"Red Dawn" Revisited

The video tape cover for a 1984 movie says, “In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now.” The movie is “Red Dawn,” and in it, Soviet & Cuban troops begin landing In Colorado, forcing a group of high school students to flee into the mountains before organizing guerrilla resistance and beginning to fight back.

Unfortunately, the macho minimalist movie is totally unrealistic, out of date. In the first place, a recent ruling by a federal judge would make the invading Soviet and Cuban troops in the movie only “undocumented aliens.” More, the court says that illegal immigration, whether by swimming or parachute, is a federal responsibility. The “Red Dawn” high school guerrillas would, therefore, be vigilantes.

There’s even more: the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, the courts says, applies to all persons, not just citizens. The Soviet and Cuban invaders – oops, “undocumented workers” – would be, to quote federal judge James M. Munley, “not stripped immediately of all their rights because of this single illegal act.”

If an illegal alien Mexican shoots, stabs, rapes, burglarizes - or steps on your blue suede shoes, presumably – it’s a federal matter. Don’t call a cop – he has no authority. Diplomatic immunity these days, it seems, requires only that you get in the country without being caught.

Neither is that all of it. According to columnists, pundits, and apologists for illegal immigrants from Mexico – the apologists, of course, include the Mexican Government - the “Red Dawn” Soviet and Cuban troops injured in the parachute attack or by the teenage guerillas would be entitled to free, U.S. Taxpayer funded, medical care, workers compensation, and social security benefits. The teenage guerrillas, of course, being citizens – and vigilantes – would not.

And there you have it – all of it. Check this, from the New York Times:

“The presumption that the 14th Amendment can be set aside while immigrants are hunted down and punished is widespread but false. The judge wrote: ‘We cannot say clearly enough that persons who enter this country without legal authorization are not stripped immediately of all their rights because of this single illegal act.’”

“A federal judge has dealt what we can only hope is a decisive blow against a dangerous trend of freelance immigration policies by local governments,” said the Times. “Judge James M. Munley of the central Pennsylvania district, struck down ordinances in the town of Hazleton that sought to harshly punish undocumented immigrants for trying to live and work there, and employers and landlords for providing them with homes and jobs.

“The ruling was a well-earned embarrassment for Mayor Louis J. Barletta and his proclaimed goal of making Hazleton ‘one of the toughest places in the United States’ for illegal immigrants. In doing so, Judge Munley laid down basic truths that every American should remember.”

Listen, now - the Times, speaking from sedia gestitoria (the Pope, speaking from the Chair of Peter, is held by the Catholic Church to be infallible), pontificates further thusly:

“First, immigration is a federal responsibility. State and local governments have no right to usurp or upend a vast, ‘carefully drawn federal statutory scheme’ (Hal’s note: couldn’t have said it better myself – "scheme," I mean) that governs who enters the country and the conditions under which immigrants stay, study, work and naturalize. Congress may be botching the job, but it has not delegated it.”

“Botching?” Who’s kidding whom? This is as intentional as any scheming crook or anarchist ever got.

“It is not yet clear when or whether Hazleton’s vigilantism will finally be stifled. Mr. Barletta says he will appeal. He and others across the country can be expected to keep concocting ever-more-inventive strategies to deliver pain to immigrants.

“But that is a legal and moral dead end. As long as people like Mr. Barletta persist in misusing the law to serve their prejudices, they will make the immigration system an ever more incoherent muddle. They will thwart reasonable efforts to grapple with the opportunities and problems borne in with the influx of newcomers. And they will continue to dehumanize not only their victims, but themselves.”

“Incoherent muddle?” – a government ignoring and defying the law that it made is coherent?

“Mayor Barletta says he is angry at the federal failure to control immigration. Good for him; he should join the club. But he should realize that it was his side — his restrictionist (sic) soul mates in the United States Senate — that last month took the most ambitious attempt in a generation to restore lawfulness and order to immigration, loaded it with unworkable cruelties, then pushed it into a ditch. They celebrated their victory, but their shortsighted insistence on border enforcement above all else will leave places like Hazleton to grapple with a failed immigration policy for years to come.”

I’m reminded of Will Rogers, the famed “cowboy philosopher.” He said that all he did was report truthfully what Congress did every day, and the public died laughing. All one has to do these days is report what courts, the media and its totally bewildered pundits say, and anyone who has a brain better than a grape, dies laughing (or sits staring in disbelief).

What the hell, dear reader, is so hard to understand about learning that when your neighbors live like pigs (not fair, actually – pigs wouldn’t live the way many of the people I’m talking about do), act like wild animals, steal everything they can carry or haul away, lust after little children, and kill at the drop of a hat, they probably will behave the same way if they manage to break into your house and take up residence?

These are Mexicans, for Christ’s sake! Look at Mexico – what goes on there (or don’t you know?)? What has been the history of Mexico? Do you really want for these people to come to this country, breed and multiply, vote, and take over? Create an Aztlan, then force you to pay for what results? Do you really want to have a nation, for instance, where one of the largest industries is that of kidnapping for ransom? Or drug smuggling? Murderous drug cartel, gang, and civil warfare in several places at any given time? A “Sub-comandante Marcos?” Thousands – that’s literally – of women raped, killed like they were chickens, and thrown away like garbage? Tens of thousands of little girls raped and impregnated without media, societal, or governmental reaction? Do you want to live in a nation like that wherein the military justice system does not even recognize rape as a crime?

God damn it, before you run off at your supposedly humanist, liberal, rhetorical- reality-only mouth, learn the history and truth about the nation and people of whom you’re speaking. Read their newspapers and magazines. Learn their language and listen to them. Wake up or shut up!

I’ve been writing here about guerrilla law, methods to combat the cancer eating our nation from within, destroying it and our way of life; but I need to back up, and start with essentials, basics. I mean find out what the hell is going on! What is the problem? Who is the opposition?

That means read the history of Mexico, and Latin America. Read the Mexican, and Latin American newspapers. Read the history – and learn - of the Iran-Peru Axis, the connection between Arab-Islamic history and morality and that of Spain and Latin America. Try historian Carroll Quigley (Tragedy and Hope). Until you actually know something of the topic of discussion, in other words, have the maturity to refrain from crippling any discussion with emotionally irrelevant and immaterial nonsense.

Don’t be like the vast majority of supposed – and specious – pundits and commentators on today’s media, in other words.

And don’t be their victims. None of this is rocket science. It’s all subject and understandable to and with common sense. Searching my memory for a suitable example of the kind of nonsense data the biased media and apologists for illegal immigration promulgate as fact, I recall supposedly scientific surveys like those of late pontificating to us that men are different from women. No shit. REALLY! Well, hell – I knew that.

Teenagers don’t drive as well as adults. Well I’ll be damned.

Women are more emotional than men. Do tell. Remarkable.

We should be surprised that young citizens of this country, now in the military, do not perform well; that they even commit atrocities, torture prisoners, report sick due to “combat fatigue” and “post traumatic stress” disorder, and shoot one another a lot? Excuse me – but aren’t we talking about the same young people who are in the news continually for doing exactly the same sort of thing before becoming soldiers?

The drug culture continues to take drugs after joining the military? No!

People willing to pay good money for Hip-Hop watchamahcallit, caterwauling, howling, and bawling “music” are too stupid to graduate from even our chaotic schools or acquire even the most basic of military skills? Well, what do you make of THAT? My goodness!

People who are interested in our meretricious and tawdry “celebrities” - consumers who on account of the economic pressures their mindless consumption exerts upon the nation’s pandering media and journalism receive half the attention of the same media and journalism - don’t make much of a soldier? Employee, even?

Well, mirabile dictu! I’ll be damned.

When you send to Congress or the White House the most greedy, power-mad people you can find, they tax everything made by god, then steal or blunder and bungle away the tax money, or sell out to the highest-bidding lobbyist? NO! Really? Who would have imagined it?

Corporations “earning” millions off the labor of illegal aliens they are paying peanuts lobby Congress and the state legislatures to assure a steady supply of the same illegal aliens? People representing the interests of the corporations and the illegal aliens lobby congress for a minimum wage law that lets the aliens under-bid the corporations fellow citizens? You wouldn’t expect that? Now, that’s amazing! I don’t believe it!

I’ll tell you what else I don’t believe. I don’t believe any of the “they’re just people who want to work” people. I don’t believe judges like Judge Munley in Pennsylvania or the ACLU nutcase who appeared on CNN the other night to explain that cockamamie ruling are acting in accordance with the reasoning or logic of the law. Sorry. What I do believe is this: the nation now languishes under anarchy.

Let me remind us all of something – the purpose for rule of law. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in Olmstead v. the United States, “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

In fact, it becomes anarchy, and that is what we have. What remains for the people, therefore and incontrovertibly, is to restore the rule of law. More, it is high time to serve notice upon those breaking the law that we will take over and enforce it. The tactic is that of guerrilla law, and it begins – as I said in an earlier essay - with notice. We must, in short, write letters, hundreds of thousands – millions, if need be – letters. The letters must tell the U.S. Government and the corporate lobbyists controlling it that we, the people, have had all we are going to take, and it must inform them that we consider a vote for either the Democrat or Republican Party treasonous.

We must also write letters to corporations and others employing illegal aliens, warning them that we intend to sue, and/or take other economic action to make their criminal conduct unprofitable. A portion of the letters must take the form of legal papers in the form of small claims court filings. All of it will require “networking,” and help otherwise, from all the people we can muster.

The invaders are here, their fifth column of journalists, judges, and lawyers like those of the ACLU are now operating openly, and we must be the “Wolverines” of “Red Dawn.”

Response to Criticism of My Last Essay.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty."

Responding to the several persons who, having read my last essay, question it, I answer this:

First, anyone who has been paying attention knows that all the provisions and mechanism necessary for declaration and imposition of martial law in the United States are in place. The president has, in fact, issued an executive decree that arrogates to himself power that can only be called dictatorial, powers he may assume simply by his own declaration of national emergency. There is no denying that; it is a published fact.

Neither is there any doubt (I have visited several) that there exists in the U.S. a vast network of internment camps. Located across the length and breadth of the U.S., these camps stand waiting for anyone who might raise objections to whatever Reichstag Fire “emergency” our wannabe Fuehrer might (and almost certainly will) declare. None of this is made up on my part; it is all verifiable by way of research or simple reason.

To avoid any of it, especially the reasoning aspect, one must trust a man who has already demonstrated himself to have little respect for the truth – or the public trust. Consider his oath of office, and how he has fulfilled it.
Next consider the state to which the Operation Mockingbird media have reduced the public. Look around. Consider events of just the past several weeks. Tell me you see nothing of the mindless acceptance for authoritarian excesses of government – whether by the president or the congress – is all represents. You don’t see that? REALLY?
Obviously, you’ve neither read George Orwell or know anything of the old Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany.
Get a copy of Nazi Reichsminister Josef Goebbels’ writings and introduce yourself to your government’s Operation Mockingbird methods.

You might, too, ask yourself why you don’t recognize in today’s right-wing television, the tawdrily specious presidential “debates” and “campaigning” anything of Leni Riefenstahl production, Nuremburg Rallies, and Sieg-Heiling, the “cut and run, stay the course” speeches concerning Iraq. You might also ask yourself why, probably, you don’t recognize anything of what I just spoke. Look it up – your life; certainly those of your children and grandchildren - may depend on what you learn.

In 1946, a man – one of the most brilliant scientists in history – tried to argue to a judge at his citizenship hearing that what had happened to Germany could happen in the United States. Kurt Goedel had seen and been part of the dementing of the German people. He had seen military industrialists take over power by marginalizing religious leaders, encouraging and developing right-wing radio and entertainment in order to alienate and play off, one against the other, the nation’s ethnic groups. He, along with his countrymen, felt what happened when entertainment and news media played upon the right-leaning public’s feelings of powerlessness against the elitist liberal rich and powerful.

Read it. Read it, and you’ll see that all of it was rigged by the corporate capitalism of Germany at the time. Railing against the nation’s liberals, they divided a stultified and stupefied populace against itself, gave it nowhere to turn but a savior named Adolf Hitler.

It wasn’t as if no one knew what was coming. Adolf Hitler had warned Germany long before in his book Mein Kampf what he would do, were he to come to power. You don’t see that happening today? REALLY? Neo-conservative corporate capitalism has been preaching its dogma for literally decades, since having emerged as a supposed rejection of liberalism and what then newly created Operation Mockingbird media identified as “the New Left” counter-culture of the sixties. You recognize in this none of Soviet and German history?

Coallescing and un-masking itself during the Reagan and Bush administrations, it not only represented a total metamorphosis of the nation’s world view and geo-politics, it determined to complete its silent coup d’etat by ending democracy.

Ask yourself how it all could have happened without your knowing. You will not only share the surprise of Germans who were awakened one morning by the thunder of goose-stepping SS jack-boots when you do, you’ll look around to find your countrymen eagerly accepting it all. You’ll also have to admit that, like Germans of the time, most of the nation’s citizenry today have been trained from birth to adapt to and serve the military industrial corporate structure established immediately after World War Two. You’ll recognize, too, the way Americans, held in thrall by Mockingbird-corrupted mass media distraction, shun any kind of critical thinking or questioning.

I keep saying “read.” Therein lies another Shakespearean “rub.” The fact is that Americans have all but ceased to read. Think about THAT one, and ask why. Admit that what that means is that the public has no way to see, know, or understand the truth of anything I say here. “Whoever controls the public record, controls the people’s truth,” Vladimir Lenin preached to his followers.

Tell me that all but all of your information, including that concerning history relevant to our discussion, doesn’t comes to you through media controlled by the government. Of what does that remind you . . . ?

Of course, I again assume you know something of the history of the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. It is highly unlikely, in the scheme of things today, in a nation of people who know so little of their own history that college students put the Battle of Yorktown in the Civil War, that you know anything at all of history critical to your recognition of our straits. Combine that fact with the fact that you seek no information outside that available without so much as the effort required to hold a book, then add the downright hostility toward any kind of personal introspection held by our people and it becomes evident that the present state of disaster has been building for a long time. And make, no mistake, it will get worse - much worse.

Consider the insidious nature of today’s Mockingbird media. “Divide and conquer” was a military and political tactic of Ancient Rome; but it is also a tactic essential to the propagandist who would control a nation and its people today. In keeping with the diabolical practice, we are taught on the one hand that passivity is for losers, especially economically. Yet, on the other hand, we find ourselves today nearly powerless before the military industrial corporation police state. Totally divided by cynical media pundits and “analysts” (my god – do you ever actually listen to these people?), we distractedly and mindlessly scream slogans at one another like parrots.

In this way, additionally distracted by tawdry and meretricious tabloid “celebrity” news, and lurid, rape of the week “national news;” we listen to fundamentalist Christian preachers rail on concerning Armageddon, play insanely nonsensical and violent video games, watch the empty spectacle of steroid-powered sports and their hype, digest appallingly primitive and nitwit “music” and lurid, sex-oriented advertisement, drug-induced fantasy, and other appeals to the most base of our human nature. In so doing, simply put, we serve our corporate masters, handing over to them control of congress and the government. And our lives.

And everywhere, the people express feelings of utter emptiness. Among our young, the word “boredom” has become a mantra. Anything, even mass murder, is sought in order to relieve the perceived ennui of a culture all but devoid of effort, discipline, or any kind of pursuit of virtue. Among adults, one finds more of the same, any kind of banal excitement or play, Sturm and Drang with which to penetrate the walls of the climate-controlled, hothouse world in which they languish unfulfilled.

All of it is all too familiar to sociologists and those who study people living under authoritarian rule. The climate-controlled hothouse is also a pressure-cooker prison. Psychologists have warned for years of people to be wary of people of, people who live with a feeling of inner emptiness. The thousand yard stare of the World War Two combat infantrymen is everywhere these days. Of course, those empty yearn to be filled – with sex and violence.

But with their hearts deadened by having watched relentless sex and violence, their minds sealed shut by Mockingbird behaviorist propaganda, their climate controlled prison nation has become deafeningly loud, thunderously stupid, and totalitarian vicious – indoctrinated, trained, and conditioned to worship power. In the words of H.L. Mencken, “The common people love a despot. They loved to be dictated to. The goose-step is their natural gait.”

And here were are, 2007. The public has become a tiger upon which the government and its corporate elite masters ride. What is needed is a feat of political legerdemain unlike none every accomplished since the banking industry and industrialists turned five hundred million turn of the century dollars debt into assets with the Federal Reserve Act and Sixteenth Amendment.

Now, having lived for more than a half century on credit, the house of cards built from cards like those that are the real estate market, jobs being taken by foreigners in both the form of businesses moved overseas and illegal aliens imported into the country, corporate and congressional corruption in staggering amounts (including presidential complicity therein to the tune of what seems likely to exceed a trillion dollars), and a public languishing on an income that leaves the individual a paycheck or two from ruin.

What it comes down to is the Second Law of Thermodynamics – “maximum entropy.” That’s confusion. Said another way, the shit is about to hit the fan.

Everything points to a declaration of martial law in the United States, and, as I said last time, the end of democracy. But you, the people once known as the Home of the Brave, won’t do a damned thing. You’ll do what you’ve always – during my lifetime, and having lost the honor and élan always referred to everywhere on the planet as the “Spirit of the Yankee” (hell, unread, unschooled, and uncaring as you are, you have no idea what I mean) – done. NOTHING!

You’ll pray. You’ll stick yellow ribbons to you car. You’ll declaim furiously over coffee at the coffee shop. Male, you’ll pontificate and bloviate masterfully as you watch pro football, and vicariously “hit” the opposing lineman or “sack” the opposing quarterback. Vicariously.

You’ll take vicarious minuteman part in the revolution your country needs so desperately. Needs in order to survive. You’ll run off at your f------ effeminate mouth.

And you’ll pray. God – I love that! I’m drowning – your country is drowning – and you pray. You’ll vote, in other words (in the United States today, government is god, and politics its religion . . . .)

Imagine that you are drowning. Imagine that your country is drowning. On shore, the typically effeminate “American” is striding back and forth, listening to your cries for help. What does he – this staunch patriot, this defender of women, of all things good and just - do?

Why, he talks. He prays to the good god – government (this is real, don’t forget). He calls nine one one. He calls the police, the fire department, the church. He calls every do-gooder he can think of. He calls.

And when you have drowned and are floating, he tells arriving police or fire department responders that he did everything he could do.

He wouldn’t want to become a vigilante.

“When in the Course of Human Events . . ."

“Now’s the time, and now’s the hour; see yon front o’ battle lour . . .”

A couple of weeks ago, I published my concern that the military industrial complex in power here would not relinquish the reins of government to a new administration. I’m apparently not alone in that, and I have a number of people of societal gravitas and credentials who share my worry. This is serious, people, and we, the citizenry had better wake the hell up: the alternative may be nothing less than our children and grandchildren in totalitarian slavery.

“All men,” said Abigail Adams, “would be tyrants if they could.” Damn – I’d have loved to know that woman!

Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total debacle in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."

Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn't about to happen. "If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it," Roberts replied. However, he added, "I don't think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective," pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.

"Americans think their danger is terrorists," said Roberts. "They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that."

Roberts pointed out that it's old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan (!) who are the diehards in warning of the danger. "It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power," he said. "There's no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. ... Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. ... A person like that would do anything."

The italics above are mine – what have I been saying? The current President of the U.S. and his cabal have literally (and I do not, ever, use that word incorrectly) made a mockery of law during the past six years. The Congress, owned as I’ve said lock, stock, and barrel by corporate America and the military industrial complex, has failed utterly to enforce the law. The White House and military industrial complex’s agent, none other than the U.S. Attorney General, has declared publicly that the U.S. Constitution is “an old document.”

What – you don’t understand what he means?!

I know these people. I have, as I noted yesterday, and have noted before (I wrote a book about it), faced these people down in the streets and at the door of my homes. In no instance of the literally scores of attacks on my constitutional rights as a citizen did the federal government or its emissaries show the slightest regard for the law. Their authority was that of power – muscle and guns – and beaten at their own game, they resorted to the tactics of every dictatorship in history – they attacked my family and friends.

One, more, time: WAKE THE HELL UP! You’re next.

Several people who have read my recent “blog” are apparently (experience has made me suspicious of Americans who profess ignorance or disbelief) nonplussed. Interested in the concept of guerrilla law, and desirous of doing everything they can to recover control of the country and destiny, they are so badly educated and informed that they know nothing of the history of law required. That’s not surprising, of course – it’s what government since time immemorial has endeavored to do. People knowledgeable about the laws by which they are governed are hard to abuse, and no intelligent person in his right mind can have any doubt about why our legal system has been brought by government and the corporations that control it to the status quo.

There are, as a matter of fact, a number of other people, among them wife Rita’s daughter and son-in-law, who are still unable to disabuse themselves of the idea that the Democratic Party – Republican Party rivalry remains real, and evidence that we still have a political process. That, of course, is evidently not true, with things like the unprecedented opening of the supposed political campaign this early an example of the Operation Mockingbird propaganda techniques now being used to “deceive, confuse, and bewilder” the public order to keep them in a controlled, Orwellian and only virtual reality.

As I’ve just observed, a president confident of the public’s feckless distraction and the congress’ co-option and sell-out to lobbyists commissioned and controlled by the nation’s profit-mad corporations, has, in fact, seized despotic power.

That there can be no doubt of that – he announces it publicly and continually – while the public persists in its Orwellian stupor attests, moreover, to the fact of an Operation Mockingbird media.

Frankly, even I am astonished, wondering what in the hell it will take to convince you, make you aware of what has happened?

Folks the so-called “debate” of night before last was nothing more than an operation designed to create a soap opera, a professional wrestling, television circus and electronic tabloid magazine by which to seize and hold the interest of the tabloid-reading, Britney Spear, Anna Nicole Smith, bimbo-of-the-week adulating public. Aware that events during the last two presidential administrations have uncovered the cesspool that is government, faced with the very real possibility of the rise of a real political party and what might be for all practical purpose total repudiation of the electoral process, the nation’s corporate masters are becoming nervous.

And dangerous.

Another case in point, that having to do with the insidious nature of law controlled only by government, and an example incontrovertibly probative thereof, is the federal tax code. Year after year, no tax authority has ever been able to interpret uniformly the literally scores of thousands of pages of convolute, nonsensical, and incomprehensible “law.” In witness of that fact, whole library rooms and buildings are required to contain all the volumes of record of court rulings which represent the effort to decide what the law means.

This of course, makes mockery of the concept of law. It makes mockery of the law because it means that only the government can say what the law means and is, and what the citizen is required to do. That courts may be called upon to interpret the law in no way changes that. The tax code is incontrovertibly unconstitutional as a creature of a legislature; and as a matter of contract between parties, it is unenforceable. No law or contract too vague to be uniformly interpreted by a court or other authority is constitutional and legal in the United States of America.

More, the entire legal system of the U.S. is of similar character now. The government, and the corporations that own it, are the only ones who can say what it means – or even says. It is therefore axiomatic that, inasmuch as only those able to pay the staggering costs of legal counsel and court process necessary to know what the law is, no fairness under the law – fairness required by the U.S. Constitution – exists. More in that regard, law that punishes unequally is likewise unconstitutional; and law that fines the poor in the same amount as the rich is obviously unfair.

I could go on for pages and books, but my point is this. Only law that is very simple has meaning or use for the common man. That is law prescribed and settled by history. Basic. Even more to the point, law, in the final analysis, is what large groups of people decide. That, when you think of it, is how the government at all levels determines what the law is. “Government,” said George Washington, is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force.”

Law, in other words, is what the greatest force says it is; and when enough people have decided what the law is – too many to be put in jail or to let their fellows be put in jail – THAT is the law .

The greatest force – whether the government or a group too big for the government to punish - does, in fact, what it pleases regardless of what has been enacted and written in the law. “Law enforcement” – George Washington’s “force” - achieves its aims by using overwhelming numbers and the force of numbers to work its way. Might does not make – or mean – right; still, the nation’s law libraries, filled as they are with tens of thousands of instances in which government and law enforcement agencies have arbitrarily violated – as the government did in my own experience - the rights of citizens, attest to the fact that government is not concerned with justice or rule by constitutional law. Each infringement upon the Constitution and its Bill of Rights has result in a narrowing of personal freedoms supposedly guaranteed by that same Constitution. When the government has done what it obviously knows is obviously wrong, the citizens’ recourse is to the government’s courts – an absurd state of affairs now becoming more apparent to the public with every passing outrage.

“Rule of Law” has in the United States become nonsense. It is everywhere apparent that government owned by corporations and the super-rich has nothing but contempt for the rights of the people or the law designed to protect them from government.

That I continue piling up examples and evidence, I hope, speaks of my extreme concern.

The illegal immigration matter is yet another example, a supreme one, of corporate government contempt for the concept of law. In New Haven, Connecticut – the latest example of official malfeasance, misprision, and subornation of violation of immigration law – illegal aliens – criminal violators of the law – are to be protected by public officials sworn to uphold the law they now choose to use brute force to violate.

Daily, now, the public is left to stand in stupefied disbelief at such news. But how do we retaliate?

First, let’s recall something from long ago, July 4, 1776, to be exact:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“A decent respect to the opinions of mankind . . .” I have stated several – certainly not all; the president’s contemptuous and public rejections of the law number in the hundreds – of the reasons we, the people, must regain political power. The public fact that the president repudiates the law, and the Congress suborns and misprisions his crime will do for “causes which impel.”

Then, too rebellion always means bloodshed. Everything in one’s power must be done to prevent that. Make no mistake, however - the government’s willingness to resort to violence at the drop of a hat is as thunderously apparent as forty thousand SWAT raids in the past few years, Ruby Ridge, Waco, and dozens like it can make it. You might, in weighing the U.S. government’s willingness to kill in slaughter-like proportions, consider the War in Iraq.

How to proceed: first, and most practicable for most people, start writing letters; not just to Congress, but to judges and police officials. These people have a duty to enforce the law - illegal immigration included. Judges have a duty to order it enforced (issue, that is, court orders called writs of mandemus or quo warranto).

Get a Nolo press, pro se (suit without lawyer) publication; learn the simple process to petition the court for the writ. It only takes a little research to learn more (and I'll be writing about it here). Places that help illegal aliens send money (obtained under false pretenses) back to Mexico are violating the law. They can be ordered by the courts to stop, and the police can be ordered to watch the places for illegal immigrants. Etc. This crap all goes on because we are too damned lazy to do our civic duty to our country.

Write to congressmen and senators, anyone in government, for that matter – including police officials. Be angry (you have damned good right to be), and say so. Write again and again (make a copy of your first letter, mail it every week). Organize everyone you can to do the same. Use, “network,” the internet. Write a letter (I’ll publish an example here, then do the same), then e-mail it as many times as possible.

Call public officials at all levels – as many and as often as possible – to inquire concerning how to calculate legal damages you are suffering at the hands of illegal immigration. You’ll be told by them that this is practice of law and they aren’t licensed to practice law. Don’t be deterred – it’s the message the phone call sends that is important.

Call clerks of courts and anyone else connected with the courts; ask how to obtain small claims forms necessary for filing suit against illegal aliens and those hiring and employing them. Be sure you include reference to illegal aliens and those hiring and employing them.

Start doing everything you can to learn how many illegal aliens reside in your city, town, or country, and who employs them. Call newspapers. Ask Hispanics you know or meet how many illegal aliens they know (in my next – this is becoming too long – essay here, I will include useful phrases in Spanish to use when inquiring). Remind them that to know of a crime being committed and to do nothing is a punishable crime in itself.

Get a bumper sticker that says, “Mexican, if I catch you in my country without proper documentation, you will be arrested – even if I have to do it myself (Mejicano, si le hallase a usted en mi país sin documentación, usted estaría detenido – aún cuando el que lo hace fui yo).

That will do for starters (as I said, this is already too long . . .) Next, we’ll have more, with necessary details. We take back our country now, or we lose it.

What is important now is for YOU to do something. Some of us have been carrying the ball too long, now.

“He jests at scars, who never felt a wound.”

"For the greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic." John Kennedy, war hero and President of the United States, said that in a speech, on June 11, 1962. Read it; read it a couple of times, then think about it.

Think about the culture, the society, and nation we live in today. Where can you find, in all of your experience (and I speak here to people old enough to have lived during a time when honesty, integrity, and honor were not scorned and scoffed at), a culture, society, and nation more dedicated to mythology and falsehood like this one? Today, I digress to a degree again from my discussion of guerrilla law related citizens arrest tactics, that due the discussion I encounter repeatedly on websites, especially those frequented by the distaff side of society.

In that regard, scientific integrity requires mention that Internet research of the kind I have been doing suggests that women are far more often liberal in political persuasion than men. More, women are seldom moderates, all but invariably tending to one political point of view or the other. Rosie O’Donnell and Ann Coulter aren’t alone in their extremism. Neither do women hide their preference for emotion as a basis for deliberation – especially where political “issues” are concerned.

To suggest that society ought consider that in making its governmental decisions, however, is something now become “politically incorrect.” Anyone, moreover, who chooses to notice the connection between what is politically incorrect and the tenets of the feminism is in danger of losing any audience he might have gathered. The truly awesome power of feminism is everywhere evident these days, and unless one stops there, he is in danger of lynching – probably by males now referred to as “metrosexual.”

At any rate, any viewing of television “info-tainment” news nowadays must steel himself for the barrage of “news” concerning “women’s issues.” I trust I do not have to recite the wearying list of things like the disappearance and/or rape of the week, lost child of the week, beached whale (or the equivalent) of the week, and any other tear-jerker incident or matter the purveyors of today’s “news” can find or contrive with which to distract the viewing audience from things weightier like the ravages of illegal immigration and the Iraq War.

In the “dumbed-down” nation, lacking in emotion and appeal to emotion means boring, and the electronic news media – to whom number of viewers is critical - must not be boring. News without “human interest” – one who studies these things comes soon to understand that that means female interest – is capitalistic anathema. So, we have feminized news. We have a feminized – effeminate – nation. Everybody’s happy. We must be - it’s what we wanted, after all. We voted for it – that’s how it became “politically correct,” the same reason the news has become what it is. Everything is just great. But is it?

Let’s see. Several weeks ago, I started talking about issues like that of illegal immigration, the carnage in Iraq, and the appalling state of our federal government. I suggested that in order to change it all, it would be necessary to change the latter - the government responsible for it all. That, I said, would require what I called “guerrilla law” – lateral thinking and effective activism by the public.

This, I noted also, wasn’t the first time I have done that. I related how in 1989, my public call for the public to take back control of their country by availing themselves of the four powers given them by the nation’s founders (quick, dear reader – what are they?) sent shock waves through the bureaucracy and congress. I also recollected how when I had called “charge” and turned to see who was following my lead, I found no one. Not a soul seized the opportunity offered by my intensive and thorough infiltrations of the cesspool that is federal government, that despite my having discovered and made public corruption still being slowly – tactically so – revealed to the “dumb-down” society. Oh, there was much talk – I was for a time the darling of the radio talk shows and the underground press – but one did anything.

Except the government. In the decade that followed, I was hounded relentlessly and across the country by the nation’s police, stopped more than five score times on the streets and highways. My residences and offices were burglarized as many as a hundred times. I was run down by motor vehicles repeatedly, attacked by street thugs even more often, shot at, and threatened continually by police “sting” operations. Provocation by law enforcement agencies reached outrageous proportions, including near gunfights.

Even that could not stir the public into action. In a scenario now so familiar, the public stood by idly, watching and ruminating calmly as the war went on. No matter the crime being committed as they watched, no one took any action. Except to “get the hell out of there.” Several times, crowds of people watched indolently as I fought multiple assailants far younger that I, survived being chased and run down by motor vehicles, and being wounded by a sniper. Even when I lay on a street surface after having been blasted from my bicycle in a protected crosswalk by a speeding (it left eighty-one feet of skid marks) vehicle having “blown” the stop light, being kicked and punched by driver and occupants of the van, dozens of rush hour passersby and spectators did absolutely nothing.

Nothing, in short, I could do could cause U.S. citizens to take part in any of their civic duties. So, when I made my latest suggestion of “guerrilla law” activity, I wasn’t expecting anything to actually happen. Except, de rigueur course, talk.

Does anyone see how certain of my “spec ops,” gunfighter, mentality kind have come to view the society and nation as effeminate?

A couple of days ago, I remarked again concerning my twenty-three years war with the government behaving exactly the way it is behaving now. I refer to the immigration “issue,” the war on terror, and more – and to the manner in which the government is behaving in their regard. There isn’t any difference, in terms of motivation and behavior – or tactics – you know. Modus operandi, it’s called – method of operation. One lady responded in a manner by now stultifyingly familiar. I’ve heard the reasoning and sentiment a thousand times.

“We all have, at some point in our lives, gone through some rough times in one way or another. Let it humble us and cause us to be more sensitive towards those in need. Most just need some help getting back to that point in life where they can help themselves once again.”

As I said, that was a very, very familiar reaction. During the sixteen years that I wrote and contacted personally literally scores of congressmen, senators, journalists, television networks, magazines, and others, I heard again and again just two responses. The first, the most characteristic of the United States of America and its peculiarly cowed public was, “Unbelievable – they can’t do that!” “Just that simple,” I remarked one day to reporter and publicist Jim Frazier - “’Unbelievable’ absolves the individual of any responsibility to so much as listen further, let alone show interest or do anything.”

The second of the mantra-like, all but invariable, responses offered by the public when informed of my struggle against criminal government was that “Everybody has some trouble in their lives” sagacity.

Get over it, in other words.

So, let’s do the rest of my experiment – help me with my study. I proceed now to propose a number of solutions to “issues” much in the current news. Enumerated, they are as follows:

I. To stop illegal immigration, begin enforcing existing immigration law. Raise, however, the penalty for hiring or continuing to employ an illegal – or “undocumented” – alien to ten percent of the company’s gross income. Fine anyone aware of an illegal alien’s employment ten thousand dollars. Write or re-write the law in a manner that leaves no way out. Make the penalty for being found in the country illegally a sentence of five years, working in the crop-producing fields for only sustenance and lodging. Those already working in an agricultural profession will simply forfeit all payment (and, of course, reside in prison). Following completion of sentence, the individual may be given citizenship (I don’t imagine many will remain – do you?). Penalty for crime against a U.S. citizen by an illegal alien should be punishable by triple that committed by a citizen, and in the case all crime resulting in the death of a citizen, or rape, the penalty should be death.

2. To end the miasma of corruption in Washington, D.C., criminalize all lobbying activity. Make persuasive personal contact – attempt to affect legislation, that is – with any of the people’s representatives in the U.S. Congress a crime, punishable by heavy penalties including imprisonment.

3. To restore semblance of rational democratic rule in the nation, require a logician in attendance at all publicized – news media and the like – discussion, in order that the audience be informed of the validity of the argument being promulgated. Impose fines for deliberate lying to the public by all persons in government, bureaucrat or elected. All persons participating in political campaigning should be sworn in before debate and public statements, and deliberate and provable falsehood should constitute perjury. All speeches by those sworn into public office should be considered as being under oath, and lying perjury.

4. To conserve gasoline and reduce prices, require installation of a speed-limiting governor on all vehicles using the public highways. Enforce the law with heavy penalties for non-compliance. Limit speeds to fifty-five miles per hour.

5. To stop predatory behavior toward children, provide legally for a truly prohibitive and interdictory penalty – in the instance of repeated offense, life imprisonment or death.

6. To assure no further insanity of the kind evidenced by Iraq, and the specious war on terror, require that whenever our troops are committed to combat, ALL of the nation – I mean corporations who normally “earn” billions – contribute proportionately. Corporation profits from munitions and the like will be sold to nation and taxpayers at cost. NO profit should accrue to anyone from the making of war.

7. In criminal prosecutions, prosecutors should be chosen by lottery from the pool of those admitted to the bar in the district where the crime occurred. (If jurors should be chosen in a manner designed to assure impartiality, so should the court and its officers.) In civil lawsuits, plaintiffs who lose should be required to pay in damages to the defendant damages equal to those sought.

8. In order to end the logically and experientially absurd state wherein one who kills one or a few of his fellows is a murderer, but one who kills tens of thousands, even millions, is a politician or “leader,” the commission of troops to battle without a declaration of war by the congress should be punishable by death where combat is joined and people killed. In the event of emergency envisioned by the War Powers Act, proof of falsification of reasons for committing troops should be codified as an impeachable offense and conviction of such punishable where life is lost by death.

There are, of course, more legislative actions needed to restore our nation to health. Deliberate pollution, for instance, should have penalties on the order of lost license or right to do business. Farmers and agriculture should be permitted to participate in the markets, and sell their produce in the same manner as does the rest of industry.

Yes, of course there will be huge increases in prices. That, however, merely proves the degree to which the nation been living off the farmer and rancher for decades, while paying industry otherwise multiples of what their product was actually worth. The public who earned dividends from stock bought at the farmer and ranchers’ resulting expense would learn its lessons in the economics it refuses to teach its children.

There is nothing wrong with the U.S. that can’t be corrected. This morning, a U.S. Senator speaking in the U.S. Senate delineated how twenty million dollars was stolen by FEMA bureaucrats and truck lines for supposed delivery of ice to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. First trucked in refrigerated trucks from somewhere in the Connecticut, then to Arkansas and then to Mississippi, the ice was finally trucked back to Connecticut, then disposed of by being dumped somewhere. It was a story hideously familiar to one my age, a story repeated literally thousands of times during my lifetime.

Anyone remember the millions – or was it billions – in cash shipped to Iraq, only to mysteriously disappear?

NONE of the “issues” or problems facing our nation is difficult in solution, all being complicated only by attitudes and reactions like those I’ve described here. Rhetorical platitudes of the kind so loved by humanist, feminist, and liberal do not aid the homeless. Drowning, or being beating to death by a gang of the vicious children we are now feeding – nothing more – to adulthood, it is not your platitudes or prayers I need. With your nation in a death spiral piloted by “leaders” who sole interested in self-aggrandizement, it is not fustian pontificating and bloviating in a coffee shop or bar, at cocktail parties or in Internet chatrooms that is needed.

During the nearly ten years that I was “Knight Errant” – traveling the U.S. to offer free assistance to anyone I could find who needed it – I offered real, physical help to a number of the people being spoken of so much here on the Internet, in the media, and elsewhere. I lived among the homeless and poor, those being criminally oppressed by our execrable bureaucracy (including women being forced to submit to extortion for rape), and those being blackmailed, stalked, and, and terrorized.

In nearly ten years, all over the nation that bills itself as the most compassionate in history, I met not one of the do-gooders I am now obliged to suffer by listening.

Want – really – to stop what’s happening to our country? Stop, then, pretending that it’s necessary to listen or argue with someone likes me. Stop pretending that citizen’s arrest is some obscure idea, or that any reasonable person has any doubt as to its legality. Stop pretending that it is difficult or requires some special ability or knowledge to file a small claims court action. Stop pretending that it is difficult to find or identify illegal aliens (they frequent places where they can send money back to Mexico, they speak only Spanish, and a dozen more things obvious even to a child). No homeless person has ever been factually and physically aided by platitude or prayer, and neither has any nation. Individual or nation, the rescuer must DO something.

When Thomas Jefferson said that "people get the government they deserve," it was more than just a clever turn of phrase. It was a timeless truth.

Citizens Arrest - "RACISM?"

Let’s deal with a couple of things, get them out of the way:

First, Glen, you might want to reconsider. You might go to the United States Judo Association site and check, too. They and literally thousands of others will tell you that I am, in fact, a two-time United States National Judo Champion, a six time state judo champion (Iowa) and a sixth degree black belt. I was a coach for the U.S. National Judo Team from 1986 to 1992. I’m also a state pistol champion (Iowa), and you can look it up. This URL will help:

(http://www.state.ia.us/government/ilea/stark_award.html

Finally, I do sets of a dozen pull-ups and sixty pushups every day, together with three hundred sit-ups and an hour walk. I still run a mile in under six and a half minutes. Do what you threaten, and you will have your ass kicked as neither your intellect or experience could possibly imagine.

I take the time to say all that because I wonder at the intellect of someone who offers insult randomly and to anyone who opposes his point of view. I don’t really have to wonder about the courage and character of someone who, like metrosexual machismo’s ideal, gives the middle finger salute from a passing car. How candy-assed can you get?!

A few years ago, I happened to have the good fortune to watch a guy who had just done that pull into a shopping center parking lot and park. Sprinting on my bicycle, I got there as he and the woman with him were getting out of the car. If you don’t know what happened next, you probably think the typical American male still has balls bigger than a canary. Outweighing me by at least fifty pounds, less than half my age, he melted like a marshmallow on a skewer. The women with him pleaded with me not to hurt him.

Glen, guys like me recognize guys like you the same way ornithologists recognize the song of a robin or a cardinal. Just about any of us recognizes the bleat of a goat – or a sheep. “Men” who offer insult like yours measure themselves exactly for men like me. Thanks, though, for telling me what you are; that way, I have some idea what your opinion is worth.

Next, for “Terri,” there’s this, a number of questions:

I'm a “racist” because I demand that my government uphold immigration law and deport illegal aliens? I'm a “racist” because I demand that state, country, and city government uphold statute, ordinance, and city codes? Why should I be required to observe law that citizens of another country are not required to observe? That makes sense to you?

I’m a “racist” because I expect the city where I live to not allow single family dwellings to be occupied by literally dozens of people? I'm a “racist” because I believe local citizens, police, and law enforcement have the authority to arrest illegal aliens? I'm a “racist” because I expect that my state government will not give drivers licenses to illegal aliens? Explain that for me, please. Why should I, a native – I was born here; I am not an immigrant – citizen be required to do and obey law a person who is here illegally doesn’t have to obey? Yes, indeed – I’d love to hear your explanation.

I'm a “racist” because I believe my fellow Americans should employ their fellow Americans before they employ someone in this country against our immigration laws? What do you suppose the purpose of immigration law IS? I'm a “racist” because I object to paying immensely higher uninsured motorist premiums because illegal aliens drive (like maniacs) while uninsured and kill U.S. citizens literally by the thousands?

Why don’t you come down here to Texas and let me show you the “descansos” – little memorial shrines erected by Hispanics at the site of a fatal crash by relatives of the deceased. Let me show you how to get the record of how many of these people were insured, and how many people – “Anglos” – died with them.

I'm a “racist” because I object to the horde of criminals pouring (an average of a hundred twenty a day) over the border? I'm a “racist” because I don't want to be taxed to pay for a prison population comprised largely of illegal Mexicans, or for the government lawyers necessary to fight Mexico’s efforts to free people like the guy whose gang repeatedly raped, then beat and kicked to death two young “anglo” women here in Texas?

Sweetheart, I not only object to that last, I would with the greatest personal satisfaction strangle to death that Mexican son of a bitch and his cohort. And that has utterly nothing to do with “racism.”

I'm a “racist” because I demand that my government protect our borders and our sovereignty as a nation? Show me another nation who permits what’s happening on our border. Check Mexico, for instance.

I'm a “racist” because I object to having to pay higher sales and property taxes in order to build more schools for the illegitimate children of illegal aliens? I'm a “racist” because I object to paying higher costs and higher taxes in order that hospitals all across America can continue treating illegal aliens and stay in business? I'm a “racist” because I believe the government and its news media have a duty to publicize the names and race of criminal illegal aliens? I'm a “racist” because I want to deny citizenship to “anchor babies” born in this country? I'm a “racist” because I object to our welfare system paying billions – that’s literal, again – to people who aren’t citizens and haven’t paid a dime in taxation supporting that system? I'm a “racist” because I object to municipalities, bureaucracies, corporations, and others spending billions – again, literally - to write and translate into Spanish laws and rules? I'm a “racist” because – even though I speak Spanish – it annoys me to have to push this or that number on a telephone in order to listen to a message recorded in English – the language of my country?

Let me stop for breath – I’m getting mad (any, trust me, you don’t want to make Hal von Luebbert mad; “beware the anger of a patient man. . .”)

I'm a “racist” because I object to immigration policies that actually give preferential treatment to illegal aliens; that, while discriminating against not only people who immigrate legally, but U.S. citizens? Lady, you must exist in another space-time continuum. I suggest that I arrange for you a similar system wherein you stand in the stead of the U.S. Citizen vis a vis another abusing your humanity like the Mexican alien is abusing the humanity of the citizens of this country. That might make my point far better than anything I have said or might say. I am not one to stoop to invective and insult – in the manner you have – but I am damned sick and tired of people who – especially now that your kind have made the use of certain words punishable by fine or imprisonment – hurl about hither and yon terms like “racist.” I have taken wounds – wounds I still suffer with every time the weather changes – in order to preserve not only the civil rights of all people but the right to abuse freedom of speech the way you have here.

Make a contribution, ma’am – then shoot off your immature mouth.

Okay. I’ve got that off my chest. Some time ago, I wrote of the “wrath of the Saxon.” I’m Saxon. We are a very long-suffering people – willing to forbear almost anything. Except arrogance; except insolence. It only so happens that arrogance and insolence are singularly characteristic of a certain culture. Check the flags I’ve posted above here.

The following article is from the Word Wide Web (angry, really pissed off, I have foregone the quotations marks):

August 21, 2006

What is a Citizen’s Arrest?

By: Collin McKibben, Attorney at Law & Ariella Rosenberg

Everyone is familiar with the term citizen’s arrest: we have seen it on TV, read about it in books, and even heard about it in social circles. Surprisingly, however, almost nobody really understands what a citizen’s arrest is, or legally, what it represents.

A citizen's arrest is an arrest performed by a civilian who lacks official government authority to make an arrest (as opposed to an officer of the law). An arrest, as defined by Black's Law Dictionary, is "The apprehending or detaining of a person in order to be forthcoming to answer an alleged or suspected crime." Ex parte Sherwood, (29 Tex. App. 334, 15 S.W. 812).

Although generally the person making a citizen’s arrest must be a citizen, in certain states, a “citizen’s” arrest can be carried out by a civilian who is not a citizen (for example, an alien or illegal immigrant). A citizen’s arrest does not necessarily mean an arrest made by a single individual who happens to witness a crime. For example, a department store may also carry out a citizen’s arrest in the course of apprehending a shoplifter.
The right to making a citizen’s arrest goes back to our roots in English common law. Historically, before the modern infrastructure of police departments, citizen's arrests were an important part of community law enforcement. Today, citizen’s arrests are still legal in every state, although state laws pertaining to citizen’s arrests are not uniform. In general, all states permit citizen’s arrests if a criminal felony (defined by the government as “a serious crime, usually punishable by at least one year in prison”) is witnessed by the citizen carrying out the arrest, or if a citizen is asked to help apprehend a suspect by the police. Variations of state law arise in cases of misdemeanors, breaches of the peace, and felonies not witnessed by the arresting party.

For example, California Penal Code mandates:
A private person may arrest another: 1. For a public offense committed or attempted in his presence. 2. When the person arrested has committed a felony, although not in his presence. 3. When a felony has been in fact committed, and he has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed it. (C.P.C. § 837).

In contrast, New York State Consolidated Laws hold that:
Any person may arrest another person (a) for a felony when the latter has in fact committed such felony, and (b) for any offense when the latter has in fact committed such offense in his presence. (N.Y.C.L. §140.30).

Unlike the California statute, which only permits citizen’s arrests in cases of felony, New York law extends the possibility for making a citizen’s arrest to “any offense committed in [one’s] presence”. Additionally, in cases where the citizen has not necessarily witnessed the crime being committed, California law allows citizen’s arrests when a citizen has “reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed [a felony],” whereas New York law applies only to situations in which person has “in fact committed” a felony. Distinctions such as these are important–unwarranted citizen’s arrests can result in repercussions (such as law suits) for well-meaning citizens who attempt to make arrests without understanding local laws. It is important to be familiar with the laws in your particular state should you want to carry out a citizen’s arrest, or should a citizen try to unlawfully detain you.

Once a person has committed an offense meriting a citizen’s arrest (under the applicable state law), the arresting party must follow certain guidelines to detain and deliver to authorities the suspect in question. Acceptable guidelines for carrying out a citizen’s arrest also vary by state. In general, the arresting party must notify the suspect as to why he or she is being arrested, and may enter the building or private residence where the suspect is residing, using a reasonable amount of force to apprehend the suspect. In California, for example, To make an arrest, a private person, if the offense is a felony…may break open the door or window of the house in which the person to be arrested is, or in which they have reasonable grounds for believing the person to be, after having demanded admittance and explained the purpose for which admittance is desired. (C.P.C., §844). In New York, A person may arrest another person for an offense…at any hour of any day or night. 2. Such person must inform the person whom he is arresting of the reason for such arrest unless he encounters physical resistance, flight or other factors rendering such procedure impractical. 3. In order to effect such an arrest, such person may use such physical force as is justifiable pursuant to subdivision four of section 35.30 of the penal law. (N.Y.C.L. §140.35).

Once the suspect has been taken into custody (by the citizen), it is the citizen’s responsibility to deliver the suspect to the proper authorities in a timely fashion. In California, A private person who has arrested another for the commission of a public offense must, without unnecessary delay, take the person arrested before a magistrate, or deliver him or her to a peace officer. (C.P.C. §847). In New York, a citizen must also act without unnecessary delay to deliver a suspect to an officer of the law. (N.Y.C.L. §140).

Making a citizen's arrest maliciously or with insufficient evidence of wrongdoing by the arrested individual can lead to civil or criminal penalties. Additionally, it is in violation of a suspect’s rights for a citizen making an arrest to use unnecessary force, to intentionally harm the suspect, to hold the suspect in unsafe conditions, or to delay in turning the suspect over to authorities. A citizen making an arrest is acting in the place of an officer of the law, and as such, is required to uphold the same rights and civil liberties as an officer of the law must uphold.

A citizen who violates a suspect’s rights, or who violates the applicable state law in detaining the suspect, (for example, arresting a suspect for a misdemeanor when the state statute requires a felony for a citizen’s arrest), risks being sued or even charged with a crime. Additionally, if it is found that the arresting party did not meet the pertinent state requirements for a citizen’s arrest, any contraband found on the suspect will have been found illegally, and charges may be dropped entirely.

If you feel that you have been unfairly arrested by a citizen, or if you have been charged with illegally detaining a suspect during an illegitimate citizen’s arrest, it is important to seek the counsel of an experienced attorney. A good attorney will demonstrate familiarity with state laws, and as such will help you to ensure the best possible outcome of your case.

You will note that the attorneys’ opinions are nearly identical to what I said here earlier. In other words, I kid you not. I wasn’t kidding – and I wasn’t wrong back in the eighties when I said the same things on late-night radio programs. I won’t back off, either. In closing this time, I quote (as I am wont to do; I seldom say things as well as the great men and women of history – that’s why they’re “great” and I’m not . . .) Abraham Lincoln, author – I remind us – of the Emancipation Proclamation:

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

Let’s not forget that. This is OUR country. Our forebears made it, and we mean to preserve it in the state they made it. Anyone who intends otherwise ought read another quote – “The Wrath of the Saxon.”

The President's Praetorian Guard - Auguring What?

I pause in discussion of illegal immigration, citizens arrest, and guerrilla law because what follows confirms what I have long expected and feared. Damn, but sometimes I hate to be right!

At a time of joy, especially for a guy like me whose life has ordered his priorities as only looking the imminent threat of pain and death in the eye can, it’s infuriating to have discovered what I did during our week visiting our first great grandchild and her parents. I’ve said it before, and at the risk of yelling wolf too often I have tell the reader that the nation I love enough to do everything honor will permit for faces its Götterdämmerung as the republic it has been. It’s that simple.

It’s not only that simple, but as many of the people who know me would tell you, I have seen it coming and feared it for almost three decades. The conclusive stroke is a book, a book vindicating everything I have said here concerning the silent coup d’etat of the military industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his valedictory address to the nation and shortly after it occurred. The book is “Blackwater, the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army,” by Jeremy Scahill, and it documents what may very well be the final maneuver preparatory to overt conversion of the United States’ federal republic into nothing less than a totalitarian, neo-conservative dictatorship.

The President of the United States – we must not forget that he is merely a figurehead actor for the cabal of military industrialists who control Washington, D.C. and the branches of government – now has a private army. Comprised of “Steve Canyon” proprietary companies like the Bird Air, Flying Tiger, Air America, and literally dozens more of the pre-Frank Church Hearings CIA, new companies like Blackwater (named for a swamp in North Carolina where it is based), Triple Canopy, DynaCorp, Aegis, and others have been organized and formed under the cover of virtual secrecy provided by the Operation Mockingbird media. Numbering near a quarter million, the new Praetorian Guard for the President operates outside the reach of both the courts and legal system and the scrutiny of the public.

Placed tactically by state-of-the-art political and economic maneuvering devised in think tanks that make the RAND corporations of old look Neanderthal, they are even further above the law and untouchable by the courts as Internal Revenue Service and the nation’s Brobdingnagian corporations. They have the power to operate as we might have suspected when informed of things like Abu Graib prison, secret CIA torture cells covertly located in sovereign nations, and presidential, congressional, and bureaucracy complicity in contemptuously blatantly violations of the U.S. Constitution by the White House and president.

Let me summarize where we are historically by asking a simple question. What do you believe the public – what would YOU do – should the president refuse to leave office, and enforce his refusal with the armed (replete with the most high-tech weapons known to man) might of as many as a quarter of a million of the most professionally skilled - and ruthless – special operations soldiers in the world? Or, imagine what the ultra-right wing of neo-conservatism might do, were Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi elected president and vice-president of the U.S. With hundreds of billions – trillions, even – of dollars at stake, knowing of their history after World War Two having to do with similar straits, tell yourself that they would meekly submit to the political process supposedly governing our country.

Let me digress long enough to point out first that I have been monitoring the rise of the military industrial complex corporations since literally boyhood when I was impressed into their service. More, I have for more than twenty-five years operated in the shadows of CIA Steve Canyon operations and armies, mostly involved in providing armed and unarmed close quarters combat skills training sought by individual mercenary special operations soldiers. Additionally, and as I have both publicized here and in the book “Letters to Aaron, the Hal Luebbert Story,” I have covertly infiltrated the federal bureaucracy at all levels. There are, I contend, few people as qualified to hold forth as I do here.

I have also devoted what others including wives and family consider an inordinate amount of time to sociology and societal trends related to Operation Mockingbird and other “orchestrations” – the favorite characterization of the man who probably first conceived such a thing – designed to weaken the nation’s resistance to eventual coup and totalitarian takeover. In fact, you see, I recognized the enemy early on. Recruited originally at fifteen years for the purpose of doing its “wet work,” I recognized who it was General of the Armies and President of the United States Eisenhower spoke of in his lamentably not-so-famous or long-remembered speech. Since it’s pivotal, let me recollect it for you:

“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Note, in particular, the words “only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.” The General wasn’t the only tactician in government aware of what would be required to take over the nation and thereby continue the acquisition of wealth and power facilitated by war. Operation Mockingbird, control of the public’s alertness and knowledge was among the first programs begun by the newly-instituted Central Intelligence Agency; using, that is, the unlimited funding provided the fledgling organization – or should I say “orchestration” – by an already co-opted U.S. Congress.

The United States, the same as any nation and people, has a government of the kind and character the people provide for and permit. The deteriorated state of our government, axiomatically, is due the deteriorated state of the public it rules and abuses. Assessment is easy, a matter of self-examination. If, for instance, you can read history, especially that of the last two presidential administrations and doubt that Dwight D. Eisenhower foresaw accurately what has happened to the government and to you, you’re simply too far gone to be of use to a republic and its governance.

If your fellow countrymen are in the same condition, ask yourself how there remains any hope for our nation, for continued liberty, and the dream of our Founding Fathers.

Ask yourself again what you will do if Eisenhower, and I, are right.

At what point will you react? When what amounts to martial law – total suspension of all constitutional freedoms (all of which have already been declared to be in jeopardy) – has been declared? When we have invaded Iran or another Arab nation? When the entire world of Islam has declared jihad against our country? When the corporate depredations and hubris of our colonializing, global-warming and planet polluting corporations has resulted in a massive retaliatory economic attack by the rest of the world’s nations has brought us to our financial knees?

Assume for a giddy moment that our political process were still generally intact, and that a new president and vice-president - Hillary and Nancy, for instance – were elected and proceeded to follow the agenda already associated with and expected of them – end of the war in Iraq, for instance, or a significant shift in policy costing the military industrial complex trillions of dollars. Do you really think the latter would quietly acquiesce, that their corporate greed would suddenly abate for the good of the country? Having already seen the public’s reaction concerning the present administration’s depredation of our civil rights? Why would neo-conservatism, its originators and adherents halt their drive toward their new – they’ve published their intentions, you know – fascism?

What do you think you would to, should the new fascists not so acquiesce to your naïve wishes? Rebellion may already be out of the question. Don’t forget the record of history (of course, you haven’t read it – a large part of the problem we face). Consider what the world’s colonialist capitalists have already done, and what they are doing. Do you really think that the same people who won’t let the health of the planet and its ecosystem stand in the way of gargantuan profit will be any more concerned for your health? Wow – you DO need to read my book! Why would people who follow the Ford Pinto Doctrine of business (remember? – rather than spend the money necessary to make safe the car that exploded easily, Ford was willing to pay costs of settling all the claims of those burned and burned to death), do business differently in this case?

More, the rebellion Founding Father Thomas Jefferson assured us would from “time to time” be necessary may be impossible. The military industrial complex corporations’ drive toward control of the U.S. and world dominion has been planned and in operation since the late forties and early fifties, let’s not forget. The plotters have been watching, probing and testing the U.S. public’s character, its resolve, and the effect of their methods for all that time. The new Praetorian Guard is only their most recent operation and success. While the public became more and more decadent, they waxed sanguine, driving relentlessly toward their profit goals. Patriotism, loyalty to nation and country, has been shown by history to mean nothing to a capitalist, after all. As Thomas Jefferson observed, “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

Look around, as I am wont to say. If you don’t recognize the truth in Jefferson’s remark, you merely personify how fat-headed and vulnerable the nation has become.

The men being recruited by Blackwater and their like are the best special operations soldiers in the world. I know because I’ve trained them. They will not only cut through our volunteer conventional military like a hot razor through butter, they will slaughter any citizen militia, of any size, like blind sheep. Don’t forget what any such militia must be made of, and what “Americans” have come to be. Fat, slovenly, morally decayed creatures reared and maintained in an effeminate, climate controlled society like this one make damned poor revolutionaries.

Of course, it may not be necessary for anything as overt as a president refusing to leave office to happen. The military industrialists who already control the country’s government would have need of an open and public coup only if the president they have put in office should refuse to leave, and use his Praetorian Guard in an effort to seize despotic power by military force. The nation and its public would then watch as the loyalties of the Praetorians were made manifest. I’d bet on whomever could pay their price.

But let us assume that by some miracle the military industrial complex plotters don’t stage the final assault of their long prosecuted campaign against republican democracy. Assume, in other words, that the public continues in its present posture, the nation drifting and decaying as it is. Where is it going? How much more can you give? Where do you think everything that’s been going on will end? For an object lesson, pick any or all of the government’s handling of matters from illegal immigration to global warming and pollution, to the war on terror. The method is essentially that of reductio ad absurdum, there is no doubt whatever where any of it will end, and the future is thunderously obvious.

It is likewise obvious, and rationally irrefutable that the United States has become a cancer the rest of the planet can no longer endure. While the U.S. citizen addled by Mockingbird media propaganda may remain oblivious, the fact of our past and present behavior thunderously manifest to the planet’s nations and peoples. If you have somehow survived Mockingbird, put yourself in the shoes of the citizenry in any other nation on the globe. The U.S., less than five percent of the world’s people, uses thirty-five percent of the planet’s energy, and contributes forty-one percent of its pollution. If that weren’t enough, the people of the United States demand even more of the planet’s energy, will not curb their appetite for fossil fuel, slow their pollution of the atmosphere, or leave their neighbors anywhere on the globe alone politically or economically.

In its capitalist ravening, in fact, the U.S. makes no bones whatever about its intentions for the future, and its past – even where the original inhabitants of the continent are concerned – is far better known to persons in foreign nations than it is to its own people. It all adds up like arithmetic, you see – the column of figures determines inexorably the sum. Want to see the “column?” I refer you to the history of history’s last private army and Praetorian Guard.

They were called the Waffen SS, and their creator was a man named Hitler.

Freedom of Speech - Sine Qua Non of Liberty

Sometimes, I feel like a visitor from another planet. Why is it that everyone - not just here on TagWorld, but on every similar site I've visited since I started my research project having to do with the public discourse - obviously (scarily) feels wounded - or insulted (which seems to be even worse, for many) by mere words, even words conveyed by a technological device across thousands of miles?

A name, often a nom de guerre, pen name, or "handle," has become a person - a real opponent in a real, harmful, even lethal, fight? Tone, tenor, even order, merit - evoke - pain, anger, or sadness?

My god - that I (may) disagree means that I have inflicted (real) INJURY? I must fly exactly formation with anyone I don't want to make a furious enemy? Any disagreement whatever with one extreme point of view or the other means that I am a member of the other extreme?

What kind of reasoning is that?

I guess I know, then, why I went to the wilderness. Of course, that wasn't because you could actually injure me the way the people who were shooting at me, or trying to run me down with cars and vans, or sending people to mug me as I walked the streets were; I have never in my life been injured by a spoken word.

Apparently, I lack something possessed by my fellows here in the Land of the Free, and of free speech. My mind, you see - my spirit, are injured only by my own, internal insult - not available for such from without.

But, I confess, that's what I came looking - to TagWorld and elsewhere on the computer - to find out. Once, over a century ago, a man named Joseph, told Congress that he didn't want to fight over words, or god. I've always felt a kinship – perhaps this is why - with Chief Joseph. Chief or the Nez Perce, and I may go back to the woods again. Something is happening, something very evil and insidious, and I frankly don't understand it. It's like watching the approach of a tornado, or a storm at sea. Ominous, malevolent - wanting to destroy. If we really believe that free speech is a right, how do we condemn, even hate, someone for DOING it?

I suppose to really appreciate, to put appropriate value, on something, you have to have planted its seed, cultivated, nurtured, and defended it against things trying to kill it. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness begin with a seed, too. They grow, and come to fruition, the same way. Always planted, cultivated, nurtured, and defended. Destroying them is as easily done as speaking a few words. I don't give a damn if you detest everything I say, or I detest everything YOU say.

In fact, now that I’ve said that, and assuming that I have integrity sufficient to save me from hypocrisy, I couldn't possibly detest your error. I couldn’t hate your error, or the method by which you came to it, because, however wrong and misguided it may be, I know with the certainty of my own experience that your error would have been arrived at in exactly the same manner I arrive at mine –and that each and every time I've tried myself to get a thing right.

If I pass judgment on others, I pass judgment on myself. But there is more here. This nation is something absolutely unique in human history and experience, being a people and its government who are dedicated to the principle that a human being has certain rights simply by virtue of being a human being, and that neither government nor people have anything to do with granting those rights. While I will not bore you with history I know you will not read, I will let it suffice to remind us all here that there was a time when the principle I’ve just enunciated did not exist outside Northern, Saxon, Germany, and that the human race otherwise had no such concept.

First, perhaps, among all the rights identified and guaranteed – NOT granted; I remind you that no one has that authority – is that of being able to speak his mind without fear of retaliation or punishment. Without the right to speak freely, there can be, after all, no such thing as democracy – certainly not where our form of the same is concerned.

As Voltaire once said, "I may detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." The French writer, essayist, deist and philosopher was known for unrelenting defense of civil liberties, and his willingness to defend to the death the right to free speech was due his realization that without it, there cannot be the freedoms which only democracy certainly assures.

But with me there’s even more: With John Donne, I know that no man is an island unto himself. Every man is a part of the whole, of the main, and if you don't say it, I'm the less.

It's like my own erroneous thought or effort. Unmade, I must wait for the conclusion, the goal, I really seek. If I haven’t the benefit of another’s errors, then all the errors from which I benefit must be mine. But, for reasons for which I can likewise only grope in the dark, my fellows here and everywhere seem to derive some kind of incomprehensible pleasure from recrimination and calling names - even anger and condemnation of a view opposed to theirs. I'm only trying to understand.

I’m a judoka – judo player – and to the judoman, the opponent is everything. To paraphrase Orson Scott Card, there is no teacher but the opponent. No one but the opponent can teach what the opponent is going to do. Only the opponent shows you where you are weak. Only the opponent tells you where he is strong, and the game shows him what you can do to him and teaches you what you can stop him from doing to you." The better my opposition, the better I will be; and no champion of judo ever was who didn’t have championship level opposition with whom to train and compete. To injure and incapacitate an opponent, or to drive him from the mat by ill manners or affront otherwise, can be disastrous to one’s chances at success in the sport.

The parallel where discourse and debate is concerned is obvious, and effort to drive the opposing viewpoint from the arena or forum is even scarier than what it seems to seek, which is silence except for the noise of one’s own point of view. It’s frightful because of what it implies where all other of our sacred rights are concerned. Every man’s death diminishes me; and death or damage of every man’s rights diminishes MY rights.

More, when any man and his rights go on trial, it is MY rights that are being tried. Lost to the worst villain imaginable, they are lost to me simultaneously – at exactly the same time.

Once a policeman, I was never able to understand the officer of the law who on account of the supposed - or, even, dead certain - guilt of the accused was willing to violate the latter’s Constitutional rights. How could the cop fail to understand that to deprive any accused any of his rights under the Constitution was to steal something of the guarantee represented by our system of law and government? I once remarked that to lie under oath was like shooting into a crowd of the innocent in order to kill the guilty.

If I will let another man’s rights be damaged or stolen, mine will certainly be lost. If I shout down, or by intimidation silence, the views of others, I will most assuredly have the same done to me. There is, therefore, a very frightening thing loose in this country. It is typified, even personified, by people like Ann Coulter and Rosie O’Donnell. It is intolerance. It is intolerance so virile, so ubiquitous that in a nation whose national religion is that of economics, whose greatest virtue is avarice, that it has spawned a new kind of advertising and sales pitch – that directed toward hate.

Hate, as I said in an earlier essay here, sells. It sells even better than lurid sex. Even that wouldn’t be so terrifying, were it not for what it must inevitably mean. It means the death of the key ingredient of liberty, that of thought. The United States has become a nation where just two opposing political viewpoints scream thoughtlessly at one another. Seen as “flip-flopping” or “waffling,” no reflection or deliberation, no consideration or moderation, is to be tolerated. The United States, the nation founded on those very principles, has now become the nation that detests them, and despises thought.

The purpose of public discourse – and freedom of speech – is that of dialectic; the same as that of forensics and the courtroom. To know the truth. Imagine a courtroom in which attorneys and witnesses could be shouted down, or intimidated by insulting or preponderant talk. We can, in fact, see the result on any given television debate between supposed pundits and scholars, where everyone talks at once, each of the principals trying to shout down the opposing view, and where, finally, the viewer has learned utterly nothing.

My research of the public discourse is all but finished, and I will report some results – those of more than four years analysis - here. I have, by the way, been meticulous in all aspects of statistical analysis, such that I am absolutely certain of my data. Where vicious and vituperative speech and terminology are the result of disagreement, persons who identify themselves as liberal in political viewpoint are responsible sixty-two percent of the time (obviously, Ann Coulter is even more exceptional than one might otherwise imagine). There is in that a parallel and corollary that I find fascinating, the fact that in a nation professing to prize freedom of speech, yet willing to do almost anything conceivable to prevent it, a group of persons who call themselves “liberal” demonstrate loudly and publicly their absolute intolerance of opposing viewpoints.

As second President of the United States John Adams once observed, “The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable. They are no keepers at all. They can neither, judge, act, think, or will as a political body.” I think I know what he spoke of. In the United States, invariably, shouted down from the religiously and ideologically rigid and dogmatic political extremes, the loneliest man in the room is the thoughtful political moderate. That, more than anything else evident and happening today, may signal the end of our way of life.

Without freedom of speech, the freedom of thought is pointless for a nation. It behooves us, then to nurture, rather than do everything we can to kill it.