Shame on the UK

The latest twist in the saga of the US government's illegal warrantless wiretapping program is that the government of the United Kingdom arrested a journalist for 9 hours trying to prevent the release of more proof of governmental wrongdoing. Brasilian journalist David Miranda - partner to Glenn Greenwald - was detained by terrorist thugs at Heathrow airport in the name of "preventing terrorism".

While all of these occurrences were predictable, they are despicable. But the reason it makes today's PtF post is because of the pass given by Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of the UK and chief of the up-and-coming Liberal Democrat party. The Liberal Democrat is truly a big tent party whose politics simultaneously support serious government reform, civil liberties, human rights laws, progressive taxation. and green values. The Liberal Democrats have been the minority party in a coalition government with the Conservatives, at least indicating the party's tendency toward pragmatism, which in general can be a good thing.

The Independent says that Clegg backed his government's decision - which really was a Conservative party decision - to send Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood to urge the Guardian to destroy its copies of information on the illegal, inhumane, and anti-liberty wiretapping programs still being conducted by the governments of the US and the UK. While the decision may help keep the Liberal Democrats in power, it will do a lot to discourage their electoral base from voting the next time around, meaning that the Conservatives and the Labour Party can be expected to carve up the pork in the old-fashioned way the next time the UK has an election. It's a massive setback for meaningful progress in the UK.

In addition to the direct ramifications for the political parties in the UK, Clegg's backing also reflects negatively on how little the party of civil liberties and human rights is willing to defend civil liberty and human rights with regard to the unlawful detention of Miranda. The excuse given by government officials is that Miranda was in possession of complete knowledge of the Matrix (aka PRISM) and the structure of the illegal wiretapping program that has been conducted since at least the days of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

The problem with wiretapping is that it does not work. Sure, a few idiots are caught in the process; but I can tell you from my own experiences with the black market in the US that those who want to get around the wiretapping do so with ease and impunity. Just look at the proliferation of illegal firearms in the United States, not to mention drugs like marijuana and crystal meth. All that warrantless wiretapping does is deny good, honest people "[t]he right... to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects...." That's the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, but as has been made clear before by pleadingthef1rst, the text of the Bill of Rights does not in and of itself grant rights to people. It makes it clear that these rights belong to people outside of government structure, and that as such no government ever has any right to obstruct those rights.

There's also the matter of the US (and probably UK) government brainwashing prisoners and turning them into terrorists. Before the "war on terror", this was a routine tactic used primarily in the drug war. "Hey, want to get back at the 'Jews' who put you here? Then convert to the Nation of Islam and by the way, here's a fully functioning bomb for you." Then when the brainwashed, government-created terrorist gets out of jaim and actually goes to deploy his weapon, the FBI swoops in and arrests him again.

Rather than preventing terrorism, a program like PRISM actually makes it easier for the government to recruit its brainwashing targets. The reason the Tsarnayevs of Boston Marathon bombing notoriety failed to show up on the government's radar wasn't so much because they didn't want another brainwashed terrorist incident to help scare us into voting away our freedoms, but rather because their precious PRISM program is not designed to catch homegrown terrorists.

While the officers of government, and certainly my Senator Charles Schumer, are under the conservative impression that Snowden's leaking is a rogue act which can only be fixed by the heavy hand of the law; many Americans are actually of the opinion that PRISM is a far greater threat to the American way of life than any terrorist's bomb. What should be a bigger concern from the viewpoint of the conservative traditionalists - like Schumer, President Obama, PM David Cameron, and sadly Nick Clegg - is that the current state of global affairs is undermining a thousand years of legal progress beginning with the Magna Carta and pulling humanity back into a primitive reality where freedom is a joke. The blood of thousands of soldiers once stained the shores of Normandy so that we could all live in freedom and peace, but wiretapping every citizen and videotaping her in every street and detaining in an airport for 9 hours those freedom fighters who still value liberty as much their ancestors 1,000 years ago stains the very thing our forebears fought and died to protect.

Shame on the UK.

Scared Republican Runs for the Hills, Trips Over Logic

This is a little story. It's nothing super-important. But FOX News is under the impression that a Republican lawmaker taking his kids out of public school is a bigger story than it really is. The reason it gets a place on pleadingthef1rst over all the other important news of the day is because of the twisted logic.

Before we get to the lack of rationality by a politician - which almost goes without saying - it's worth pointing out for those not in the know that Republicans are notorious for their fear of public schools. One of my favourite fat GOP targets, Chris Christie, has been afraid of public school far longer than Rep. Tim Donnelly.

The background to Donnelly's knee-jerk lack of support for the people he represents was instigated by California Gov. Jerry Brown's signing into law a bill that enables transgendered students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender with whom they identify. Donnelly's reaction was - not surprisingly - to pull his children out of public schools, saying students' privacy rights "will be replaced by the right to be ogled."

Allow me to summarise why Donnelly's decision and reasoning (available in the FNC link above) are logically flawed:
1) Gender identity is totally a separate matter from sexual orientation, meaning Donnelly's fear of his boys being "ogled" is irrelevant, and therefore unfounded, and therefore stupid.
2) Let's say a person born female but identifying as a male is trying to act "as male as possible": wouldn't the conservative basis of our society mean that individual is more likely to be ogled as a girl in boys' facilities and not the other way around? And what heterosexual teenage boy would really have a problem being ogled by someone born a girl?
3) Regardless of transgendered individuals, the current setup of public schools means that there could very easily be homosexuals (of any gender) forced into those locker room situations with members of the same gender, meaning there coulde be lots of ogling already going on simply by virtue of our conservative system of education put into place centuries ago. Horrors, no!

The only way I can think of preventing that problem is by setting up gay boys and gay girls locker rooms separate from the straight boys and straight girls locker rooms already in existence. However, such a setup would violate the privacy rights of those students to figure out their sexual identity as they grow into adulthood, and as Donnelly rightly defends students' privacy rights - hey, I'll give him credit where it's due - he probably would not be in favour of exposing those gay students' private lives before their entire community at a vulnerable age where many are still figuring out those identity issues.

So perhaps the simplest solution is to throw all students of every gender into one locker room and let them ogle one another. I seem to recall such a suggestion by Socrates in The Republic, though perhaps today's Republicans have forgetten the roots of their philosophies.

As has been stated many times on the PtF radio show, taking public education seriously and fixing its flaws is the key to rebuilding the American democratic republic and fixing the current flaws with the other parts of the system. My own academic background is in public education, and others in the PtF community are currently active as teachers in public education.

With that in mind, allow me to propose yet another solution that works in the German public education system. First of all, know that the general German public school student attends his/her regular classes in the morning, goes home for a 1-2 hour dinner break with family around noon (German dinners happen at noon while a light lunch happens in the evening), and then returns to school (if s/he wishes) for what we Americans call "extracurricular activities" like band, drama, or sports. Of course, in Germany, these are considered serious courses of study and participation is heavily encouraged, not in the least by parents who need to go back to work in the afternoon.

Furthermore, the 3 hours of playing music, acting in a school play, or playing on an athletic team sufficiently taxes the young students' bodies and minds to the point where it far surpasses the measly 30- or 40-minute designated period for physical education in American public schools. When the student goes home for his/her family dinner at noon, s/he can shower in the privacy of home and dress for athletics without the uncomfortable stares of classmates.

I doubt Rep. Donnelly will ever read this little philosophical diatribe, but if he does, I do think that the German concept would be great not just for students of any gender and sexual orientation, but it would also do wonders for family values to know that kids are expected to head home to eat a meal with their families. Of course, this would interfere with the way America's political parties help exploit the working masses, but hey, family values wouldn't be under attack in the first place if Republicans and Democrats hadn't worked together to undermine them.

Gov. Christie Backs More Red Tape for Marijuana

I was going to head into the weekend without putting up another post. But then I saw this story from CNN about Gov. Chris Christie's response to his state's pending medical marijuana legislation.

I know, it's the second post this week about marijuana and CNN and still nothing about the uprising in Egypt, Bradley Manning's sentencing, or the latest revelations from Edward Snowden. But there are priorities at stake.

CNN have been reporting on Brian Wilson, a father from NJ whose 2-year-old daughter suffers from seizures due to Dravet's syndrome. This latest story is just a continuation, with the added twist of the father asking Christie "I was wondering what the holdup was; it's been like two months now."

Christie's response is the reason this story takes precedence over seemingly more important liberty news: "These are complicated issues," Christie told Wilson. "I know you think it's simple and it's not."

Actually, it's very simple. Allow me to quote from the Bill of Rights: "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...."

In this case, a 2-year-old girl's life and pursuit of happiness are both at stake. Preventing the seizures gives her and her family hope that she can grow up to be a normal girl, and it gives her the chance to actually go to school and form social relationships and get a job so she's not hooked on Medicaid. Why are these "unalienable rights" being denied to a little girl? Because the federal government and the State of New Jersey have both decided to interject themselves into the private affairs of individuals and deny them the right to a successful treatment.

Oh, and also because Chris Christie refuses to stand up for the American way. If this episode is any preview of a future Christie presidency, I fear for the nation's future.

While the law in New Jersey may be complicated, Gov. Christie has the right and the duty to protect the life and liberty of this little girl, not to mention her pursuit of happiness. As the top law enforcement officer in his state, he can issue an executive order to all other law enforcement entities in his state that expressly say they may not prosecute Brian Wilson's family for exercising their inborn human rights.

Gov. Christie, it is very simple. Don't give us the lame excuse that you first require more red tape from the NJ state legislature before this little girl's suffering can stop. Start respecting her rights NOW! It is your job to protect her, not ill-conceived federal or state laws about drug possession.

The government has never had any right to make marijuana illegal, as is made clear in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It's time to stand up for all our rights by standing up for a 2-year-old girl.

CNN and Sanjay Gupta Are Still Misleading on Medical Marijuana

Normally I hate to cover medical stories. Stories about medicine are usually corporate entities panning poorly researched products as miracle cures in the hopes that public awareness - even of products with low success rates - will somehow assist with the legitimisation process and allow the products to be sold as prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) drugs.

But in this case, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta has admitted to being the face of CNN's effort to mislead the public about marijuana's efficacy when used as a pharmaceutical. This story has implications for the freedom of religion, manipulation of the public by the press, and corporate manipulation of government. So the story earns its place here.

While I'd like to compliment Gupta on his honesty, it's too late in coming. Furthermore, his apology is shrouded in more half-truths. Media pundits have an obligation to research facts. While he claims to have "steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive," this very sentence is misleading. First of all, there is a ton of scientific literature from other nations that shows promising results in understanding marijuana's potential for helping cancer patients cope with extreme pain and regain appetite. There is also medical literature from around the world that explores the psychological mechanisms behind the various compounds in marijuana (not just THC) that can have a positive impact on a wide array of medical conditions.

But really, does Gupta or his overlords at CNN truly think that modern Americans are so stupid that we believe the medical community in the United States to be that divorced from what is being researched in other nations, say the UK, Germany, Japan, France, Israel, or Switzerland? Because out of the 15 biggest pharmaceutical corporations, half are based in the US. The other half conduct their research in the UK (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca), Germany (Bayer), Japan (Takeda), France (Sanofi-Aventis), Israel (Teva), or Switzerland (Novartis and Hoffman-LaRoche). And that's not counting the plentiful marijuana research reports published in other nations like Australia, Holland, Brasil, Russia, India, or China. Either Sanjay Gupta is telling more lies or CNN really does ignore the world outside the United States when it puts together its newscasts.

What if CNN's anchors started out the newscast saying "we reviewed todays news stories from countries outside the United States and found them to be fairly unimpressive"? Would that fly with you? No news of bombings in Nigeria, no news of Oprah being dissed in Switzerland, no news of violence in the Holy Land... all because it's "fairly unimpressive". If you claim to run a first-rate news agency, it's a lame excuse that flies as well as a hog. Rather than regale you with all the published, peer-reviewed studies that Dr Gupta chose to ignore since they weren't published in "the United States", I'll just wrap up my point by pointing the "liar" finger at Dr Gupta's face.

Now, because I try to hold pleadingthef1rst to a higher journalistic standard than CNN, I did some background investigation into CNN's holdings and those who hold stock in CNN. At this point, I can confirm that Time-Warner (which owns CNN) holds no pharmaceutical stock. However, I was unable to confirm whether any pharmaceutical corporations hold stock in Time-Warner, or whether Ted Turner (the mogul behind CNN) owns any significant stakes in pharmaceutical corporations. These facts are important because now that a majority of the American public has consistently backed marijuana legislation for over a decade, pharmaceutical companies are trying to figure out how to cash in.

The problem for their business side is that the American federal system has allowed a lot of smaller businesses to cash in ahead of them and accumulate a wealth of folk knowledge and research knowledge along the way. So because of anti-marijuana drug scheduling at the federal level, the only tactic left to the world's major pharmaceutical corporations for cornering the market is to turn to marketing. In other words, since they can't just play the game with its current rules, they want to deceive the public into thinking the rules are different long enough for them to manoeuvre into a dominant market position.

While this may sound like yet another outlandish conspiracy theory, it's how things are done. Just look at these few CNN stories from years past:
Dirt-Cheap Diabetes Drug
Leukemia Drug
Breast Cancer Drug

I could list many, many more similar articles from the CNN archives, but hopefully you are getting a sense for how at least this one media corporation is manipulating public thought on pharmaceutical information. They know that we, the People, will not spend our precious family time reading every major scientific article on every potenial drug. And we're not going to spend our free hours watching FDA proceedings in person. So they know we're going to rely on these secondary news sources (like CNN) to keep us misinformed. Mind you, every one of the major news corporations is doing the same thing. It's just that Sanjay Gupta's misdirection is so blatantly obvious that it provides an ideal focus for PtF's criticism.

Now, as for religious freedom, if you are of European or North Asian descent, there is a ~70% chance that your ancestors smoked marijuana regularly as part of a religious sacrament to honour and commune with your deceased ancestors. This religious tradition is still maintained today in the underground. Unfortuantely, the Supreme Court does not recognise religious practise unless it has not-for-profit religious status with the IRS. Just keep in mind that the Constitution exists to protect our rights, not to limit them. Yes, we may be breaking federal law by practising a religion that's over 3,000 years old, but we are not in violation of the greater law. In fact, it is the federal government that is in violation of that law.

Shame on CNN and Sanjay Gupta for enabling such an abuse to continue for so long, and shame on all American media for allowing so many medical patients suffering from epilepsy, insomnia, cancer, and other ills from getting the treatment that doctors today will still readily proscribe. While the public eye stands ignorant, doctors know what works. They may have their hands tied by insurance law, but they will still tell their patients how to survive chemotherapy, even if the federal government will arrest them for it.

Finally, shame on Barack Obama. We elected you thinking you would end drug persecution. We hoped that you would remove this scourge which alienates many African Americans and takes their lives and livelihoods at a young age. You've got two years to stand up and act like a progressive American, and we hope you - like Dr Gupta - won't act after doing a decade of damage.

Bomber Boycott Backfires

While I was out this past month, Rolling Stone decided to put the surviving Boston Marathon bomber on its cover, spurring torrents of outrage. It also spurred a misguided boycott, which according to the Christian Science Monitor, has backfired.

This story pops up as a free speech issue not because the government is stepping on anybody's freedoms, but because large masses of duped Americans are stepping on other Americans' freedoms. The kneejerk choice of the Boston police officer who released photos of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's capture is emblematic of the mindset that led to the failed boycott.

America needs to learn about what happened to Tsarnaev so that we can prevent it from happening again. I shudder to think that somewhere in Boston is still an officer of the law still serving as a police officer who believes so strongly in letting more Tsarnaevs happening in the US that he would be willing to step outside of the law in order to make a political statement. Such people do not have the mindset necessary for an impartial officer of the law and he should be immediately relieved of all duty, not just relegated to paperwork until this all blows over.

Of course, I don't think Sean Murphy actually wants to create more Tsarnaevs; but the effect of his statements and actions only perpetuate the climate of American ignorance that creates homegrown terrorists. All those people calling for a boycott of Rolling Stone over their editorial choice are also helping create more terrorists in the same ignorant manner. It's a matter of personal responsibility: either you take personal responsibility for society's ills and try to fix them, or like Murphy and the boycotters, you sweep society's ills under the rug until the burst forth again with renewed violence and more victims.

9/11 should have been a teachable moment. Millions of people around the world came together to support the United States. But when it became clear that such support was turning into military action, the support evaporated. We should have reacted to 9/11 by learning about what created Osama ibn Laden - the CIA, the ISI, the Pakistan-Afghanistan border conflict, and the larger Shia-Sunni struggle within the Islamic world - and taken steps as a nation to prevent that threat from growing. Instead, we destabilised the Middle East, entrenched the Taliban, and allowed religious fanatics to stake claim to legitimate government in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Tunisia, and Egypt. Sadly, the way America responded to 9/11 created Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The way America responds to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will determine whether we create the next generation of terror. One of the things I have learned watching terrorism cases over the past 15 years, is that entrapment isn't just one of the tools used by American law enforcement to eliminate potentially terroristic personalities. It is actually the primary tool that creates domestic terrorism. From Newburgh to the Liberty City Seven, every single domestic incident of Islamic terrorism on American soil was incited by FBI investigators. The Tsarnaev situation is the first major terrorist case of this nature conducted by rogue operatives who were not incited to violence by the FBI. In both the Newburgh and Liberty City cases, the FBI gave money and fake explosives to the so-called terrorists. In the Newburgh case, as in many others, the perpetrators were coverted to Islam in jail by FBI operatives/informants, so that by the time they left incarceration they had been brainwashed into believing that "Jews" were responsible for all their suffering.

I don't know about Sean Murphy or my fellow Americans, but I find it absolutely disgusting to know that my own hard-earned tax dollars are being used to radicalise imprisoned Americans and convert them into anti-Semitic monsters.

The reason why Roling Stone's article is so crucial to our understanding and dialogue at this point in history is because the Tsarnaevs acted without FBI instigation. So did Wade Michael Page when he shot up the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI one year ago. In fact, so do many of our nation's ignored mass murderers. Our human reaction to these mass murders is one of disgust, but unless we are willing to take the philosophical suggestion of Jesus and Buddha and see ourselves within others, that disgust will lead to ignorance, which in turn leads to more mass murderers.

We are slowly discovering that a common thread in all these cases is social ostracisation, brought on by society at large percieving certain individuals as "socially awkward" or "mentally unstable". Rather than society dealing with the issue and fixing it, the approach of ostracisation makes the situation worse, pushing the individual toward instability when he should be headed toward adulthood. In many Muslim nations, especially in Central Asia, these individuals can join a guerilla group or terrorist group and end their suffering with a suicide bombing. In the US, they buy firearms and bulletproof vests and go on rampages.

For those who have read this far and think I'm a flaming liberal, this is the point where I stand up against gun control. Pushing for gun control does absolutely zero to end the ostracisation that is the cause of these mental disabilities and the root cause of all these murders. Sure, we must attribute personal responsibility to the murder and sentence him according to our law; but if we let it end there, we only allow future murders to happen. Therefore, pushing for gun control allows the same mentality to persist and allows future murders to happen, even if it might statistically reduce the per-capita numbers of gun violence.

Finally, we're also forgetting about suicide victims. How many more individuals decide to take their own lives instead of others? By focusing on gun control, we abandon suicide victims and their families while allowing their tormentors - who in most cases are serial abusers themselves - to walk free. Just look at the case of Phoebe Prince, and there are another 100+ recent cases of young people committing suicide under similar conditions.

So for the sake of the victims of 9/11, the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, the victims of FBI entrapment, the victims of suicide, and the victims of school shootings; I heartly applaud Rolling Stone for doing what needed to be done. It's good to see moral law preserving goodness in the face of evil people and it's good to see that confirmed economically by Rolling Stone doubling its sales for this one issue. For those of you who say I'm wrong, allow me to suggest you move to any nation whose political system suppresses the truth and values its peoples' ignorance.

America was put here as a revolution in the face of the Machiavellian order and all its abuses. If you have no interest in perpetuating the Revolution of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, you have no place being in America. And lest you think this is all about Tsarnaev and I'm giving him a free pass, I'm not. Tsarnaev's actions have demonstrated he is filled with the exact same mentality of contempt for America as still-serving police officer Sean Murphy. Both are a threat to our way of life, but luckily I live in America and still have the freedom to speak up and warn my fellow citizens: Let's make change now before any more Americans are killed.

Paul vs Christie - the Showdown Begins

Everyone already knows that Rand Paul and Chris Christie are the Republican heavyweights headed for the big game in 2016. The question I'm wondering is whether they can keep it civil enough to both run on the ticket or if Christie's callous indifference to public opinion will lose out over Paul's difficulty staking out America's libertarian middle ground. There's also the bizarre AquaBuddha story lurking in the background to derail Paul, but he's already had to deal with it pretty up close.

But my main point here is to point out some ominous words coming from Christie that drew scathing criticism from Paul and now do so from me:

"This all began last week when Christie said at an Aspen Institute forum that there is a 'strain of libertarianism' within the Republican Party by those who oppose the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program and other counterterrorism techniques. The governor said Paul and others in the GOP could come to New Jersey and explain their opposition to the 'widows and orphans' who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 terror attacks."

 From the AP via CBS Denver:

“I remember what this country was like on Sept. 12.... I’m very nervous about the direction this is moving in. I think we need to be very cautious … about shifting this thing way back."

 Chris Christie is trying to pay lip service to the national security establishment in the hopes that it will win him what looks to be a very, very bloody nomination process, unless as I said earlier he has already made the veep deal with Rand Paul.

But let's focus on the main issue, which is not Rand Paul but the preservation of the essence of American society. Remember above where I referred to the staking out of America's libertarian middle ground? This is the most important of my points. We are libertarian at heart.

I remember in public school trying to get to my backpack that was hanging on a wall and asking a classmate to please step aside so I could get to it. He responded, "I'm not moving. It's a free country." While that's one extreme case, it demonstrates how much freedom is in our air. Go to Japan, go to Germany or the UK, go to most places in Latin America or Africa and you won't find the air of freedom the way you do in the United States.

While I admit there are herds of mindless Americans who have grown so used to Facebook and smart phones that they refuse to practise security on a personal level, I still know how much freedom means to our culture and way of life. The Republican nomination in 2016 will be about whether freedom can still survive. We had hoped for Barack Obama to bring us that change, but his refusal to budge from a very anti-libertarian middle ground has squandered all the Democratic advances made in the horrors of the Bush era. With the Democratic Party already promising to put more police officers in the streets and continue reckless government abuses of power until it is voted out of office, America now turns its eye again to the Republican Party to see what morally-upright characters might still stroll amongst its ruins.

If you ask your average progressive whether he would vote for a libertarian or a capitalist conservative centrist, it's pretty obvious to see what would happen should Rand Paul win the nomination. It will be a very difficult process, but it will be enabled by all the liberal areas of the US that have recently moved in the direction of month-long elections and same-day registration. Young voters are leaning libertarian in larger numbers.

Remember that Rand Paul's father Ron Paul polled at a solid 30-33% in post-debate opinion polls for much of the primary process, until only the main contenders were left. Ron Paul also almost won Iowa with all the new voters he was able to muster, coming in just a hair behind the whirlwind Santorum blitz and the perpetual Romney machine. And Ron Paul won the overwhelming majority of caucus delegates from Iowa, for all the good it did him.

It's safe to say that Rand Paul's presence in Iowa should not be discounted, which I think explain's Christie's early attack. Sadly, it predisposes me against him. Sure, much of the centrist "I don't really follow politics" crowd who voted Christie into office will continue to support him at the national level, but I really don't think the middle of America is asking for it. Post-Bush and post-Obama, we need a real reformer.

Speaking of which, just take a look at the new Pope's stance on homosexuality. After growing up in a very Catholic part of the East Coast, I see it as nothing short of a miracle.

Let's pray we can get the miracle of an independent reformer in the White House again. Vetoing almost every bill would go a long way in cleaning up the bovine excreta of the legislative branch, even if it could put us into a short period of mild chaos. It's just trading the chaos of today's bureaucracy for the chaos of a few months' of reforms.

Use Pope Francis's cleaning up of the Vatican as the example here. Sure it causes a little chaos that the prelate of the Vatican Bank is indicted for theft and fraud. But restoring the brand to its true foundations thereby restoring trust of its clients/citizens to it is far more important to the brand in the long run than questions of growth or chaos. Long-term growth on a solid foundation is far more valuable as an asset, but America is heavily in personal and national debt.

Under Obama, the economy has been gaining ground, and businesses don't want that trend to stop, even in the name of reform. Even if the Obama economy can continue another two years of even more robust growth, Americans will still vote in droves for Rand Paul the same way they voted for George W. Bush. The current holders of debt and credit in America do not want the loose credit environment to stop, even if it means strengthening the ability of their debtors to pay up. They will be happy to line Christie's process for a bloody fight, again, unless Rand Paul is already playing along to their tune.

In the end, Rand Paul has irked me on some decisions, but time will tell whether he plays to money or to the tune of Liberty.

Manning's Convictions

Just a warning to y'all:

I've been out of blog-land for over a month, but a lot of news has been building up. I'll be firing out a few more of these in rapid succession over the next 48 hours.

So let's start out this post with the hottest First Amendment story of the hour: Bradley Manning's conviction. Manning was found guilty on 20 out of 22 counts. The mainstream media are reporting the fact that he was found not guilty of aiding the enemy as though it is some miracle when in reality it was a horrendously inept charge for prosecutors to level in the first place. The only reason for including the charge I can imagine is that the military wanted to send a strong signal to other soldiers that they would be charged similarly in their cases.

Believe me, I understand the need for internal security in the military. But what I don't understand is why an 18-year-old private was given access to classified national military secrets. I also don't understand why he had access to State Department information. It seems to me that our foreign affairs should not be part of even the DIA, but then again the DIA has grown far beyond its initial mandate and resists attempts to rein in its activities legally. I digress....

Back on why a young service member ranking at private would be allowed access to any of this stuff. It is a pressing issue of national law and fundamental chaos in our military bureaucracy when young, inexperienced personnel are handling information that should not even be within reach. In our effort to innovate and share information more quickly, the United States has wired its nation with an intelligence network that can function like a bomb with billions of independent parts. Bradley Manning just went off when he wasn't supposed to.

How much easier then for a civilian subcontrator - say Edward Snowden? - to use his position to steal the entire structure of the NSA. Bottom line: No more unaccountable personnel working in intelligence, period.

We don't need contractors or subcontractors gaining access, we don't need novices gaining access, we don't need one inept government branch sharing information it shouldn't with another inept branch, and we don't need any civilians except our appointed officials to be looking at sensivitve information. When information does need to be shared, it can be; however, the twin responses "We put it all up on the internet but it's password protected" and "the Federal government invented and owns the internet" should not be the excuse behind every lapse.

The American public are obviously victims of both Bradley Manning's inexperience and the Department of Defense's atrocious handling of intelligence for our national security, but while Manning today stands convicted of 20 counts for his part in the problem, the various officials above him in his chain of command will ever bear no responsibility for the bureaucratic mess they sustain around themselves, and many of the elected officials who wrote the poor legislation that enabled these abuses are lying six feet below amongst nettles and stones. Nobody is going to jail for allowing an 18-year-old to gain access to classified documents.

Manning is the scapegoat, but the American public must suffer with him, knowing that Bradley Manning could just as easily have stolen those dirty pictures of you doing the thing you shouldn't have in the place you shouldn't have been and leaked them to the media, in which case he wouldn't have been pursued by military investigators and maybe you'd be the one losing your job and answering to 22 counts in a court of law. Sadly, it's more common than you think.

If this is the future of our society, count me among the Amish.

Wiretapping Deja Vu, Part II

Normally, I wouldn't want to waste time exploring or commenting on an issue that's already been brought up. There are so many news events in the world that deserve coverage, so why waste time doubling up?

The story of the American phone-tapping scandal bears repeating today because of yesterday's twin revelations that the leaker involved is Edward Snowden, and that he worked for another barely-accountable government contractor named Booz Allen Hamilton. That leak should and would happen has been anticipated by many of us Americans, but the fact that it comes from a contractor should be extra cause for alarm.

It's bad enough to have the government snooping around everybody's private business. It's even worse knowing that the government is allowing people outside the government and outside law enforcement agencies to look at that information. Why? Because we have rules regarding the operations of our government officials. We expect all intelligence and security matters to be handled by the government because the private sector is mercilessly incompetent: incompetent at screening during the hiring process, incompetent at job performance, and horrendously incompetent at security, internal or otherwise. It's the same reason it should be illegal for private corporations to run prisons or run criminal gangs (aka "mercenary outfits") in war zones like Iraq. Remember the puppy thrown off the back of the truck? Remember the four Haliburton employees that got lynched in Fallujah? Remember the contractors taunting the Iraqi children with water bottles?

These sorts of behaviours occur because contractors are not held to the same standards of behaviour as actual federal employees and officials. Therefore, it is a major security threat to the United States to allow contractors to do security work instead of actual government employees, no matter the illusion of cost savings. Whether you are in favour of the Obama Administration reading all your mails and knowing which pair of underwear you are wearing, or if you are sane and oppose such over-reaching, we can all agree that using private contractors to conduct intelligence operations is as productive as using Swiss cheese to collect radioactive rainwater.

Let's say that Edward Snowden was an actual threat, a creep, a bad guy with a vendetta, a spy for China. Let's say that he just went underground and didn't bother to report this information to newspapers in America that are trying to save our country in their dying breath. That would mean that China would have the power to look at all the private communications and financial transactions of every single US citizen.

Let's now say that one of Snowden's fellow employees at Booz Allen Hamilton is an actual Chinese spy passing on intel to the Chinese government. It would mean that Presidents George W. Bush and Barak H. Obama are both responsible for rounding up the private details of all 300M+ American citizens and offering them on a golden platter to the Chinese, or the Russians, or any intelligent and well-funded enemy of the United States.

Any other country in the world could use our private communications to infiltrate our society without the American intelligence system even knowing. They could manipulate our political process, manipulate our economy, or throw some companies under the bus while making others profit wildly.

This is not just a flaw with using private contractors. This is the primary foible of pursuing security before freedom. By allegedly pursuing terrorists using methods that directly contradict our Constitution and the intentions of our Founders to create a truly free society, we have (perhaps) unwittingly planted socially-explosive devices in the private life of every American. This is a clear and present danger that cannot stand.

In other government snooping news, Senator Rand Paul, looking for some libertarian bonafides to bolster a potential 2016 presidential run, said on FOX News that he would try to spearhead a class action lawsuit against the federal government:

"I'm going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies, ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying we don't want our phone records looked at then somebody will wake up and say things will change in Washington."

While I question Paul's motives (as I do for any politician, especially those living in their fathers' shadows), I certainly agree with his main thrust that there should be a class action lawsuit. In particular I'm thinking of the kind of lawsuit called an "impeachment". It's time to file some articles of impeachment in exchange for getting some business done to help the Democratic Party agenda. Even if Obama is not removed from office, an impeachment would send the clear signal from We the People that messing around with our Fourth Amendment rights is not okay with us. Furthermore, the impeacment proceedings should also call in George W. Bush, as well as all those who worked in either administration to undermine our American way of life.

Senator Paul, I know I'm not the only one who voted for Obama that wants Washington cleaned up. If only you'd jump on board and acknowledge just how seriously the private sector has failed us here, I'd support you 100% on your impeachment/class action suit and even vote for you in 2016. A lawsuit will only be meaningful if we can ensure that only those who are actual government employees can screw us. At least it assures me that any transgressions will be held accountable to the People.

Wiretapping Déja Vu

My what a tangled web we weave. It is disheartening but not unexpected that the American people are now again deciding to confront the Obama Administration on warrantless wiretapping, a clear  violation of every citizen's 4th Amendment rights. But why are unreasonable searches such a big deal and how does that relate to the First Amendment?

Historically, governments trying to prevent reasonable voices from instigating much-needed change will resort to unreasonable searches, unreasonable seizures, unreasonable arrests, unreasonable torture, and unreasonabe murder in order to stifle the message. Warrantless searching is Step #1 when it comes to abusing a population of people and eventually depriving them of far more important rights.

But this story also deserves a place at Pleading the First because of all the work we did in the past decade to generate public awareness of this horrific government menace. So here's a little of the back story the rest of you may have forgotten, a little recap for those not keyed into the underground.

The Federal government's warrantless wiretapping program began in 2001. Most people, even in the underground, are confused over this, thinking President George W. Bush started the program in response to 9/11. The reality is that the warrantless wiretapping program started in February, within weeks of Bush even taking office.

The method of the program was ingenious, and affected not only carriers and telecommunication corporations, but also product manufacturers and other peripheral industres. Basically, the NSA would commission from each corporation, privately, an insistence on access to all "company data". The private business contracts would also make it clear that the company was expected to record and save every phone call and internet data transmission. In the case of cell phone manufacturers, your everyday producers were legally required to have on-board wireless wiretapping technology or else they wouldn't be allowed to sell product in the USA.

If a corporation was smart enough to figure out that what was going on and decided to protest, NSA pulled the contracts, affacting corporate worth, and then arrested the CEOs for insider trading. Do some research on the cases of Bernie Ebbers and Joe Nacchio, who served jail time for not bowing to Bush. Also, feel free to dig up some former executive-level employees of MCI-WorldCom and Qwest Telecommunications, and you'll hear first-hand what those guys had to say about their arrests.

See, all the energy Americans put into getting Bush out of office was because of stories like this. We were disgusted that a sitting American president could have such contempt for our ways and traditions. We were also disgusted that most Republicans would not join the Democrats in getting rid of Bush, and we were disgusted that such anti-Americanism on Bush's part would nevertheless win him re-election. (Then again, John Kerry was probably the worst choice to head the Democratic ticket, but that's another discussion for another day.)

When America voted for Democrats to control Congress in 2006, we hoped that Bush would be brought to bear for his crimes against us. Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that any legal action against President Bush was "off the table". In 2008, when our agitation got Obama elected, the new President also declared that he would not pursue charges against Bush because it would be looking backward instead of forward. Imagine a prosecutor saying that to a family of a teenager who was raped and murdered: "We don't want to prosecute the murdering criminal because we want to move forward."

And yet Democrats bought the argument hook, line, and sinker. So now the shoe is on the other foot. Now it's Democrats who are abusing an illegal government program that shouldn't be in existence. Now it's the Democratic Party and its President who can squarely bear the blame for not putting a stop to criminal behaviour that threatens our nation and erodes the rights of every citizen.

If Democrats want a Congressional majority before Obama leaves office, they need to reverse course, pack up the program, and throw Bush in jail. Believe me, once Republicans understand the criminal actions that went on in the White House from 2001-2009, they won't be voting Republican for a while. Of course, to prosecute Bush is to prosecute only a small piece of the mess in Washington.

The excuse "this program protects us" is bunk. That's like me saying I need a nuclear bomb to protect my home from intruders. How can a program protect me if it makes it easier for the government to stifle my speech, take my money, and prevent me from my right to protest and rebel? How can I be free if every phone call I make or email I send can be read by my President?

So the Democrats and Republicans are both morally compromised. Let's do away with both parties so we can fix this system. Focus on third parties until Democrats and Republicans are but a footnote in history. Neither of the major parties has what it takes to run America, obviously. Neither knows how to protect us from terrorists and neither is able to protect us in any manner that doesn't fundamentally hurt us. It is high time for change....

Fabrication of Reality in the IRS Hearings

For this post, I'd like to draw your attention to the Bloomberg version of the story of today's Congressional hearing into wrongdoing at the IRS:

At a House Financial Services Committee hearing, Lew declined to answer a question from Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, about whether he agreed with Lerner’s assertion today that she has “not done anything wrong.” Garrett told Lew it was a “yes or no” question.

“Congressman, it’s not a yes or no,” Lew said. “I’m going to wait to have all the facts.” 

This is the primary psychological tool used by both the left-wing and the right-wing media to subconsciously propel their respective political myths. In this case, the tool is being employed by a member of Congress. Notice that Garrett trying to force an inappropriate "yes or no" answer from a person who doesn't know the answer.

Now that the event has happened, video of the event can be cut to eliminate context. It can be thrown up on FOX as a talking point that "Democrats are playing fast and loose with the facts" and "acting like they've got something to hide. When the light reflected in the mirrors hits the smoke, the holographic image of an actual scandal appears. As far as I can tell from the inquiries, so far, the only scandal is how the GOP are trying to gain from a situation they themselves created.

In order to grasp the whole picture of the IRS non-scandal, I'm gonna have to start waaaaaaaaay back in the dark ages of the 2008 Presidential campaign. It was Barack vs. Hillary. The GOP knew they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the presidency within 8 years of Bush. So they sacrificed their most popular pariah (John McCain) to help consolidate party ideology, and they focused their efforts on the Democratic primaries. GOP leadership were and still are afraid of Hillary. So they and their donors, from whatever nation foreign or domestic, threw hundreds of millions of dollars into squashing Hillary's primary hopes. She surrendered after it became clear her margin was two or three whiskers behind Obama. All that GOP spending gave us candidate Barack Obama.

But that's not the only regretable choice the Republicans made for themselves that cause them to wring their hands today. You see, the FEC decided that the groups spending large amounts of un-traceable cash on political campaigns was a threat to national security, and it was a violation of the clunky McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill of 2002. The actual case centered around a basic free speech argument, that the government had no right to block a film, regardless of it being full of distortions about a political candidate and regardless of whether its funding came from Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia.

Yes, it was a thorny case. And Roberts, to his credit, was going to rule on the strict question of whether the hack film about Hillary could be shown publicly. (Of course, the answer is yes.) Justice Kennedy pulled some ju-jitsu and got to write the majority opinion, in which he reached outside of the scope of the case and the question before the court saying, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." Now watch closely, because that's another smoke-and-mirrors trick.

Of course we agree with that! The concern inspiring the campaign finance reform law attempt was the subjection of the USA to criminal and/or foreign influence due to a lack of reasonable campaign finance regulations. But the question in before the Court was simply, "Should Citizens United be allowed to air NWO propaganda films?" And the majority, reasonably and somewhat thankfully, said yes. *sigh*

So now money equals speech, and if you don't have enough money, you don't get to speak. Funny how a brilliant guy Kennedy could only think that one halfway through. I surmise a few large, untraceable monetary gifts to a few friends on the sly might make up Kennedy's other half....

When the Supreme Court ruling was handed down in 2010, Obama had been in office for two years. He was basically tasked with administrative overhaul of the IRS to accommodate yet another kink in the system's bureaucracy. You have to remember that people who accept bureaucracy in order to work in it run like machines. They have habits. They are only semi-aware of their surroundings. When you change the machinery of that bureaucracy, they still run on their old habits, which is where this "scandal" started and most likely ended, according to the Treasury Department's report. The elimination of regulations by the Supreme Court caused a backlog of requests for tax-exempt status, so the bureaucrats ran triage and moved the most overtly political applications to the back of the line.

For the GOP to suggest that this entire situation was intentionally created by the President they themselves pushed into power is a ridiculous political game. If only enough Americans are too busy with the struggle of everyday life to be unable to read up on this story, maybe the GOP can get away with peeing on the public's leg while telling us it's raining. It's too bad the Democrats don't go for the jugular and pull the false face off these machinations more frequently. It's not difficult.

But at least the GOP are huffing and puffing and making themseles look a little less stupid than they did with their empty-handed Benghazi scandal inquiry. The only news from that side of the Republican brain is that the Representatives who got most indignant about the murder of an ambassador also made sure to avoid accepting responsibility for paying for embassy security. The Democrats have introduced yet another embassy security funding bill into the Senate, but I'm willing to bet that the GOP have enough control of the media to let it die in the House again.

I've gotta say the style of Lois Lerner is admirable. She should just come forth with answers to all the silly questions these new Republicans want to parade in front of the American public. In this day and age, it is admirable to see a lifelong bureaurcat standing up and exercising her Constitutional right not to go along with horse manure.

In the meantime, all you GOPers, I know there are those of you frustrated with a party that no longer represents your traditional values. Hang in there, but just know there's more internecine strife a-comin'. I know how much it rubs conservatives to defecate in their own nest, but that's the only way left to win the party back. I can't tell you how many of my Republican friends have been saying "we need a third party" but it's close to the number of times I hear them say "hello".

Toronto Mayor Whips Up A Crackstorm

So on my break today I see that Toronto's mayor is accused of smoking crack.

And?

Your point would be?

This one's simple: stay out of the guy's private life. If he's "in possession of" and that's a legal issue, well then the evidence shouldn't be free and running around in private hands. It should be in police custody, not up on the information market for $100k, right? That's more than the operating budget of quite a few community newspapers in upstate New York.

And if there's no video or no lawbreaking, there's no legal problem. That's the point where the news butts out. Job over. It's personal life, not news, at that point. A news enterprise may not harass any average individual. So why am I wasting my time talking about a non-news event for a politician I've never heard about before today?

Because this story has to do with the ethics of personal privacy. Canadian society is slightly different from American society, but we have our shades based on geography just like Canadians do. Both our nations largely descend from the English legal system, though both our nations have places where a substantial French minority thrive. We both have many of the same immigrants, and even similar ratios of African-Americans in our populations due to runaway slaves crossing the border into freedom.

The Canadian legal system treats different legal elements slightly differently, however. Prostitution is legal under some conditions in some places, while police are given broad interpretive powers when they detect a person in public in possession of marijuana. As far as crack goes, I must admit I don't hang out with all that many Canadian crack smokers, so I can't report on how the Canadian police or legal system treat the issue. But if I ever do, I'll get the word to all you here via an update.

So back to the IVth Amendment situation, which I know has no direct bearing in Canada; however, maintain in mind that the rights mentioned in the first eight Amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other [right]s retained by the people." Yes, I added the word in brackets so it would make sense contextually; but what I am saying is no surprise to students of law.

Point being, we have these rights as human beings regardless of our legal system. Our legal systems are bound by their own constitutions to preserve the rights of their citizens to different degrees and with different limits, but this changes not the fact that individuals have these rights regardless of the government's opinion. This is the purpose behind the IXth Amendment. Its importance in today's times should not be underestimated.

So I'm saying it bluntly: Rob Ford has the right to smoke as much crack as he wants to, regardless of his government. In the US, he'd be so protected by his IVth Amendment rights. But if it's something that's illegal, and he's working in that government, then he's gotta lotta 'splainin' to do. Maybe he should have worked to legalise crack and then smoked it. Of course in the US, crack is specifically illegal just about everywhere, IVth Amendment aside for reasons of interstate commerce and domestic tranquility.

But if on the other hand, if Canadians frown on crack smoking but largely don't persecute it - imagine that the good Mayor was smoking marijuana or tobacco - would the public reaction be different? But again, if these things are personal moral choices, not public choices, why is this in the news? Please respect the guy's IVth Amendment rights (or their Canadian counterparts) or at least tell us what he's done to lose those rights or endanger them in any way. That would be newsworthy.

So I have to ask why are the AP and FOX News both failing to explain the context of the situation in their article? Is it excusable as a "short"? I had to go over to Reuters for the context. Apparently Ford has gotten himself in trouble for corruption, then won an appeal so he could close out his term. Maybe he's just in depression and smoking his way out of it with one of the more dangerous drugs out there. If we're trusting in his right to privacy, maybe he's got family and friends that can stage an intervention. Still, it's not newsworthy at this stage except for the offer of the video sale.

Funny thing about that $100k: neither Gawker or the Toronto Star wanted to shell out the $100k on their own, and this from guys who claim to have sold crack to the mayor. Sounds like a dangerous game those sugarmen play. Hmm, I wonder where they would invest their money once Gawker gives it to them....

So anyways, good on the Toronto Star for saying no, and shame on Gawker's Crackstarter campaign for its support of the Canadian crack trade. I'll give a goshdarn when any of these so-called news sources reports whether crack possession, crack purchase, or crack inhalation are considered felonies in the jurisdiction where the infraction allegedly occurred.

Context, please.

P.S. The Gawker campaign site now claims it needs $200k. Maybe Reuters, FOX, and the AP can get together with Gawker and figure out what-the-shucks is going on with that number. Or maybe Gawker's gonna get cut in on an extra 15 kilos of the primo.

Uganda Shuts Down a Newspaper

Yesterday's news from Uganda is a perfect example of a few hundred PtF points, and if this was the old radio show, you can imagine we'd be talkin' it up as our leading story. With my luck, we'd have a couple people from Uganda on board to talk about life in their home country.

In any event, freedom of the press is protected by the First Amendment in the USA. Traditionally, the freedom of the press meant the press could write anything they want without fear of government retribution. Over time, that has somehow evolved into the right to report on anything they want, and this extended right is being used primarily by legions of papparazzi to assault various celebrities in the LA and NYC areas. But I digress from Uganda.

Uganda also has a constitutionally-enshrined freedom of the press. Unlike the USA, Uganda doesn't have much of a tradition of upholding press freedoms. In fact, the constitution of Uganda was only adoped in 1995, but was based largely on the American constitution. But if we want to get a good understanding of the state of Uganda's international relations, we have to rewind and do a historical recap. Only then will this story of a government violating its citizens' press freedoms make full sense.

If you already know Ugandan history, skip to the next set of dashes.
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After World War II, European nations started to divest themselves of their colonial holdings. In East Africa, the British release of its colonies was largely spurred on by attempts to balance the wartime checkbook. Efforts at setting up post-colonial governments (around the world) were hampered by:
1) religious groups
2) socialist/communist groups
3) ethnic groups

In different nations, these different influences undermined colonial powers' attempts to establish control over the fledgling governments. The British ideal was to hand temporal and administrative power over to the local nobility. But democracy kept asserting itself.

In Uganda, the focal point for this history lesson has to be Idi Amin. Do yourself a favour and read the overview of his Wikipedia article and the rest of what I write will make sense. The local socialist movement had managed to secure its independence from Britain and spent the better part of the 1960s trying to rebuild the country. However, the local nobility had already trained with the British military and was itself an extension of British power in Uganda.

The human rights being protected by the state was only part of the issue the military nobility took with the socialists. The other part was the socialists' deconstructing of social privilege at the legislative and administrative levels. In more rural districts, there was a sense of corruption from city power centers. So while President Milton Obote went to a meeting in Singapore, Idi Amin claimed power, and held it throughout the '70s.

Amin used brutality rather than respect to instill domestic tranquility and enforce his régime. This turned off Britain and the western allies, so guess who stepped in to fill the funding gap? (Please tell me you guessed the USSR.) It started with Libya, if I recall correctly, and Ghaddafi brought the budding dictator out of the circle of right-wing murderous dictators and into the circle of left-wing murderous dictators. The shift was also brought about by his erratic mental state, which deterioriated with time. In short, Western powers were increasingly embarassed to be seen talking with him.

A Western-backed military coalition consisting primarily of Tanzanian troops reinforced by armed and trained Ugandan refugees invaded Uganda and took out Idi Amin's régime in 1979, and Milton Obote came back to power. But the military nobility continued to see itself as the lawful regime, and retreated into a loose network of guerilla organisations in the North. After four years, the Obote government attempted to quell the uprising through military means, bringing international condemnation of his régime. Obote was deposed in 1985, but his replacement only lasted 6 months before he himself was replaced by Yoweri Museveni, who remains "president" to this day.

The Ugandans drafted a new constitution in 1995. The constitution's primary change was to centralise more executive authority with the president. Of course, since the president is a president-for-life and he is well-connected to the military, it's difficult for us Westerners to see such a constitutional change as more democratic.

Two years ago, the Parliament attempted to pass legislation that would have made homosexuality punishable by death. The international furor over the bill has exposed the relationship between the Ugandan régime and fundamentalist Christians in America, and led to some half-mumbled apologies from right-wing leaders in the USA. It is understandable that the American right wing leadership want to keep their thumb on Uganda, as the relatively small nation has been of strategic importance in regional politics ever since Britain relinquished its claim to the region. But it is really sad to see American money today flowing into the hands of a régime that resorts to physical intimidation and threats against life purportedly in the name of Jesus.
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From this mostly turbulent history, you can understand why Uganda's press freedoms are not as solid as America's. It's not that the people of Uganda aren't interested in their own freedom. But how much you want to bet the only reason more than half their nation even knows it's happening is because of the internet presence of global media?

Press freedoms aren't just about respecting individual rights. It's also about a government's image: not making itself look foolish, brutal, and helpless. At some point, the powers in charge of Uganda need to accept that they can't stop every single news report they don't like. They need to realise that stepping on the face of their media is the first step in reverting to a darker period of history. At some point, those in power in Uganda need to realise they will waste more time and money and lose global support by pursuing heavy-handed security initiatives.

Ironically enough, the Obama administration is facing heat for its beat-down of the Associated Press. All the above points apply to Obama, and hopefully he and Museveni are watching one another to learn. If a spy leaks something to the media, go and find him. Just don't shake down the media to get your answer, because that's just a really crummy way to operate.

The larger picture here is not necessarily that the USA and Uganda are operating in a simliar fashion from a similar mentality that fears freedom. (It's an important point but lines of correlation are a separate discussion.) Indeed, the American influence in Uganda is heavy. Uganda's violent past will keep poking into the nation's affairs, and Ugandans will have to continue the struggle for self-control. The larger picture is that the world wants to see a stable, democratic Uganda.

A stable Uganda is needed to help her neighbours keep peace. Simmering racial tensions currently threaten to bubble over the border of every neighbouring nation except Tanzania. Rwanda has been mostly in self-control since its brutal holocaust in the 1990s. The Congo is still swarming with rebel guerillas who like to hide out in Uganda from time to time. To the east, Kenyan leaders are doing their best to contain ethnic strife as competing leaders learn how to cooperate in government management in the wake of the highly-controversial elections in 2007, the grand union of 2008, and the new constitution of 2013. To the north lies South Sudan, a nation not even two years old and still embroiled in conflict with the north, not to mention internal power struggles and more warlords from the Congo taking advantage of the lack of central authority in rural areas.

If any of these powder kegs were to blow, it will require a stable Ugandan government to keep the region at ease. If Ugandans have to question the good intentions of their leaders, any one of those regional conflicts could open up and suck in Uganda.

At some point, we all hope Museveni will recognise that in an internet-connected gobal reality, the Daily Monitor is seen around the world as an extension of the people of Uganda. Anything done to the Daily Monitor is understood globally as an affront to the people of Uganda, even if done with the best of intentions. In this small world we live in, an event as small as a beat-down on a newspaper can put the drop on Museveni's rule the same way the Tanzanian invasion failed Idi Amin and the same way crushing the northern guerillas tanked Milton Obote in the 1980s. Certainly, global perception of the beat-down is where global allies start to decide to choke off "financial support", and then things get slowly worse. I don't think the people of Uganda want that, and I'm pretty sure neither does Museveni.

My message to Museveni: Never focus fire on your own people, focus on fighting the rebels. Don't repeat the past, learn from it. May the people of Uganda find peace.

Assault Weapons vs Health Care

Several weeks ago, the Democratic Party political machine was ramping up for Round 2 of its quest for an assault weapon ban in Congress. I remember Round 1, which was around Christmas/New Year's, in the immediate wake of the Newtown tragedy.
After looking at the manner in which the Obama Administration's political campaign was organised (rather efficiently, might I add), I was struck by the outrage from the left. Many of my friends are in the Democratic Party, and urge me to join from time to time. Quite a few of these individuals own firearms and were generally in agreement with the party line

As well-organised as the campaign was, action didn't follow through within a week, it became old news and was forgotten. After washing us for two weeks in gun control propaganda, the corporate media had new boring stories to dangle in front of our noses for 8 hours at a time, and the public obliged by putting the debate back on the shelf. But I didn't, and neither did my friends in the Democratic Party.

You see, there are millions of firearm owners who are registered Democrats. They aren't even a small minority. In general, they view the question of assault weapons as a serious question of liberty vs. safety. Some tend toward one side or the other of that question, but all are in agreement that there is a basic right to bear firearms protected by the Second Amendment. Their opinions tend to drift slightly over the years, but this basic agreement on a natural right never deviates.

I put together some of their thoughts on the assault weapons ban MSM story Round 1 and realised that in organising a political campaign to prevent future Newtowns, the Democratic Party had omitted several of its long-term policy planks:
1) National healthcare
2) Mental healthcare parity
3) Comprehensive health coverage for all former service members
4) A ban on private prisons
5) Reduction of student:teacher ratios in public education

The first two are slam-dunks. As clunky and difficult as the new federal healthcare legislation may be, it has accomplished the first two, which will go a long way toward reducing the likelihood of future Newtowns. So why not talk it up every day of the week? It's like watching Jason Kidd taking a layup in the early part of Game 5, finishing by getting nervous and bobbling the ball. You know the guy can do way better even though he didn't score a single shot in the tournament. As a friend said, "But hey, he's still on the court."

While the shooter at Newtown wasn't a returning veteran, there is a serious problem with not ensuring that veterans are left untreated. Some may wish to remain untreated. There is no reason that our veterans cannot have a standard of healthcare above and beyond what senators receive. This will also reduce violence in our nation.

The ban on private prisons will help reduce corruption. Americas prisons are a breeding ground for criminals, where the weak are winnowed out at the strong are molded into theives, kidnappers, and murderers for every one of the most notorious gangs in the USA, and that's not counting the foreign gangs that recruit out of our private prisons. Some of the facilities maintained by private contractors are reminiscent of the horrors of the 1930s-1970s ethnic cleansing operations by governments, and it is an absolute shame that we permit it and enourage it on American soil. What's even worse is that we all pay for it out of our tax money.

Finally, mental disorder is preceded by social disorder. An individual mind takes impressions from the world around itself. Often public schooling is the first social order a child sees. If one teacher is expected to deal with 30 five-year-old children at once, how many of those child-to-child interactions are monitored? The gang mentality sets in immediately and power plays are made, frequently without the teacher noticing and being able to advise both parties on their weaknesses and faults. Class sizes larger than 12 are breeding grounds for mental disease and should be considered a public health risk. We could double the number of teachers in our nation instantly through federal expenditure, and it wouldn't cost nearly as much as one year we spent in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The shooters we see are generally children who have gone through some kind of abuse, often at school, and suffer the trauma thereof. Some individuals who have been so abused take the quiet way out and commit suicide. The abuse can be emotional or physical and often sexual. This happens in our military, too. While lawmakers talk about tough anti-bullying laws, how about some serious prevention measures? How about some serious funding?

But most importantly, why aren't the above issues at the center of the progressive battle against gun violence? Why is the focus on an assault weapons ban? Here you have five well-made arrows, two of which have already hit their targets and should be hallmarks of the Obama administration. Instead, the Democrats choose another arrow made of lead and wonder why it can't reach the target. Is ignoring your greatest success your best political strategy? Or is it just that Obama's advisors are so scared of GOP misinformation that they don't want to mention the word "ObamaCare"?

My advice to Obama: Shake it off and talk up your successes more frequently.

Democrats have to realise that the centrists of this country take the Second Amendment the way I take the First. There are many centrists in the Democratic Party that they just won over from the GOP trashing its own these past 16 years. Don't lose them in a fight over assault weapons. Win them over by appealing to their humanity and their decency. Keep them on your side for a generation or two, if you can.

Fighting this battle ain't worth it, especially if Democrats want to stay in the White House beyond 2017.

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Then I read this piece by Joe Klein. I'm still a bit steamed at him for calling the centrist position "disgraceful". Joe, if you ever stumble on this, just know that even though I don't own any guns, I do take offence at America's traditional political philosophy being called "disgraceful". Just sayin'.

Now, about them votes in 2016. Are we going to let CNN, MSN, the AP, and others tell we the people what our Constitution and Amendments say regarding freedom and liberty? Or are we going to continue to allow the Supreme Court to continue to equate money with liberty, as in the ruling on Citizens United vs. FEC?

If we want to defend the liberty of gays and lesbians to live unmolested with their chosen life partner and to have that union consecrated by the states they live in, we need to stand up for all liberties at once. If we want to defend the rights of an African-American buying food at a grocery store, we need to stand up for liberty, not just that individual person. If we want to defend our liberty as individual citizens in this great republic to stand up and be heard by our representatives, as enshrined in the First Amendment, we need to stand up for all liberty. And if we're going to make the point that corporate money in elections erodes and limits individual liberty, we have to stand up as one, united for all liberty. Period.

If you're liberal and reading this and say to yourself "but what about the children of Newtown?", then your answer is that the causes of Newtown were not firearms. The causes were people.

Until we are interested in taking care of people and offering healing unconditionally, we will have broken people running around breaking more people. Let's be a nation of people that take care of one another. Only when every one of us can tune out the mainstream media buzz and tune in the suffering, then will we reach out to put a stop it.

Reach into your progressive back pocket and pull out the old humanist values. They still have meaning and they still work. And they still appeal to a majority of Americans.

Greetings & Salutations

Welcome to Pleading the First.

Before posting anything else, I wanted to set the tone for this blog to echo that of the radio show on WICB for which I once worked. Fear not: There will be no Brittney Spears or Jimmy Fallon here! Celebrity personal lives are irrelevant 99.42% of the time. I'm also trying to be on my best "we have no 5-second delay" behaviour, so ideally we're all mature enough to leave the four-letter words at the door and take the 5 seconds you need to find a far more witty substitute.

International news is a key ingredient of this production, as international media messaging is a reflection of internal political pressures within nations which are in turn reflections of pressures on those nations from the outside, occasionally in the form of US military or espionage. You don't need to know much about history to start picking up on these cues.

Another key ingredient is the talking points of the major parties. Once you know the talking points, you can ignore them and pick out the rest of the message from what's left. The tone of delivery, the urgency of "getting it out", the inability to rationally answer questions from an interviewer. There are many more signs to pick up on, some of which are verbal. As you get used to talking points, you start to be able to see them coming before you read them. Everybody with a press office uses them, even the White House.

Who am I? Gosh, I wish I could tell you in 50 words or less. I have done a lot of things, and I do a lot less than I used to. I've been a writer, a musician, a vegetable-picker, a bean-bagger, a cook, a delivery boy, a dish-washer, an intern, an office boy, a gardener, a construction worker, an accountant, a block-cutter, a lover, a dreamer, a business owner, a defendant, an interrogator, a socialist, a libertarian, a pantheist, an atheist, a pagan, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a scientist, an engineer, a representative, a protestor, an oppressor, a voice, an ear. I wish I could tell you that I was good at any of them, but I've had mixed success in places.

I have gotten compliments on my writing before, and I've been thinking about starting a blog for a long time. A lot of people continue to share their life stories with me. I know there are things all of us can do to work for a peaceful future in which every person's needs are met. Pretty much every day for the last month has been at least one news story I've read that deserved deconstruction. So the fire under my fanny is now lit, again.

The world today is at war. There are famines, strikes, ethnic cleansing, police actions, fracturous civil wars, tense calms before many brooding storms, espionage, intimidation, murders and house arrest of journalists and politicians, corruption, weapons of mass destruction all around us. We make them with our unconscious money and unconscious thoughts. Today's commercial media are designed to keep the wealth flowing toward the war while keeping our minds in ignorance of the war.

Even the cable news channels and especially talk radio shows are designed for ignorance rather than information. That is why they mock up pharmaceutical advertising to sound like news stories in the newscast. This is why over 50% of commercial newscasts in any nation are fluff. If entire TV networks are dedicated to celebrity news, we get duped into giving up our money to the war machine while we tune out the war.

Consider this blog f1rst and foremost to be about tuning in....