Monday, May 23, 2005

War as a racket

When retired U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler blew the whistle in the thirties on the biggest racket there is, you'd have thought it would make a difference. It didn't, proving that the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

Nevertheless, the question comes up again every so often. Regularly, in fact. If our young men and women can be required to contribute their lives to the prosecution of one of our government's wars, why shouldn't the military industrial complex - and corporate "America" (there are thirty-four other nations in the hemisphere, you know) generally, for that matter - also be expected to contribute? Why should some "Americans" die while others profit? If this war is indeed being fought in order to make our nation more secure against an enemy, why shouldn't Halliburton and the rest donate their produce and services? The answer is incontrovertibly that they should. It's a matter of ethics and ethical government.

But war is a racket. The Iraq version is the most obvious, the most contemptible of the kind. Racketeers don't blow the whistle on their own racket, especially when it's as vicious and contemptible as this one.

It's high time the public demand an end to corporations profiting from the maiming and death of our sons and daughters. I demand it, so should you. Wake the hell up!

Walks-in-Storms

Friday, May 20, 2005

"America" and its Freedom Myth

The quotes are there because there are thirty four other countries - nations - in this hemisphere. We're not the only "Americans." Neither are we the people we refer to when we use the word. We're pale shadows of them, a nation busily - eagerly - tearing itself to pieces. I wish you well.
I wish you well because you are the "Americans" who stood by while the IRS, Frankenstein Monster your apathy and self-indulgent cowardice has loosed upon people like me destroyed my business, my marriage and family, my professional reputation, and resolutely and relentlessly prevented my return to gainful employment. When I had nevertheless recovered, remarried, and returned to business, they (you - they exist because you let them exist) did it all over again. This time, though they drove my teenage son to three attempts at suicide.
At first, all I could do was reel under the astonishing power and cruelty of the United States' assault. I couldn't get out of my mind all that asinine mythology, all that "constitutional rights," "nation of laws," "land of the free" mythology. Raised on it, it affected everything I did, sapped my strength and slowed my reactions. Utterly helpless - how do you hire a lawyer when all your money (even my retirement account at the bank), has been seized? - I just stood and took it for a time. Then I started fighting back.
How? Ha! A case I was working, the Keith DeGroote matter, showed me. You see, government in the U.S. is always criminal. It thinks it's the law (it is - in Jeffersonian democracy, the people police and control government; no control, criminals rule). The government had faked evidence in the DeGroote trial, a fact I proved incontrovertibly before a television audience. Now I saw how to fight. "Scelus semper timidus est," the Latin motto goes - crime is always fearful.
I would show a government made up of thugs how to be afraid. I started with simple tape recordings of the relentless traffic and street stops the police subjected me to. Issued after a lifetime of driving without a speeding ticket or accident with three speeding tickets, and having had my drivers license suspended on that account, I went to the revocation hearing with tape recordings of the cops remarks and behavior during the "stops." The state found a way to give my license back forthwith. Bingo!
In the twenty-one years that followed, during more than a hundred twenty-five (I have a hundred and nine recorded in the diary I kept of such) traffic stops which occurred across the country, cops shoved and slapped me around, unloaded my van and threw everything in the ditch and mud, stole item after item of personal property, and "did their thing." When I had begun infiltrating federal and state offices everywhere, even dating IRS women, I amassed a powerful case. In 1988, when I sued in US District Court for Colorado under the Freedom of Information act and similar provision under 26 USC (the tax code) itself, the government argued that the records were exempt under the national security clause of the laws (where have we heard that one before?).
Ultimately, the court (Judge Hilbert Schauer was the magistrate) ruled that to give me the records "would irreparably damage the tax collection system of the United States." Notice that that is a verbatim quote.
Why? What did I know that would "irreparably" damage the government? What I knew was rape, extortion to commit rape, illegal conversion of property, outright theft, burglary, mayhem, and - yes - even murder. Unable to get anyone in the system to help against Congress Gestapo einsatzgruppen, all I could do to rescue one woman being raped continually by an IRS thug was get her out of the country.
Oh, I know what you're thinking. The "incredible" excuse. If you believe me, you're obligated to do something. Much easier to just mutter your mantra, "unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable." Where's the proof? Well, for one thing, the law library. You'll find cases like these:
“March 4, 1976: Ten minutes after Clyde H. Allisan and Ralph W. Foster, two IRS agents, left the residence of Robert Smiley in Salem, the latter was found dead from a bullet wound in the head. Two thousand dollars, which Smiley had in his pockets, was gone. Local police reported the death as a suicide. No autopsy was performed. The IRS agents were neither interviewed nor interrogated. No hearing was held.

“A weeks later five IRS agents seized all the vehicles comprising Smiley's business inventory and sold them. The Treasury Department refused to answer any questions on the matter. They also refused to let IRS agents Allisan and Foster be interviewed. Meanwhile, IRS agents continued to harass Smiley's broken-hearted, destitute, ill widow to the point that she attempted suicide on October 23, 1976.”
You don't believe the government took my retirement account from the bank?
“The IRS claimed Donald McGrath owed $39.65, refusing to say why Instead they persuaded McGrath's bank to transfer $39.65 from his account to the IRS.” Incited by the IRS – who eventually arranged for me to be stopped by local cops more than a hundred twenty times in fifteen years – a sheriff’s deputy shot Donald McGrath to death."
When I tell people how I was forced to fight IRS and federal goons again and again, they tell me the government doesn't do things like that. We have rights. Yeah? Tell that to this couple in Alaska:

“IRS agents jumped Stephen and Mona Oliver of Fairbanks, Alaska as they sat in their car, a Volkswagen. When they had smashed out the VW’s driver’s side window and windshield with clubs, they dragged Stephen from the vehicle. Having beaten him into submission, they likewise dragged Mona out through the broken windshield, then across the broken glass, leaving her stunned, bruised, and bleeding.”
Oh, I had the goods on the government and its thugs, all right. In fact, I sent reams of proof, including tape, movie, and video recordings to US senators, congressmen, radio and TV stations , newspapers, even Soldier of Fortune magazine - while they were much interested in the Waco massacre.
You do remember that one, don't you? Funny how they government's victims always have a fire. There was the MOVE "compound" - that word always comes up somehow, too, doesn't it? - in Philadelphia, the SLA "compound" in LA, the fire at the Gordon Kaul siege in Arkansas, and about twenty more in the past few years.
But they don't just shoot people. Yeah? How about Ruby Ridge? Randy Weaver? The woman whose head a the FBI "Hostage Rescue" Team (who was the hostage there?) sniper blew off while she stood in with her baby in her arms.
In 1986, when I had gone to the home of Senator Charles Grassley and got him out of the shower to lecture him about the IRS and its thugs, he wrote a bill, the first of several "Omnibus Taxpayers Bill of Right." Sounds impressive, doesn't it? American. Land of the free. Representative government. They passed the bill, too - "it's the law."
Yeah? Well guess what? When the law had been passed, guess who was put in charge of enforcing it. Who was the police department that would enforce the law controlling IRS? IRS!
Want me to say that again? The law to Control the excesses of IRS is enforced by IRS. You don't believe it. See? That's what's called a "knee-jerk" reaction. You're wrong, look it up.
Oh, yeah, you say - there's been new legislation. Sure. You believe THAT? Wait a minute - I need to barf in the wastebasket.
Anyway, I survived. I kicked the government's slimy ass from coast to coast, border to border. I don't pay taxes to this day. For years, I wrote the IRS a letter every April 15th. It said "F--- you! Take me to court, and go to jail." But I paid a price, too. Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged?) said it's impossible to rule innocent men. I add that it's just as impossible to rule men who aren't in debt. It's what taxes and taxation are really about, you know. I
I lived in the wilderness, without money. I taught judo, shooting, and math; I did electrical wiring, carpentry, auto mechanics, and twenty more; I was a bodyguard, pilot, and coach - all for small amounts of cash. And I survived. I survived skirmish after skirmish with federal "pull-toys" (that's a guy, sometimes a woman, who has been convicted of something heavy - drugs is a favorite - then impressed into service as a goon; or, where women are the victim, prostitute, of course) and "wind-ups" (that one is the guy who's already so mentally unbalanced that he'll attack anyone he's sicced on by means of the right motivation). It all ended with 9-11. Too busy with real "terrorists," I guess.
And you can read about it on my new website: www.judoknighterrant.com/ I've written two books, too "Letters to Aaron - the Hal Luebbert Story" and "Jonatha's Truth" a novel. Both tell my story and how I survived. They also tell you about a government ruled by the military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned about. Totally addicted to wartime profits, the industrialists who first create the CIA - the one agency of government who could, by law, spend all - if they wanted to - our money without having to account for a penny. Then came what was called the "Cold War." Gee, what a co-incidence! Then the Korean War, then Vietnam, then . . .
A president who announced his intentions (he'd had some long talks with Eisenhower, if you remember) to get control of the CIA was murdered after that same CIA had begun efforts to kill Fidel Castro and done its level best to incite WW-3.
Then the Soviet Union "fell" and the Cold War ended. Wow. Guess what happened next. Yup, just in time, the War on Terror.
But I get ahead of myself. Why did the government attack me? Why risk, why spend, everything they did to get rid of one little, John Q. Citizen guy? Well, I was one of the guys they sent to kill Fidel Castro. But when I'd been to Cuba and learned the truth, I not only refused, I wrote Fidel a letter telling him what was afoot. Juanita, his sister, and Che himself wrote back. Che thanked me for my "humanity" (I sent snapshots proving how close I had been). The government was pretty pissed, I guess you know.
And I had all that other evidence, besides. Stop and think. Read your history (read my books, while you're at it). Does what I say makes sense? Give me a better explanation of history since WW-2.
Or do what you've always done. Recite your "unbelievable" mantra. Let me tell you something. This time, the military industrial people have a hidden motive. Over population. In your name, they've picked a fight with all of Islam. That's a people who for all practical purposes and for 800 years have given up everything of civilized progress for their religion. They blow themselves up to avenge themselves, remember? If the bomb were a nuke, and it takes a third of mankind with the bombers, do you think that will make any difference to guys promised 72 virgins - by god?
Wake up, dummy - you're about to become a sacrifice to the great god greed.
Walks-in-Storms