. A tendency can and will develop
that engenders conformity, something very unhealthy for a revolutionary
organisation. Furthermore, it is very easy for a feeling to develop of
"us" and "them" - something we have already had more than enough
experience of in the past. The underlying processes at work here are
by no means easy to depict. Attitudes are shaped by an organisation
but an organisation is also shaped by attitudes. Cause and effect will
change places more than once
Ideas when taken up by people become a material force in their own
right. Separating the overwhelming majority of the members from the
decision making process has consequences that go a lot further than
depicted up to now.
A tendency will develop, as is the case in almost any workers'
organisation, of loyalty and acceptance of the leaders. Those who
decide will also be those who appear to be competent in the eyes of the
members. If the organisation grows, i.e. it is successful, the
position of the leadership will be strengthened, a bureaucracy can then
develop. If the organisation declines, it is by no means said that the
leadership will be weakened [1]. How often in the history of the labour
movement have leaderships survived bad decisions because of the loyalty
of the members? Leaderships of Stalinist organisations, for example,
have often committed great crimes against their members and still
survived to tell the story!
Looking through the documents of the factional struggle within
Militant, it immediately becomes apparent that the force of ideas were
by no means sufficient to break the loyalty built up in the leadership.
Loyalty to a leadership - be it blind or conscious - is poison for a
revolutionary organisation. This point has to be seen in context of
what I wrote above on sectarianism and the psychological background of
loyalty.
The development of loyalties, the inability to question ideas, to
understand differing ideas shows that democratic checks, as important
as they undoubtedly are, are in now way sufficient to prevent an
organisation from degenerating. To put it another way, there is always
a need for democratic checks when the organisation in question has un-
democratic traits in it right from the word go!
Bureaucratic centralism, or bureaucratism in general, begins with the
separation of the leaders from the rest, i.e. those who carry out the
decisions. As soon as no active control takes place - be it due to the
structure of the organisation or because the members do not want to -
bureaucratism will be the result. It must be the result.
Up till now, I have looked into the effects of democratic centralism in
the organisation itself. I would like to now portray how democratic
centralism affects the political work in the movement. In passing, it
should be obvious that the criticisms of democratic centralism are, in
a slightly modified form, just as applicable and relevant to the
organisations of the labour movement, i.e. the trade unions and the
Labour Party.
The discussion on the merits or otherwise of democratic centralism are
by no means new. Both Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky criticized in
detail, and independently of each other, Lenin's organisation concept.
Rosa Luxemburg's contribution appeared in English under the title
Organizational Question of Russian Social Democracy. Although the
translation is terrible, the translator managed to get the meaning more
or less across - the article is well worth a read. Trotsky's pamphlet,
Our Political Tasks, was published in 1904 in Russian and also
translated in 1970 into German.
One of Trotsky's criticisms of Lenin's organisation concept concerned
the question of self-activity, i.e. the ability of the working class
to act by itself. In Lenin's concept this self-activity was given
narrow bounds.
In contrast, Trotsky saw the main task of the Social Democracy as being
one of stimulating and fostering this self-activity. Trotsky saw in
Lenin's plans an obstacle for the development of political
consciousness of the proletariat. Moreover he saw the danger that the
party, due to its not legitimated claim to hegemony with regard to the
working class and the resulting strict separation from the proletariat,
taking up such a sectarian position that the proletariat could turn its
back on the party at the decisive moment.
Lenin's formal centralism would not lead to its declared aim, the
strengthening of the party, but, instead, to the danger of the
separation of the working class from the party. Trotsky saw the
guarantee for the party's stability "in an active and self-active
participating proletariat and not in its organisational head".
Trotsky counterposed to democratic centralism the concept of
democratic centralisation, i.e. a centralisation from below. In his
view, this centralisation can only be the majority will of the rank
and file organisations, which exercise a continuous control over their
delegates. To give a flavor and the direction of Trotsky's
criticisms, here are a few passages from his pamphlet:
"The system of political substitution is, as is the system of
'economistic' simplification, derived consciously or
unconsciously from a 'sophistic' understanding of the
relationship of the objective interests of the proletariat to its
consciousness. Marxism teaches that the interests of the
proletariat are determined by its objective conditions of
existence. These interests are so imperious that they in the end
cause the proletariat to transfer them into the area of its
consciousness, i.e. to reach its objective interests by its
subjective needs. Between both these factors - the objective
factor of its class interests and its subjective consciousness -
lies, in reality unavoidable, road of knocks and blows, mistakes
and disappointments, vicissitudes and defeats. For the tactical
wisdom of the party of the proletariat, the whole task lies
between these two planes, it consists in shortening and
facilitating the road from the one to another."
"... If the Economists do not lead in this way the proletariat
because it trots behind them, the 'politicians' also do not lead
the proletariat because they are themselves looking to perform
their duties. If the Economists shirk their colossal tasks by
devoting themselves to a modest role, to march at the tail of
history, the 'politicians' solve the question by making history
to its own tail..."
"We revolutionize the masses badly or well (mostly badly) by
waking in them their elementary political instincts. However, as
long as it is the question of the complex tasks of transforming
these instincts into the conscious efforts of a political working
class determined by the class itself, we resort to the short and
simplified methods of the thoughts of standing in for others and
substitution.
In the internal politics of the party, these methods lead, as we
will see, to the party organisation replacing the party itself,
the CC replacing the party's organisation and finally a dictator
replacing the CC; furthermore, these methods lead to the
committees creating and abolishing the 'lines', while 'the people
remain silent'. In the external politics, these methods appear
in the attempts to exert pressure on other social organisations,
not by the real power of the proletarian conscious of its own
interests but by the abstract power of the class interests of the
proletariat."
"We are speaking of the absolute necessity of the creation of
party members, of conscious social democrats, not, however, of
simple skilled 'detail workers'- and one answers us: 'That goes
without saying'. What does that mean? For whom does 'that' go
without saying? Does 'that' go without saying in the context of
our party work, i.e. does the creation of political thinking
party comrades an absolute, integral part of it?"
"Every thought that promotes the technical principle of the
division of labour to the principle of social democratic
organisation, consciously or unconsciously acquires the final
unavoidable consequence: the separation of consciousness and
implementation, the separation of social democratic thought from
technical functions by means of which these thoughts must
necessarily be realised. The 'organisation of professional
revolutionaries', more precisely its head, appears as the centre
of social democratic consciousness and underneath this centre,
the disciplined executors of technical functions are to be
found."
Originally, I planned at this point to look into the historical
background of democratic centralism in some detail. Due to lack of
time, I can only skirt over the subject. If enough interest is
present, I can into this subject in some detail.
If one reads 'What is to be Done', Lenin states clearly that his
organisational model stems from a terrorist organisation, 'Land and
Freedom'. Moreover, his ideas were based on an amalgamation of the
Marxism of the 2. International (in particular the German Marxism of
Kautsky) with the traditions of the Russian revolutionary
intelligentsia.
The idea taken directly from Kautsky that the proletariat is only
capable of developing a trade union consciousness and therefore the
bourgeois intelligentsia, collected in the Social Democracy, is
required to 'bring in' a socialist consciousness into the working
class, determined Lenin's organisational concept.
Despite the fact that Lenin modified his views on this subject under
pressure from without, the organisational principles derived from this
false understanding of the question of socialist consciousness
remained. The idea that the ideas of socialism are not to be explained
by the material conditions but instead are to viewed as a question of
science, higher morals and a successful propaganda activity, have since
this time bedevilled the labour movement.
The ideas of separating out the tasks of leadership, i.e. the
separation detailed above, also have their roots in this false
understanding of the question of socialist consciousness. Instead of
it being a question of the working class being able to free itself from
the chains of capitalism, this mentality leads to this question being
reduced to a technical problem that can only be solved by technicians.
Slowly, surely and unavoidably, the whole concept of socialism is
robbed of its human content: "We have the solution and you have to put
it into practice". Having experienced this way of thinking more than
once and over a long period of time, I think I can say that this way of
thinking was prevalent in the sects.
Instead of a conclusion
It is easy to criticize, it is easy to know better. I was tempted -
despite the shortness of time available to me - to pick up on a number
of points made in the documents for your national meeting. What struck
me on reading them however, is that it is very unclear as to what you
consider to be your tasks.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. What sort of
organisation is required and for what purpose? It is stated in the
document Establishing a new Tradition that there is a tremendous
political vacuum existing in the current world situation.
Unfortunately, it is much more than a vacuum. The ideas of socialism,
i.e. that the workers can take charge of society, have been
discredited and most probably for a whole historical period. The
rediscovery of these ideas can only take place over a long period of
time. As we have already said in Germany, it is not even clear whether
these new ideas will acquire the name "Socialism".
What alternatives are there going to be, how they are going to look,
etc. will only result from a long period of discussion in and with the
labour movement and also by learning from experiences. One very
important part of these discussions will undoubtedly be a reappraisal
of the history of the labour movement and its ideas. This reappraisal
will require socialists having to leave no stone unturned and really
questioning things we have always taken for granted.
From what I have said in the article as a whole, revolutionaries will
have to take more account of a number of things that it has never
really done to any great degree in the past. Life has changed a lot
since the "great teachers". Either one has to learn to come to terms
with this fact and draw the necessary conclusions otherwise how things
will end up will be clear right from the word go - sect No. 3!
To hold comrades together just on the basis of ideas is not going to be
a simple task. Once the pressure is off, those comrades who have
missed out on life up to know will want to catch up. Some, or perhaps
many, will leave politics altogether.
Life is no longer going to be rosy or easy. There are no simple
solutions and to call for the nationalization of the top 200 monopolies
at every appropriate and inappropriate occasion is not going to help
either. Only by understanding what went wrong in the past and why it
went wrong, is it possible to build for the future. The form and
content this will take are still very unclear - if we recognize this
fact, there is a chance that we can do it better. But only if we do
so!
Dave Hollis, 15.4.94
P.S. This document was written in a hurry and under pressure from an
ongoing struggle against redundancies. It would have been impossible
to have written it without the help and critical comments of Maggie
McQuillan, who agrees with the main lines of argument and conclusions.
In this sense, the document should be considered to have been co-
authored by her. All grammatical mistakes, mis-spellings, etc. are,
of course my responsibility.
----
[1] In fact, often the leadership have been _strengthened_, since it
generally is the opposition that leaves the organisation first, leaving
the sinking ship in an even worse condition than before. Editors remark
=======================================================================
(07) GENERAL INFORMATION
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END BREAKAWAY.003

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from the Amnet Civil Liberties BBS, Chicago
-------------------------------------------
BUGS, TAPS AND INFILTRATORS: WHAT TO DO ABOUT POLITICAL SPYING
by Linda Lotz
American Friends Service Committee
Organizations involved in controversial issues -- particularly those who
encourage or assist members to commit civil disobedience -- should be alert to
the possibility of surveillance and disruption by police or federal agencies.
During the last three decades, many individuals and organizations were spied
upon, wiretapped, their personal lives dirupted in an effort to draw them away
from their political work, and their organizations infiltrated. Hundreds of
thousands of pages of evidence from agencies such as the FBI and CIA were
obtained by Congressional inquiries headed by Senator Frank Church and
Representative Otis Pike, others were obtained through use of the Freedom of
Information Act and as a result of lawsuits seeking damages for First
Amendment violations.
Despite the public outcry to these revelations, the apparatus remains in place,
and federal agencies have been given increased powers by the Reagan
Administration.
Good organizers should be acquainted with this sordid part of American history,
and with the signs that may indicate their group is the target of an
investigation.
HOWEVER, DO NOT LET PARANOIA IMMOBILIZE YOU. The results of paranoia and
overreaction to evidence of surveillance can be just as disruptive to an
organization as an actual infiltrator or disruption campaign.
This document is a brief outline of what to look for -- and what to do if you
think your group is the subject of an investigation. This is meant to suggest
possible actions, and is not intended to provide legal advice.
POSSIBLE EVIDENCE OF GOVERNMENT SPYING
|| OBVIOUS SURVEILLANCE
Look for:
* Visits by police or federal agents to politically involved individuals,
landlords, employers, family members or business associates. These visits may
be to ask for information, to encourage or create possibility of eviction or
termination of employment, or to create pressure for the person to stop his or
her political involvement.
* Uniformed or plainclothes officers taking pictures of people entering your
office or participating in your activities. Just before and during
demonstrations and other public events, check the area including windows and
rooftops for photographers. (Credentialling press can help to separate the
media from the spies.)
* People who seem out of place. If they come to your office or attend your
events, greet them as potential members. Try to determine if they are really
interested in your issues -- or just your members!
* People writing down license plate numbers of cars and other vehicles in
the vicinity of your meetings and rallies.
Despite local legislation and several court orders limiting policy spying
activities, these investigatory practices have been generally found to be
legal unless significant "chilling" of constitutional rights can be proved.
|| TELEPHONE PROBLEMS:
Electronic surveillance equipment is now so sophisticated that you should not
be able to tell if your telephone converstaions are being monitored. Clicks,
whirrs, and other noises probably indicate a problem in the telephone line or
other equipment.
For example, the National Security Agency has the technology to monitor
microwave communications traffic, and to isolate all calls to or from a
particular line, or to listen for key words that activate a tape recording
device. Laser beams and "spike" microphones can detect sound waves hitting
walls and window panes, and then transmit those waves for recording. In these
cases, there is little chance that the subject would be able to find out about
the surveillance.
Among the possible signs you may find are:
* Hearing a tape recording of a conversation you, or someone else in your
home or office, have recently held.
* Hearing people talking about your activities when you try to use the
telephone.
* Losing service several days before major events.
Government use of electronic surveillance is governed by two laws, the Omnibus
Crime Control and Safe Streets Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. Warrants for such surveillance can be obtained if there is evidence of a
federal crime, such as murder, drug trafficking, or crimes characteristic of
organized crime, or for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence
information available within the U.S. In the latter case, an "agent of a
foreign power" can be defined as a representative of a foriegn government,
from a faction or opposition group, or foreign based political groups.
|| MAIL PROBLEMS:
Because of traditional difficulties with the US Postal Service, some problems
with mail delivery will occur, such as a machine catching an end of an envelope
and tearing it, or a bag getting lost and delaying delivery.
However, a pattern of problems may occur because of political intelligence
gathering:
* Envelopes may have been opened prior to reaching their destination;
contents were removed and/or switched with other mail. Remember that the glue
on envelopes doesn't work as well when volume or bulk mailings are involved.
* Mail may arrive late, on a regular basis different from others in your
neighborhood.
* Mail may never arrive.
There are currently two kinds of surveillance permitted with regards to mail:
the mail cover, and opening of mail. The simplest, and least intrusive form is
the "mail cover" in which postal employees simply list any information that can
be obtained from the envelope, or opening second, third or fourth class mail.
Opening of first class mail requires a warrant unless it is believed to hold
drugs .... More leeway is given for opening first class international mail.
|| BURGLARIES:
A common practice during the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)
was the use of surreptitious entries or "black bag jobs." Bureau agents were
given special training in burglary, key reproduction, etc. for use in entering
homes and offices. In some cases, keys could be obtained from "loyal American"
landlords or building owners.
Typical indicators are:
* Files, including membership and financial reports, are rifled, copied or
stolen.
* Items of obvious financial value are left untouched.
* Equipment vital to the organization may be broken or stolen, such as
typewriters, printing machinery, and computers.
* Signs of a political motive are left, such as putting a membership list or
a poster from an important event in an obvious place.
Although warrantless domestic security searches are in violation of the Fourth
Amendment, and any evidence obtained this way cannot be used in criminal
proceedings, the Reagan Administration and most recent Presidents (excepting
Carter) have asserted the inherent authority to conduct searches against those
viewed as agents of a foreign power.
|| INFORMERS AND INFILTRATORS:
Information about an organization or individual can also be obtined by placing
an informer or infiltrator. This person may be a police officer, employee of a
federal agency, someone who has been charged or convicted of criminal activity
and has agreed to "help" instead of serve time, or anyone from the public.
Once someone joins an organization for the purposes of gathering information,
the line between data gathering and participation blurs. Two types of
infiltrators result -- those who are under "deep cover" and adapt to the
lifestyle of the people they are infiltrating, and agents provocateurs.
Deep-cover infiltrators may maintain their cover for many years, and an
organization may never know who these people are. Agents provocateurs are more
visible, because they will deliberately attempt to disrupt or lead the group
into illegal activites. They often become involved just as an event or crisis
is occurring, and leave town or drop out after the organizing slows down.
An agent may:
* Volunteer for tasks which provide access to important meetings and papers
such as financial records, membership lists, minutes and confidential files.
* Not follow through or complete tasks, or else do them poorly despite an
obvious ability to do good work.
* Cause problems for a group such as commiting it to activities or expenses
without following proper channels, or urge the group to plan activities that
divide group unity.
* Seem to create or be in the middle of personal or political difference that
slow the work of the group.
* Seek the public spotlight, in the name of your group, and then make
comments or present an image different from the rest of the group.
* Urge the use of violence or breaking the law, and provide information and
resources to enable such ventures.
* Have no obvious source of income over a period of time, or have more money
available than his or her job should pay.
* Charge other people with being agents (a process called snitch-jackets),
thereby diverting attention from him or herself, and draining the group's
energy from other work.
THESE ARE NOT THE ONLY SIGNS, NOR IS A PERSON WHO FITS SEVERAL OF THESE
CATEGORIES NECESSARILY AN AGENT. BE EXTREMELY CAUTIONS AND DO NOT CALL ANOTHER
PERSON AN AGENT WITHOUT HAVING SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.
Courts have consistently found that an invividual who provides information,
even if it is incriminating, to an informer has not had his or her
Constitutional rights violated. This includes the use of tape recorders or
electronic transmitters as well.
Lawsuits in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere, alleging infiltration of lawful
political groups, have resulted in court orders limiting the use of police
informers and infiltrators. However, this does not affect activities of federal
agencies.
|| IF YOU FIND EVIDENCE OF SURVEILLANCE:
* Hold a meeting to discuss spying and harassment
* Determine if any of your members have experienced any harassment or noticed
any surveillance activities that appear to be directed at the organization's
activities. Carefully record all the details of these and see if any patterns
develop.
* Review past suspicious activities or difficulties in your group. Have one
or several people been involved in many of these events? List other possible
"evidence" of infiltration.
* Develop internal policy on how the group should respond to any possible
surveillance or suspicious actions. Decide who should be the contact person(s),
what information should be recorded, what process to follow during any event or
demonstration if disruption tactics are used.
* Consider holding a public meeting to discuss spying in your community and
around the country. Schedule a speaker or film discussing political
surveillance.
* Make sure to protect important documents or computer disks, by keeping a
second copy in a separate, secret location. Use fireproof, locked cabinets if
possible.
* Implement a sign-in policy for your office and/or meetings. This is helpful
for your organizing, developing a mailing list, and can provide evidence that
an infiltrator or informer was at your meeting. Appoint a contact for spying
concerns. This contact person or committee should implement the policy
developed above and should be given authority to act, to get others to respond
should any problems occur.
The contact should:
* Seek someone familiar with surveillance history and law, such as the local
chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the American Civil Liberties Union, the
National Conference of Black Lawyers or the American Friends Service Committee.
Brief them about your evidence and suspicions. They will be able to make
suggestions about actions to take, as well as organizing and legal contacts.
* Maintain a file of all suspected or confirmed experiences of surveillance
and disruption. Include: date, place, time, who was present, a complete
description of everything that happened, and any comments explaining the
context of the event or showing what impact the event had on the individual or
organization. If this is put in deposition form and signed, it can be used as
evidence in court.
* Under the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act, request any files
on the organization from federal agencies such as the FBI, CIA, Immigration and
Naturalization, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, etc. File similar
requests with local and state law enforcement agencies, if your state freedom
of information act applies.
|| PREPARE FOR MAJOR DEMONSTRATIONS AND EVENTS:
* Plan ahead; brief your legal workers on appropriate state and federal
statutes on police and federal officials spying. Discuss whether photographing
with still or video cameras is anticipated and decide if you want to challenge
it.
* If you anticipate surveillance, brief reporters who are expected to cover
the event, and provide them with materials about past surveillance by your
city's police in the past, and/or against other activitists throughout the
country.
* Tell the participants when surveillance is anticipated and discuss what
the group's response will be. Also, decide how to handle provocateurs, police
violence, etc. and incorporate this into any affinity group, marshall or other
training.
|| DURING THE EVENT:
* Carefully monitor the crowd, looking for surveillance or possible
disruption tactics. Photograph any suspicious or questionable activities.
* Approach police officer(s) seen engaging in questionable activities.
Consider having a legal worker and/or press person monitor their actions.
|| IF YOU SUSPECT SOMEONE IS AN INFILTRATOR:
* Try to obtain information about his or her background: where s/he attended
high school and college; place of employment, and other pieces of history.
Attempt to verify this information.
* Check public records which include employment; this can include voter
registation, mortgages or other debt filings, etc.
* Check listings of police academy graduates, if available.
|| ONCE YOU OBTAIN EVIDENCE THAT SOMEONE IS AN INFILTRATOR:
* Confront him or her in a protected setting, such as a small meeting with
several other key members of your group (and an attorney if available).
Present the evidence and ask for the person's response.
* You should plan how to inform your members about the infiltration,
gathering information about what the person did while a part of the group and
determining any additional impact s/he may have had.
* You should consider contacting the press with evidence of the infiltration.
|| IF YOU CAN ONLY GATHER CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, BUT ARE CONCERNED THAT THE
PERSON IS DISRUPTING THE GROUP:
* Hold a strategy session with key leadership as to how to handle the
troublesome person.
* Confront the troublemaker, and lay out why the person is disrupting the
organization. Set guidelines for further involvement and carefully monitor the
person's activities. If the problems continue, consider asking the person to
leave the organization.
* If sufficient evidence is then gathered which indicates s/he is an
infiltrator, confront the person with the information in front of witnesses
and carefully watch reactions.
* Request an investigation or make a formal complaint
* Report telephone difficulties to your local and long distance carriers.
Ask for a check on the lines to assure that the equipment is working properly.
Ask them to do a sweep/check to see if any wiretap equipment is attached
(Sometimes repair staff can be very helpful in this way.) If you can afford it,
request a sweep of your phone and office or home from a private security firm.
Remember this will only be good at the time that the sweep is done.
* File a formal complaint with the US Postal Service, specifying the problems
you have been experiencing, specific dates, and other details. If mail has
failed to arrive, ask the Post Office to trace the envelope or package.
* Request a formal inquiry by the police, if you have been the subject of
surveillance or infiltration. Describe any offending actions by police
officers and ask a variety of questions. If an activity was photographed, ask
what will be done with the pictures. Set a time when you expect a reply from
the police chief. Inform members of the City Council and the press of your
request.
* If you are not pleased with the results of the police chief's reply, file
a complaint with the Police Board or other administrative body. Demand a full
investigation. Work with investigators to insure that all witnesses are
contacted. Monitor the investigation and respond publicy to the conclusions.
* Initiate a lawsuit if applicable federal or local statutes have been
violated. Before embarking on a lawsuit, remember that most suits take many
years to complete and require tremendous amounts of organizers' and legal
workers' energy and money.
* Always notify the press when you have a good story; keep interested
reporters updated on any new developments. They may be aware of other police
abuses, or be able to obtain further evidence of police practices. Press
coverage of spying activities is very important, because publicity-conscious
politicians and police chiefs will be held accountable for questionable
practices.
Prepared by:
Linda Lotz
American Friends Service Committee
980 North Fair Oaks Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

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-------------------------------------------
President Bush's Address to the Nation
Wednesday, January 16, 1991, 9:00 PM E.S.T.
-------------------------------------------
Just two hours ago, Allied Air forces began an attack on military
targets in Iraq and Kuwait. These attacks continue as I speak.
Ground forces are not engaged.
This conflict started August 2d, when the dictator of Iraq
invaded a small and helpless neighbor. Kuwait, a member of the
Arab league and a member of the United Nations, was crushed; its
people brutalized. Five months ago Saddam Hussein started this
cruel war against Kuwait. Tonight, the battle has been joined.
This military action, taken in accord with United Nations
resolutions, and with the consent of the United States Congrees,
follows months of constant and virtually endless diplomatic
activity on the part on the United Nations, the United States,
and many, many other countries. Arab leaders sought what became
known as an Arab solution only to conclude that Saddam Hussein
was unwilling to leave Kuwait. Others traveled to Baghdad, and a
variety of efforts to restore peace and justice. Our Secretary
of State, James Baker, held an historic meeting in Geneva, only
to be totally rebuffed. This past weekend, in a last ditch
effort, the Secretary General of the United Nations went to the
Middle East, with peace in his heart - his second such mission.
And he came back from Baghdad with no progress at all in getting
Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. Now, the 28 countries
with forces in the Gulf area, have exhausted all reasonable
efforts to reach a peaceful resolution, have no choice but to
drive Saddam from Kuwait by force. We will not fail.
As I report to you, air attacks are underway against
military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam
Hussein's nuclear bomb potential; we will also destroy his
chemical weapons facilities; much of Saddam's artillery and tanks
will be destroyed. Our operations are designed to best protect
the lives of all the coalition forces by targeting Saddam's vast
military arsenal. Initial reports from General Schwarzkopf are
that our operations are proceeding according to plan. Our
objectives are clear : Saddam Hussein's forces will leave Kuwait,
the legitimate government of Kuwait will be restored to its
rightful place, and Kuwait will once again be free. Iraq will
eventually comply with all relevant United Nations resolutions
and then, when peace is restored, it is our hope, that Iraq will
live as a peaceful and cooperative member of the family of
nations, thus enhancing the security and stability of the Gulf.
Some may ask, "Why act now, why not wait?" The answer is
clear : The world could wait no longer. Sanctions, though having
some effect, showed no signs of accomplishing their objective.
Sanctions were tried for well over five months, and we and our
allies concluded that sanctions alone would not force Saddam from
Kuwait.
While the world waited, Saddam Hussein systematically raped,
pillaged, and plundered a tiny nation no threat to his own. He
subjected the people of Kuwait to unspeakable atrocities. And
among those maimed and murdered - innocent children. While the
world waited, Saddam sought to add to the chemical weapons
arsenal he now possesses - an infinitely more dangerous weapon of
mass destruction - a nuclear weapon. And while the world waited,
while the world talked peace and withdraw, Saddam Hussein dug in
and moved massive forces into Kuwait. While the world waited,
while Saddam stalled, more damage was being done to the fragile
economies of the third world, emerging democracies of Eastern
Europe, to the entire world including to our own economy. The
United States, together with the United Nations, exhausted every
means at our disposal to bring this crisis to a peaceful end.
However, Saddam clearly felt, that by stalling and threatening
and defying the United Nations, he could weaken the forces
arrayed against him. While the world waited, Saddam Hussein met
every overture of peace with open contempt. While the world
prayed for peace, Saddam prepared for war.
I had hoped, that when the United States Congress, in
historic debate, took its resolute action, Saddam would realize
he could not prevail, and would move out of Kuwait in accord with
the United Nation resolutions. He did not do that. Instead, he
remained intransigent, certain that time was on his side. Saddam
was warned over and over again to comply with the will of the
United Nations - "Leave Kuwait or be driven out." Saddam has
arrogantly rejected all warnings. Instead he tried to make this
a dispute between Iraq and the United States of America. Well he
failed.
Tonight, 28 nations, countries from five continents : Europe
and Asia, Africa and the Arab league, have forces in the Gulf
area, standing shoulder to shoulder against Saddam Hussein.
These countries had hoped the use of force could be avoided.
Regrettably, we now believe that only force will make him leave.
Prior to ordering our forces into battle I instructed our
military commanders to take every necessary step to prevail as
quickly as possible. And with the greatest degree of protection
possible for American and Allied servicemen and women. I've told
the American people before, that this will not be another
Vietnam. And I repeat this here tonight, our troops will have
the best possible support in the entire world. And they will not
be asked to fight with one hand tied behind their back. I'm
hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long, and that
casualties will be held to an absolute minimum.
This is an historic moment. We have, in this past year,
made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold
war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves
and for future generations a new world order. A world where the
rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of
nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real
chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible
United Nations can use its peace-keeping role to fulfill the
promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders.
We have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed, for
the innocents caught in this conflict, I pray for their safety.
Our goal is not the conquest of Iraq. It is the liberation of
Kuwait. It is my hope that somehow the Iraqi people can, even
now, convince their dictator that he must lay down his arms,
leave Kuwait, and let Iraq itself rejoin the family of peace
loving nations. Thomas Paine wrote, many years ago, "These are
the times that try mens' souls." Those well known words are so
very true today. But even as planes of the multi national forces
attack Iraq, I prefer to think of peace, not war. I'm convinced,
not only that we will prevail, but that out of the horror of
combat, will come the recognition that no nation can stand
against a world united. No nation will be permitted to brutally
assault its neighbor.
No president can easily commit our sons and daughters to
war. They are the nation's finest. Ours is an all volunteer
force, magnificently trained, highly motivated. The troops know
why they're there. And listen to what they say. For they've
said it better than any president or prime minister ever could.
Listen to Hollywood Huddleston, Marine Lance Corporal. He says,
"Let's free these people so we can go home and be free again."
And he's right. The terrible crimes and tortures committed by
Saddam's henchmen against the innocent people of Kuwait are an
affront to mankind and a challenge to the freedom of all. Listen
to one of our great officers out there. Marine Lieutenant
General Walter Boomer. He said, "There are things worth fighting
for. A world in which brutality and lawlessness are allowed to
go unchecked isn't the kind of world we're going to want to live
in." Listen to Master Sergeant J.P. Kendel of the 82nd Airborne.
"We're here for more than just the price of a gallon of gas.
What we're doing is going to chart the future of the world for
the next hundred years. Its better to deal with this guy now,
then five years from now." And finally, we should all sit up and
listen to Jackie Jones, an Army lieutenant, when she says, "If we
let him get away with this, who knows what's going to be next."
I've called upon Hollywood and Walter and J.P. and Jackie, and
all their courageous comrades in arms, to do what must be done.
Tonight, America and the world are deeply grateful to them,
and to their families. And let me say to everyone listening or
watching tonight, when the troops we've sent in finish their
work, I'm determined to bring them home as soon as possible.
Tonight, as our forces fight, they and their families are in our
prayers. May God bless each and every one of them, and the
coalition forces at our side in the Gulf, and may he continue to
bless our nation, the United States of America.

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The recent "Buy American" hysteria has raised the question of just
which common products are, in fact, made by American companies.
Here's a quiz:
1. The parent company of Braun household appliances is:
a) Swiss; b) German; c) American; d) Japanese
2. Bic pens are:
a) Japanese; b) Czech; c) American; d) French
3. The maker of Haagen-Dazs ice cream is based in:
a) France; b) Sweden; c) Britain; d) America
4. RCA televisions are made by a company based in:
a) Japan; b) America; c) France; d) Korea
5. The parent of Arrow shirts is:
a) Thai; b) Italian; c) American; d) French
6. Godiva chocolate is:
a) French; b) Belgian; c) Swiss; d) American
7. Vaseline's owner is:
a) American; b) French; c) Anglo-Dutch; d) German
8. Firestone tires are:
a) Japanese; b) American; c) German; d) French
9. Holiday Inns are owned by a company based in:
a) France; b) America; c) Britain; d) Saudi Arabia
10. Tropicana orange juice is owned by a company based in:
a) Brazil; b) Canada; c) Mexico; d) America
11. Jaguar cars are made by a company based in:
a) Germany; b) Britain; c) America; d) Japan
12. Atari video games are:
a) Korean; b) American; c) Japanese; d) Malaysian
Answers: 1. (c) Braun is American (Gillette Co.)
2. (d) Bic is French (Bic SA)
3. (c) Haagen-Dasz is British (Grand Metropolitan PLC)
4. (c) RCA is French (Thomson SA)
5. (d) Arrow is French (Bidermann International)
6. (d) Godiva is American (Campbell Soup Co.)
7. (c) Vaseline is Anglo-Dutch (Unilever PLC)
8. (a) Firestone is Japanese (Bridgestone Corp.)
9. (c) Holiday Inns is British (Bass PLC)
10. (b) Tropicana is Canadian (Seagram Co. Ltd.)
11. (c) Jaguar is American (Ford Motor Co.)
12. (b) Atari is American (Atari Corp.).
---
* Origin: *PowerSurge!* (23:914/0)

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The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
Timothy C. May
tcmay@netcom.com
A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto
anarchy.
Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for
individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other
in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange
messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts
without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other.
Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re-
routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which
implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance
against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far
more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today.
These developments will alter completely the nature of government
regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the
ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of
trust and reputation.
The technology for this revolution--and it surely will be both a social
and economic revolution--has existed in theory for the past decade.
The methods are based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge
interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for
interaction, authentication, and verification. The focus has until now
been on academic conferences in Europe and the U.S., conferences
monitored closely by the National Security Agency. But only recently
have computer networks and personal computers attained sufficient
speed to make the ideas practically realizable. And the next ten
years will bring enough additional speed to make the ideas
economically feasible and essentially unstoppable. High-speed
networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards, satellites, Ku-band
transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips
now under development will be some of the enabling technologies.
The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this
technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology
by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration.
Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow
national secrets to be traded freely and will allow illicit and stolen
materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will
even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and
extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users
of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy.
Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of
medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will
cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations
and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined
with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a
liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words
and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed
wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus
altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the
frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an
arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which
dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.
Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | PGP Public Key: by arrangement.
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven
& the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845
Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766
realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662
Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699
The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK
The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674
Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X

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***** Reformatted. Please distribute.
CLINTON/GORE ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM
American politics is held hostage by big money
interests. Members of Congress now collect more
than $2.5 million in campaign funds every week
while Political Action Committees, industry
lobbies, and cliques of $100,000 donors buy access
to Congress and the White House.
George Bush recently vetoed the 1992 Campaign
Finance Reform Bill in order to protect the special
interest that support him. American pay for this
system in decreased environmental and worker safety
regulations, increased health care costs, and
weakened consumer regulations.
Bill Clinton and Al Gore believe it's long past
time to clean up Washington. As part of their plan
to fight the cynicism that is gripping the American
people, Bill Clinton and Al gore will support and
sign strong campaign finance reform legislation to
bring down the cost of campaigning and encourage
real competition.
We can't go four more years without a plan to take
away power form the entrenched bureaucracies and
special interests that dominate Washington.
The Clinton/Gore Plan
* Place voluntary spending caps on House and
Senate Races, depending on a state's
population. These caps will level the playing
field and encourage challengers to enter the
race.
* Limit political action committee (PAC)
contributions to the $1000 legal limit for
individuals.
* Reduce the cost to television air time to
promote real discussion and turn TV into an
instrument of education, not a weapon of
political assassination.
* Eliminate tax deductions for special interest
lobbying expenses and the "lawyer' loophole,"
which allows lawyer-lobbyists to disguise
lobbying activities on behalf of foreign
governments and powerful corporations.
* Require lobbyists who appear before
Congressional committees to disclose the
campaign contributions they've made to members
of those committees. The public has a right
to know when moneyed interests are trying
influence elected officials in Washington.
* End the unlimited "soft" money contributions
that are funneled through national, state, and
local parties to Presidential candidates.
The Record
* In the face of legislative resistance and
powerful opposition form special interests,
Governor Clinton spearheaded a successful
citizen's initiative to adopt an Ethics and
Lobbyist Disclosure Act which requires
professional lobbyists to disclose the amount
of money they spend to influence public
officials, and public officials to disclose
information about their income and financial
holdings.
* Senator Gore voted for the Senate Elections
Ethics Act which establishes spending limits
on Senate campaigns, prohibits Federal office
holders and candidates from raising "soft
money," eliminates "leadership PACs," and
encourages cleaner campaigns.

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Author: Krishna Padmasola
e-mail: krishna@scri.fsu.edu
Credit: The idea for writing this story came after reading the 1992 Scientific
American special issue on Mind and Brain.
Case No. 234FA
``It was a diminutive winged creature, a little bird with
crimson headdress, its brown feathered body quivering with the
restless energy derived from the accelerated metabolic rate so
characteristic of its species. Displaying excellent navigational
skills, it would suddenly dive into the thicket to feast on some
insect which betrayed its own presence and relieve it of its burden of
existence, and emerge again from the world of inconstant shadows into
the brilliant sunlit garden. However, the feast is soon forgotten, and
the search for new source of food begins all over again; this time
perhaps it is a flower in bloom, its scent hinting at the presence of
nectar, advertising its need for pollination. It was fascinating to
watch the exquisite little bundle of life, and I could see every
detail of its feathered body, I could feel its heartbeat, I followed
the rythmic motion of its wings flapping in synchrony, its tail
serving to steer and balance at the same time. There was no message in
its existence, and as I realized the senselessness of the demand for
the meaning of life by ossified minds, I felt a strange kinship
towards my avian friend...''
Three days ago, a patient was admitted to the ward. Evidently
he was suffering from severe depression. He used to be a dancer in a
Broadway show, before he was fired six months ago for being rude and
giving unsolicited advice to the director. As is usually the case, the
onset of mania was quite sudden and apparently without any obvious
reason. At home he mistreated his wife, and made life difficult for
her with his tense and irritable demeanor. Then he left to live with
his father, who also suffered from similar symptoms, though not quite
that degree. There, however, his condition steadily deteriorated , and
finally he accepted hospitalization. Although he received a dose of
tranquilizer, he spent the night disrupting the ward, and in the
morning, signed out against medical advice. That was two days ago....
Yesterday we learnt that he had committed suicide. Interestingly, the
cause of death was unknown. One would have thought that he had passed
away in his sleep had it not been for the note found in his clenched
hands, in which he stated that he was committing suicide of his own
free will.
The description of the bird in the garden was one of the many
remarkable entries we found in his diary, each of them revealing an
intensity of perception and heightened awareness which a prejudiced
mind would have thought him incapable of possessing. It has been
observed that manic-depressives are talented or even endowed with
genius. Perhaps, as some suggest, the extreme swings of mood and the
accompanying changes of outlook may give rise to creativity. The same
emotional fluctuations often lead manic-depressives to exhibit
suicidal tendencies, and their spark of creativity is prematurely
extinguished , perhaps an indication of the inherent instability of
creativity itself. If I were allowed to speculate, I might say that
creativity is a local revolution against mental entropy; but that is
the philosopher's job, and henceforth I shall withhold myself from
trespassing into the realm of his investigations.
How did he come by his death? That is an interesting question,
but his diary is mute upon that point, understandably so. Perhaps if
the fleeting images of his thoughts in the moments prior to his death
were captured by an invisible scribe , they might read like this...
`` I am on the shore of a mighty ocean, a silent observer, dwarfed by
its magnificence to an insignificant speck . The waves are rushing to
pounce upon the beach, then receding to muster all their strength and
prepare for a fresh assault with renewed determination. But deep below
the raging surface, there is an undercurrent, signifying confidence
and purpose. This, I recognize to be my mind, my conciousness
witnessing the various activities going on in it. I am now lying down,
with the suicide note in my hand, and have willed myself to death. The
waves are subsiding gradually , and now the surface is disturbed only
by tiny ripples. I feel my breath to be a tenuous thread connecting me
with life. Deep down, on the ocean floor, a dormant volcano is about
to wake up, and if it did, its tremors would create a tidal wave of
uncontrollable fury. This is my innermost survival instinct rebelling
against the sentence I have placed upon myself, but it vanished as
soon as I recognised its identity. Now the ocean is completely
stagnant, its surface mirroring the blue sky above. Suddenly, there
are clouds floating across the sky, their reflections skimming the
ocean surface. These are the images of various people, cherished,
forgotten or vanished memories , the faces, sights, sounds and smells
that I had hoarded in my unconcious. They are of no value to me
anymore. Of what use are dead memories to a dead man? My breath has
stopped and the heart has followed suit. Now there is just the calm
ocean, and a clear blue sky , both merging together in the horizon.
There is no more division between the mind and the conciousness; they
are one. Only I exist. ''

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WIRED's Press Release Regarding the Ban - 3/23/94
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
Taara Eden Hoffman
544 Second Street Director of Publicity
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA +1 (415) 904 0666
taara@wired.com
Cyberspace Cannot Be Censored
*****************************
WIRED Responds to Canadian Ban of Its April Issue
Wednesday, March 23, 1994, San Francisco
WIRED's April issue has been banned in Canada. WIRED's offense? Publication
of a story called "Paul and Karla Hit the Net," a 400-word article about
how Canadians are getting around a Canadian court decision to ban media
coverage of details in the Teale-Homolka murder case.
This article does not reveal details of the case. Instead, the article
WIRED's Press Release Regarding the Ban - 3/23/94 (23/24)
explains why the media ban has proven unenforceable and reports how
information on the case is readily available to Canadians.
According to a survey conducted by the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, 26 percent
of those polled said they knew prohibited details of the trial, because
they are continuously leaked by Canadian court witnesses, police, and
others to the international media. Once this information is published, it
pours back into Canada via fax, videocassettes, magazines and photocopies
of articles, e-mail, Internet newsgroups, and other online services. In the
United States, People magazine, and the TV show, A Current Affair as well
as the New York Times and other publications and shows have covered the
story and the ban.
As WIRED's story and the action of Canada's Attorney General make clear,
the ban is not only a waste of time and money,but has actually had the
opposite effect of what was intended. Rumors and sensationalized accounts
of the case abound, and the Teale-Homolka trial is one of the hottest
topics of discussion among Canadians.
"Banning of publications is behavior we normally associate with Third World
dictatorships," said WIRED publisher Louis Rossetto. "This an ominous
indication that the violation of human rights is becoming Canadian policy."
WIRED's Press Release Regarding the Ban - 3/23/94 (24/47)
According to Rossetto, the Canadian Government's recent seizure of gay and
lesbian periodicals under the guise of controlling "pornography" and its
behavior in the Teale-Homolka case have made Canada a leading violator of
free speech rights, and have set a scary precedent for other nations that
would like to control what its citizens read and think.
"Information wants to be free," said Jane Metcalfe, WIRED's president. "At
the end of the 20th century, attempts to ban stories like this one are
condemned to be futile. That WIRED's criticism of the ban has itself been
banned is supremely ironic and utterly chilling."
Since WIRED supports free speech, WIRED is making the text of its "banned"
story with details on how readers can get more information on the case
available on the Internet. Canadians and people around the world can
discover exactly what the Canadian government is trying to keep hidden.
The banned article text can be obtained via the following WIRED Online
services:
o WIRED Infobot e-mail server send e-mail to infobot@wired.com,
containing the words "get
homolka/banned.text" on a single
WIRED's Press Release Regarding the Ban - 3/23/94 (24/69)
line inside the message body
o WIRED Gopher gopher to gopher.wired.com
select "Teale-Homolka "
o WIRED on World Wide Web http://www.wired.com
select "Teale-Homolka "
The complete text of WIRED 2.04 will be available from the Infobot, Gopher,
and World Wide Web on April 19.

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[Speech: Massachusetts Libertarian Party:
200th Birthday of the Bill of Rights, December 19, 1991.]
The occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of the Bill of
Rights reminds us to be very worried about the growth since World War Il
of a national-security oligarchy, a secret and invisible state within
the public state.
The national-security state has come upon us not all at once but
bit by bit over a span of several decades. It is useful to review the
episodes -- the ones that are now known to us -- through which the current
situation evolved.
1. 1945: The Gehlen Deal
Wild Bill Donovan of the wartime Office of Strategic Services,
the OSS, proposed to President Roosevelt before the war was over that
the United States should setup a permanent civilian intelligence agency,
but military foes of Donovan leaked his plan to a conservative
journalist, Walter Trohan, who exposed the idea in the Chicago _Tribune_
and denounced it as an" American Gestapo." [1]
But only a few weeks after this. after Roosevelt's death and the
inauguration of Harry Truman. In the utmost secrecy, the Army was taking
its own much more dangerous steps toward an American Gestapo.
Days after the Nazi surrender in May 1945, a US Army command
center in southern Germany was approached by Nazi Brigadier General
Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen was the chief of the Nazi intelligence apparatus
known as the FHO, Foreign Armies East. The FHO ran spy operations
throughout East Europe and the Soviet Union during the war, and it
remained intact during the late-war period when the rest of the
Wehrmacht was crumbling. In fact, the FHO was the one part of the
Naziwar machine that continued to recruit new members right through the
end of the war. SS men at risk of war crimes charges in particular were
told to join with Gehlen, go to ground, and await further orders.
Gehlen presented himself for surrender to the American forces
with an arrogant, take-me-to-your-leader attitude and was for a few
weeks shunted aside by GIs who were unimpressed by his demand for
red-carpet treatment. But he had an interesting proposal to make and was
soon brought before high-level officers of the Army's G-2 intelligence
command.
Gehlen's proposal in brief: Now that Germany has been defeated,
he told his captors, everyone knows that the pre-war antagonism between
the Soviet Union and the United States will reappear - Who emerges with
the upper hand in Europe may well depend on the quality of either side's
intelligence. The Soviets are well known to have many spies placed in
the United States and the American government, but the Americans have
almost no intelligence capability in East Europe and the Soviet Union.
Therefore, Gehlen proposes that the United States Army adopt the FHO in
its entirety, including its central staff, as well as its underground
intelligence units, several thousand men strong, throughout East Europe
and the U.S.S.R. Thus, the FHO will continue doing what it was doing for
Hitler that is, fighting Bolshevism - but will now do it for the United
States.
The OSS was formally dismantled in the fall of 1945 at the very
moment at which General Gehlen and six of his top aides were settling
into comfortable quarters at the army's Fort Hunt in Virginia, not far
from the Pentagon. For the next several months, in highly secret
conversations, Gehlen and the U.S. Army hammered out the terms of their
agreement. By February 1946, Gehlen and his staff were back in Europe,
installed in a new village-sized compound in Pullach, from which they
set about the business of reactivating their wartime intelligence
network, estimated at between 6,000 and 20,000 men, all of them former
Nazis and SS members, many of them wanted for war crimes but now (like
the famous Klaus Barbie) protected through Gehlen's deal with the United
States both from the Nuremberg Tribunal and the de-Nazification
program.
Thus it was that the superstructure of the United States'
post-war intelligence system was laid on the foundation of an international
Nazi spy ring that had come to be the last refuge of SS war criminals who
had no other means of escaping judgment. The Gehlen Org, as it came to be
called by the few Americans who knew about it (and needless to say, the United
States Congress knew nothing of the Gehlen deal, and the evidence is strong
that Truman knew very little, if anything at all, about it) continued to serve
the United States as its eyes and ears on Europe and the U.S.S.R. until 1955.
At that time, fulfilling one of the terms of the secret treaty of Fort Hunt in
1945, the entire Gehlen Org was transferred to the new West German government,
which gave it the name of the Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, and which
the descendants of General Gehlen serve to this day. The BND continued to serve
as the backbone of NATO intelligence and is said to have supplied well into the
1960s something in the order of seventy percent of the NATO intelligence take.
This is the base upon which the U.S. intelligence system was
founded. The National Security Act of 1947 reorganized the military and
created the CIA, but the Gehlen Org was the base from which U.S.
intelligence developed throughout the decades of the Cold War. I am not
trying to imply here that Stalin was not a villain or that Soviet
communism was not a threat to Europe. I am saying rather that everything
American policymakers believed they knew about Europe and the U.S.S.R.
well into the 1960s was sent to them by an intelligence network made up
completely of Hitler's most dedicated Nazis. I believe this fact helps to
explain how the American national-security community evolved the
quasi-fascistic credo we can observe developing in the following incidents.
2. 1945: Operation Shamrock
This program, set up by the Pentagon and turned over to the
National Security Agency after 1947, was discovered and shut down by
Congress in 1975. As a House committee explained in a 1979 report,
Shamrock intercepted "virtually all telegraphic traffic sent to, from,
or transitting the United States." Said the House report,'Operation
Shamrock was the largest government interception program affecting
Americans" ever carried out. In a suit brought by the ACLU in the 1978
to declassify Shamrock files, the Defense Department claimed that either
admitting or denying that the Shamrock surveillance took place, never
mind revealing actual files, would disclose "state secrets." A judicial
panel decided in the Pentagon's favor despite the ACLU's argument that
to do so was 'dangerously close to an open ended warrant to intrude on
liberties guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.' [2]
3. 1945: Project Paperclip
This is perhaps the most famous of such programs but it is still
not well understood. The U.S. Army wanted German rocket scientists both
for its own interest in rocketry and to keep them out of the hands of
the Soviets, who had the same ambitions. United States law forbade these
scientists' entry into the U.S., however, because they were all Nazis
and members of the SS, including the prize among them, Dr. Werner von
Braun. The Army acted unilaterally, therefore, in bringing the rocket
scientists to the United States as prisoners of war and defining the
Redstone rocket laboratory in Huntsville as a POW compound. Later the
Paperclip scientists were de- Nazified by various bureaucratic means and
emplaced at the center of the military space program. What is not well
understood is that hundreds of additional Nazi SS members who had
nothing at all to contribute to a scientific program were also admitted.
This included the SS bureaucrat who oversaw the slave labor efforts in
digging the underground facilities at the Nazi rocket base on
Peenemunde. [3]
4. 1947: Project Chatter
The U.S. Navy initiated this program to continue Nazi
experiments in extracting truth from unwilling subjects by chemical
means, especially mind-altering drugs such as Mescaline. This was at the
same time that U.S. investigative elements detailed to the Nuremberg
Tribunal were rounding up Nazis suspected of having experimented with
"truth serums" during World War II. Such experiments are banned by
international law. [4]
5. 1948: Election Theft
New to the world and eager to learn, the CIA immediately began
spending secret money to influence election results in France and Italy.
Straight from the womb, it thus established a habit of intervention
which, despite being rationalized in terms of the Red menace abroad,
would ultimately find expression within the domestic interior. [5]
6. 1953: MK-Ultra
The CIA picked up the Navy's Project Chatter and throughout the
1950s and '60s ran tests on involuntary and unwitting subjects using
truth drugs and electro-magnetic fields to see if it could indeed
control a subject's mind without the subject's being aware. This
research continued despite the fact that the United States signed the
Nuremberg Code in 1953 stipulating that subjects must be aware, must
volunteer, must have the aid of a supervising doctor, and must be
allowed to quit the experiment at any moment.
7. 1953: HT/Lingual
The CIA began opening all mail traveling between United States
and the U.S.S.R. and China. HT/Lingual ran until 1973 before it was
stopped. We found out about it in 1975. [6]
8. 1953: Operation Ajax
The CIA overthrew Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran,
complaining of his neutralism in the Cold War, and installed in his
place General Fazlollah Zahedi, a wartime Nazi collaborator. Zahedi
showed his gratitude by giving 25-year leases on forty percent of Iran's
oil to three American firms. One of these firms, Gulf Oil, was fortunate
enough a few years later to hire as a vice president the CIA agent
Kermit Roosevelt, who had run Operation Ajax. Did this coup set the
clock ticking on the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80? [7]
9. 1954: Operation Success
The CIA spent $20 million to overthrow the democratically
elected Jacabo Arbenz in Guatemala for daring to introduce an agrarian
reform program that the United Fruit Company found threatening. General
Walter Bedell Smith, CIA director at the time, later joined the board of
United Fruit. [8]
10. 1954: News Control
The CIA began a program of infiltration of domestic and foreign
institutions, concentrating on journalists and labor unions. Among the
targeted U.S. organizations was the National Student Association, which
the CIA secretly supported to the tune of some $200,000 a year. This
meddling with an American and thus presumably off-limits organization
remained secret until _Ramparts_ magazine exposed it in 1967. It was at
this point that mainstream media first became curious about the CIA and
began unearthing other cases involving corporations, research centers,
religious groups and universities. [9]
11. 1960-1961: Operation Zapata
Castro warned that the United States was preparing an invasion
of Cuba, but this was 1960 and we all laughed. We knew in those days the
United States did not do such things. Then came the Bay of Pigs, and we
were left to wonder how such an impossible thing could happen.
12. 1960--63: Task Force W
Only because someone still anonymous inside the CIA decided to
talk about it to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, we
discovered that the CIA's operations directorate decided in September
1960: (a) that it would be good thing to murder Fidel Castro and other
Cuban leaders, (b) that it would be appropriate to hire the Mafia to
carry these assassinations out, and (c) that there would be no need to
tell the President that such an arrangement was being made. After all,
was killing not the Mafia's area of expertise?
It hardly seemed to trouble the CIA that the Kennedy
administration was at the very same time trying to mount a war on
organized crime focusing on precisely the Mafia leaders that the CIA was
recruiting as hired assassins.
13. 1964: Brazil
Two weeks after the Johnson administration announced the end of
the JFK Alliance for Progress with its commitment to the principle of
not aiding tyrants, the CIA staged and the U.S. Navy supported a coup
d'etat in Brazil over-throwing the democratically elected Joao Goulart.
Within twenty-four hours a new right-wing government was installed,
congratulated and recognized by the United States.
14. 1965: The DR
An uprising in the Dominican Republic was put down with the help
of 20,000 U.S. Marines. Ellsworth Bunker, the U.S. ambassador, Abe
Fortas, a new Supreme Court justice and a crony of LBJ's presidential
advisors (Adolf Berle, Averill Harriman, and Joseph Farland) were all on
the payroll of organizations such as the National Sugar Refining
Company, the Sucrest Company, the National Sugar Company, and the South
Puerto Rico Sugar Company--all of which had holdings in the Dominican
Republic that were threatened by the revolution.
15. 1967: The Phoenix Program
A terror and assassination program conceived by the CIA but
implemented by the military command targeted Viet Cong cadres by name
-- a crime of war, according to international law. At least twenty thousand
were killed, according to the CIA's own William Colby, of whom some 3,000
were political assassinations. A CIA analyst later observed "They
killed a lot of the wrong damn people". [10]
16. August 1967: COINTELPRO
Faced with mounting public protest against the Vietnam War, the
PBI formally inaugurated its so-called COINTELPRO operations, a
rationalized and extended form of operations under way for at least a
year. A House committee reported in 1979 that "the FBI Chicago Field
Office files in 1966 alone contained the identities of a small
army of 837 informers, all of whom reported on antiwar activists' political
activities, views or beliefs, and none of whom reported on any unlawful
activities by these activists." [11]
17. October 1967: MH/Chaos
Two months after the PBI started up COINTELPRO, the CIA followed
suit with MH/Chaos, set up in the counterintelligence section run by a
certifiable paranoid named James Jesus Angleton. Even though the illegal
Chaos infiltration showed that there was no Soviet financing or
manipulation of the antiwar movement, Johnson refused to accept this,
and the operation continued in to the Nixon administration. By 1971, CIA
agents were operating everywhere there were students inside America,
infiltrating protest groups not only to spy on them but to provide
authentic cover stories they could use while traveling abroad and
joining foreign anti-war groups. Chaos was refocused on international
terrorism in 1972, but another operation, Project Resistance, conducted
out of the CIA Office of Security, continued surveillance of American
domestic dissent until it was ended in June 1973.
18. April 1968: The King Plot
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. led at once to
massive urban riots, the breakup of the nonviolent civil rights movement
and in ten years to a congressional investigation that found evidence of
conspiracy, despite the initial finding that, as in the JFK case, the
assassin was a lone nut. The conspiracy evidence included proof that the
FBI had directly threatened King and that, in the certain knowledge that
King was a target of violent hate groups, the Memphis Police Department
had withdrawn its protective surveillance and had let this fact be known
publically via newspaper, radio, and television broadcasts.
19. June 1968: The RFK Hit
The assassination of Robert Kennedy came on the heels of his
victory in the California presidential primary. This victory had
virtually guaranteed his nomination as an antiwar presidential candidate
at the Democratic convention in August. The assassinations of King and
the second Kennedy were body blows to the civil rights and the antiwar
movements and drove nails in the coffins of those who were still
committed to the principles of democratic nonviolent struggle.
From now on there would be virtually nothing left of the
organized movement except the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, both
committed to violence and thus both of them doomed. The official
verdict in Robert Kennedy's murder was, predictably enough, that it was
the work of another lone nut. This conclusion was reached by a
still-secret Los Angeles Police Department investigation, despite the
fact that L.A. coroner Thomas Noguchi found that most of RFK's wounds were
fired point blank behind him whereas the alleged assassin Sirhan Sirhan, by
unanimous testimony of many eyewitnesses, never got his pistol closer to
Kennedy than six feet and was always in front of him. It was true
nevertheless, that Sirhan fired. It was also true that he was, and
apparently remains, insane. Sirhan has claimed several times that he
was "programmed" to carry out the assassination by unnamed sources. Was Sirhan
the offspring of Project Chatter and/or MK-Ultra?
20. 1969: Operation Minaret
This was a CIA program charted to intercept (according to a
House Report) "the international communications of selected American
citizens and groups on the basis of lists of names, 'watchlists,'
supplied by other government agencies...The Program applied not only to
alleged foreign influence on domestic dissent, but also to American
groups and individuals whose activities 'may result in civil
disturbances...'" [14]
21. April 1971: Helms protests
In a rare public speech to the American Society of Newspaper
Editors, CIA Director Richard Helms asked the nation to "take it on
faith that we too are honorable men devoted to her service." He went on
to say, "We do not target on American citizens." [15]
22. 1972: Watergate
As though to give body to Helms' touching promise, seven CIA
Operatives detailed to the Nixon White House played the same political
game the CIA learned abroad in all its clandestine manipulations from
France to Brazil, from Italy to Guatemala, but now in the context of
U.S. Presidential politics. Whether through sheer fluke or a subtle
counter-conspiracy, Nixon's CIA burglars were caught in the act, and two
years later Nixon was therefore forced to resign. For a moment, a
window opened into the heart of darkness.
23. 1973: Allende Murdered
Frustrated in its 1970 efforts to control the Chilean election,
the CIA resorted to murder once again in the elimination of Salvador
Allende. Allende government official Orlando Letelier along with an
American supporter, Ronnie Moffit, were also killed, not far away in
Chile, but in Dupont Circle in our nation's capital.
24. Late 1970s: "Defenders of Democracy"
As death squads raged through Latin America, FBI agents and U.S.
marshals in Puerto Rico secretly created, trained and armed a super-secret
police unit named "Defenders of Democracy" and dedicated to the assassination
of leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement. [16]
This was in the Jimmy Carter period. Did Carter know?
25. 1980: October Surprise
The facts in this strange first act of the Iran-Contra episode
are still in dispute, but the charge made by Barbara Honegger, activist
in the Reagan 1980 campaign, and by Carter national security aide Gary
Sick, is of megascandal dimensions.
Honegger and Sick claim in outline that in 1980 William Casey,
long-time U.S. super-spy but at that point without the least portfolio,
led a secret Reagan campaign delegation to Europe to strike a secret
deal with Iran, a nation with which the United States was virtually at
war because of the 42 hostages Iran had seized from the U.S. embassy.
In the alleged deal, Iran agreed not to release the hostages
until the U.S. presidential race was over, thus denying President Carter
the political benefit of getting the hostages back. Reagan agreed that,
if elected, he would help Iran acquire certain weapons. Well, for a few
bucks here and there, too, of course, and something for Israel, but the
basic deal was U.S. Arms for U.S. hostages held by Iran.
The basic deal was also so deeply criminal as to go beyond all
statutes but those that deal with treason.
26. 1970s and 1980s: The Noreiga Connection
The CIA was exposed time and again throughout these decades in
big-time international dope trafficking. This was not altogether new.
Already in the late '60s we had discovered that this was happening in
Southeast Asia, where the CIA's regional airline, Air America, was found
deeply involved in the opium trade being run out of the so called Golden
Triangle centered in Laos and involving Chinese drug lords associated
with the anti-Communist Kuomintang. [17] The ClA's support in moving
large amounts of opium was valuable, it seemed, in maintaining good
relations with our anti-Communist friends. In the 1970s and '80s, CIA
drug operations appeared in this hemisphere for a related but even
better reason: they were a convenient way to finance anti-Communist
operations that the Congress would not fund.
The rash of drug cases around former Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega--once a darling of the CIA until he dared oppose U.S. policy in
Nicaragua--provides a glimpse into the true heart of the contemporary
CIA. Noriega received as much as $10 million a month from the Medellin
Cartel (whose profits were $3 million a day) plus $200,000 a year from
the CIA for the use of Panamanian runways in transhipment of cocaine to
the north.
Noriega is only in trouble today because he turned against the
Reaganauts. The real attitude of Reagan and Bush toward drug trafficking
is indicated much less in Noriega's trial itself than in the kind of
deals the Justice Department is willing to make to convict him.
According to a recent _Boston Globe_ news story, federal prosecution
have paid at least $1.5 million in "fees" for testimony against Noriega.
In addition, some government witnesses have received freedom from life
sentences, recovery of stashed drug profits and confiscated property,
and permanent U.S. residency and work permits for themselves and family
members.
The best deals go to the biggest offenders, such as Carlos
Lehder. Leader of the Medellin Cartel, Lehder was sentenced to 145 years
in prison, but is probably facing a real sentence of less than five
years on account of his collaboration against Noriega. He is said to
have made a $10-million contribution to the contra cause.
The case of Floyd Carlton is also instructive. Carlton was a
drug pilot whose testimony led to Noriega's indictment in 1988. He was
allowed by Bush's prosecutors to transfer his cocaine profits into the
U.S.tax-free. Bush also promised not to seize his various homes and
ranches and agreed to pay $210,000 to support his wife, three children,
and a nanny and to furnish them with permanent residence in the U.S. and
work permits. [18]
27. October 1986: The Enterprise
A contra supply plane was shot down in Nicaragua. A low-level
CIA agent named Eugene Hassenfus was captured alive. Hassenfus chose not
to make a martyr of himself, and thus was born the Iran-Contra scandal,
a continuation of the politics of the October Surprise but on a far
grander scale. The CIA and the NSC were learning how to operate beyond
the reach of American Law. With the "free-standing, off-the-books"
organization they called "the Enterprise," capable of financing it's
operations from drug profits and thus independent of the exchequer, The
likes of Oliver North and John Poindexter and Theodore Shackley and
Thomas Clines and Rafael Quintero and William Casey had it made. They
could form U.S. policy pretty much by themselves, especially since the
super-patriot Ronald Reagan seemed content to blink and doze. Who cared
what Congress might think or say? As Admiral Poindexter put it so
eloquently, "I never believed . . . that the Boland Amendment ever
applied to the -- National Security Council staff." [19]
28. 1991: BCCI
The main difference between the CIA's early Cold War scandals
and the ones we are seeing today is that the more recent ones are
immeasurably more complex. This is sharply true of our last two
examples, one of which is that of the still emerging scandal around the
Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The BCCI scandal appears to
involve the CIA in a far-flung international financial network created
for the primary purpose of laundering vast amounts of drug money and
with the secondary purpose of ripping off the unsuspecting smaller banks
that BCCI acquired in pursuit of its primary objective.
One fascinating aspect of the BCCI scandal is that it may at last supply
us with the final solution of one of the outstanding riddles of the last
decades--namely, why does the government insist on keeping drugs illegal
since the only evident result of this is to keep the price of drugs (in
both dollars and lives) high? Could this be because it is the secret
elements of the Government--The CIA, the NSC, the Enterprise--that is actually
selling them?
29. 1991: Casolaro
Finally, consider just briefly another case of astounding
complexity, still not at all exposed, still writhing in the
twilight--the case of Inslaw, Inc., involving the George Bush Justice
Department and the death of Danny Casolaro, a free-lance investigative
journalist with whom I happen to identify most closely, even though I
never met him.
The story in brief: Inslaw, Inc. in the early 1980s was an
enterprising computer software company whose most important product was
a software program called Promis. Promis' appeal lay in the fact that it
made it possible for Justice Department attorneys to keep track of an
extremely large number of cases. The Justice Department bought Promis
from Inslaw in 1982 and began installing it in its various offices.
Inslaw had completed nineteen installations of Promis within a
year, and all seemed to be going well. But suddenly the Justice
Department began to complain about Promis and soon was refusing to pay
Inslaw, which therefore careened into bankruptcy.
The fact, however, was that nothing at all was wrong with
Promis. Rather, the Justice Department--so it is alleged--had made a
deal with Dr. Earl Brian, California health secretary under Governor
Ronald Reagan. In this alleged deal--which Dr. Brian denies--the Justice
Department would simply steal Inslaw's Promis software and give it to
Dr. Brian, who--would then be in a position to sell it back to the
Justice Department for an estimated $250 million.
Part of the reason the Justice Department was willing to do this
for Dr. Brian, as the allegation continues, is that Brian had helped
persuade Iranian leaders to cooperate with Reagan in the October
Surprise operation of 1980.
But there's more to the allegation. The attempt to get Promis
out of Inslaw's hands and into Dr. Brian's had two other purposes,
according to Inslaw's attorney, Elliot L. Richardson. The first was "to
generate revenue for covert operations not authorized by Congress. The
second was to supply foreign intelligence agencies with a software
system that would make it easier for U.S. eavesdroppers to read
intercepted signals." That is, a back door access was built into the
Promis software. Anyone who bought Promise was buying a Trojan Horse.
Danny Casolaro had talked to many of the informants in this
case. Telling friends he was on his way to contact an informant who
would put the last piece in the picture, he left his home in Washington
in August l99l to travel to Martinsburg, West Virginia, where he took a
hotel room and waited for the informant to contact him. Before leaving
he had told his friends not to believe it if he died in a car accident.
He was found dead in his room, in the bathtub, with both arms
slashed a total of twelve times. The Martinsburg police quickly ruled
his death a suicide and allowed his body to be embalmed immediately,
even before notifying his family of his death. His hotel room was
cleaned of the least indication that he had been in it. His briefcase
and his notes were never found. In his _New York Times_ op-ed piece
about this last October, Elliot Richardson ended by reminding his
readers that he had called for a special prosecutor once before.
Richardson was the nominated Attorney General in 1973 and
resigned in disagreement with Nixon, calling for a special prosecutor to
investigate Watergate.
Now Richardson wants another special prosecutor to probe the
Inslaw case. He believes Casolaro was murdered and that evidence points
to "a widespread conspiracy implicating lesser government officials in
the theft of Inslaw's technology." These same officials, of course,
would also be involved in the apparent attempt to generate funding for
illegal covert operations and to sneak Trojan Horse software into the
systems by which other governments monitor their litigation caseloads.
We can be sure at least that the events we have briefly reviewed
here are not isolated and separate. In the painful story that begins
with General of the Third Reich Reinhard Gehlen and continues down to
the death of Danny Casolaro, we face a stream of systemically connected
corruption and abuses of power.
A secret state has set itself up within the darkest corners of
the American government. It is what Nixon adviser John Dean called a
cancer on the presidency, but it has metastasized well beyond the White
House. It is not paranoia to call attention to this, but a simple act
of realism.
NOTES
1. John Ranalegh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 80.
2. House Select Committee on Assassinations: Report, vol. Vlll, pp.
506-08.
3. Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990).
4. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams (New York: Grove
Press, 1985).
5. Ranalegh, p. 131.
6. Ibid., p. 270.
7. Ibid., p. 261-64.
8. Ibid., p. 268.
9. Ibid., p. 246, p. 471.
10. Ibid., p. 440, p. 553.
11. HSCA, vol. VIII, p. 524.
12. Ranalegh, p. 534.
13. The HSCA Report. Findings and Recommendations (Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1979). See p. 407 re the FBI and p.
418 re the MPD.
14. HSCA, vol. VIII, p. 507.
15. Ranalegh, p. 281.
16. See Boston Globe and New York Times stories of January 29, 1992.
17. See Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New
York: Harper Colophon, 1973).
18. Boston Globe, Dec. 13, 1991.
19. Iran-Contra Trading Cards #35.

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Computer Gaming World (Golden Empire Publications)
June, 1990, Number 72, Page 8
Editorial by Johnny L. Wilson
It CAN Happen Here
Although Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis is probably best known
for 'Main Street', 'Babbitt', 'Elmer Gantry', and 'Arrowsmith', my personal
favorites are 'It Can't Happen Here' and 'Kingsblood Royal'. The latter is an
ironic narrative in which who suffers from racial prejudice toward the black
population discovers, through genealogical research, that he himself has black
ancestors. The protagonist experienced a life-challenging discovery that
enabled Lewis to preach a gospel of civil rights to his readership.
The former is, perhaps, Lewis' most lengthy novel and it tells how a radio
evangelist was able to use the issues of morality and national security to form
a national mandate and create a fascist dictatorship in the United States. As
Lewis showed how patriotic symbolism could be distorted by power-hungry elite
and religious fervor channeled into a political movement, I was personally
shaken. As a highschool student, reading this novel, for the first time, I
suddenly realized what lewis intended for his readers to realize. "It" (a
dictatorship) really CAN happen here, There is an infinitesimally fine line
between protecting the interests of society and encumbering the freedoms of the
self-same society in the name of protection.
Now it appears that the civil liberties of game designers and gamers
themselves are to be assaulted in the name of protecting society. In recent
months two unrelated events have taken place which must make us pause: the
raiding of Steve Jackson Games' offices by the United States Secret Service,
and the introduction of A.B. 3280 into the California State Assembly by
Assemblyperson Tanner.
On March 1, 1990, Steve Jackson Games (a small pen and paper game company)
was raided by agents of the United States Secret Service. The raid was
allegedly part of an investigation into data piracy and was, apparently,
related to the latest supplement from SJG entitled, GURPS Cyberpunk (GURPS
stands for Generic Universal Role-Playing System). GURPS Cyberpunk features
rules for a game universe analogous to the dark futures of George Alec Effinger
('When Gravity Fails'), William Gibson ('Neuromancer'), Norman Spinrad ('Little
Heroes'), Bruce Sterling ('Islands in the Net'), and Walter Jon Williams
('Hardwired').
GURPS Cyberpunk features character related to breaking into networks and
phreaking (abusing the telephone system).Hence, certain federal agents are
reported to have made several disparaging remarks about the game rules being a
"handbook for computer crime". In the course of the raid (reported to have
been conducted under the authority of an unsigned photocopy of a warrant; at
least, such was the only warrant showed to the employees at SJG) significant
destruction allegedly occurred. A footlocker, as well as exterior storage
units and cartons, were deliberately forced open even though an employee with
appropriate keys was present and available to lend assistance. In addition,
the materials confiscated included: two computers, an HP Laserjet II printer, a
variety of computer cards and parts, and an assortment of commercial software.
In all, SJG estimates that approximately $10,000 worth of computer hardware and
software was confiscated.
The amorphous nature of the raid is what is most frightening to me. Does
this raid indicate that those who operate bulletin board systems as individuals
are at risk for similar raids if someone posts "hacking" information on their
computer? Or does it indicate that games which involve "hacking" are subject
to searches and seizures by the federal government? Does it indicate that
writing about "hacking" exposes one to the risk of a raid? It seems that this
raid goes over the line of protecting society and has, instead, violated the
freedom of its citizenry. Further facts may indicate that this is not the
case, but the first impression strongly indicates an abuse of freedom.
Then there is the case of California's A.B 3280 which would forbid the
depiction of any alcohol or tobacco package or container in any video game
intended primarily for use by minors. The bill makes no distinction between
positive or negative depiction of alcohol or tobacco, does not specify what
"primarily designed for" means, and defines 'video game' in such a way that
coin-ops, dedicated game machines, and computer games can all fit within the
category.
Now the law is, admittedly, intended to help curb the use and abuse of
alcohol and tobacco among minors. Yet the broad stroke of the brush with which
it is written limits the dramatic license which can be used to make even
desirable points in computer games. For example, Chris Crawford's 'Balance of
the Planet' depicts a liquor bottle on a trash heap as part of a screen talking
about the garbage problem. Does this encourage alcohol abuse? In 'Wasteland',
one of the encounters involves two winos in an alley. Does their use of
homemade white lightening commend it to any minors that might be playing the
game?
One of the problems with legislating art is that art is designed to both
reflect and cast new light and new perspectives on life. As such, depiction of
any aspect of life may be appropriate, in context. Unfortunately for those who
want to use the law as a means of enforcing morality, laws cannot be written to
cover every context.
We urge our California readers to oppose A.B. 3280 and help defend our basic
freedoms. We urge all of our readers to be on the alert for any governmental
intervention that threatens our freedom of expression. "It" not only CAN
happen here, but "it" is very likely to if we are not careful.

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THE CHARLOTTE TOWN RESOLVES:
RESOLVES ADOPTED IN CHARLOTTE TOWN,
MECKLENBURG COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA,
MAY 31, 1775
Charlotte Town, Mecklenburg County, May 31.
This Day the Committee met, and passed the following
RESOLVES:
Whereas by an Address presented to his Majesty by both
Houses of Parliament in February last, the American Colonies
are declared to be in a State of actual Rebelion, we conceive
that all Laws and Commissions confirmed by, or derived from the
Authority of the King or Parliament, are annulled and vacated,
and the former civil Constitution of these Colinies for the
present wholly suspended. To provide in some Degree for the
Exigencies of the County in the present alarming Period, we
deem it proper and necessary to pass the following Resolves,
viz.
1. That all Commissions, civil and military, heretofore
granted by the Crown, to be exercised in these Colonies, are
null and void, and the Constitution of each particular Colony
wholly suspended.
2. That the Provincial Congress of each Province, under
the Direction of the Great Continental Congress, is invested
with all legislative and executive Powers within their
respective Provinces; and that no other Legislative or
Executive does or can exist, at this time, in any of these
Colonies.
3. As all former Laws are now suspended in this Province,
and the Congress have not yet provided others, we judge it
necessary, for the better Preservation of good Order, to form
certain Rules and Regulations for the internal Government of
this County, until Laws shall be provided for us by the
Congress.
4. That the Inhabitants of this County do meet on a
certain Day appointed by this Committee, and having formed
themselves into nine Companies, to wit, eight for the County,
and one for the Town of Charlotte, do choose a Colonel and
other military Officers, who shall hold and exercise their
several Powers by Virtue of this Choice, and independent of
Great-Britain, and former Constitution of this Province.
5. That for the better Preservation of the Peace, and
Administration of Justice, each of these Companies do choose
from their own Body two discreet Freeholders, who shall be
impowered each by himself, and singly, to decide and determine
all Matters of Controversy arising within the said Company
under the Sum of Twenty Shillings, and jointly and together all
Controversies under the Sum of Forty Shillings, yet so as their
Decisions may admit of Appeals to the Convention of the Select
Men of the whole County; and also, that any one of these shall
have Power to examine, and commit to Confinement, Persons
accused of Petit Larceny.
6. That those two Select Men, thus chosen, do, jointly
and together, choose from the Body of their particular Company
two Persons, properly qualified to serve as Constables, who may
assist them in the Execution of their Office.
7. That upon the Complaint of any Person to either of
these Select Men, he do issue his Warrant, directed to the
Constable, commanding him to bring the Aggressor before him or
them to answer the said Complaint.
8. That these eighteen Select Men, thus appointed, do
meet every third Tuesday in January, April, July, and October,
at the Court-House, in Charlotte, to hear and determine all
Matters of Controversy for Sums exceeding Forty Shillings;
also Appeals: And in Cases of Felony, to commit the Person or
Persons convicted thereof to close Confinement, until the
Provincial Congress shall provide and establish Laws and Modes
of Proceeding in all such Cases.
9. That these Eighteen Select Men, thus convened, do
choose a Clerk to record the Transactions of said Convention;
and that the said Clerk, upon the Application of any Person or
Persons aggrieved, do issue his Warrant to one of the
Constables, to summon and warn said Offender to appear before
the Convention at their next sittinbg, to answer the aforesaid
Complaint.
10. That any Person making Complaint upon Oath to the
Clerk, or any Member of the Convention, that he has Reason to
suspect that any Person or Persons indebted to him in a Sum
above Forty Shillings, do intend clandestinely to withdraw from
the County without paying such Debt; the Clerk, or such Member,
shall issue his Warrant to the Constable, commanding him to
take the said Person or Persons into safe Custody, until the
next sitting of the Convention.
11. That when a Debtor for a Sum below Forty Shillings
shall abscond and leave the County, the Warrant granted as
aforesaid shall extend to any Goods or Chattels of the said
Debtor as may be found, and such Goods or Chattels be seized
and held in Custody by the Constable for the Space of Thirty
Days; in which Term if the Debtor fails to return and discharge
the Debt, the Constable shall return the Warrant to one of the
Select Men of the Company where the Goods and Chattels are
found, who shall issue Orders to the Constable to sell such a
Part of the said Goods as shall amount to the Sum due; that
when the Debt exceeds Forty Shillings, the Return shall be made
to the Convention, who shall issue the Orders for Sale.
12. That all Receivers and Collectors of Quitrents, Public
and County Taxes, do pay the same into the Hands of the
Chairman of this Committee, to be by them disbursed as the
public Exigencies may require. And that such Receivers and
Collectors proceed no farther in their Office until they be
approved of by, and have given to this Committee good and
sufficient Security for a faithful Return of such Monies when
collected.
13. That the Committee be accountable to the County for
the Application of all Monies received from such public
Officers.
14. That all these Officers hold their Commissions during
the Pleasure of their respective Constituents.
15. That this Commission will sustain all Damages that may
ever hereafter accrue to all or any of these Officers thus
appointed, and thus acting, on Account of their Obedience and
Conformity to these Resolves.
16. That whatever Person shall hereafter receive a
Commission from the Crown, or attempt to exercise any such
Commission heretofore received, shall be deemed an Enemy to
his Country; and upon Information being made to the Captain of
the Company where he resides, the said Captain shall cause him
to be apprehended, and conveyed before the two Select Men of
the said Company, who, upon Proof of the Fact, shall commit him
the said Offender, into safe Custody, until the next setting of
the Convention, who shall deal with him as Prudence may direct.
17. That any Person refusing to yield Obedience to the
above Resolves shall be deemed equally criminal, and liable to
the same Punishments as the Offenders above last mentioned.
18. That these Resolves be in full Force and Virtue, until
Instructions from the General Congress of this Province,
regulating the Jurisprudence of this Province, shall provide
otherwise, or the legislative Body of Great-Britain resign its
unjust and arbitrary Pretentions with Respect to America.
19. That the several Militia Companies in this county do
provide themselves with proper Arms and Accoutrements, and hold
themselves in Readiness to execute the commands and Directions
of the Provincial Congress, and of this committee.
20. That this committee do appoint Colonel Thomas Polk, and
Doctor Joseph Kennedy, to purchase 300 lb. of Powder, 600 lb.
of Lead, and 1000 Flints, and deposit the same in some safe
Place, hereafter to be appointed by the committee.
Signed by Order of the Commitee.
EPH. BREVARD, Clerk of the Committee
------------------------------------
Prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net - aa300)
Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
Permission is hereby granted to download, reprint, and/or otherwise
redistribute this file, provided appropriate point of origin
credit is given to the preparer(s) and the National Public
Telecomputing Network.
V R T


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GW> Ain't sayin' which side I'm on here, but relax a bit -- I noticed the
GW> phrase "anti-choice" enter the pro-choicers' vocabulary about the same
GW> time I first heard the term "pro-abortion" used by pro-lifers. The
GW> chicken or the egg, it doesn't matter, but in a battle for public
GW> sentiment, neither side will give up its code words unless the other
GW> one does first -- sounds like a stand-off to me.
CHOICESPEAK:
THE LANGUAGE TO ABORT THE CONSCIENCE
From where Winston stood, it was just possible to read, picked
out on its face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the
party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
1984, by George Orwell
Language has always been used for deceitful and misleading
purposes. Misrepresentations, distortions and outright lying
have been employed for ulterior motives throughout all of
recorded history. And, as man has "progressed," his abuse of
language has reached new levels of sophistication and
treachery.
The abuse of language for devious purposes has been given
several definitions over time. The term "doublespeak" (or
"doubletalk") refers to language which APPEARS to be
meaningful, but is actually a mixture of sense and nonsense.
George Orwell, in his famous novel *1984*, coined the word
"Newspeak," denoting a propagandistic language marked by
ambiguity and contradictions. Its stated purpose: to
"diminish the range of thought."
Never has language-for-propaganda been more cleverly or
effectively used, however, than by our contemporary
pro-abortionists. To as great an extent as possible, abortion
advocates have conceptualized and debated abortion without
mention of, or attention to, the act itself. For the last
twenty years, they have strived to redefine child-killing as a
"choice." Sadly, their endeavor has met with great success.
One commonly hears, for instance: "Whose CHOICE is it, who
decides?" "This fight is for reproductive CHOICE."
"Pro-lifers are the anti-CHOICE minority." "Pro-CHOICE is not
pro-abortion." "The issue is not abortion, the issue is
CHOICE." And even in the "neutral" media: "Anti-abortion
demonstrators squared off with pro-CHOICE activists."
Given the spread, like so many cancer cells, of such
pro-abortion euphemisms throughout our language, it is clear
that a new term is necessary to definitively characterize the
pro-abortionists' misleading use of words for propaganda
purposes. The term I propose to serve this purpose is
"Choicespeak," which I define as "propagandistic language
marked by ambiguity and contradictions DESIGNED TO INCREASE
ACCEPTANCE OF THE ANTI-LIFE MENTALITY."
Specific examples of Choicespeak are not at all hard to find.
A preborn baby becomes, via Choicespeak, the "product of
conception." The scientific fact that a human being's
biological life begins at fertilization (conception) becomes,
via Choicespeak, a "religious view." The killing of a CHILD
becomes, via Choicespeak, the "termination of a PREGNANCY."
(In terms of intent and effect, abortion and childbirth should
be contrasted as follows: CHILDBIRTH is the termination of a
PREGNANCY; ABORTION is the "termination" of a CHILD.) And,
last but not least, abortion --- the killing of an innocent
preborn baby --- becomes, via Choicespeak, a valid "choice"
that a woman may consider.
Words can be used as weapons so long as there is a target. In
abortion, the targets are easy prey. Simply put, the abortion
industry has wielded its powerfully deceptive words against
vulnerable mothers and the innocent children within their
wombs. Women are exploited; their babies destroyed; men are
alienated. And the family, the very foundation of society, is
assaulted at its core.
Therefore, the Choicespeaking zealots must be exposed; their
NON-truths must be replaced by THE truth. To do this, one
must be alert when exposed to pro-abortion rhetoric and
anti-life logic. Probe beyond the surface and ascertain the
underlying principles; uncover the real meaning behind the
alluring message. Otherwise, the abortion seducing "Big
Brother" may very well distort YOUR perception and diminish
YOUR "range of thought," increasing your acceptance of and
tolerance for abortion -- a truly unthinkable crime.
Woe to those who call evil good,
and good evil,
who change the darkness into light,
and light into darkness,
who change bitter into sweet,
and sweet into bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
---------------------------------------------------------------
documentation provided by SCMIS
David on the Beach in Arizona
... To let live is to live yourself!
--- Blue Wave/TG v2.00 [NR]
* Origin: The Arizona Badlands BBS Casa Grande AZ 6028368336 (85:823/126.0)

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Via Greenlink II
=================================================================
GREENPEACE WORLD PARK BASE
ANTARCTIC DIARY 23
Jan 11,1990
Our Resupply ship the MV Gondwana has left Auckland, New Zealand
on the second leg of this years campaign to have this vast frozen
continent protected as a World Park. This last twelve months
living at Cape Evans has been a remarkable time for me both
personally and as a small part of the world wide movement for
environmental protection. When we left New Zealand on 22nd
December 1988 the challenge was to highlight Antarctica's place
in the mind's of people all around the world. From the many
contacts we have had from many countries and from hearing about
the growing influence of the Green political movement I feel sure
that we humans are collectively changing our awareness of the
natural world and in particular Antarctica's place in natural
order of things.
It has long been a fear that oil exploration and exploitation was
the biggest and most imminent danger that the natural world faced
in Antarctica. 1989 seems to have been a year full of examples
of the damage that can be done in the polar regions when fuel
spills occur. In our own backyard we saw for ourselves that
where large quantities of fuel are handled the possiblities for
large spills seems to be almost inevitable. The US McMurdo
Station, 25Km to the south has had a series of large fuel spills
in the last eighteen months ( Over 450 000 Litres or nearly 118
000 US Gals ) and none of these spills have been cleaned up to
date. While we were investigating the environmental impact of
one of these spills in early October we uncovered yet another
fuel spill which was later admitted to be in fact a number of
spills going back as far as 1983 and no records exist of these
periodic spills. This spill site was only 150 Metres from New
Zealand's Scott Base and was on an area of foreshore sea-ice that
thaws each summer thus releasing the contaminating fuel directly
into the sea.
Both New Zealand and the US are major sponsors of the Minerals
Convention which is an agreement among the Antarctic Treaty
signatory nations. This Convention which is also know around the
world as the Wellington Convention, after the capital city of New
Zealand was negotiated behind closed doors, sets out the
conditions under which minerals can be extracted from Antarctica.
There are a growing number of governments, now responding to
public opinion at home opposing the ratification of this Minerals
Convention. Australia, France, Italy and Belgium have rejected
the convention and along with a number of other countries are
actively pushing for a comprehensive Envronmental Protection
agreement for Antarctica in the form of a Wilderness Reserve.
Oil hungry nations and their supporters remain in favour of this
Miners Convention stating that they wish to keep their options
open for future oil exploration of Antarctica while reluctantly
pursuing the more sensible path of energy conservation and the
development of alternative energy systems.
Well, in my last diary written at World Park Base I found myself
with the treat of oil-exploration in my mind and I haven't
written about the Polar summer that is blazing around me. I
suspect that there are two factors involved in my preoccupation.
The news of the rusting hulk of the Kharg 5 tanker spilling its
contents uncontrollably into the Atlantic off the Morroccan coast
has brought back to me the 1989 events... the Bahia Paraiso -
Anvers Isand Antarctica, the Exxon Valdez - Prince Philips Sound
Alaska, the US South Pole Station, the US airfield McMurdo Sound
Antarctica... all sites of environmental disasters in Polar
regions. The other factor is that as a New Zealander I am
saddened by the fact that my government remains a major sponsor
of a Miners Convention for Antarctica.
Outside my window the sea-ice is in full-melt and the stretches
of open water are growing before our eyes. In the Cape Evans
area more than twenty Weddell Seals are basking ashore and the
Skua chicks are growing. The amazing thaw that we have
experienced this year continues to feed the thousands of little
streams and dozens of miniature lakes that dot the area. We have
had about two week of settled weather, ideal for preparing the
base for the arrival of our resupply ship and our many old
friends.
My kindest regards to all our supporters and friends as my time
here at World Park base comes rapidly to and end.
Phil Doherty.

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"GIVING THE LIE TO THE CHRISTIAN RIGHTWING"
Howdy, gang! It's time for another radical-subversive, smutty,
leftwing upload from that old electronic anarchist, Sax Allen, coming to you
very much alive from Free San Francisco!
In recent weeks, the Reagan/Nixon stacked Supreme Court has
abandoned law and precedent in favor of extreme rightwing ideology and the
Heritage Foundation agenda. They've begun dismantling the progressive changes
for which we all fought so hard and long. They're sabotaging and undermining
important gains in civil rights, abortion, search and seizure, privacy and
separation of church and state.
Because these rightwing noodle heads are so fond of making up
their own "factoids" and because they're currently pumping out a bunch of
malarkey about America supposedly being a "Christian" nation, and because as
proof of this they're making up religious lies about some of our most
intelligent presidents...for all these reasons I thought you'd enjoy hearing a
few hot words from our founding fathers themselves. Note in particular what
George Washington says!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The American Revolution of 1776 was to a large degree led by men
steeped in the rational humanism of the Enlightenment who considered all
established religion a form of barbaric superstition. Thus their insistence on
the separation of church and state, which was universally regarded as the MOST
RADICAL aspect of the American Revolution.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THOMAS JEFFERSON:
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned:
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect
of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
To suport roguery and error all over the earth."
-- "Notes on the State of Virginia" (1781-82)
"...the priests indeed have heretofore thought proper to ascribe
to me religious, or rather anti-religious sentiments, of their own fabric, but
such as soothed their resentments against the act of Virginia for establishing
religious freedom. They wished him to be thought atheist, deist, or devil, who
could advocate freedom from their religious dictations. But I have ever
thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for
which we were accountable to him, and not to the priests."
-- Letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith (6 August 1816)
JOHN ADAMS:
"Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and
glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful as he
pleases. Some hundreds of millions of Mussulmans [Moslems] expect another
prophet more powerful than Mahomet [Mohammed], who is to spread Islamism over
the whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for a
millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the whole world
before it is burnt up. The Hindoos [Hindus] expect another and final
incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know not
what. All these hopes are founded on real or pretended revelation....
You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and
vast amelioration in the condition of mankind. Our faith may be supposed by
more rational arguments than any of the former."
-- Letter to Thomas Jefferson (24 September 1821)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on
the Christian religion."
-- George Washington
"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
-- Napoleon
"When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live
a normal and wholesome life."
-- Sigmund Freud
, he has a better chance to live
a
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CHURCH AND STATE
The school all recited in unison ". . .that one Nation,
indivisible, under God, shall not perish from this Earth."
"Now, let's give thanks to the Father for all the
blessings we have received in the pursuit of our studies.
Mr. Jones, will you lead us in the prayer?"
Mr. Jack Jones, the minister of our local Methodist
Church gives a short but inspiring prayer. The entire class
of students respond with a sincere 'Amen'.
They hold the opening ceremony each day in the audi-
torium. Following the prayer, the entire school sings a
song from the hymnal. They are accompanied by the church
organist. No student has ever complained that they didn't
enjoy these morning sessions. Students are excused and go
to their respective classrooms.
The school, sponsored by our church, gains its support
from members of the church who have children attending the
school. Parents became disenchanted with our public school
system. They finally agreed they should have input in
determining the teaching of their children.
In the lower grade public schools, rowdiness had become
an accepted fact of school life. The teachers had simply
lost control over the students. It had become obvious that
teaching was to accommodate slower students. Other students
with more and faster learning abilities were held back.
They were becoming bored and restive.
In junior and senior high schools, the same problems
existed and drug use is becoming evident. Physical violence
is becoming an everyday occurrence. These problems were all
on the minds of parents when they decided to form a school
under the sponsorship of the church. Throughout the history
of this country, churches were in the forefront of educa-
tion. Some of the oldest colleges in the east were started
in the same manner.
In his study and interpretation of the history of
education in the United States, Elwood P. Cubberly (1868-
1941) demonstrated that in the United States the school
arose everywhere as a child of the church. James F.
Messenger (b. 1872), in his study of the history of
education, points out at time of the framing of the
Constitution of the United States, in 1787, education was
regarded as a matter of church control. (Encyclopedia
Americana)
Back to our school. Several parents had been teachers
in the past and they were hired for the new school. The man
hired as principal also coordinated the lesson plans for all
the classes. The student body had grown to 45 in the past
year alone.
Scholastically, our students scored appreciably higher
than students of the same grades in public schools of our
city. The students were proud of their achievements. The
teachers were proud of their students as were the parents.

Our school was gaining a reputation for good, solid educa-
tion. No frills, no pampering, no nonsense.
That our students scored much higher than students in
the public system obviously upset local and state education
authorities. Efforts were started to close the school.
First attack was on the teachers . . . they were not state
accredited.
The school answered that this was a private school and
of no concern to educational authorities. Nevertheless, it
was apparent these people had become concerned. Our
students were learning to become God-fearing, questioning
and upright citizens. They were not robots as were being
churned out in the state run system.
State authorities were not so easily dissuaded and
filed suit in a local court to have the school closed. Our
minister and principal ignored the court order and the
school continued. For a short while, anyway. The local
sheriff came by the church and school with an order for the
school to close down. However, the minister had received a
call from friends and the doors are locked barring their
entry.
Finally, in a show of police power, they forced their
way into the buildings. They actually arrested the minister
and principal for contempt of court.
What was that? They forced their way into the church
and school to arrest the minister and the principal? Is
this still America? Just where do these knotheads find the
authority to pull such a stunt?
Separation of church and state, is their argument.
Where do they find such a statement? They insist our
Constitution guarantees separation of church and state.
Religion belongs to the church and education is a state
function.
Cow paddies! Our Constitution says NO such thing.
These are words of demented idiots. These people are
parroting words which were taken completely out of their
context. This statement is attributed to Thomas Jefferson
and used by bleeding hearts out of it's intent and meaning
for many years.
Let's take a look at what our Constitution has to say
about church and state.
The First Amendment is part of our Bill of Rights.
This specifically prohibits the government from interfering
in special areas such as religion, press, free speech, etc.
The introductory statement or preamble to the Bill of
Rights makes the intent crystal clear . . .
"THE Convention of a number of the States, having
at the time of their adopting the Constitution,
expressed a desire, in order to prevent mis-
construction or abuse of its powers, that further
declaratory and restrictive clauses should be
added: And as extending the ground of public

confidence in the Government, will best ensure the
beneficent ends of its institution:" (Also from
Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the
Union)
Not any question about the intent of the First Congress
when it submitted the first twelve amendments to the states
for their approval, is there? Further restraining and
confining clauses to prevent the misunderstanding or abuse
of its powers. This was the high fence around the powers.
They also confined the misuse of those powers by the federal
government.
Back to the First Amendment . . . separation of church
and state? Not a chance. Here is what it has to say about
our RIGHT to religious freedom, opening and operating
schools, etc:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an es-
tablishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances."
Can you read anything in there which allows them to
close a school or arrest a minister or principal? Of course
not. They would prefer you didn't know what our rights are
so they say we are guaranteed "separation of church and
state."
We are GUARANTEED the right to establish any religion
and to practice it freely as our hearts and consciences
dictate. Our Founding Fathers were religious and Christian
and believed religion was something between an individual
and his Maker.
In 1789, Congress passed an ordinance which declared
that: Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to
good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and
the means of education should ever be encouraged. (Encyclo-
pedia Americana) Religion most certainly not an issue in
which the government could stick its nose. This is one of
those restrictive clauses to prevent an abuse of power!
Is it possible that those who work for government don't
know what our Constitution says either? It is not only
possible but very definitely true. This even though we have
ordered ALL persons who work for a government entity, at any
level, to take an oath to support the document.
Being men of wisdom, the Founding Fathers specified
that no religious test be a qualification to office. (Art
VI, Sec 3) They were firm believers in religious freedom.
For the sake of illustration, let's say that you and
three or four friends get together. You all decide to
worship Isis or a stone or a jaguar, . . . . the idol is
unimportant. The fact remains our Constitution says you
have that RIGHT! And further you have the right to exercise

your religious belief freely.
Your friends may not agree with you or your belief and
I may not agree with you. Even government may also disagree
with that belief. Yet they cannot interfere with your
doctrine or the free exercise thereof. First Amendment
guarantees that. There are no changes further on in our
Constitution to say they can obstruct your belief. This is
why they want you to believe there is a guarantee of
separation of church and state.
Going back to our opening illustration, the right to
establish and practice a religious belief was violated.
Also the right to freedom of speech and of the people to
peacefully assemble. All First Amendment guarantees.
How do they get away with it? Because they feel power
and might makes right! And we are fast becoming illiterate
and ignorant concerning our Constitution. At the same time
we are becoming a nation of wimps. It's becoming apparent
as we look around there are no real men anymore. No one has
enough starch in their backbones to tell these people enough
is enough. What has happened to the "land of the free and
the home of the brave?"
These people are seizing and assuming powers which we
did not grant to government at any level. Can you imagine
this happening in this country let's say 200 or even 100
years ago? People would have been up in arms. And rightly
so.
A quote from an encyclopedia might shed some light on
what our government has in mind for the United States . . .
"In Russia, education is a state monopoly. No
religious schools (apart from a few seminaries for the
special purpose of training priests) or private schools of
any kind are permitted to exist. (And we've seen what is
going on there. They have people who don't know how to wind
a watch.)
Teaching in the schools must emphasize scientific
materialism and exclude any consideration of the super-
natural." (Encyclopedia Americana) God is a no-no!
If you have a chance to see the original or true copy
of our Constitution, you will see WE THE PEOPLE on the first
line of the Preamble. We agreed to and established the
Constitution giving permission and authority for our
government.
This is a fixed and immutable document changeable only
by the ones who gave the authority for government . . . WE
THE PEOPLE. (Art V) There is nothing in the document which
gives the right to anyone in government to enlarge their
sphere of power or authority.
By our permission, they were given authority and
jurisdiction to govern. When they exceed granted powers,
they are breaking the law and violating the trust we imposed
in them. By such an act their jurisdiction ceases. Alex-
ander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers (No. 78)
that 'No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Consti-
tution can be valid.' 
Let's take a look at how the federales are observing
this guaranteed right to free exercise of our religious
beliefs. Would it surprise you to hear that they don't
believe we have it?
The Internal Revenue Service, part of the executive
branch, have regulations which have a direct or implied
consent of the Congress. They can decide if a church
doesn't conform to what they term is a conventional
religious belief. By a simple letter they can then say you
are not a church and take away your tax exempt status.
Further restrictive clauses mentioned in the preamble
to the Bill of Rights has a hollow ring. I'll have to admit
it really generates confidence in our government, doesn't
it?
Looking a little further in our Bill of Rights, two
more amendments will make our point. The Ninth and Tenth
are clear to anyone that no power or authority not expressly
granted can be seized. These were included just in case
someone in government decided our Constitution and Bill of
Rights didn't mean what they say. Let's see what they say
and you will understand why governments really wish they
didn't exist.
Article IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain
rights, shall not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people.
Article X
The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively or
to the people.
Not difficult to understand, are they? Then why were
the people arrested or the church and school closed? We
have to reassert ourselves and assume the power of directing
our governments to their intended roles. We have elected
people to Congress who break the law by violating constitu-
tional restrictions and the oath they took to support the
document. Throw them out of office! Drastic? Not at all.
Look at what they are doing to us. Those appointed deserve
to have civil suits filed in federal courts for violation of
our constitutional rights.
Relying on Supreme Court decisions as a guide to filing
suits in court is normally a false hope. First, the Supreme
Court has NO authority under our form of government to make
law. Their decisions are just that . . . decisions . . .
only opinions! The basis for federal suits are the
Constitution and what our Founding Fathers determined and
established for our new government.
Nevertheless, there are many older decisions which do
substantiate our stand. Intensive research will find those.
By staying strictly within constitutional authority, they
have no where to turn to disagree or argue against.

Petitions for Redress of Grievances can be effective.
Send them to all members of Congress together with anyone
else in the bureaucracy with a suggestion of power. This is
First Amendment right. Send any Petitions for Redress of
Grievances via certified mail. It wouldn't be the first
time bureaucrats have 'lost' mail when they haven't had to
sign for it. Phone calls and letters to members of Congress
are a must. Ask questions about assuming powers we did not
confer . . . about the oath they have taken to support the
document etc.
Before someone takes me to task for the statement that
the Founding Fathers were Christians, let me point out the
last page of the Constitution. When the delegates affixed
their signatures before it was sent to the Congress for its
submission to the states we find:
"DONE in Convention, by the Unanimous Consent of
the States present the Seventeenth Day of
September in the Year of Our Lord one thousand
seven hundred and Eighty seven . . . ."
The opening illustration was not hypothetical.
Incidents like this are occurring with frightening regular-
ity. Media reports show there are over 6000 cases now
pending between religious organizations and the federal
government.
To allow these people to destroy our country and form
of government, all good people need to do is nothing! What
will you tell your posterity? How will you justify it? Or
is it simply that you don't want to become involved . . .
let your children or grandchildren worry about it them-
selves?
There is a point where the exercise of their power
stops . . that's when we stand firm and say don't cross this
line.
Young minds are fertile ground. The state wants
control of education to mold these minds to their view.
They WANT robots. Let's deny them the power.
PLEASE SUPPORT SHAREWARE BY REGISTERING WITH THE AUTHOR. 

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***NOTE: EXTRACTED FROM THE ACADEMIC AMERICAN
ENCYCLOPEDIA***
TITLE(s): Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States (CIA) is one of
several organizations responsible for gathering and evaluating foreign
intelligence information vital to the security of the United States.
It is also charged with coordinating the work of other agencies in the
intelligence community--including the NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY and the
Defense Intelligence Agency. It was established by the National Security Act
of 1947, replacing the wartime Office of Strategic Services. Its first
director was Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter.
The CIA's specific tasks include: advising the president and the NATIONAL
SECURITY COUNCIL on international developments; conducting research in
political, economic, scientific, technical, military, and other fields;
carrying on counterintelligence activities outside the United States;
monitoring foreign radio and television broadcasts; and engaging in more
direct forms of ESPIONAGE and INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS.
Throughout its history the CIA has seldom been free from controversy. In
the 1950s, at the height of the cold war and under the direction of Allen
Welsh DULLES, its activities expanded to include many undercover operations.
It subsidized political leaders in other countries; secretly recruited the
services of trade-union, church, and youth leaders, along with
businesspeople, journalists, academics, and even underworld leaders; set up
radio stations and news services; and financed cultural organizations and
journals.
After the failure of the CIA-sponsored BAY OF PIGS INVASION of Cuba in
1961, the agency was reorganized. In the mid-1970s a Senate Select Committee
and a Presidential Commission headed by Nelson Rockefeller investigated
charges of illegal CIA activities. Among other things, they found that the
CIA had tried to assassinate several foreign leaders, including Fidel CASTRO
of Cuba. It had tried to prevent Salvador ALLENDE from winning the 1970
elections in Chile and afterward had worked to topple him from power.
Between 1950 and 1973 the CIA had also carried on extensive mind-control
experiments at universities, prisons, and hospitals. In 1977, President
Jimmy Carter directed that tighter restrictions be placed on CIA clandestine
operations. Controls were later also placed on the use of intrusive
surveillance methods, such as wiretapping and opening of mail, against U.S.
citizens and resident aliens.
Late in the 1970s, however, fears arose that restraints on the CIA had
undermined national security. The agency's failure to foresee the revolution
in Iran (1979) gave new impetus to efforts at revitalization. President
Ronald Reagan and his CIA director, William J. CASEY, loosened many of the
restrictions, but such activities as the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in 1984
as part of the covert campaign in support of the Contra rebels and the
still-unclear role of the CIA in the IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR focused renewed
public attention on the agency.
Following Casey's death in 1987, Reagan appointed William WEBSTER, then
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to be Director of Central
Intelligence. His reputation for integrity helped to restore the agency's
image, but alleged intelligence failures during the PERSIAN GULF WAR (1991)
tarnished the record of his tenure. He was succeeded in 1991 by Robert M.
GATES.
Bibliography: Ameringer, C. D., Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of
American History (1990); Breckinridge, S. A., The CIA and the U. S.
Intelligence System (1986); Colby, William, and Forbath, Peter, Honorable
Men: My Life in the CIA (1978); Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri, The CIA and
American Democracy (1989); Karalekas, Anne, History of the Central
Intelligence Agency (1977); Leary, W. M., ed., The Central Intelligence
Agency (1984); Lefever, Ernest W., and Godson, Roy, The CIA and the
American Ethic: An Unfinished Debate (1980); McGarvey, Patrick, CIA: The
Myth and the Madness (1972); Marchetti, Victor, and Marks, John D., The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence (1975); Ranelagh, John, The Agency: The Rise
and Decline of the CIA (1986); Ransom, Harry H., The Intelligence
Establishment (1970); Snepp, Frank, Decent Interval (1977);
Turner, Stansfield, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (1985);
Woodward, Bob, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987 (1988).

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_________________________________________________________________
W I N N I N G B Y C I R C U M N A V I G A T I O N:
Milwaukee's clinic defenders find legal recourse
on a detour around the District Attorney
Copyright 1993, 1994 by Muriel Hogan
_________________________________________________________________
As the Milwaukee Clinic Protection Coalition (MCPC) steeled itself
for a second Wisconsin winter on the street, members celebrated
the anniversary of the permanent injunction signed December 10,
1992 by Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Wagner. The injunction
limits certain kinds of protest activity outside Milwaukee's
abortion clinics. Clinic escorts and defenders, dreading their
winter vigil, are nonetheless cheered by indications that the
fundamentalist Christian onslaught is diminishing at last.
Once-huge crowds of "Antis" have dwindled to a handful on
weekdays and 20 or 30 on Saturdays. At some clinics, there've
been no protesters at all, a condition the defenders call "NFA."
Away from the clinics, protest leaders can't recruit more that a
few hundred people to come to their public events. By contrast,
LifeChain, an annual pro-life demonstration in Milwaukee,
attracted 8,000 people last fall. The Milwaukee Journal quoted
one LifeChain participant who preferred to express his opinion
"without threatening anyone, without breaking any laws."
* Signs of decline
Programming on the Christian broadcast station WVCY also reflects
the cooldown. At the height of Milwaukee's 1992 summer protests,
WVCY-FM aired two hours a day of live reports and exhortations,
while WVCY-TV showed 30 minutes a night of clinic protest
footage, often followed by an hour-long call-in show on the
subject. In 1993, most abortion-related programs were nostalgic
reruns of the Antis' 1992 glory days.
WVCY's anti-abortion radio show, "Building the Foundations" has
cut back from 30 minutes to 15, inspiring its MCPC listeners to
call it "The Quarter-Hour of Power." Other WVCY shows have
switched to safer topics: school prayer, satanism in popular
music, and the dangers of troll dolls. Today, WVCY often ignores
news about abortion protesters who are facing fines and jail
terms under the permanent injunction.
* Attendance down, violence up
MCPC started in April, 1992, when anti-abortion activists
announced their eight-week "Short-Term Mission to the Pre-Born."
That summer, the Missionaries to the Preborn, Operation Rescue,
and Youth for America (YOFAM) orchestrated large demonstrations
and blockades. Missionary founders Rev. Joseph Foreman and Rev.
Matthew Trewhella stated their intention to close every abortion
clinic in Milwaukee. The Short-Term Mission resulted in over
1,000 arrests and $1 million in law enforcement costs.
By contrast, 1993's summer protests were much smaller, with
police costs of $112,000. But the Milwaukee Fire Department
reported costs of $48,000 for the butyric acid attack on one
clinic in August, and $99,000 for two September "car rescues" in
which Antis chained themselves into junked automobiles to block
clinic doors. Figures are unavailable for protest-related court
costs and for the amount of protesters' unpaid fines.
As the Antis' desperation has increased, so has their violence.
Since Dr. David Gunn's assassination last March, Milwaukee's
doctors have been the target of home blockades, stalking, and
death threats. One clinic has had bullets fired through its
windows four times in 1993.
* How the defenders attack
On the street, MCPC's strategy is purely defensive, protecting
patients and holding clinic doors to prevent blockades.
Defenders practice the discipline of keeping their hands in their
pockets and avoiding verbal exchanges with the Antis. But in
court, the hands come out of the pockets. Using the permanent
injunction, the Coalition has launched a full-tilt legal
offensive against the Antis.
The injunction orders protesters to stay 25 feet away from each
clinic and ten feet from each patient. Protesters must not
impede patients, touch them, photograph them, or record their
license plates. (See box.) If an Anti repeatedly breaks these
rules, MCPC serves them with the injunction and starts collecting
evidence of their violations.
* The legal lioness
Attorney Joan Clark, one of MCPC's co-coordinators, has led the
legal attacks like a mama lion: watchful, tenacious, and coolly
aggressive. A self-described "housewife and mom," she plots
strategies with other pro-choice attorneys including her husband
Bill Guis, MCPC board members Katy Doyle and Katie Walsh, and
Walsh's husband Steve Glenn. No doubt, the presence of so many
female lawyers has inspired gland-shrivelling FemiNazi paranoia
in many Antis.
Interviewed last week, Clark said MCPC began its legal work even
before the Short-Term Mission. "By the time the first big crowds
hit the streets," she said, "the Coalition had been successful in
getting a preliminary injunction into place."
"That spring," Clark said, "Katie Walsh and Chris Korsmo (of
NARAL) convinced the Powers That Be that there was going to be
serious, serious trouble. And with no injunction, there'd be no
mechanism to handle it."
The December permanent injunction, almost identical to the
preliminary, solidified what Clark calls the "completely
separate, parallel system of justice" that protects Milwaukee's
five abortion clinics.
But even after the preliminary injunction was signed, its
benefits were hard to see and difficult to enforce. "It didn't
do us much tangible good until this year. But two significant
things happened. First, fully half of the named defendents
disappeared. In that respect, the injunction started helping
right away. And second, it gave us a great morale boost."
* A detour around what?
But why was this roundabout route necessary? "You get an
injunction because there isn't an enforceable law on the books
that will that will prevent certain things from taking place,"
Clark explained. "There's a hole and you need to fill it up."
"We needed this injunction," she said, "because the Milwaukee
District Attorney, E. Michael McCann, is anti-choice and would
not charge people who were arrested day after day. The only way
to stop this activity was to set up a completely separate system
of justice," she said.
"People don't realize that the Missionaries had already been
doing this for three years, long before the Short-Term Mission."
Clark said. "Every single day at Summit, when a patient would
approach, two people blocked the door. You call the cops, get
the paddy, spend an hour getting rid of them. The woman would
get in. And then when the next patient came -- two more people
would sit down."
Clark said police officers have told her that "until the
Coalition started, the DA wouldn't talk to police or clinic
owners about anything, not even battery. Dr. Paul Seamars was
physically restrained by one Anti while another took his picture,
and the DA wouldn't do anything. It's a very, very, very
dishonest policy."
"Anywhere else," said Clark, "if you receive ten municipal
disorderly conduct tickets for the same activity within a
relatively short period of time, you'll be charged with a crime,
because these muni tickets are not deterring you."
"If we had had a District Attorney who'd do his job, the
Missionaries wouldn't be here. Except for two weeks in Buffalo
and four weeks in Wichita, we have the most chronic, terrible
problem in the country," she said.
* Have you been served?
You'll frequently find Clark in court, sitting at the prosecution
table with counsel from the City Attorney or State Attorney
General. "I'm there unofficially as an evidence gatherer. I'm
more conversant with the facts than the city attorney, because
usually I was there when the incident happened," Clark said. "A
second function we serve is to tell the city when the people
they're looking for show up at clinics."
Clark also serves injunctions for MCPC and keeps track of
which Antis have been served. She described her informal rule:
"We serve people whose names we know who violate the injunction.
Because down the road, if they do something bad, we want to be
able to bring a motion against them."
She's very sensitive to the free speech issues the injunction
raises. "If you violate the injunction, the question is whether
you're acting in concert with a named defendant, and / or whether
we care," she said.
"Take the Concrete Christian," she said, referring to a protester
who always stands motionless and silent. "He violates the
injunction every day, but I couldn't care less. I consider that
First Amendment activity, and I would never go after him," Clark
said. Although we might get a judge to say this guy is acting in
concert, it would be dishonest, because he's not."
Clark urges people to come observe how "sidewalk counselling"
works. "Watch for half an hour," she said. "You'll see: it's
not someone expressing a view. It's very aggressive, very
physical -- and it's designed to scare the hell out of somebody
who's seeking medical attention."
* Crime and punishment
So far, MCPC's biggest catch is Brian Longworth, convicted in
November of criminal contempt and sentenced to two years for
twice blockading clinic doors. Longworth first attracted MCPC's
attention by leading "kiddie-hits," blockades that result in
dozens of arrests of children as young as eight years old.
"Longworth is definitely the worst," said Clark. "Longworth is
big because he's the leader of Youth for America, he felt he was
untouchable, and his name was not on the injunction."
Clark stressed the importance of prosecuting defendants whose
names are not on the injunction: "The Antis tell everybody the
injunction's just a piece of paper. If your name isn't on there,
it doesn't apply to you. But this Longworth thing hit everybody
right in the face. All of a sudden, they can't deny it any
more," she said.
Another un-named defendant, Rev. Joseph Foreman, was found in civil
contempt November 29. Foreman's a national figure among anti-
abortion activists, a former field operations director for
Operation Rescue. Since moving to Milwaukee in 1992, he's become
the most prominent leader on the local scene. Oddly, neither
WVCY nor the Missionaries to the Preborn has mentioned Foreman's
conviction.
At his trial, Foreman complained that he felt singled out for
selective prosecution, and urged the city to first pursue
defendants who were named on the injunction. Joan Clark
dismissed Foreman's assertion, saying, "Joe knows why he's being
picked. A prosecutor with limited resources will go after the
people who are the most troublesome."
Altogether, six Antis have been found in criminal contempt and 27
in civil contempt. More than half of these people have come to
Milwaukee from other states to participate in protests here.
A person found in civil contempt must forfeit $500, or swear to
obey the injunction, or serve 20 days. For a second violation,
penalties double. A third violation can become criminal
contempt, carrying $5,000 or a year in jail. The Milwaukee City
Attorney's office and the State Attorney General are continuing
to bring contempt motions against Antis who violate the
injunction.
* Approaching the endgame
The permanent injunction, like many legal matters, has taken
effect with an almost geological slowness over the past year.
Now Clark and the Coalition can sense its increasing speed and
effectiveness. "This is absolutely going to mop up the problem,"
she said. "Things will pop up now and again, but most Antis will
drop out after their first convictions. They're desperate! Why
are they talking about Waco, Texas all the time, and Halloween?
They can't even talk about this issue on the radio any more!"
At the clinics, defenders feel that the remaining protesters have
become more frantic. As their legal woes multiply, previously
mild-mannered Antis have spun out of control. In recent weeks,
police have arrested middle-aged Christian homeowners for
kicking, slapping, and spitting at clinic defenders and escorts.
With spring, MCPC hopes that the Freedom of Access to Clinic
Entrances (FACE) bill will solve the Anti problem for clinics
nationwide. FACE has passed both houses of Congress, but must
clear a conference committee before President Clinton can sign
it. Among hard-core protesters, a common practice is to blockade
in one city until the penalties become too severe, then move to
another city. Brian Longworth, for example, collected 16
convictions in Georgia and California before he came to
Wisconsin. The new federal law will stop these itinerant
protestors much more effectively.
FACE may make the local issue moot, but the pro-choice community
won't forget how their District Attorney made Milwaukee taxpayers
underwrite his personal religious beliefs. And dollars don't
cover the damage to patients' privacy and peace of mind. One
clinic escort said, "I wish I'd counted the tears. Every time
the Antis make a woman cry, I think of how the DA should make
reparations for all those tears."
Clark said that one defender, Mike Salick, has found the perfect
analogy for MCPC's long struggle. "It's like a town in the Old
West," she said, "where the bad guys are preying on the
townspeople. And for some reason, the sheriff won't do anything.
Finally the townspeople say 'OK, we've had enough!' And they
rise up and they drive the bad guys out of town. That's just
what we've done!"
_________________________________________________________________
* Clip and save!
How to Exercise Your First Amendment Rights
Without Getting Arrested:
A Handy Wallet Card for the Pro-Life Activist
1. Do not come any closer than 25 feet to any abortion clinic's
doorway, parking lot, or driveway.
2. Do not come any closer than 10 feet to any person entering or
leaving the clinic.
3. Do not physically abuse, grab, touch, push, shove, or crowd
any person entering or leaving the clinic.
4. Do not photograph any person entering or leaving the clinic,
and do not record their car's license number.
5. Clinic defenders focus their legal offensive on certain kinds
of protesters, those who:
- Blockade clinic entrances.
- Threaten or scare patients, doctors, or clinic staff.
- Make physical contact with patients or defenders.
- Lose their tempers, or are verbally abusive.
You can speak, pray, sing, hold a sign, and counsel anyone who
voluntarily approaches you. People who follow these guidelines
have nothing to worry about.
_________________________________________________________________
This article has appeared in:
The Shepherd Express, Milwaukee, WI, December, 1993.
The Sojourner, Boston, MA, January, 1994, in a condensed version.
Off Our Backs, Washington, DC, February, 1994.
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright 1993, 1994 by Muriel Hogan
Anyone may duplicate or distribute this article on BBSs, nets,
and echos. No one may reproduce this article in hardcopy for
sale or free distribution without my prior written permission.
For print permission, please contact me via Fido netmail.
_________________________________________________________________

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THE CITIZEN'S LINE ITEM VETO PROPOSITION
"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal." -- Karl
Hess
"If a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely
that you would be better off without it?" -- The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
Here's a proposition that, if passed, would convince me to
abandon two decades of abstinence from the political process,
register to vote, and vote early and often -- too often, I think,
for this proposition to stand any chance of being enacted, for it
would actually place real power in the hands of the average voter
in a way that the established Powers That Be would not permit.
You are free to try proving me wrong by attempting to get it
passed: I assure you it will not be enacted into law without
being watered down so much as to be meaningless. But I offer it
as an exercise for the politically active, to demonstrate to them
the contempt in which the electorate is held by elected and
appointed officials, and how any real attempt to enfranchise
power in the hands of the people will be resisted tooth and nail.
California has in place a method of amending the state
constitution through voters' initiatives called propositions.
Very well -- California is as good a place as any to test any
whacky new idea. If successful here, it will be imitated in
other states, and perhaps even federally. Therefore, herewith
proposed to be placed before the voters of the State of
California is
*****
THE CITIZEN'S LINE ITEM VETO PROPOSITION
Summary: The State of California shall establish a statewide
voicemail telephone system whereby voters may exercise a line-
item veto over all legislation signed by the governor. A one-
third vote in favor of vetoing a line item shall prevent it from
becoming law, with no override available.
The proposition:
Within one year of the passage of this proposition:
I. A. The State of California shall register any California voter
who wishes to enroll for Citizen's Line Item Veto participation.
Such enrollment shall identify these voters in a manner not
invasive to their personal privacy, but with a level of security
equivalent to that used by the commercial banking industry for
telephone banking transactions.
B. The State of California shall establish a state-wide voice-
mail telephone system, operated by touch-tone telephones using an
(800) area code telephone number or other free-to-caller area
code. All California voters enrolled for Citizen's Line Item
Veto participation shall be entitled to vote on this system.
C. Each line item in all legislation signed by the governor the
previous week shall be placed before the enrolled voters on this
voice mail system. Each voter on the system shall be given one
vote per line item of legislation signed by the governor, YES or
NO.
D. A count shall be made each week of all votes on each line-
item. If a line-item gains one-third or more NO votes, it shall
fail to have been passed into law, and no appeal to any
legislative, executive, or judicial authority may override this
veto.
II. The State of California shall provide a weekly line-item
summary of all legislation which has been signed into law by the
governor the previous week. Such summary shall be in a form
understandable to any resident of the State of California with a
high school diploma issued by a California public school, and
shall be made publicly available.
III. To compensate voters in the Line Item Veto for the time and
effort of reading the legislation and registering their vote, all
voters enrolled in the Line Item Veto who vote on the system at
least eight times per year shall be exempt at point of sale on
all purchases from the California Sales Tax for the next year.
IV. No line-item vetoed by the voters of the Line Item Veto may
be reintroduced into legislation for a period of three years.
V. No tax or other method of public funding, including all usage
fees, shall pass into effect without being subject to the
Citizen's Line Item Veto, nor shall any tax or other method of
funding, including all usage fees, remain in effect two years
from the passage of this proposition unless it is placed before
the enrolled voters of the Citizen's Line Item Veto.
*****
--J. Neil Schulman
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Newsgroups: misc.legal
From: jim@irvine.com (James)
Subject: SSNs, taxes, legal jurisdictions, and citizenship
Organization: Irvine Compiler Corp., Irvine, California, USA
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1993 02:03:16 GMT
Message-ID: <C0xCDH.n2K@irvine.com>
Lines: 394
I've come across claims that there is another class of citizenship in
these United States, and that members of that class do not have to
file taxes and hence do not have to obtain a Social Security Number
for any reason.
I would very much like to obtain informed opinions and citings from
legal decisions in support for or against, as I don't yet have all the
facts.
To kick off the discussion, I'll offer what I've learned so far. But,
please: I'm primarily interested in the legal aspects. Discussing the
philosophical or social implications would be fun, but only as asides
to the legal aspects. Also, I'm not especially interested in the
tax consequences so much as I'm interested in the overall issue of
individual Sovereignty and the loss thereof.
* * *
0. The Issue
With respect to US citizenship and SSNs, there are two claims made:
1) that US citizens are required to file taxes and the IRS requires
taxpayers to obtain an SSN; and 2) that there is another class of
citizenship whose members do not have to file taxes and are not
subject to most federal regulations.
The first claim is undeniably true. US citizens must definitely file
taxes and the IRS definitely requires taxpayers to obtain SSNs.
A summary of the argument for the second claim follows. I am trying
to track down all supporting information---court decisions in
particular---to determine its veracity.
Where I've wished to add supporting evidence or personal interjections,
I've placed references in square brackets [] to a Notes section.
1. The Argument In Favor of Claim 2
1.1. Classes of Citizenship
There are two distinct and separate classes of citizenship: 1) State
Citizenship, which has existed since before and after the Union was
formed; and 2) US citizenship, which has existed only since the 14th
Amendment (which actually created the class of US citizenship).
By Common Law birthright everyone who is born in a State is a
Sovereign Citizen of the State in which they were born.
1.2. Common Law
Common Law is the basis of the U.S. Constitution and the various State
constitutions. Common Law derives from English law, and is largely
uncodified. Common Law is approached as axiomatic, and provides that
persons have inalienable (or "natural") rights that cannot be taken
away by governmental entities. [1]
1.3. The Nature of Sovereignty
The term Sovereign has very special meaning in law. It is from Common
Law and derives from the body of law applicable to Kings (Sovereigns).
A Sovereign is not necessarily subject to any higher authority.
However, if one is not a Sovereign then one is subject to some higher
authority.
There are three classes of Sovereigns in the United States: "We The
People", the State Governments, and the Federal Government. Hence, a
State Citizen is a Sovereign.
Each Sovereign State Citizen, with respect to every other Sovereign
State Citizen, is a Sovereign. Each State, with respect to every
other State, is a Sovereign. The United States of America ("the US"),
as a country, is a Sovereign with respect to every other country in
the world.
The Sovereign "We The People" created the States. The States are
subject to the Sovereign We The People that created them. The
Sovereign States created the US. The US is subject to the Sovereign
States that created it.
1.4. Classes of Constitutions
Each State has two constitutions: 1) an original Common Law
constitution with which the State, as a Sovereign Country whose form
of government was required to be a Republic (not quite the same thing
as a Democracy), entered into the Union; and 2) a Corporate
constitution created sometime after the State entered into the Union
and had incorporated.
California, for example, has two Constitutions: the original Common
Law constitution of 1849, and the statutory law ("Corporate")
constitution of 1879. Both constitutions are still in effect. The
Corporate constitution cites the original Common Law constitution and
is a substitute for it. The term substitute has special meaning in
law. It does not mean "to replace" or "to supersede". [2]
The State Constitutions and the Federal Constitution are documents
specifically creating and delineating the powers and restrictions of
the created government. All other powers are to remain with the
People and all powers granted to the government are from the People.
The Constitutions give a Sovereign Citizen no rights whatsoever,
because a Sovereign Citizen already possessed all rights possible:
the Citizen was and is the ultimate Sovereign in this country.
The Constitutions simply acknowledge and state the preexistence of
these "inalienable rights" and guarantee that the government will not
in any way infringe or take away these rights.
Among other things, the various Constitutions state that any
government shall not infringe on the right of individuals to enter
into contracts.
1.5. The Nature of the District of Columbia
Each State in the Union is a separate Country. This is stated by US
Supreme Court Cases and Congressional Record, most recently in 1968.
Late in the 18th century, 13 separate countries agreed to form a Union
and to create a 14th separate country called the District Of Columbia.
The land for the Federal District of Columbia was taken from the
country of Maryland. [3]
Washington D.C. and all States are separate countries with respect to
each other. Therefore, any entity, whether a person or a corporation,
while residing in another country, is a foreigner (an "alien").
The US Government (of the District of Columbia) is a foreign/alien
corporation with respect to each State.
1.6. Classes of Citizenship Revisited
Sovereign State Citizenship is a Common Law birthright. That status
was not and is not created by the State or the United States; it is
axiomatic.
US citizenship was created by the 14th amendment to the Constitution,
hence US citizens are subject to the US government.
A Sovereign State Citizen (or briefly, a State Citizen) is not subject
to the US government in the same way that a US citizen is. A State
Citizen has the full protections of all of the restrictions on the US
Government that the US constitution provides.
State Citizens are Citizens of exactly one State. The US Constitution
guarantees that every State shall treat Citizens of every other State
while within that State as if they were Citizens of their State.
US citizens are citizens only of the District Of Columbia. They are
not State Citizens of the State in which they reside. They are
technically Franchises of the Corporation called the US Government.
Any US citizen residing in one of the 50 states is considered to be a
resident alien of that state, and not a Citizen of that state---and,
as a special point in law, is "residing" in that State, as opposed to
being "domiciled" there.
A State Citizen is subject to common law and the original state
constitution. The Common Law constitution can be invoked in court by
a State Citizen. The Corporate constitution does not apply to a State
Citizen. [4]
The Corporate constitution of a State does apply to a resident/alien.
All modifications to the original Common Law constitution contained
in the Corporate constitution do apply to residents/aliens.
1.7. The Nature of Income Taxes
Both the US Constitution and the State Constitutions do allow for
excise taxes.
The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that
Congress may impose taxes on income. [5]
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the income tax is an excise tax
because it is a tax on the earnings of corporate franchises (i.e. US
citizens) and hence is an excise tax. [6]
Because a US citizen is a Franchise of a foreign corporation with
respect to the State, and is residing in the State, that citizen pays
some income taxes to a special state entity. In California, that
entity is the Franchise Tax Board and the tax is called the Resident
Income Tax.
State Citizens are not subject to the Resident Income Tax since they
are not residents of the State and are not aliens with respect to the
State. [7]
State Citizens are not citizens of the District Of Columbia and therefore
they are not subject to the District Of Columbia's income tax.
1.8. The Nature of the Social Security Tax
Social Security was first implemented in 1935, originally not as a tax
per se. The Social Security Act of 1935 was repealed in 1938 and
reenacted as a direct tax on all US citizens. It is a direct tax
because the Social Security Act of 1938 states that the revenues can
be used for "any other purposes". [8]
The Social Security tax today is a direct tax called FICA, and the
revenue collected from payees is directly given to recipients.
However, the revenue is considered part of the general tax revenues
(e.g. those collected from taxes on incomes and other sources),
and can be spent in any way specified by Congress.
The courts have ruled that Social Security disbursements are "gifts"
from the government. However, the US Government is free to do with
the monies whatever it wishes.
Social Security taxes are not refundable.
Since State Citizens are not US citizens they are not subject to
social security tax. The social security tax is voluntary.
2. Notes.
[1] I wanted to compare Common Law and Statutory Law, but my
understanding of the nature of Statutory Law needs improvement.
[2] Each Sovereign State after entering into the Union eventually
incorporated. Each State has two flags: the Sovereign State flag
and the Corporate State flag. The Corporate constitution is the
constitution that is full of all of the Statutory "laws" that
apply to its residents. Anything the Corporate State creates is
subject to it. The US Government is also a Corporation.
The US also has two flags: the Sovereign United States flag and
the Federal Corporate flag which, with Gold fringe, is also a
military or martial law flag.
[3] The District of Columbia cannot become a state, because the land
belongs to Maryland.
[4] If one examines many of the "laws" on the books and the Corporate
Constitution of a State one will find that they are carefully written
so as not to apply to State Citizens. They are written to apply to all
the residents/foreigners/aliens/corporations (aka "Persons", i.e.
non-State Citizens) residing in the state. Of course, virtually
everyone in every state is a resident alien ("Person") since they
are all citizens of the US. (State Citizens are "Sovereigns,"
and, under statutory law, not "Persons".)
[5] The tax laws, as written by the US Congress, are not actually Laws
(with a capital L) at all but are codes (or contract laws).
The laws most certainly are valid for US citizens. Persons who
claim the tax laws are unconstitutional are also wrong:
there are US Supreme Court cases stating in clear and certain terms
that the "income tax" is actually an excise and hence is not
unconstitutional. In addition there are US Supreme Court cases
stating in clear and certain terms that the tax laws apply to US
citizens even if they earn all of their income outside of the US
with no direct or indirect economic involvement with US.
The mere fact that one is a US citizen empowers the IRS to determine
one's Federal income tax liability. The IRS usually forces
US citizens to "voluntarily" determine that liability themselves.
[6] There are court rulings stating that the income tax as it now
stands has nothing to do with---and never has had anything to do
with---the 16th amendment.
[7] Do Citizens of Thailand (a foreign country) pay their taxes to the US
Government? No. State Citizens are considered non-resident
aliens with respect to the District of Columbia. There is an IRS
form W-8, "non-resident alien declaration", that exempts one from
the Federal Income tax. If one files a W-8, the IRS will
eventually send one a letter stating that one is exempt from all
Federal tax liability. I have yet to actually see such a letter though.
[8] Many persons today, especially older persons, still claim that the
Social Security tax is not a direct tax and is like an account into
which they have paid and from which they expect all of "their" invested
money back plus some. But that is only as it was originally
implemented and stated to the American People, and has not applied
since 1938.
3. Analysis
3.1. Questions of Status and Jurisdiction
The key legal issue seems to be one of Status. Is one's status under
law Sovereign or Subject? Status is critical to any legal proceeding
so that proper and legal jurisdiction can be determined. It is
beginning to look like the outcome of any given case, whether argued
before the US Supreme Court or some other court, is ultimately
affected by Status and Jurisdiction. Another key legal issue which
ultimately affects Status are the terms "domiciled in/living in" and
"resides in/residing in". According to law a citizen of his own
country is domiciled in or lives in his country. A foreigner/alien or
diplomat while "living in" a country not his own resides in or is
residing in that country.
The question then in court is which constitution one can invoke. The
constitution that one can invoke is totally dependent upon one's
Status.
3.2. Contracts and Social Security
A State Citizen or US citizen is entering into a contract by obtaining
a driver's license, a credit card, a bank account, a social security
card, by filing income tax returns, etc. Once one is party to a
contract the terms of that contract are in full effect and actually
are law for the parties of the contract and fully enforcible to the
full extent of the Law.
The governments and courts must make sure the terms of the contract
are followed to the letter. This is what the Federal Government and
State Governments are supposed to do and are doing with great effect.
They enforce the terms of contracts voluntarily and non-fraudulently
entered into by two or more parties.
A State Citizen, by obtaining a social security number, is signing a
contract. The terms of a contract can constrain or supersede any of
the rights the Sovereign previously held. And those terms are fully
enforcible by the courts.
The social security contract binds the parties to the laws and
statutes regarding social security.
The social security contract also makes one a US citizen and hence
makes one subject to the 14th amendment and to any other laws that
apply to US citizens. One is still a State Citizen, but all the
Federal laws, income tax laws, social security laws, etc., constrain
one's rights contractually.
3.3. Rights of US citizens vs. Rights of State Citizens
All US citizens are subject to the US Government and have "civil
rights," but have neither "inalienable" rights nor rights guaranteed
by the Constitutions. The rights that US citizens hold are only those
granted to them by the US Government.
Civil rights can be removed or changed at will by legislation. For
example, US citizens were given the right to a trial by jury only in
1968. Previously, US citizens might be given trials by jury but the
guaranteed right to a jury trial did not exist for them. In contrast,
State Citizens have had that right guaranteed by the State and US
Constitutions since their existence.
A State Citizen has absolutely no need of civil rights. A State
Citizen already holds all rights as inalienable.
No challenges regarding constitutionality may be mounted by
aliens/foreigners and US citizens since they did not create the US
constitution---instead they are created constructs of the US
constitution. Sovereign State Citizens can challenge the
constitutionality of laws, codes, or statutes. This is why US citizen
tax-protesters get slam-dunked when they stand before the US Supreme
Court (or the Tax Court for that matter) and claim that the income tax
is unconstitutional. They are wrong twice: they cannot legally even
present the challenge, and the income tax is an excise tax and is
constitutional.
4. Conclusions
Some individuals now claim to be State Citizens by virtue of having
obtained letters from the states in which they are domiciled
acknowledging their Citizenships in those States. Also, to deny
Federal jurisdiction, these Citizens have attempted to break all
contractual ties with the US Government, by returning their Social
Security cards, by submitting IRS W-8 forms and by closing all
financial accounts with members of the Federal Reserve System (credit
cards, bank accounts, loans) etc. In addition, to deny Corporate
State jurisdiction, these Citizens have returned their driver's
licenses, vehicle registrations, and license plates.
These Citizens claim that Federal Statutory laws, statutes, codes,
etc., and the state Corporate constitutions, do not apply to
them---and have never applied to them---and also that none of the
State Statutory laws, statutes, codes, etc., apply to them.
In traffic and tax cases, the state courts are upholding these claims
so far, but not without a huge fight per individual case. I have yet
to actually sit in on a case to see this happen, but I have read some
of the decisions rendered on such cases. Most cases against State
Citizens are eventually dismissed, because the courts appear not to
want more legal precedents set.
The above is a summary of most of the support that I have found so far
for claim 2. I have not verified all of this. This is what I am
trying to do right now. So: does anyone have informed opinions about
this matter? Can anyone point to solid legal work that secures or
refutes the correctness of claim 2?
--James Zarbock

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