Category Archives: Psychology and Manipulation

The Madness of Jon Drew Roland and Shelley Sue Thomson

Originally Published on August 23, 2008 at 8:05 as “Jon Roland—Hypocrite Lecteur, Mon Semblable, Mon Frere”

For about five years now Jon Drew Roland, three time failed Libertarian Candidate for Texas Attorney General and who knows what else, a man who never campaigns and never puts himself at risk for anything, has published a nasty little snipe against me on his otherwise rather marvelous website, www.constitution.org.

Jon Drew Roland in some ways is the exact reverse of me: he is a native Californian who came to Texas (so the Californians claim he’s from Texas and the Texans claim he’s from California).  Jon was for a very long time a wonderful mentor, advocate, sponsor, trustee to me.  He was one of my most enthusiastic supporters and best friends during my divorce and child custody battles of the half-decade of 2002-2007.  And indeed, Jon and I were for some years quite inseparable around the Central Texas world of Patriotic Constitutionalism and Civil Rights Litigation on behalf of the oppressed but silent majority in Texas.

Quite frankly, our collaboration was hardly an unqualified success either in legal or political terms although it WAS a great philosophical and spiritual journey. We lost almost all the cases we worked on together because we picked on people who were just too damned powerful: among them, I inherited the enmity and hatred of Jon Roland’s oldest nemesis Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Abbott surely ranks one of the worst Attorneys General in the history of the United States, never mind of Texas.  Even flying under color of conservatism, as Texas Republicans from Bush on down love to do, Abbott  has institute one of the most oppressive regimes of Maoist Family destruction and mass imprisonment (never mind mass execution) in these formerly great states of the Union—and Texas, even into the 1990s, was one of the freest corners of the United States, believe it or not.  That all changed with the election of Governor George W. Bush and Attorney General Abbott.

I suppose one of the proudest moments Jon Roland and I had was when we jointly, together with (then State Senator) Jerry O’Neil from Kalispell, Montana, made parallel grant/project proposasl to the  Ford Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to fund a trial program in the High Schools of the State of Montana whereby the entire first year curriculum of law school would be taught during the 10th-12th grades.  The “High School Civics” that most people receive is essentially a nugatory nullity.  Our proposal was rejected, although the MacArthur Foundation gave it three full hearings (final grounds for rejection being that we had not one single specialist in secondary education or adolescent psychology among us and were therefore not qualified to make the proposal). The Ford Foundation’s response was probably the most honest: teaching law to high school students would heighten their frustration and discontent and therefore be counterproductive to today’s broader social and economic policies.  Oh yeah?  Well, I guess that was our point: we think people SHOULD be discontent and frustrated and if education is the tool to make them that way—and avoiding education is a way to prevent that—


But one day in November 2006, Jon Drew Roland told me about a friend of his who needed some help.  She needed to find out if she had inherited anything from her mother, who had died 10 years earlier.  I told Jon it was almost inconceivable that she would inherit anything now, or could claim anything now, after so long, but Jon asked me to talk to this dear and long-time friend of his, knowing that I had practiced quite a lot of probate & trust law back when I was a semi-normal attorney in private practice, before civil rights and the reaction to my efforts in that department changed my life forever.

To make a long story short, I found that Shelley Sue Thomson, then living in an incredibly depressed slum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had indeed been the victim of one of the most bald-faced cases of probate theft and conversion I had ever seen.  Shelley Sue Thomson couldn’t afford to hire a licensed attorney, and she asked me to back up Jon Drew Roland as her Trustee, as Jon would act merely for free.  Shelly Sue Thomson promised me 1/3 of whatever estate she could recover in exchange for my efforts—actually she promised even more than that—she promised me that, since she had no children of her own, she would leave her mother’s house to my son Charlie if she could live in it for the rest of her life.

As it turned out, victory was swift, coming by May 1, 2007: after merely filing two state and two federal lawsuits, Shelley’s old, greedy, and evil stepfather simply gave up and vanished, deeding everything to her, with his large team of high-paid attorneys trumpeting his generosity.

Shelley could not even believe it had all happened so fast, but my loyal assistant Peyton Yates Freiman and I, at Shelley’s initial invitation and Jon Roland’s enthusiastic backing and support, met in Albuquerque.  I came from Santa Monica, California, where I had been celebrating another commercial litigation victory [actually a post-Katrina insurance victory in New Orleans Federal Court].  I was specifically in Santa Monica for a birthday party—a certain California TV actress friend’s 30th birthday, while Peyton came from Austin, where he left his only recently acquired new girlfriend Mercedes behind out of sheer loyalty and devotion to the causes of justice).

In the midst of all this euphoria, something went wrong.  I had talked with Shelley for hours and hours but never actually met her.  Jon Roland and I had done all the actual work (as a matter of fact, Jon Roland, ironically enough, was under investigation and injunction for UPL as a result of his litigation activities on Shelley’s behalf).  All I can say is, apparently, Shelley hated me on sight and everything went downhill from there, but Peyton and I ran around Albuquerque renting trucks, hiring a moving crew, loading up Shelley’s cat ridden house (I’m allergic to cats….of all kinds) and even finding a way to move Shelley’s immense private safe….yes that wasy fun.  After a few tense days and one extremely pleasant farewell dinner, Peyton and I moved all of Shelley’s worldly possessions to her mother’s sumptuous suburban (not-quite-palatial but extremely nice) residence on Windsor Drive in a Western Suburb of New Braunfels, Texas.  Shelley does not, at first glance, fit the Disney image of Cinderella, but her rags to riches transformation in less than six months was, to put it mildly, very dramatic and not at all dependent upon fairy Godmothers or glass slippers, but on about 2000 hours of work between Peyton and me put together—Jon Roland had advanced most of the costs of litigation, Peyton had advanced the costs of moving Shelley, Peyton and I had “done our time” and Shelley was now ready to commit a crime: she wanted to stiff us.

Well, I don’t take it well when people want to stiff me.  I especially don’t take it well when I haven’t had any money down, no retainer, no cash up front, NOTHING, and yet I pull off a major victory within less than six months and can truthfully say that the result is the complete transformation of someone’s life from near homeless pauperism to near Texas-Hill Country Royal living.

I accordingly have NO apologies whatsoever for the fact that Peyton and I slapped first one and then an amended lien on Shelley’s property.  Jon Drew Roland had been directly responsible for the amended lien.  He knew that Peyton’s parents were respectively a Deacon and a Sunday School teacher at a major Baptist Church in Austin, and that Peyton could often be found with them there on Sundays.  So, one Sunday in August 2007 (it was almost exactly one year ago as I write this, maybe one year and two weeks ago), Jon Roland went over to Great Hills Baptist Church and cornered Lennie and Claudia Freiman and told them that their son (Peyton) was going to jail for having filed the lien against Shelley on behalf of my Tierra Limpia Trust fund.  Peyton was there and tried to set him right, but anyone who knows Jon Roland knows him to be one big talker—very forceful and almost impossible to shut up (it was a large part of why I liked him so much….honestly).  Jon Roland said that the Notice of Claim of Lien Peyton had filed was improper (1) because I hadn’t signed it and (2) the Lien didn’t mention him (Jon Roland) as Trustee for Shelley Sue Thomson.  Well, I was by this time in Montana visiting Senator Jerry O’Neil, and so I prepared an amended Notice of Claim of Lien which I signed and included reference to Jon Roland as Trustee for Shelley Sue Thomson.

Well, I suppose that was when Jon Roland decided to slander me, to accuse me of filing a false lien against Shelley Sue Thomson on his website.  I was totally disgusted and suppose I will eventually have to sue Jon Roland for defamation and libel—and I guess I can sue him anywhere since people from Florida to Russia have now read about how I take advantage of poor people by filing liens on their property without moral or legal justification.

It was Jon Roland who had originally told me about how easy it is to resolve legal disputes without litigation through liens.  It was a very successful Texas mortgage broker (who hopes to stay OUT of the line of fire in this and who shall accordingly remain anonymous) who suggested to me that I just slap a lien on Shelley’s property if she didn’t want to settle up with me–because after all, my services (and Peyton’s) were in fact the equivalent of the “Purchase Money” of Shelley’s house—Shelley had never seen her mother’s will, never been aware that she was the intended beneficiary of a VERY large trust fund, or that her step father had embezzled 100% of the trust fund for himself and kept the house on top of that.  I am very proud of my work for Shelley Sue Thomson and frankly I enjoyed all our time on the telephone talking between November 2006 and end of April 2007.

I was so enthusiastic about the work I did for her that I actually LEFT THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA for Shelley (and no, I’m not kidding—I was actually staying at a place called THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA on the beach in Santa Monica, and yes, I really DIDN’T want to leave at all—I had a beautiful suite, room 19, less than five minutes from both the beach, third street, and the Santa Monica Pier, and I wouldn’t have left that place for anybody except someone I imagined would be a lifetime friend—I had just made several new friends in California that trip, and spent a huge amount of time with them at the Getty Villa in Malibu, the Getty Center on the 405, and LACMA Art Museum by the La Brea Tar Pits—the LACMA Art Museum having been the place I first became interested in archaeology, sitting and copying the cuneiform inscriptions of Asurbanipal on weekends when I was in High School with the Assyrian Primer my mother had brought me from the British Museum).

Now, as it happens, Shelley Sue Thomson later enlisted the pro-bono services of another friend and supporter of mine—a lawyer with whom I had a temporary falling out over yet more civil rights litigation, namely David A. Sibley of Corpus Christi, against me.  David definitely should NEVER have taken this job—it was not quite ethical since he was representing me the whole time I was working for Shelley—but I forgive David because of what he wrote about Shelley in his April 30, 2008, Motion to Withdraw as her attorney in Thomson’s suit against me and Peyton (No. 2008-119-C in the 274th District Court of Comal County, Texas) after Sibley finally had his own nearly fatal falling out with her.  What follows are only four excerpted paragraphs from David A. Sibley’s nine Page Single-Spaced Motion to Withdraw—possibly the most devastating Motion to Withdraw I have ever seen—no lawyer has ever felt this oppressed by has client to need to “nuke” her this way before—but if anyone ever deserved it, it would be Shelley Sue Thomson) TO WIT:

“4. Thomson sends repetitive emails (now probably numbering in the hundreds). She asks the same questions over and over and over and over again. Sibley has answered these questions over and over and over and over again. She will repeatedly threaten grievances among other things stating that Sibley has not answered her questions when he has answered them many times (and for other spurious reasons). She makes the same arguments over and over and over again even after Sibley has refuted her arguments over and over and over again (or expressed disagreement). Some of her arguments reflect profound misunderstandings of the law and she expects Sibley to answer endless questions about the law. More often than not, when Sibley explains the law, she disagrees or continues to ask questions about the same issue of law (or ignores his answer). She has recently taken to mixing her comments in her emails with previous emails so it is almost impossible without great effort to determine her new comments making her emails extremely burdensome (undoubtedly in the hope of Sibley missing one of her comments so she can argue that Sibley has not answered one of her questions — she doesn’t set her comments out by bold face, underline, or otherwise). Sibley has repeatedly asked her to identify questions he supposedly hasn’t answered and she never has. She just continues her endless repetitions, etc.

5. Thomson has suggested that Sibley and Peyton are having some kind of affair. She has stated to [a mutual friend & colleague Attorney Andrea S.] Atalay that Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet (Atalay is Jewish). She also told Atalay that Hitler should have killed all the Jews. Also, she told Atalay that she was putting witchcraft spells on Sibley (she claims to have various psychic abilities including “remote viewing” and believes in numerous para–normal things, for example she believes Lincoln is possessed by an Aztec “deity”). She has tried to sow dissension between Sibley and Atalay by telling inconsistent things to each and trying to turn each against the other. She repeatedly harasses Sibley with comments suggesting that Sibley wants to steal her house (or is in a conspiracy with other lawyers to steal her house), he is stupid, he is unethical, etc. Also, she has suggested that Sibley may be in conspiracy with Lincoln and/or Peyton. When Sibley planned to travel over 100 miles by airplane to a hearing, she refused to pick him up at the airport. She has never paid Sibley a penny and never offered to even reimburse any out of pocket expense. In fact, she mocks the out of pocket expenses incurred (suggesting they are trivial – the amounts are not trivial to Sibley – she has no appreciation whatsoever for Sibley’s efforts). Sibley has never demanded payment of a penny but he expects basic courtesies like being picked up at the airport (how far can the airport be out of her way in New Braunsfel – she said “you can take a cab!”). She clearly does not respect Sibley’s advice or strategies (or him). As a result, Sibley is unable to act as an attorney in this case. Sibley finds some of Thomson’s behaviors highly offensive.

******

8. The attorney client relationship is completely destroyed. Atalay has been suffering even more from Thomson’s abuse than Sibley. Atalay has called Sibley on numerous occasions passed the point of tears (literally crying). The most extreme example was when Thomson made offensive comments including that Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet and Hitler should have killed all the Jews, etc. Thomson has repeatedly insulted Atalay including her abilities as a lawyer, her communication abilities, etc. Atalay called the Comal County District Attorney (or one of his representatives) and Thomson went ballistic (Thomson had been discussing this case with the District Attorney). Thomson and Roland clearly want to control everything (including all information). Thomson and Roland clearly want to handle this case themselves and just want a lawyer as a puppet. Sibley does not trust Thomson (neither does Atalay). It is believed Thomson may have been misrepresenting her conversations with the District Attorney and this is why she went ballistic when Atalay called the District Attorney. Thomson is an endless nightmare.

9. Atalay has been in the hospital for several days and it is not clear when she will get well. She has an extremely high fever (over 104 degrees at one point). She shows evidence of stress and exhaustion. It is entirely possible that her condition results from Thomson’s endless abuses, insults, etc. Her condition certainly hasn’t been helped by Thomson’s endless abuses. This situation has just got to stop. It has gotten way, way out of hand. Thomson is an abusive personality. She seems to enjoy harassing, annoying and abusing Sibley and Atalay. Thomson has had plenty of time and many second chances to end her abusive behaviors but she refuses.  She received an additional “chance” as recently as last week and responded with the same endless nonsense. A specific very reasonable plan was proposed for resolving the liens on her house and she rejected the plan and continued her endless pattern of abuse (endless insults, threats, etc.). It has to be done her way and no other way. Her way involves refusing settlements that involve exactly what the objective supposedly was (partial resolution of this case). She wants Sibley and Atalay to endless dance to her tune. She is not a lawyer and not only does her demands waste time and money they are likely to embarrass two lawyers severely.”

It is really hard to imagine why Sibley would find any of Shelley’s conduct offensive—I for my part feel rather flattered and intrigued by Shelley’s observations (of which she had informed me personally) that she believed I was either possessed by or even was the living reincarnation of one of the Aztec Gods, either Huitzil Opochtli (Hummingbird of the left, the Chief Aztec Tribal God & God of War—compare, perhaps, the Hebrew “Yahweh”) or his pair Tezcatl Ipoca (Smoking Mirror, a much older God in Mesoamerica, patron of kings, equivalent to Maya God-K, the great Mah Kinah Chimal Pacal buried in the Tomb inside the Temple of the Inscriptions of Palenque and Kak u Pacal of the Hieroglyphs of Chichén Itzá and History of Mayapán).  

Well, I could have warned Sibley that Shelley really does believe herself to be the original “Witchy Woman” (I have to confess she never revealed her virulent hatred of Jews & Israel to me).  But in any event—when people “Google” my name they too often find and go to Jon Drew Roland’s hateful defamation & slanderous comments on www.constitution.org.  Peyton and I did a lot of work, and shed a lot of “blood, toil, sweat, & tears” for Shelley, and she is just the consummate ingrate, and Jon Drew Roland is nothing but a treacherous Judas who stabbed his best friend in the back.  In the words of Paul Harvey, you now know “the rest of the story.”

The Impossible Dream…

The Impossible Dream….

Is restoration of a Constitutionally Limited Government in America an Impossible Dream?  Is there any way that we can right the unrightable wrongs against freedom and individual autonomy that have been done in the name of “progress”, “protection,” “public safety” and “security?”

If such restorations and rectifications indeed lie out side of the realm of the possible, I still agree with this song that it is better that we dream of such things and “be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause”, than that we let our dreams die in peaceful and quiet despair….

I confess that the discovery of Obama’s Executive Order 13603, entered last March 16, 2012, has had a profound effect on me.  I think that almost all of our OTHER struggles are hopeless and in vain now, until we can start overturning some of these terrible perversions of executive power into dictatorship….

They say that Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors were gay lovers, and if so, who cares?  They were quiet and civilized about it and it doesn’t diminish one bit the fact that Jim Nabors has a beautiful voice and performs this stirring song of idealized knighthood and heroic dreaming far better than Peter O’Toole managed during his otherwise masterful performance as the Knight of the Woeful Countenance in the movie “Man of La Mancha.”

Was the world really a poorer place when people kept their eccentricities private?   Freud taught us that guilt lies at the very foundation of civilization and civilized life—I don’t know whether that’s true or not—I find a lot of Freud’s notions bizarre and anthropologically/historically untenable.   But in its milder forms of modesty and keeping our private lives private, is “guilt” really such an awful thing?  My long-term assistant Peyton went up to San Francisco about a year ago for a vacation and found himself in the middle of a “gay pride” day.  The stories he told me about what people were doing in the streets were not something that would make me proud (gay OR straight).   Sigmund Freud may have been a Jew and Henry Ford may have hated Jews, but isn’t it odd how they both promoted the culture of “instant gratification” and constant change in lifestyle and behavior of all kinds which culture has come to dominate our world?

Old Gossip, Still Floating Around—I deny it (again) just for the record—and discuss some Patriot Myths….

Gossip about me and Orly Taitz remains on the web, which just shows how completely uninformed and stupid information on the web really can be, and how much damage it can do over the long run.  I just discovered a little bit of remnant misinformation tinged with stupid insult that I think needs to be addressed:

“Charles Edward Lincoln III was Orly Taitz’ Law Clerk during her representation of Maj. Stefan F. Cook and Capt. Connie Rhodes. He is thought to have been the author of her Motion for Recusal which wound up costing her $20,000 in sanctions.

Now the simple truth is this: Orly and I had a big fight about that motion and SHE is the one who insisted on going around insulting Judges—I tried as hard as I could to restrain her myself.  As I have stated many times, I grew up in a family with several Federal Judges as friends in Dallas (including Sarah Hughes and Barefoot Sanders).  I lived near and met U.S. Judges around Tulane and Harvard, I studied under some present and (at that time) future Judges at the University of Chicago.  While I was at law school I served a term as an judicial extern to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (it was one of the greatest intellectual experiences of my life) and after law school I held an ordinary judicial clerkship with Kenneth L. Ryskamp on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.  During all of these experiences, I came to know and worked with judges whom I deeply respected.  

Now I have never had much use for the common California practice of holding lawyers in contempt for insulting Judges or the Judicial process, but I did find a funny case history about such a case of undeniably counterproductive (if extremely revealing) contempt just yesterday on the first day of summer, and I highly recommend it as instructive and fairly amusing reading: Hanson v Superior Court.  Either we need more lawyers like this Hanson guy, or we really don’t need any lawyers at all—I wonder which it is?

Anyhow, back to the piece above accusing me of being responsible for Orly’s sanctions: NOT.  Definitely not.  I suspect Orly and Yosi spread this bit of malicious gossip themselves, but it just ain’t so, folks….

I certainly started the motion and provided her with all the citations she ever used (including the Cohens v. Virginia Citation about treason against the Constitution: Cohens v State of Virginia) and with some of the text (I have done motions to recuse before), but I did so fighting with her every step of the way.

Before she attacked Judge Clay D. Land in Columbus I as already fighting with her about the need to respect the Judges before whom we appeared.  I was totally opposed to her attacks on Judge David O. Carter (who I thought was a wonderful judge, and still think is one of the best, certainly in Orange County, possibly anywhere).  Orly claimed that HER SUPPORTERS wanted her to take a strong stand against the Judge in the Connie Rhodes case, and that she had to do what HER SUPPORTERS wanted to.  Many of these were retired military types who (understandably) hated and loathed Obama with a purple passion, and that’s why they were Orly supporters.

I called this “litigation by Patriot pod committee” a very dangerous strategy and technique to proceed, especially since most of these folks were just barely off the “everything in the Courts is admiralty” boat and shouldn’t be trusted as legal or constitutional advisers.

For those neither involved in nor familiar with the Patriot-Constitutionalist Conservative movement, I make reference here to one of the stupidest and most counterproductive of all “Patriot myths” about the Courts and legal system: namely that the Courts are all operating (secretly) under British Admiralty Law, that the “BAR” stands for “British Admiralty Registry”, and that the United States government is secretly still controlled, through the operation of Admiralty law, by the Queen of England.  I originally thought the only possible origin of this myth was in amazing overdoses of cocaine mixed with bourbon, but after Hurricane Katrina I had occasion to settle a number of property loss cases in New Orleans and vicinity and saw admiralty terms in the settlement agreements.  Of course, I asked what was going on, with these very normal and  (as respectable as they can be) insurance lawyers.  It turns out that the “admiralty” and “British Influence on the Courts” myth actually has some historic foundation in the post World War II development of the Southern USA Oil Offshore Oil Industry, more than JUST BP’s involvement in drilling wells, and that it is this kernel of truth which has just provided enough historical grounding in the history of the Southern USA Oil business that the “British Admiralty Registry” myth won’t go away easily or die a natural death, as it certainly should.

Anyhow, I totally disclaim any responsibility for Orly’s unwarranted attacks on Judges.  If she had ever really listened to me, her litigation would have been conducted in a much better researched, more dignified, and more responsible matter, but she was basically out there to become “famous or infamous”, just so long as she got headlines.   As I have written before, I now think that her entire involvement in the Article II eligibility movement was designed to derail Philip J. Berg and to discredit the real constitutional lawyers who were trying to expose Obama’s crimes and lies—before the really got serious, as they have in the past year.  

In my opinion, Obama probably owes his survival as President to Orly Taitz’ completely incompetent litigation show.  I think this was an intentional plan from the very beginning concocted by Orly and her husband Yosi, and that Orly is neither a genuine conservative nor a Constitutionalist in any sense.  I have yet to see firm evidence that Orly is a spy either for Israel or China, but I strongly suspect that she is working for some foreign agent to weaken and destroy America by making a laughing stock out of true conservatives.

Many of us are convinced that those who keep on purveying the “Everything is Admiralty” and “the USA is under British” (or in the alternative, or in addition, Vatican) control are likewise acting as agents for the government.   Some of them are just illiterate.  Anyone who completed the most elementary secondary education in Latin, of course, winces with pain when some of the modern patriots claim that our “inalienable” rights (in-ale-e-en-able) should be read as “unalienable rights” (un-a-leen-able) rights, interpreting that ancient concept of natural birthright to a commercial notion of “rights upon which no lien can be imposed.”  This is the purest poppycock but people persist in believing it.  Just like some people think that Orly is still really working AGAINST Obama.

We have moved back our New Orleans Seminar to the end of July, and we will have a panel discussion on Patriot Myths at that Seminar.  Patriotic Shreveport Louisiana Lawyer Tommy Cryer died a couple of hours after I talked to him the night he agreed to appear at that Seminar, and I intend to dedicate a part of the Seminar to his memory.  Cryer, along with Larry Becraft and Donald W. MacPherson, was among the top anti-IRS Lawyers in the United States, and an inspiration to many people fighting this corrupt system around the Country—but Orly was NEVER on their side, or interested in their work or what they had to say, more’s the pity…..

A Step towards Emancipation from Lies—My Favorite Juneteenth Reading for 2012 is all about 9-11-2001 (from Salon.com)


http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/new_nsa_docs_reveal_911_truths/singleton/

Remember, remember, Eleven September—the “Terrorist” Treason and Plot….

TUESDAY, JUN 19, 2012 01:24 PM PDT

New NSA docs contradict 9/11 claims “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released,” an expert tells Salon

BY 

New NSA docs contradict 9/11 claims(Credit: Reuters)

Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests.

The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

Let’s start there. In 2000 and 2001, the CIA began using Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan. “The idea of using UAVs originated in April 2000 as a result of a request from the NSC’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism to the CIA and the Department of Defense to come up with new ideas to go after the terrorists in Afghanistan,” a 2004 document summarizes. The Pentagon approved the plan for surveillance purposes.

And yet, simultaneously, the CIA declared that budget concerns were forcing it to move its Counterterrorism Center/Osama bin Laden Unit from an “offensive” to a “defensive” posture. For the CIA, that meant trying to get Afghan tribal leaders and the Northern Alliance to kill or capture bin Laden, Elias-Sanborn says. “It was forced to be less of a kinetic operation,” she says. “It had to be only for surveillance, which was not what they considered an offensive posture.”

“Budget concerns … CT [counterterrorism] supplemental still at NSC-OMB [National Security Council – Office of Management and Budget] level,” an April 2000 document reads. “Need forward movement on supplemental soonest due to expected early recess due to conventions, campaigning and elections.” In addition, the Air Force told the CIA that if it lost a drone, the CIA would have to pay for it, which made the agency more reluctant to use the technology.

Still, the drone program began in September 2000. One drone swiftly twice observed an individual “most likely to have been Bin Laden.” But since the CIA only had permission to use the drones for intelligence gathering, it had no way to act on its findings. The agency submitted a proposal to the National Security Council staff in December 2000 that would have significantly expanded the program. “It was too late for the departing Clinton Administration to take action on this strategic request,” however. It wasn’t too late for the Bush administration, though. It just never did.

Former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has taken credit for the drone program that the Bush administration ignored. “Things like working to get an armed Predator that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important, working to get a strategy that would allow us to get better cooperation from Pakistan and from the Central Asians,” she said in 2006. “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida.” Rice claimed that the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism policies, a claim the documents disprove. “If the administration wanted to get it done, I’m sure they could have gotten it done,” says Elias-Sanborn.

Many of the documents publicize for the first time what was first made clear in the 9/11 Commission: The White House received a truly remarkable amount of warnings that al-Qaida was trying to attack the United States. From June to September 2001, a full seven CIA Senior Intelligence Briefs detailed that attacks were imminent, an incredible amount of information from one intelligence agency. One from June called “Bin-Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats” writes that “[redacted] expects Usama Bin Laden to launch multiple attacks over the coming days.” The famous August brief called “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike the US” is included. “Al-Qai’da members, including some US citizens, have resided in or travelled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure here,” it says. During the entire month of August, President Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas — which tied with one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest vacation ever taken by a president. CIA Director George Tenet has said he didn’t speak to Bush once that month, describing the president as being “on leave.” Bush did not hold a Principals’ meeting on terrorism until September 4, 2001, having downgraded the meetings to a deputies’ meeting, which then-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke has repeatedly said slowed down anti-Bin Laden efforts “enormously, by months.”

For all the information the documents reveal, one huge matter is conspicuously absent: torture. There are nearly 50 CIA documents relating to such matters as the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the intelligence gleaned from him, and yet “none of them were declassified at all,” notes Elias-Sanborn. “Certainly, the CIA has a stake in revealing what they did,” and they clearly do not want to reveal their complicity in war crimes.

One last thing is worth mentioning from the documents published today:  Anyone with any doubt that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dangerous to the United States is contradicting U.S. intelligence. “Violence between Israelis and the Palestinians, moreover is making Sunni extremists more willing to participate in attacks against US or Israeli interests,” the CIA wrote in February 2001. It is not the only piece of information revealed by the new documents that will be deeply uncomfortable for the Bush administration and hawks across the country.

Jordan Michael Smith writes about U.S. foreign policy for Salon. He has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post.

Comments

  • Yg Bluig
  • TUESDAY, JUN 19, 2012 01:52 PM PDT

“Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had Bin Laden in its crosshairs a full year before 9/11 — but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. “

But Bush was not in the White House “a full year” before 9/11. He took office in January 2001. On Sept. 11, 2011, he hadn’t yet stolen the election.Yg Bluig

  • TUESDAY, JUN 19, 2012 01:53 PM PDT

I meant ‘on sept. 11, 2000.”

The article doesn’t say that the Bush administration blocked funding for a year, just that the CIA knew OBL’s whereabouts for a year. The implication is that the Bushies did nothing about that information after Bush took office.tanmack

  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 12:57 PM PDT

I recall Condoleeza Rice trying to explain to a Congressional hearing why the Bush Administration had disregarded the memo entitled “Bin Laden to Strike the U.S. with Planes.” I can’t for the life of me remember her response.

A few weeks ago, I rewatched the film Path to 9/11 that covered much of this ground, including CIA frustration that they could not get approval to shoot bin Laden. It also showed Richard Clarke being sidelined after he begged Rice to take bin Laden intel seriously.

I guess this is why the administration approved giving money to the 9/11 victims (rather than face being sued by thousands of families) although the Oklahoma victims received no compensation for their losses.ChillyDogg

  • TUESDAY, JUN 19, 2012 03:21 PM PDT

The CIA spent 70 billion in 2001 yet they couldn’t find a few million to monitor Bin Laden? I have a bridge to sell you.

  • sajwan
  • TUESDAY, JUN 19, 2012 03:23 PM PDT

There’s a lot of people buying.BillyFLA

  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 06:52 AM PDT

Not to mention the $1 Trillion plus that we’ve spent on the GOP’s unnecessary war in Iraq and countless other millions thought needed to beef up homeland security after 9/11. If this was an example of Republicans trying to save a few bucks of Federal money, its also a great example of their being pennywise and pound foolish.Gus1964

  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 08:23 AM PDT

How is it the GOP’s war? How many cowardly Democrats voted for the AUMF?

Just millions to beef up homeland security? I think your calculations are way off. The TSA alone costs billions of dollars a year.

  • sitka0230
  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 07:30 AM PDT

The budgetary process allocates money for specific programs within various agencies. Even if the CIA had $1 trillion in 2001, it doesn’t mean a penny of it was allocated to this mission.

I am curious, though, how you arrived at $70 billion since this budget is classified. There was a slip-up in 2005 or so when it was accidentally disclosed that the CIA budget was $44 billion. I do not know if this includes so-called black ops budget.

  • paulie
  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 08:28 AM PDT

Even more damning is that George’s younger brother Marvin Bush was a principal and prior director of the security company contracted to provide security to the WTC and his and Bush’s cousin Wirt Walker III was the CEO at the time.The company was given a contract the day after GWB’s ignauguration.

These ties were never investigated by the 9/11 ,Commission, of course .

It must just kill the Repugnants and Bush-worshippers that their doofus let bin Laden off the hook so brazenly while that Kenyan Muslim Usurper Ni**er in the White House took him out after less than 2 1/2 years in office.jonvaljon

  • TUESDAY, JUN 19, 2012 02:08 PM PDT

it was all coordinated and neither bush nor obama had any control over when the body that no one ever saw was rolled out, thawed and stamped “done” right on the forehead.

  • mjshep
  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 06:49 AM PDT

I think the tinfoil hat is cutting off the circulation to your brain. Reduced blood flow causes hallucinations.

  • suave
  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 07:17 AM PDT

zzzzzzzz’BillyFLA

  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 06:55 AM PDT

Well it WOULD just kill GOPers and Bushies IF they EVER admitted to making a mistake. But they’d rather line up en masse and insist that they have “no regrets”.sitka0230

  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 07:32 AM PDT

Cognitive dissonance. See, for instance, jonvaljon’s comment. Rather than except reality, invent your own facts to meet your pre-established world view.

  • suave
  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 07:58 AM PDT

.. except your reality relies on faith, instead of irrefutable evidence.

  • jonvaljon
  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 09:06 AM PDT

pics or it didnt happen.

  • WEDNESDAY, JUN 20, 2012 09:27 AM PDT

No, my reality is based on observations and parsimony.

CONSTITUTIONAL WAR vs. 1984 “Perpetual War”

Congress, originally (in 1787), was supposed to be the successor to Parliament as the highest expression of the Sovereignty of the Anglo-American People.  It seems, over the past 70 years, that Congress has largely abandoned its role as the primary lawmaker in the United States. As noted on this blog recently, Executive Orders have pretty much replaced legislative enactments.  During the 1950s and 60s, the Judiciary was commissioned with implementing the program of desegregation which neither of the directly political branches were willing to impose on the unwilling American people.

But now, as a consequence of all this history, the “legislature” now longer “legislates”–it mostly ratifies bills prepared by bureaucrats or lobbyists.  Debate is almost nugatory, no longer meaningful, and elections seem “rigged” at all levels.  One of the key powers of Congress granted in Article I of the Constitution was the power to declare war, and Congress has done this throughout history—but the last times were in 1941-1942 at the beginning of the Second World War.  

I find myself simply astonished by the following brain-dead (anti-Libertarian, anti-Ron Paul, anti-Constitutional) Republican “Red State” website (
http://www.redstate.com/dcacklam/2012/05/16/law-war-security-why-libertarians-are-wrong-about-indefinate-detention/
) defense of Indefinite Detention, but I reproduce it here merely to highlight its one key but absolutely fatal flaw—the “War on Terrorism” (like the “War on Drugs”) is an undeclared, unconstitutional war.  It is also a war which is likely to last forever—where there is no Constitutional Declaration of War, there will be no Treaty Ratifying Peace—precisely because the ENEMY DEPENDS ON US FOR ITS EXISTENCE—There can be no Al Qaida, no Terrorist Threat anywhere, that is not nurtured and fostered by the CIA and other elements of the American and “allied” governments.  Long-term terrorism is in essence a fantasy, a very Orwellian Fantasy, just like the “perpetual war” of Eurasia, Eastasia, and Anglo-American “Oceania”:
 

I’m sure I’m not alone in having “grown up” on 1984.  In Orwell’s book a very credible “Cold War”-like “perpetual war” consumes what little surplus exists between the economies of London-based Anglo-American Oceania, Bolshevik Eurasia and Sino-Japanese Eastasia, the super-states which emerged from the atomic global war. “The book”, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains how the balance of power is maintained: each state is so strong it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two super-states—despite changing alliances. To hide such ridiculously illogical contradictions, history is  constantly being re-written to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces accustomed to doublethink accept it.

EXACTLY LIKE THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM, ORWELL’S “FICTIONAL” (or was it Prophetic?) WAR is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia).  

{{{For those of you with a weak grasp on geography, that includes Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Israel Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, the site of the USS Cole disaster in 1999, the sites of the U.S. Embassy Attacks in Nairobi & Dar es Salaam in 1998, Somalia, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia including Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia—in other words EVERY major theatre of war since 1945 EXCEPT for Korea, but including BOTH “Stanleyville and Saigon” and Algiers which were sites of major undeclared “hot spots in the cold war” in the 1950s-60s).  I sometimes wonder whether 1984 was actually an INSTRUCTIONAL manual leaked out, and quickly reclassified as a “fictional” work.  The author George Orwell really DID work for BBC Wartime anti-Nazi propaganda in India, after all, and given his circle of friends and contacts he was probably as privy as anyone outside of government could be to Power-Elite’s Vision of their plans for the next 70 years….}}}

At the start of Orwell’s Perpetual War, Oceania and Eastasia are allies combatting Eurasia in northern Africa.

That alliance ends and Oceania allied with Eurasia fights Eastasia, a change which occurred during the “Hate Week” (comparable to the real world “National Brotherhood Week” maybe?) dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party’s perpetual war.  The public are utterly insensitive and blind to the change; in mid-sentence an orator changes the name of the enemy from “Eurasia” to “Eastasia” without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed they tear them down—thus the origin of the idiom ”We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; later the Party claims to have captured Africa.  

{{{I personally have, for a long time now, suspected that it is no coincidence that we first went to war with Saddam Hussein and a terrorist named Osama bin Laden and then [had elected for us] a New World Order President named Barack Hussein Obama—so that people would have these similar sounding names confused, just as in Orwell’s 1984}}}.

“The book” by Goldstein, a credible name for a New World Order Theorist if ever there was one, explains the design and purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war: the war serves to consume all “surplus” or excess human energy, time, labour and commodities, hence the economy of a super-state cannot (or is not expected to) support economic equality (a high standard of life) for every citizen.

Goldstein also details in characteristic doublespeak an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion, yet dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war’s purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s the super-states stopped such warfare lest it cause disequilibrium among the perfectly balanced and perpetually warring powers and thus bring about the uneconomical, politically undesirable, result of an actual peace.

Even the Perpetual War military technology in Orwell’s 1984 is prophetic in that, although it differs little from that of World War II, strategic bomber airplanes have been largely replaced with an evolved species of Werner von Braun’s Rocket Bombs (not quite the ICBMs of the Cold war, or the ABMs of the Star Wars Dreamtime).  True to the reality of Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (while they didn’t figure in WW2 in any form but prototypes) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses, island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform.  Orwell’s novel describes one such platform anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting an Political and Practical “Perpetual War”-perpetuating preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).

In any event: serious students of U.S. History will recognize in the passage below, but see the logical and moral flaws in, the direct comparison to the U.S. Civil War of 1861-1865—when the rights of Americans, North and South, were first repressed and began their long decay into the nightmare of what I can only call either “the Brave New World” or “The New Dark Age”—although fans of George H.W. Bush like to call it “The New World Order”:

Law, War & Security – Why libertarians are wrong about ‘Indefinate Detention’

Posted by Dave_A (Diary)
Wednesday, May 16th at 2:56AM EDT
14 Comments
Recommenders: mikeymike143 (Diary), PowerToThePeople (Diary)

We hear complaints on this subject from time to time – in the past it was Bush’s opening Gitmo, the 2006 Military Commissions Act, and now it’s the NDAA & Obama not closing Gitmo…

Supposedly, this is a ‘grave violation’ of people’s rights, and we should all be very, very afraid because ‘It might be us next’…

Predictably enough, it’s usually lefties, extremists, libertarians, and Paul supporters (but I repeat myself on the last one, it seems – as that group encompasses all of the ones preceding) making these claims…

And rather than using the correct terms – such as EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War) or POW, and ‘detention for the duration of hostilities’, they use ‘indefinite detention’ and ‘violation of habeas corpus’ – as if the situation is one of holding every-day civilian criminals indefinitely without trial, rather than holding enemy combatants (some lawful, some very much unlawful) captured while engaging in hostilities against the United States…

So, with that said, here’s the case FOR proper handling of EPWs – or as the L’s call it ‘indefinite detention’:

1) The traditional treatment of captured persons, and specifically the concept of taking prisoners & holding them for the duration of hostilities or until an exchange can be negotiated, is older than the United States – and something we practiced ourselves in every war we have fought.

If it was Constitutional and right to hold British, Mexican, Spanish, German, and Japanese prisoners for the duration of the war-in-question – and to hold captured rebels for the duration of hostilities during the Civil War (despite their holding US Citizenship (the Union never recognized the CSA as a foreign nation) it being legal under the Constitution to try and execute them for treason instead – a decision likely influenced by the mutual possession of prisoners by both sides & the Union’s desire for reconciliation after eventual victory), what has changed to make it suddenly unconstitutional to hold Al Queda and Taliban prisoners in the same manner?

2) There are international agreements on the treatment of captured and retained persons – a subset of what is referred to in the military as ‘Law of Armed Combat’ or ‘Law of Land Warfare’ – that require certain things & prohibit others. Shooting surrendered enemy forces is prohibited, as is torture and various other offenses. <b>So is subjecting captured enemy troops to the capturing nation’s CIVILIAN JUSTICE SYSTEM.</b> Prisoners found to have engaged in unlawful combat/war crimes (through a hearing process spelled out in the aforementioned agreements) are to be tried by <b>military court</b>, NOT civilian court.

3) Of the alternatives, indefinite detention is the only legal way to keep captured enemy forces from returning to the battlefield (that’s why we’ve done it in every other war).

History – including OUR OWN history – shows that when combatants escape or evade capture, they routinely rejoin friendly forces and return to the fight. This isn’t unique to bad-guys – the US military has a good list of medals awarded to troops who escaped from or evaded capture, then returned to friendly lines & re-entered combat. In this war, we have a Marine of Muslim descent, who after being captured in Iraq tricked his captors into releasing him to a neutral Muslim country with promises that he would desert – of course when he got there he immediately went to the US Embassy & returned to the Marines. In addition, there are documented cases of released EPWs returning to the fight against us in this war.

- We can’t shoot them – that’s kind of illegal and immoral (Yes, they’d do it to us, but the price of being good guys is, well, being good)…
- We can’t try them as civilians – they’re not civilians, and it’s illegal.
- Releasing them to a foreign country means they’ll be back in the fight against us as soon as they can find a way home (as a Soldier myself, that’s what I’d do to them if I managed to get captured & released alive (fat chance – which is why anything is preferable to capture in this war, but let’s allow the example))…
- (For Taliban captured in Afghanistan) Turning them over to the Afghans results in them being treated as civilian criminals by the Afghan government, and that results in their being released due to the Afghan rules of evidence being ridiculously too limited.

So that leaves the one thing every single nation has done during a war – lock them up in a POW camp, in military custody (a place like, um, Gitmo) until the war is over…

3) The notion that we are in danger of EPW measures being used against US citizens, on US soil & not engaged in hostilities against the United States, for political or other nefarious purpose is unjustified paranoia. We have been at war for over 10 years now, and it hasn’t happened. Now it’s understandable to hear various revolutionary movements complaining, because at their core you usually find extremists who are willing to levy war against the US to achieve political ends – and who want to make winning that war as hard as possible for the US. But for everyone else, it’s paranoia… Plain and simple…

Personally, I’d say the violent-revolutionary types should be more worried about what we’ll do to them if they actually try to have their revolution – getting captured & held for the duration is the least of worries (compared to being killed by vastly superior pro-US forces, or captured & executed for treason)….

 (
http://www.redstate.com/dcacklam/2012/05/16/law-war-security-why-libertarians-are-wrong-about-indefinate-detention/

4-20 Focus on Cannabis and Confederates, Hitler and the Hunger-Games, the New Dark Ages, and Andreas Behring Breivik

Before writing anything else, I just want to reiterate a great big Cheer “Vive La France” for Marine Le Pen and the Front National in France.  The French National Elections are this Sunday, April 22, 2012, and although polls are not rating her as having much of a chance of winning, we can always hope that people lie to pollsters (as we know they do) and speak truth inside the ballot booth.  There was once a time when Jean-Marie Le Pen came in Second and the Established World went mad with fear that a real outsider candidate might have a real chance.  It was almost as crazy as the “Vote for the Crook, It’s Important” nationwide campaign to insure that Edwin Edwards beat David Duke in 1991, when Duke received over 60% of the White vote in Louisiana.  (Prior to serving his full ten year term for racketeering, the Federal Bureau of Prisons in its great mercy released Edwards from the federal gulag into a halfway house on January 13, 2011).  Marine Le Pen has none of Duke’s biographical baggages and the Old France is quite a bit more threatened by obvious aliens and outsiders today than the New France of La Louisianne  was in 1991, but the same forces of corporate industry and global homogenization have the same goal in both cases: KILL THE POLITICAL OUTSIDERS, let the real enemies of the people reign….  And no, of course, nothing that I’m saying has anything whatsoever to do with my theory of why I’m not on the California Ballot this year, absolutely, positively, nothing.

But today if 4-20, and as the show trial of Andreas Behring Breivik concludes its first week, I can only say that I am more convinced than ever that it IS a show trial staged precisely for the purpose of suppressing freedom in a uniquely European/Scandinavian way.  9-11 was too widely recognized in Europe for the staged fraud it was for the rail bombings in Madrid or the tube bombings in London to work again.  (France, as the world-leader in rational 9-11 doubt, was strangely immune to terrorist attacks—everyone old enough to talk in France knows what a sham 9-11 was and no one in that most enlightened country in Europe would be taken in by such a farce—but as PT Barnum is so famous for saying—no one EVER went broke UNDER-estimating the intelligence of the American people).

Just look at Andreas Behring Breivik making a pseudo-Nazi arm salute and then describing in such cool rational terms how he killed people.  Cui Bono Baby?  Would any rational thinking terrorist really imagine that killing a bunch of teenagers was going to garner sympathy for the cause of expelling non-Nordic immigrants from Norway?  Obviously Andreas Behring Breivik is NOT insane, as evidenced by his coherent and predictable patterns of speech and by his ability to follow instructions on courtroom decorum (such as “Don’t Make the Nazi salute anymore”, it upsets people).  But his explanation for what he’s doing is absurd.  Cui bono?  The only plausible beneficiaries of Andreas Behring Breivik’s attack are those who want to discredit his words.  The BNP, the Front National, and the German NPD certainly shy away from him, as do the National Democrats of neighboring Sweden.  Going around killing innocent people cannot CAUSE in the knowledge (which Breivik has affirmed) that you will become the most hated man in Norway is NOT a very effective way or means to become an apostle to cultural homogeneity.  Breivik’s trial has been scheduled in the week leading up to the French Elections….Marine Le Pen being the most effective anti-immigration leader in Europe, without any doubt—is this mere coincidence?  Anyone who studied how to kill people as calmly and as privately as Breivik did must have studied some history, and there is NO historical precedent or antecedent for mass random killings of completely innocent people leading to identity as a hero.  Sorry folks—if I’ve missed something out there, please let me know, but as far as I am concerned, Andreas Behring Breivik’s entire life story is part of the plot to make the descendants of the Vikings bow down and serve Mecca in much the same way that the Varangian guard once served the Byzantine Emperors.  It is to the Norwegian’s credit that they (unlike the Brits and the Americans) couldn’t be taken in by staged MUSLIM terrorist attacks), but in effect, they’ve just been taken in by the polar opposite….  And the fabled freedoms of Scandinavia will soon start to fade and diminish.  Sad but I guarantee you it’s true….

So the looming signs of the New Dark Ages come both closer and more obvious—Andreas Behring Breivik would not be giving Nazi-Arm Salutes if he were a real Nazi, he would not have chosen the targets he chose if he were a real Nazi, and this is, after all, Adolf Hitler’s birthday (4-20-1889).

The connection between Hitler’s birthday and Cannabis is one of the odder coincidences of history.  Why?  Some inconclusive evidence suggests that Hitler might (as many frontline soldiers in the Kaiser’s army did) have used Heroin during WWI, but otherwise his use of drugs is confined to having used various drugs during WWII, especially as the war went against him.

In the twisted and uneducated America today, what would you expect in the era of GW Bush & BH Obama, understanding of history is so confused in the popular mind that there is a tendency to conflate general notions of racism into one template. Confederates are considered equivalent to the Nazis and the Nazi forced labor of non-Germans in Europe to Southern American/US (i.e. “Confederate”) chattel slavery.  Critics of the Southern Confederacy have, on-line in this 150th anniversary year of Shiloh, gone so far as to claim that the CSA, if it had won the war, would have sought to extend slavery to Latin America and throughout the Western Hemisphere.  Such hateful, hate-filled fantasies seem likely to bear fruit in Tim Burton’s upcoming “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter“, and all I can say is—”will someone please help me organize a boycott?”  

The CSA Confederates and their Southern Patriotic heirs may believe in segregation of the races, and may even believe that Barack Hussein Obama is constitutionally disqualified to be and serve as Reich’s Fuhrer, I mean Chairman of the Central Committee and Supreme Soviet, I mean President…. but the Southern Tradition is one of individual freedom, not corporate tyranny.  Tennessee Williams, of course, saw a serious contradiction evolving in this tradition in the 1950s when he wrote Sweet Bird of Youth when Big Oil and other mostly “Yankee” Corporate Interests were taking over the South (especially early in Texas and Louisiana, but throughout the South after WWII)….

To a true Son of the Confederate State of America, there is nothing sadder than such confusion as links Confederates with Nazis, traditional southerners with corporate values or interests….because the reality is the extreme opposite.

The Confederates fought for Freedom AGAINST Centralized Government and Dictatorship, and modern Southern leaders, like the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, were war heroes on the beaches of Normandy to liberate France in 1944.  In Lincoln’s Marxists, Donald Kennedy and his co-author draw intense comparisons between Abraham and Adolf.  They do not mention the ultimate irony that Judah P. Benjamin, a West Indian Jew, was one of the leading statesmen of the Confederacy, or that Florida’s David Levy was the very first Jewish American to sit in the United States Senate.  Levy County on the Florida Gulf Coast is named after this pioneering Hebrew settler of the Sunshine State, and by some irony Levy County is the site of the infamous “Rosewood” Massacre.   But really and truly, as I have recently written, All Americans are now living in “Greater Rosewood,” Levy County, Florida—we are all subject to summary foreclosure and eviction by force—from sea to shining sea, but it is NOT the Klansmen who are after us this time….it is the Banks….and their “servicers” of course…. 04-19-2012 Carrie Loft v Citigroup Global Markets Realty Corp et al Response to Order of 04-05-2012 and Motion for 30 day Extension of Time to file FAC.  

As I have also written here and elsewhere, the United States Federal Courts are unwilling to apply the Civil Rights Laws of the Land for the protection of white people, apparently because these laws only exist to foment racial discord and competition between Black and White (with some bones here and there thrown to fomenting conflict with Hispanics and Asians).   So long as the Banks and Banksters apply their vicious fraud equally to black and white alike, the courts will not recognize any violation of the civil rights of the people.  This too, is a sign of the Bush 41-Clinton-Bush 43-Obama Dark Age, descending upon us…

   The Nazis had certain ideals in common with conservatives throughout Western Europe and North America: the romanticized revitalization of indigenous European Culture, for example, rooting the spirit of progress in national pride and identity.  Such things are found in England, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Greece, and Israel, not to mention in the United States and many countries in Latin America, or even post-Colonial Africa and Asia.

If that were all that Hitler’s Naziism had amounted to—resurgent national pride and rebuilding the nation shattered by the Great Depression (which effectively began in Germany immediately after Versailles in 1919 and never really ended).  Chancellor Sutler in V-for-Vendetta is a thinly disguised Hitler (“H” is the 8th letter of the alphabet starting with “A”, “S” is the 8th letter of the alphabet reciting backwards from “Z”).  Chancellor Sutler, like Hitler, believed in the power of the Big Lie.  But unlike Chancellor Sutler and his terrorism through “St. Mary’s” infection…. Hitler did more than merely terrorize his own people.  He went off to terrorize the French and the Poles.  Had Hitler NOT embarked on his war of extensive military conquest, Naziism might have been accepted and remained a “Third Way” in Europe.  Great Britain had guaranteed the integrity of Poland, and the 129 years of the Polish Partition was a wrong that deserved finally to be righted (one of the few things the Versailles Conference actually got right, surely, was the restoration of Polish national identity and autonomy).

But as a Confederate and Patriot of the American tradition, I cannot accept Hitler’s invasion and conquest of Poland, which started World War II, as even remotely legitimate.  One interesting thought is that Hitler must have had at least as clear an idea that invading Poland (and especially then invading the Soviet Union two years later, breaking faith with the after the Von Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) would ultimately lead to his demise as Andreas Behring Breivik must realize that his slaughter of innocents would win him no friends either personally or for his cause.  

One could almost wonder and ask “cui bono” of Nazi Germany?  Nazi Germany led to the modern religion of Globalism, suppression of nationalism, and “we are one” suppression of the ideology of race-as-extended family, in short, of race as a biologically natural and real element of human culture and social identity.  World War II also resulted in the foundation of the state of Israel and the rise of a distinctly non-Christian ethos and elite in the world, which non-Christian ethos and elite clearly either needed and created or is now using and needs Andreas Behring Breivik in Norway, and George Zimmerman in Florida…  (not to make any comparison here—what Andreas Behring Breivik did in Norway was murder—intention killing of another person without justification or provocation of any kind, but what George Zimmerman did in Florida was, in my opinion, probably—almost certainly—self-defense, but it is being USED as a racially polarizing device and divisive event by President Barack Hussein Obama….).  

Going back to my April 13, 2012, essay on the Hunger Games and the New Dark Ages, and the comparison and contrast between the Hunger Games and V-for-Vendetta, the latter is clearly about Hitler-like totalitarian oppression, while the former directly concerns Confederate Rebels within an easily recognizable future North American Corporate/Centralized Government hegemony.

Confederates were not Nazis; they were not conquerors.  For all of Robert E. Lee’s fabled brilliance a military strategist, his best bet was to seize Washington D.C. and Maryland for the Confederacy in 1861-1862, when the northern armies were poorly organized and poorly led, but he and Jefferson Davis declined even to try to impose their will on Maryland and Delaware, slave states which had elected not to secede.   The Confederacy, it has often occurred to me, could and should have simply taken Washington D.C. right after the First Battle of Manassas/Bull Run, and taken over the capital there.  The War of 1861 might have then ended, perhaps with the Confederate Constitution replacing the new Federal Constitution of 1787 as Southern Sympathizers from Ohio, Illinois, and New York joined in. Slavery would have probably ended in the South by the 1880s or 1890s regardless, as it did in Brazil and the Spanish Colonies,but this is not consistent with Obama era anti-Confederate education, because Confederates were actually the original anti-Communists.  Worse (for themselves and the CSA) because Lee and Davis were dedicated to NON-CONQUEST IDEOLOGY, they gave up their best chances at winning in 1861-62.  By the time Lee invaded the North in earnest in 1863, there was no obvious purpose in doing so, no reasonable strategy, and once again, the chance to seize Washington D.C. and make it the Confederate Capital was lost.  Gettysburg ended that campaign and with it all reasonable hopes of Confederate victory, all reasonable hopes for the survival of the Confederate Constitution.

The Hunger Games, as I wrote last week, seems firmly rooted in the legacy of the vanquished 13 state of the Southern Confederacy, of which North Carolina was the state that sacrificed the most (suffering the greatest number of casualty losses, per capita, of any Southern State—Virginia lost more by number, but not as a percentage of the population, Florida lost the least, participating in the war hardly at all, Texas effectively won the war, maintaining its independence throughout, but surrendering on June 19, 1865 at Galveston, in spite of it all; New Orleans surrendered exactly 150 years ago this month, constituting the first great loss of the Confederacy, without firing a single shot, much as Paris was not defended in World War II—the French apparently like to save their beautiful cities from war-time destruction and mayhem…. consistently choosing discretion over valor….).

 But the Hunger Games also captured the coldly exploitative nature of the centralized government, in need of lots of “coal, minerals and row crops” as President Snow puts it while talking to the ill-fated game-master Seneca, who mistakenly thinks that “everyone likes an underdog.”

In the book, Hunger Games, which I finally started reading after seeing the movie last night for a seventh time in Santa Monica, suppression of private ownership of arms (even including ordinary bows and arrows like Katniss’) is a key an important aspect of the Government’s policy towards the people of District 12 (= Appalachia,  filmed in North Carolina).  

It was critical to keep the people disarmed lest they ever rise up against the establishment armies.  The people were forbidden effectively to feed themselves…. for fear that a well-fed populace might hunger for freedom….

In that connexion, I am today on my way to Fresno to work with members of the 4-20 cooperative there.  None of them, to the best of my knowledge, will be celebrating Hitler’s 123 birthday there this evening.  They have other problems.  The State of California has legalized medical marijuana but the Federal government continues to suppress it.  Just as in 1860, the Centralized Government wishes to suppress the farmers who supply a product much in demand around the world, to denigrate individual autonomy and local authority.  Unlike 1860, the states are weak, and in fact what I will face in Fresno is finding the ways and means to oppose the degree to which the Federal Government has skipped the state or effectively nullified state authority all together, and seeks to impose state law by collaborating with city and county authorities.

This is a Tenth Amendment crusade in the Confederate tradition: restore individual independence by building up autonomous farmers.  I personally haven’t touched cannabis as an intoxicant since July 1991, but the occasion when I did, in the Mary Martin Suite at the Hotel Pontchartrain in New Orleans, was one of the turning points in my life (and certainly it sounded the death knell of my marriage).  

But for the moment, I take pride in knowing that in 2012 as it was 152 years ago, real freedom and real liberty reside in the defense of self-supporting farmers away from the city and centralized economy and government.  This is the Confederate way, and the Confederate way is anti-communist and anti-Nazi, all at the same time as it is anti-Obama, anti-Bush, and generally antithetical to the Corporate establishment which rules America and Europe, and which has dedicated untold millions to the suppression of real individualists such as Marine Le Pen, and the creation of such fake individualists as Andreas Behring Breivik……

April 13: The Hunger Games, Judicial Immunity, and the Dawn of a New Dark Age

Life in its petty pace from day-to-day (and related notes on why I’m not on the California ballot)

Is it a coincidence that the California Secretary of State refused to approve me for a ballot place as candidate for the United States Senate Seat currently held by Diane Feinstein within 3 days of Facebook Canceling my profile because I was “promoting or organizing violence?”  Since I have never (to the best of my knowledge) advocated (much less “organized”) violence except to praise the spirit of continuing revolution, it was a great shock to me, but that was how my Spring season began.  (My long-time personal assistant and “Man Friday” Peyton assures me that I’ve never organized anything in my life, violent, peaceful, or indifferent)  

The snafu that led to my ballot position not being approved may yet prove the subject of a lawsuit, so I shan’t go into details except to say: California’s “Top Two, Voter Nominated” primary system only makes sense if non-professional political operatives (i.e. “voters”) are actually permitted to nominate candidates, and this requires a certain exercise of common sense on the part of the Registrar of Voters in each county as well as the Secretary of State.  Obviously, my supporters are largely battered down middle class working people who no longer trust the government to begin with.  They are anything BUT government insiders.  If only political insiders can maneuver the system then it is NOT a true “voter nominated” system.

I would guess that, in fact, the “top two” system was designed to protect the best funded insider candidates from even any hypothetical threat from outsiders like me, and that is, of course, a way of stifling change and preventing any real “dynamic” in the democratic process.  ”Top two” primaries arguably serve a system well-designed to engender a “thousand year reich”, ironic indeed since one would think that individuals of Barbara Boxer’s, Diane Feinstein’s and Henry Waxman’s background and ethnic origins would not WANT a thousand year reich….but perhaps the quibble was with the identity of the master race destined to rule for a millennium, rather than whether a unitary elite should have such power…. forever.

Remembering V-for-Vendetta and Serenity from 2005-2006

The only redeeming feature of Spring 2012 so far is a new movie, which equals and possibly surpasses in political insight my (obvious, previous) all time favorite: V-for-Vendetta.   V-for-Vendetta was a futuristic science fiction (literally based on cartoon characters based on a four centuries old English school boys’  rhyme about a highly manipulated historical even in 1605) and as such it served as an allegory about 9-11 and the “W” Bush (43rd Presidential) administration in the USA.   The lead characters, the Guy Fawkes’ masked “V” (Hugo Weaving) and Evey Hammond” (Nathalie Portman), were an amazing couple NOT in love (at least not romantically, and not in any way at all, at least not until Evey’s post-mortem eulogy) were, as cartoon characters are, difficult to relate to any ordinary people one might encounter in life.  

The brilliance of V-for-Vendetta was the incisive treatment of 9-11 and all that had happened in and around that date under the Bush 43 administration: barely a stone was left unturned to expose the rotten mould and horrible colony of insect life underneath it.  The sad part about V-for-Vendetta is that it’s message apparently resonated with so few people.  

As a movie, it should have had a national impact on political thought, revealing the ruling government as an oligarchy of hypocrisy, lies and fear through government media manipulation concealing a simple policy of orchestrated terrorism attributed to foreigners, specifically Islamic fundamentalists, in the justification of never-ending war, even though it was in fact the brainchild policy of the government itself.  

Above all, V-for-Vendetta reminded us of Adolf Hitler’s brilliant but evil insight, that the great mass of people will sooner believe a great lie than a small one.  Another movie concerning a “big lie” by the government was Joss Whedon’s beautiful epic Serenity.  The tale of the outer-space “wild-west racially non-discriminatory confederates” was, in so many ways, merely the extra galactic, historically unspecific, parallel to V.  Unlike V, Serenity did not focus on any specific modern event like 9-11, but  very generally shared a focus on governmental experiments in biotechnology and psychological manipulation as the root of transformational events in human history.  Of course, Serenity very unusually and distinctively echoed and memorialized the injustice of the Confederate defeat at the hands of a technologically superior Centralized government (“the Federation”).

Die Hungerspiele von Panem/Die Tribute von Panem (Totliche Spiele) (You’re a Damn Confederate, aren’t you?)

The new movie which in my mind at least now threaten’s V-for-Vendetta’s supremacy as the greatest political movie of our time premiered on Friday March 23, and is of course, the Hunger Games. (I confess I have not read Suzanne Collins’ books—everything I say here is based on the movie and the movie alone, which I found absolutely overwhelming—but I didn’t read Gone with the Wind until I was 26, by which time I had seen the movie at leas 30 times in my life).  The Hunger Games lacks any of the cartoonish elements of V-for-Vendetta and Serenity (as much as I like and appreciate the genuinely artistic value of those elements).  

My suspicions of Collins’ perspectives as those of a not-so-closet Confederate sympathizer gain more than moderate a bolster from the knowledge that, although born in Connecticut, the author was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and spent her High School (i.e. critical formative identity) years in the heart of Dixie, specifically in Alabama in the 1970s…. where she attended  high school at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, where she was a Theater Arts major.  Oh yea, FWIW, the Alabama School of Fine Arts was founded by George Corley Wallace’s Wife, Governor Lurleen Wallace, in 1968, shortly before she tragically died of Cancer at age 41, and George Corley Wallace was Governor 1971-1979, all through Suzanne’s High School years.

Now, one way of looking at it is that, perhaps, the Hunger Games takes place after the collapse of the United States and Civil War to which the government news commentators in V-for-Vendetta made such frequent allusion.  According to those reports, the USA “the country that had everything” had become a “cesspool” of continental proportions due to its “Godlessness.”  While that’s a legitimate perspective, I think that the overwhelming weight of evidence and frame of reference in the Hunger Games is to the War of Southern Independence/War Between the States/War of 1861-1973, realizing that those dates are not the ones usually used in High School American History texts.

In fact, The Hunger Games in some of its visuals at least, almost approximates a kind of a futuristic Nanook of the North staged realism, focusing on the lives of the common people of the post-War (I mean Post-War Between the States) south, especially of the Appalachian regions of North Carolina (where The Hunger Games was filmed “on site”).  As in Whedon’s Serenity, the strong suggestion of Confederate nostalgia and sympathy is, to my mind at least, absolutely undeniable.  

It is too much to ask that we NOT see parallels to the War of 1861-65 and its aftermath when the “Treaty of the Treason” and “War” movie both recite that 13 Districts of “Panem” (“Panem” to my eyes sounds like a Hellenized partial translation of “E Pluribus Unum“, cf. Pangea) rose up against the Paternalistic “Welfare” Government that “fed them, protected them, cared for them”, that the District 12 setting is so obviously the REAL Southern landscape of coal-mining Appalachia, and that the poor whites of District 12 have a closely parallel lives and culture to at least the partially segregated black-African dominated population of District 11.

Without wanting totally to “spoil” the Hunger Games for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I will just summarize my interpretation of its wild popularity this way (aside from the obvious: a very human love story about two extraordinarily mature for their age teenagers who were unlikely ever to have fallen in love, but end up being “perfect” for each other, played by a genuinely handsome “All American Boy” lead and beautiful soft-spoken and emotional “Tomboy-type-Girl” who is so hot she literally sets her red dress on fire, combined with lots of action): Even though most Americans are not in fact hungry for food (that is the “Nano of the North” element reality of the starving South of 1865-1950, seeing oppressed, hard-working, underdogs whose primary source of protein was from very small game—squirrels, because the deer were almost all hunted out) people are clearly hungry for genuine justice and a fair playing field. (For one alternative, but to my mind, quite beautifully written and  excellent review of the Hunger Games, I recommend “The Feminist Spectator” by Princeton University’s Jill Dolan, published on April 4: 
http://www.feministspectator.blogspot.com/
.  I somehow doubt that Professor Dolan would agree with me on the strong Confederate Sympathies implicit in The Hunger Games but there was once a President of Princeton University, the only Ph.D. ever to become President of the USA in fact, who thought that Birth of a Nation was the greatest historical drama in history, and portrayed the reality of his native south perfectly—unfortunately, that was also the Democratic President who signed into law (1) the 16th Amendment and Federal Income Tax, (2) the Federal Reserve Banking System, and the (3) the 17th Amendment, namely Woodrow Wilson….)

Hunger for Justice and Freedom

Like the residents of the 13 oppressed Districts of Panem, despite all government hypocrisy and lies to the contrary Americans both you and old today know that the odds are NOT in their favor and that, in fact, the odds are fairly hopelessly stacked against them.  And yet the system has this tiny escape valve: that about 1 in every 24 people can make it rich.  That is, one-in-twenty four of the oppressed can make it rich IF they’re willing to “play the government’s game” and basically, kill a lot of their fellow citizens in the process.  As of this April 13, 2012, I have seen the Hunger Games 5 times, and each time I’ve liked it more, seen more details.  I will have to read the books before completely integrating it into my thought processes about modern pop-cultural reaction to the impending doom that this American Life obviously faces, but I submit to you: the American people (on the whole, and certainly as a population compared to many parts of the world at the present and throughout history) may not be starving or hungry for food, but they hunger for justice and an even playing field, and they do not “relish” the very real prospect of a thousand years of subservience to “the government that feeds, them clothes them, takes care of them.”

Of Time and Space and Presidential Succession in the Leap Years…..

The Hunger Games takes place on the 74th anniversary of the institution of these gladiatorial combats.  The significance of that 74 years has bothered me.  On the one hand, it COULD refer to 1860 (the election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of “District 1, South Carolina…) + 74 = 1934, the year in which Roosevelt’s New Deal started WPA reorganization of the South in earnest, or it could refer to the original publication date of the book, 2008, as the 74th year since 1934—or it could refer to both.  The coincidence, again, is hard to avoid.  1934 was the first full year of (de facto) Socialist Dictatorship in the United States (Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932, took office in March 1933, and many of his first year legislative proposals only took effect in 1934).  2008, 74 years later, Barack Hussein Obama, the first Communist President of the United States, was elected and took office, “perfecting” or at least completing the process begun by Abraham Lincoln in 1860, a mere 12 years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto in London in 1848.  (See Al Benson, Jr., & Walter Donald Kennedy’s 2011: Lincoln’s Marxists, Pelican Publishing, Gretna Louisiana, a fine historical summary of the connexion between Communism and Central government predominance in the USA, a historical summary which is easy to read although not nearly well-enough documented with footnotes and source citations as professional historians would like and scholars generally would appreciate).

Another aspect of the Hunger Games is the correlation between the oppressive Central government of Panem and Edward Gibbons’ the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, on the one hand, and a heartless, Machiavellian version of the Social Darwinism of the late 19th century on the other.  The capital of Panem is degenerate in a distinctly Roman Imperial Silver Age manner (Rome’s “Silver Age” normally said to run from the death of Augustus in A.D. 14 through the death of Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 180).  Nero and even Caracalla (“Post-Silver Age” Emperor from A.S. 198-217) would have felt quite at home in the Capitol of Panem, I think.  But the “Emperor” himself is a distinctly late 19th century Anglo-American type (President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland), who has a Romano-”Robber-Baron’s” scorn for the “underdog” without any explanation or moral justification, just the political desire to keep himself and his world on top and everyone else underneath.  President Snow appears to share none of the cultural degeneracy of the Capital, but has a great deal in common with aristocratic Victorian gardeners of the late 19th century.  

Snow’s name is English, as are most of the names of the characters known from District 12.  Most of the residents of the Capitol City, however, and apparently of Districts 1-2, have Roman names: “Cato”, “Caesar”, “Seneca”, “Octavia”, and “Claudius” just to name a few…..  

So the Hunger Games follows the pattern of Serenity and V-for-Vendetta in another distinctly modern way (although all these movies do it well, and for good purposes and effect, quite a few others, such as Captain America and [the movie that I dread most]—Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer, do it very poorly and for improper purposes): historical metaphors and mythic realities are conflated, merged, and reorganized.

NOX OCCIDIT (“NIGHT FALLS”)

In any event, there is a Leonard Cohen song that summarizes why the Hunger Games, as a historical-mythological and futuristic allegory of injustice and game rigging, is so wildly popular, and that song is:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through 
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary 
To the beach of Malibu 
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

The saddest difference between V-for-Vendetta and Serenity on the one hand and the Hunger Games on the other is the complete transparency of the society of Panem: “Everybody knows that the system’s rotten…. everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost.”  Everybody knows that the government that feeds the people, clothes them, and cares for them does not like underdogs.  President Snow is a late 19th Century-styled  avatar of George H.W. Bush (41st), Bill Clinton, George W. Bush (43rd), & Barack Hussein Obama all rolled into one.  

At least in V-for-Vendetta and Serenity, there still existed the apparent hope that revelation of truth could lead to revolution and change. 

But now President Obama signs the National Defense Authorization Act allowing indefinite detention of American Citizens on American soil without charges or trial, and he does so unblinkingly and unabashedly.  President Obama jingoistically adopts the dead Trayvon Martin as his own son in an effort to exacerbate racial tensions and divisions to his advantage in an election year at the same time that he tells the AIPAC Conference that he supports Israel’s quest to maintain ethnic homogeneity and integrity.  

There are no secrets in modern America, our Joseph Stalin, aka President Obama, has no need of Hitlerian, Rooseveltian, or “W” Bushian type “Big Lie”—he tells us all that he wants the power to take away all our rights, but asks us to trust him that he won’t really do it—except in the case of real underdogs, like, I guess, for example, George Zimmerman?  And speaking of that, how many of you imagine that George Zimmerman, whether he be called White, Hispanic, or Jewish, or all of the above, will get a fair trial?

So now to celebrate April 13 even further: WHERE WILL WE BE 74 years from now, or from 2008, say in 2082?  I predict we may well be in a New Dark Age, and not just because I’m not on the California Ballot for this year (although that is symptomatic).  

So far as “fixed games” go, what could be worse than a criminal prosecution set by agreement between Judges and prosecutors arranged through bribes?  Is that the American Way?  We wouldn’t like to think so.  In 1980, the year I graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences at Tulane and started graduate school at Harvard, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California said that “fixing” cases was not a normal judicial function and that no judicial immunity could attach to such activities: Rankin v Howard 633 F2d 844 _9th Circuit December 5 1980.  A short six years later, that same Ninth Circuit reversed itself and found judicial immunity from civil suit for such activities: Ashelman v Pope 793 F2d 1072 *EN BANC* 9th Circuit 1986

But the outrageous history of the suppression of judicial immunity just goes on and on through the subsequent citation history of Ashelman v. Pope to show how official immunity for prosecutors and the executive branch has almost merged with Judicial immunity to the point that the government is just one big immune mass of oppression against the people, and the modern government of E Pluribus Unum, aka “Panem” can prosecute you, jail you, and torture you, with complete immunity.

State-Licensed Marriage is a CRIME AGAINST GOD, HUMANITY, and NATURE!

My Dear Friend Dr. Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson of Palm Beach Continues her Crusade against the forces of Secular Humanism as they fight against Constitutional Freedom, Liberty and Individual Integrity and Autonomy.  04-16-2012 KAGL Edited Motion to Stay Proceedings Pending Determination back in 15th Judicial Circuit Court.  We a complete reversal in the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeals!  Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson’s divorce decree was vacated and nullified (on February 15, 2012) as having been entered in the Complete Absence of Jurisdiction, by Judge Richard L. Oftedal (now off the case).  The 4th DCA returned its mandate to the Florida Circuit Court in North Palm Beach County on Friday 13 April, and so here we are, back in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court in and for Palm Beach County.  Hurray, Kathy! 

Notice of Respondent’s Constitutional Objections to Personal Jurisdiction,

Motion for Leave to Amend Answer & Counterclaim,

Motion for Scheduling Order and New Trial, and

MOTION TO STAY PROCEEDINGS PENDING DETERMINATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL JURISDICTION

COMES NOW the Respondent Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson, pro se, giving notice of her constitutional objections to the exercise of personal and subject matter jurisdiction over her by and under the Family and Domestic Relations Code and Courts of Florida. The fundamental question which Respondent submits is this:

Where there is no express constitutional authorization, how can there be any legitimate constitutional exercise of control over any subject matter or personal question defined as a matter of fundamental right, such as marriage, privacy, and child-rearing? If neither the constitutions of the United States of America nor the State of Florida authorize the licensing or dissolution of marriages, nor to regulate domestic relations in any way except with regard to public safety, how can the State of Florida erect and maintain courts to adjudicate cases relating to such matters?

The Fourth District Court of Appeal for the State of Florida has expressly decided in its order of February 15, 2012, that the Judge Richard L. Oftedal had no power whatsoever to enter a final judgment on April 29, 2010 for the dissolution of marriage.  In other words, the Fourth District Court found that Judge Richard L. Oftedal acted in the complete absence of jurisdiction in entering that “Final Decree of Dissolution” dated April 29, 2010, and that his actions were a nullity.  Implicitly, Judge Oftedal must also have acted unlawfully when he refused to set aside his April 29, 2010, order upon Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson’s post-trial Motion.  As the Fourth DCA correctly noted, Respondent Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson had not one, but two appeals of non-final orders filed (pursuant to the Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure, 9.130).

The two interlocutory appeals both concerned constitutional challenges to the Florida Family Code and Florida Domestic Relations jurisdiction. Since the Fourth DCA denied Respondent’s motion for clarification or rehearing on these subjects, the appellate justices essentially declined to decide and/or found it unnecessary or improper to reach these issues, since they had already reversed and vacated Judge Oftedal’s final judgment in full in Respondent’s favor[1].

Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson now returns to this Circuit Court and asks for leave to amend her pleadings, and for a new scheduling order, a new opportunity to conduct discovery (which she never did) and for a New Trial in this Court to find and/or determine, after sufficient hearing and inquiry into the underlying facts and law of the case all of the Constitutional Issues which Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawon has sought to bring to bear in this case, as a matter of law.

The essential point is that neither the United States Constitution nor the Constitution of the State of Florida authorize the State to Issue Marriage Licenses or to impose jurisdiction by statute to resolve cases or controversies involving or arising from private domestic relations or religious questions of any kind (so long as no breaches of the public safety or peace are involved or implicated).

Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson now demands that, in the interests of judicial economy, this Court rule (after seven long years of waiting) how the Florida Florida Family Code (in particular as dealing with dissolution, division of property, and child custody) derives any legitimate power or constitutional authority in light of Article I: §§1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 21, 22, 23, 27, including but not limited to Basic Rights, Religious Freedom and Non-impairment of contract provisions of Article I: §§3 & 10 (including the proposed amendment of Article I: §3 submitted to the people for popular mandate on the ballot this November 2012) of the Florida Constitution, as well as the First, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as a whole, and her rights to Due Process of Law (Art. I: §9), Trial-by-Jury (Art. I: §22), and protection from wrongful intrusion into her privacy (Art. I: §23) by the Courts as a precondition of preserving those rights in dissolution proceedings.

The only mentions of “marriage” in the entire constitution of Florida appear in the recently adopted negative definition in I: §27 and in Article X, §5.  Neither section neither authorizes nor implies state authority to license marriage.  Article I, §27 mandates that Florida will respect only heterosexual unions as marriages as a matter of law, for whatever legitimate purposes there might be in so doing.  Article X, §5 likewise makes no reference to state regulation of marriage, but addresses (somewhat mysteriously, and perhaps redundantly with Article I, §2 above) another issue of “respect” under law:

There shall be no distinction between married women and married men in the holding, control, disposition, or encumbering of their property, both real and personal; except that dower or curtesy may be established and regulated by law.

Accordingly, Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson now asks this Court finally to rule, resolve, and clarify, upon new trial after amendments, discovery, and full-briefing herein requested to resolve Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson’s constitutional questions and affirm her challenges both to this court’s exercise of personal and subject matter jurisdiction.

Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson is the respondent to the Petition for Dissolution of Marriage brought by her husband, Jeffrey P. Lawson, originally in February of 2005.

Contending from the beginning that there was a defect in the subject matter jurisdiction of this Court, Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson has never consented to the jurisdiction of this Court.  It is a time honored principle in this state, affirmed steadily by our Supreme Court since at least Lovett v. Lovett, 93 Fla. 611, 112 So. 768 (Florida March 29, 1927) that any:

Party proceeding without objection with hearing in equity court of controversy, jurisdiction of which may be given by consent, may not thereafter complain as to jurisdiction.

            But the record will show that Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson has continually objected to the jurisdiction of this Court and never waived her rights to challenge the personal or subject matter jurisdiction of any Florida Court to adjudicate any aspect of her marriage, her domestic relationship with her husband, or her domestic relationship with their daughter, or to dispose of any of their property except that her husband or the Court show positive constitutional authority to do so, and not merely acquiescence by silence as to this point of most sacred and fundamental rights.

Nor has Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson ever been afforded the right to amend her pleadings in accordance with her constitutional objections and challenges to the personal and subject matter jurisdiction of this Court.  Accordingly, Respondent here and now further requests that this Court acknowledge, affirm, and enforce her right under Article I, §§1, 2, 3, but especially §5 (Right to Instruct Representatives and to Petition for Redress of Grievances), §9 (Due Process of Law) and §21 (the “Open Courts” provision) of the Florida Constitution to amend her pleadings, conduct discovery (Art. I, §24), file pre-trial (and, unlike under Judge Oftedal, have a full and fair hearing on all) motions (including but not limited to Constitutional questions of both substance and procedure[2]), and otherwise to prepare try her constitutional and jurisdictional challenges related to the current Florida Statutory Scheme for the Dissolution of Marriage.  Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson submits that seven years is too long already, and that she should no longer have to wait to challenge and deny the power of the State of Florida so to intrude upon her fundamental rights as to design and enforce upon her a Family Law Jurisdiction and application of judicial process without consent to deny her (1) right to petition, (2) right to privately contract, (3) right to due process of law, (4) right to a trial-by-jury, (5) rights and powers reserved to her as one of the American people under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson has already collected statistical and documentary evidence which she would have plead and presented by and through expert witnesses and testimony (long ago) to the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, had she been allowed to do so by Judge Richard L. Oftedal, which shows that Florida Courts automatically grant 100% petitions for divorce without regard to any principal or standard other than that to allege that a marriage is irretrievably broken is taken as sufficient proof of the same as a matter of both fact and law.  Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson would also have argued that such a system was enacted by the Florida Legislature without legitimate or even colorable constitutional authority, then enforced by the State Judges and “officers of the Court,” and applied to her in defiance of all constitutional and statutory law, and in violation of her rights guaranteed under the Federal and Florida Constitutions to rights to due process, equal protection, and freedom from both state impairment of the obligations of contract and takings of liberty and process in violation of the First, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.


[1]           Kathy Ann Garcia-Lawson abandoned these two interlocutory appeals once Judge Oftedal entered his final judgment on April 29, 2010, but the issues were not waived firstly because by operation of law the issues raised by the interlocutory merged, and secondly because these issues were fully briefed, as part of Kathy Ann-Garcia-Lawson’s Initial Appellate Brief, of which the Florida Fourth D.C.A. reached only the 9.130 jurisdictional issue and refused, even on her March 1, 2012, motion for clarification or re-argument, to address, decide, or resolve in any manner.

[2]           This Court should be aware that Judge Oftedal, on the record, refused to hear or rule upon any constitutional issues in his court, which is surely a denial of Kathy Ann Garcia’s rights under both the State and Federal Constitutions of Florida and the United States.

In the full version of this Motion, attached above, Kathy quotes in her conclusion of Chief Justice John Marshall’s stirring words in Cohens v. Virginia (March 3, 1821):

The judiciary cannot, as the legislature may, avoid a measure because it approaches the confines of the constitution. We cannot pass it by because it is doubtful. With whatever doubts, with whatever difficulties, a case may be attended, we must decide it, if it be brought before us. We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the constitution. Questions may occur which we would gladly avoid; but we cannot avoid them. All we can do is, to exercise our best judgment, and conscientiously to perform our duty.

The Full text of Cohens v. Virginia is attached here: Cohens v State of Virginia 19 US 284 5 LEd 257 6 Wheat 264 Chief Justice Marshall March 3 1821

For the Second Sunday in Easter, Ponder the Words of the Former Archbishop of Canterbury

‘Vilified’ Christians ‘fear arrest’ in the United Kingdom—where is the Queen, still the Fidei Defensor?

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  • Lord Carey said Christians were excluded from many sectors of employment because of their beliefsView Photo

    Lord Carey said Christians were excluded from many sectors of employment because of their beliefs

Christians are being “persecuted” and “driven underground” while the courts fail to protect their religious values, a former Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed.

Lord Carey said Christians were excluded from many sectors of employment because of their beliefs, “vilified by state bodies” and feared arrest for expressing their views.

The former archbishop’s claims are part of a written submission to the European Court of Human Rights, seen by the Daily Telegraph, ahead of a landmark case on religious freedom.

The hearing will deal with the case of two workers forced out of their jobs after visibly wearing crosses, the case of a Relate therapist sacked for saying he may not be comfortable giving sex counselling to homosexual couples, and a Christian registrar who wishes not to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

In the submission, Lord Carey said the outward expression of traditional conservative Christian values has effectively been “banned” under a new “secular conformity of belief and conduct”.

The former archbishop argued that in “case after case” British courts have failed to protect Christian values and urged European judges to correct the balance. He said there was a “drive to remove Judeo-Christian values from the public square” and argued UK courts have “consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians” as they show a “crude” misunderstanding of the faith by treating some worshippers as “bigots”.

In his submission, Lord Carey, who was archbishop from 1991 to 2002, wrote: “In a country where Christians can be sacked for manifesting their faith, are vilified by state bodies, are in fear of reprisal or even arrest for expressing their views on sexual ethics, something is very wrong. It affects the moral and ethical compass of the United Kingdom. Christians are excluded from many sectors of employment simply because of their beliefs; beliefs which are not contrary to the public good.”

He added: “It is now Christians who are persecuted; often sought out and framed by homosexual activists. Christians are driven underground. There appears to be a clear animus to the Christian faith and to Judaeo-Christian values. Clearly the courts of the United Kingdom need guidance.”

He argued British judges have used a strict reading of the equality law to strip the legal right to freedom of religion of “any substantive effect.”

Keith Porteous-Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, told the Telegraph: “The idea that there is any kind of suppression of religion in Britain is ridiculous. Even in the European Court of Human Rights, the right to religious freedom is not absolute – it is not a licence to trample on the rights of others. That seems to be what Lord Carey wants to do.”

I say, for my part: God Save the Queen and May She Yet Live to Appoint Nick Griffin as Prime Minister someday of a BNP Led Government to restore the national values of Winston Churchill! (She wouldn’t have him to tea as I recall, but I presume that would change if he were elected—we’ll see how Marine Le Pen does in France—that will be a key test!  I mean, I like Nick and the BNP just fine, but I’d rather have Marine ANY DAY as my President…. if only there were anybody like her AT ALL in the USA….)