Lamar W. Hankins : Ted Cruz Vs. Personal Liberty

Tea Party darling Ted Cruz. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr.
Ted Cruz:
Opponent of personal liberty

Like many right-wingers, Cruz has a limited understanding of our First Amendment rights.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / October 9, 2012

Ted Cruz, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas, presents himself as a champion of personal liberty, but he is far from that. Based on what he writes on his own campaign website, Cruz is a proponent of restricting liberty in vast areas of our lives.

Cruz opposes the right of women to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their physicians. Like many other right-wingers, Cruz does not believe a woman should have control over her reproductive processes. He believes that the government knows best what a woman should do about unwanted pregnancies. To Cruz, a woman’s reproductive system is mainly the purview of the state. Apparently, this extends even to the decision to use birth control.

Cruz’s views on religious liberty revolve entirely around the right of the government to promote religious practices associated with Abrahamic monotheism, though his views on Islam, one of the Abrahamic religions (along with Christianity and Judaism) are not clear. But he does support the government’s promotion of the Abrahamic God to the exclusion of the religious beliefs of more than 65 million Americans, and about 5.5 million Texans.

 It is politically convenient to side with the majority on religious issues, even if that means that the majority’s religious beliefs are, with the help of the government, crammed down the throats of those who believe differently.

Cruz does not seem to see the nexus between the need for access to health care and liberty, but without health care the liberty one has is severely circumscribed. Not only does Cruz oppose access to health care for all, he opposes George W. Bush’s prescription drug benefit for seniors.

I admit that I have a vested interest in the drug benefit, since I receive Medicare benefits, including those for prescription drugs. Cruz would take from me the financial security that Medicare and all of its benefits provide. Without Medicare, my life would be more limited and its length undoubtedly shortened. The evidence shows that many, if not most, seniors are in the same situation I am in.

When Ted Cruz discusses voting, he apparently does not connect it to liberty. Instead, Cruz believes that voter fraud is a serious problem, though he is unable to find evidence for any significant voter fraud -- just like everyone else who has studied the data. That hasn’t stopped him from supporting laws and regulations that make it difficult for seniors and low-income citizens to vote.

No one who claims to believe in democracy can justify regulations that suppress voting, but Cruz is in favor of taking away from thousands of Texans this seminal freedom, without which we will have little, if any, liberty. The voter suppression Cruz favors most seems to be voter ID laws that require a state-issued ID to register and vote. In Texas, 34 counties do not have a state office that issues photo IDs. Four of these counties have Hispanic populations over 75%. Cruz has not protected the liberty interests of these citizens.

In a 2007 report on voter fraud, the Brennan Center concluded: “The type of individual voter fraud supposedly targeted by recent legislative efforts -- especially efforts to require certain forms of voter ID -- simply does not exist.”

For five years during the George W. Bush presidency, the Justice Department conducted a “war on voter fraud,” which resulted in 86 convictions out of more than 196,000,000 votes cast. This result was not unexpected. It is absurd to believe that there is a systematic effort by large numbers of people to cast a vote as another person.

Such projects would be an enormous waste of time, yield few results, be easy to detect, and are adequately controlled by existing criminal laws with harsh penalties. But Ted Cruz cares so little about the liberty of all Texas citizens that he wants to keep them from voting with such voter suppression laws and regulations.

Cruz’s campaign website claims that he has played an important “role in the fight against infringement of private property rights,” including those arising from the use of eminent domain by government or allowed by government.

But where has Cruz been in the fight against the abuse of eminent domain allowed by Texas law for such companies as TransCanada, which is trying to take the land of Texas citizens to build a pipeline to transport tar sands oil to be refined at two Texas refineries and sold overseas to increase their profits? This pipeline will not lower any Texan’s gasoline bill or provide any long-term jobs that will benefit Texans, but Cruz has not stood up for the liberty interests of Texas landowners to protect and preserve their land.

For Cruz and many right-wingers, same-sex marriage is not seen as a matter of personal liberty. Cruz thinks he and the government have the right to tell citizens whom they can love and marry. In fact, he is proud to deny citizens the right to choose the mate of their choice unless that mate is someone of the opposite sex.

No liberty interest is more personal than the right to choose with whom to live, love, and marry, yet Cruz places his personal religious beliefs and preferences over the liberty interests of the entire gay population. To deny anyone such a basic liberty grounded in religious belief means that other liberties can be denied also for religious reasons. Cruz’s position is antithetical to the Constitution and basic morality -- and personal liberty.

Like many right-wingers, Cruz has a limited understanding of our First Amendment rights. To his credit, Cruz opposes “groups that spout hatred and bigotry,” but to Cruz this means that such groups cannot participate in civic projects of benefit to all.

While I have opposed the Ku Klux Klan longer than Cruz has been alive, it violates the constitutional rights of association and free speech to deny that backward group the right to pick up litter along the highways as part of a government-sponsored program, which is an action that Cruz is proud to have pursued.

Cruz may think he supports the liberty interests of all of our citizens, but he is mistaken. He is an extreme right-wing ideologue, selected by the Republican Party of Texas, mainly through the efforts of Tea Party zealots and their rich friends, to go to Washington to destroy the social safety net that protects all our citizens from lives of misery and poverty.

He has spent his brief career in the service of corporations and the wealthiest 1% of Americans -- the plutocracy that is very near to complete control of our political and economic systems.

Texans have risen up in the past to oppose injustice and fight for liberty. Electing politicians like Ted Cruz is a step in the wrong direction. It is the direction that will ensure that we will all have less liberty and more government control over our lives.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Cultural Clash in Rural Texas

Adriel Arocha's parents consider his waist-length hair "sacred" and contend it reflects Native American religious beliefs. Photo by Eric Kayne / Houston Chronicle.
Long hair doesn't cut it, school says...

Native American beliefs up against rural district's dress code
By Eric Hanson / July 15, 2008

A small rural school district in Fort Bend County and a determined mother are tangled in a dispute over hair.

Michelle Betenbaugh says her 5-year-old son, Adriel Arocha, wears his hair long because of religious beliefs tied to his Native American heritage.

But the leaders of the Needville school district have strict rules about long hair on boys and don't see any reason to make an exception in his case.

The dispute illustrates a problem American schools have faced for decades: how to balance individual student rights against rules designed to maintain order and discipline in the classroom.

The case also shows that some rural Texas school districts often have stricter grooming codes that reflect the traditional or old-fashioned values of small-town America when compared to those in big-city school districts such as Houston's.

According to a legal expert, courts have repeatedly backed school districts in numerous lawsuits. But the same courts have granted students and parents some rights when it comes to hairstyles tied to religion.

"Every sort of legal challenge that could spring into the creative mind of a lawyer has been brought," said Joy Baskin, an attorney for the Texas Association of School Boards. "Time after time, courts have said that it is not unreasonable to regulate dress and grooming."

Baskin said legal rulings regarding challenges to hair codes on religious grounds let school districts grant exceptions.

Appeal to school board

Betenbaugh's fight started in May when she told Needville school officials she planned to move to Needville from her Meadows Place home over the summer and enroll her son in kindergarten.

She told officials that Adriel had waist-length hair and she wanted to keep it that way. She said her husband is of Apache heritage and the tribe's religious practices call for men to wear their hair long.

"His dad is of Native American descent, so we have chosen to raise him with certain beliefs in place, one of them being that his hair is sacred and we don't cut it," she said.

But Needville administrators said the boy's hair would have to be cut.

Betenbaugh said she plans to appeal the decision to the school board Wednesday, and if the board rules against her she will fight in court.

Betenbaugh will be taking on the Needville Independent School District, a system of 2,596 students surrounded by farm and ranch country. The town is tight-knit, and many of the children at the Needville schools are third- and fourth-generation students.

Superintendent Curtis Rhodes, a Needville High graduate himself, said he talked to Betenbaugh about the dispute and decided no exception should be granted to the rule.

"What is their religious belief that defies cutting hair and following our policies?" Rhodes said. "They have not produced any information except they are Native American Indians."

Rhodes said if the family can provide more specifics, the district would reconsider the case.

Needville's dress and grooming code, which does not allow hair past the collar or eyes, is similar to other rural districts' in the Houston region.

In the Devers school district in Liberty County, boys cannot wear hair below the collar.

"I would consider it pretty much a rural community with the basic tenets and beliefs that go with that," said superintendent Larry Wadzek.

Wadzek said controversies over hair rarely come up and the district has never had to go to court over it.

Houston school district spokesman Norm Uhl said the district has no hair code and that individual school administrators set dress policies.

Baskin said school districts have had more success enforcing dress codes because courts have ruled that clothing can be disruptive, which creates distractions in the classroom.

No plans to move

A federal appeals court has said schools can also set rules about hair but that accommodations can be made for religious reasons.

"Religion is probably one of the few or only areas where students are going to be afforded a greater protection," Baskin said.

Baskin said the reason rules regarding dress and grooming are imposed is that educators believe the classroom environment is more orderly with those guidelines in place.

"The students have better attendance, have better disciplinary behavior, and it has alleviated tension among students who might be distracted by dress," she said.

Baskin said Texas has a religious freedom law that basically says a governmental unit can't pass a rule that infringes on a person's good-faith exercise of religion unless an exemption would cause an undue hardship for the governmental unit.

Baskin said many Native American tribes include hair length as a religious belief and if the case is litigated, a court will have to consider a number of factors. "Where does the religious tenet come from? Is it an organized religion or a personal set of beliefs?" she said.

Meanwhile, Betenbaugh said she is ready to fight the Needville rule and has not considered moving to another school district with a less stringent hair code.

"It would just teach our son that it is easier to roll over and do what you're told and not stand up for your rights," she said.

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Source. / Houston Chronicle

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Imperfect Obama or Republican Brownshirts

A Study in Tyranny: oil sketch, inspired by my interest in politics, persuasion, influence, brain washing, propaganda, as well as sales and marketing. --Luscher.

At this point,we have no other choice than Obama, love him or not, unless we want to support some third party candidate who would certainly lose badly as they always do. He will surely do less damage than McCain, but we would be foolish to expect miracles from Obama unless they toss most of the Republicans out of Congress in November or the next election.

Jon Ford / The Rag Blog

Elect Obama or Fall Into Tyranny
By Paul Craig Roberts / June 16, 2008

As recent articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn, and Uri Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel Lobby Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.

Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East.

As Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and a modern air force and missiles supplied by the US, the idea that Israel needs American protection from Iran is a fantasy. All Israel needs to do in order to be safe and to live in peace is to stop stealing the West Bank and to drop its designs on southern Lebanon. Obama is too smart not to know that US foreign policy has been Shanghaied by the Lobby not in order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel’s territorial expansion.

Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front as well. Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as his economic advisors--Bill Clinton’s Treasury Robert Rubin and Rubin associate Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies that benefit Wall Street, CEOs, and large retailers at the expense of the economic well being and careers of millions of Americans.

As a result of offshoring, good jobs in America are disappearing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics job figures make it totally clear that the US economy has ceased creating net new middle class jobs in the private economy in the 21st century.

Stressing higher returns to shareholders, Wall Street pressures corporations to move their operations abroad. Wal-Mart tells its American suppliers to “meet the Chinese price” or else, a price that US firms can meet only by offshoring their operations to China.

Every job and product that is offshored increases the US trade deficit and lowers US GDP. It is a losing game for America that rewards the overpaid elite of Wall Street and corporate America, while dismantling the ladders of upward mobility.

By enlarging the trade deficit, offshoring erodes the reserve currency role of the dollar, the real basis of US power. Now that US imports exceed US industrial production, it is unlikely that the US trade deficit can be closed except by a sharp reduction in US consumption, which implies a drop in US living standards. If the dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US government will not be able to finance its budget and trade deficits.

Where is the hope when Obama endorses a foreign policy that benefits only Israeli territorial expansion and an economic policy that benefits only multimillionaires and billionaires?

The answer is that Obama’s election would signify the electorate’s rejection of Bush and the Republicans. Considering the cowardice of the Democratic Congress and its reluctance to hold a criminal regime accountable, electoral defeat is the only accountability that the Bush Republicans are likely to experience.

It is not sufficient accountability, but at least it is some accountability.

If the Republicans win the election and escape accountability, the damage Republicans have done to the US Constitution, civil liberty, and a free society will be irreversible. The Bush Regime and its totalitarians have openly violated US law against spying on Americans without warrants and US and international laws against torture. The regime and its totalitarians have violated the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold. Bush’s attorney general Gonzales even asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to American citizens.

When federal courts acted to stop the regime’s unconstitutional practices and abuse of prisoners, the Republicans passed legislation to overturn the court rulings. The Republican Party has shown beyond all doubt that it holds the US Constitution in total contempt. Today the Republican Party stands for unaccountable executive power.

To reelect such a party is to murder liberty in America.

The June 12 Supreme Court decision pulled America back from the abyss of tyranny. For years hundreds of innocent people have been held by the Bush regime without charges, a handful of which were set to be tried in a kangaroo military tribunal in which they could be convicted on the basis of secret evidence and confession extracted by torture.

The Court ruled 5-4 that detainees have the right to appeal to civilian courts for habeas corpus protection. The Bush Republicans claiming “extraordinary times” had created a gestapo system in which the government could accuse, without presenting any evidence, a person of being a threat and on that basis alone imprison him indefinitely. Justice Anthony Kennedy reminded the Republican Brownshirts that “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

Bush’s current attorney general, Michael Mukassey, said he would proceed with his kangaroo trials.

President Bush indicated that he was inclined to again seek to overturn the Court with a law.

Brownshirt Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he would draft a constitutional amendment to restore the executive branch’s tyrannical power.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain said that the Supreme Court decision protecting habeas corpus “is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

The four Supreme Court justices (Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas) who voted for tyranny in America are all Republicans. They all came out of the Federalist Society, a highly subversive group of right-wing lawyers who are determined to elevate the powers of the executive branch above Congress and the Supreme Court.

The Republican Party has morphed into a Brownshirt Party. The party worships “energy in the executive.” If the Brownshirt Republicans are reelected, they only need one more Supreme Court appointment in order to destroy American liberty.

That is what is at stake in the November election. As bad as Obama is on important issues, his election will signal rejection of the tyranny to which the Republicans are committed.

Source. / Information Clearing House

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Death and the D.C. Madam

Deborah Jean Palfrey aka the D.C. Madam. Photo by Nikki Kahn, The Washington Post
Call girls speak out about the suicide of Deborah Jeane Palfrey and the complicated truths it reveals about their lives.
By Susannah Breslin / May 5, 2008

May 5, 2008 On May 1, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, better known as "the D.C. Madam," was found dead in a shed located behind her mother's Tarpon Springs, Fla., mobile home. Apparently, Palfrey, 52, hanged herself from a metal beam with a length of nylon rope. When her 76-year-old mother, Blanche Palfrey, called 911 just before 11 a.m., the emergency operator asked if her daughter was still hanging from the rafter. "Yes," said the madam's weeping mother, who had regularly accompanied her daughter to court the month previous, "I can't move her. I'm 76 years old."

Palfrey's was one of a recent spate of high-profile political sex scandals, from Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's toe-tapping routine to the fall of New York Gov. Eliot "Luv Guv" Spitzer. It was also another chapter in our ongoing fascination with prostitution -- that mysterious and yet still little-understood profession. (Palfrey entered the business as an escort. Later, she became a madam, claiming she was "appalled and disgusted" by the way women in the sex business were treated.) Sex may be everywhere these days -- heck, adult movie star Jenna Jameson's autobiography, "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale," was a New York Times bestseller -- but what life is really like inside the American sex trade remains a mystery. Mostly, Americans have been fed one of two myths about sex workers: the "Pretty Woman" story about a hooker with a heart of gold, or the Jezebel tale about a woman who leads moral men astray by virtue of her sexual wiles.

In more recent years, thanks to a growing number of call girls, strippers and other sex workers using blogs to tell their stories in their own words, we've seen a more complex and nuanced tale. And it's one we don't seem to be able to get enough of. HBO and Showtime are launching competing series focusing on working girls -- "Sex and the City" creator Darren Star is turning Tracy Quan's "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl" (which began as a column on Salon) into a dramatic series for HBO, while Showtime will begin airing the U.K. series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," based on the blog turned book by Belle de Jour, next month.

Though Palfrey's death is complicated, not to mention controversial, it does offer us some insight into the experience of sex industry workers, who bear the burden of a double life and the toll of secrecy. I contacted three women, currently chronicling online their past and present lives as sex workers, to speak to them about their reactions to Palfrey's harrowing tale and how sharing their own stories might keep them from a similar kind of darkness.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey arrives for a hearing at a federal courthouse in Washington, April 30, 2007. Photo by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters.
Melissa Gira is a San Francisco-based sex worker and Valleywag reporter who last year co-founded Bound, Not Gagged, a group blog written by and for sex workers, because of the Palfrey case. Tired of so-called experts speaking for sex workers in the mainstream media, Gira created the site as a forum where working women could express their opinions, reactions and frustrations. The day the blog launched, Gira found Palfrey's phone number, called her and spoke with her briefly about the project. "I was shocked she picked up the phone, she knew what a blog was, and she wasn't immediately distrustful," Gira says.

Upon hearing of Palfrey's death, Gira felt a jumble of emotions: confusion, anger, sadness. "Her story represented our story," she says.

Gira is angry about the way female sex workers are vilified when stories like these go public, while the men involved "go back to their job or they quietly leave." From among the 15,000 names in Palfrey's potent little black book, only three boldface names surfaced: Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, a married Republican and father of four who apologized for his "very serious sin" and kept his job; U.S. ambassador Randall L. Tobias, who as Bush's "AIDS czar" had publicly denounced prostitution and resigned after his outing; and Harlan K. Ullman, a retired Navy commander known for developing the shock-and-awe doctrine and who told Brian Ross of ABC News that he had gotten only massages from the women involved, not had sex with them, and stated that the experience was "like ordering pizza."

"If I was in her position I would have papered the walls of that shed with the sheets of my client list," says Gira.

Although Gira is frustrated by the media's relentless representation of sex workers as victims, she is also suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Palfrey's death. It has been a question circulating since: Did Palfrey actually kill herself? In fact, Palfrey had stated in numerous interviews with members of the press that she would rather commit suicide than return to prison. Washington, D.C., writer Dan Moldea, who got to know Palfrey while considering writing a book about her, told reporters that Palfrey had told him, "I am not going back to prison. I will commit suicide first." At the time of her death, she was awaiting her July 24 sentencing, and authorities in Florida have reported that several suicide notes were found at the scene. Either way, Gira says, Palfrey's death has had a "chilling effect" on at least some sex workers, who, now fearing for their own lives, are more reluctant than ever to reveal themselves.

Another sex worker I spoke with, who writes online about her call girl experiences but requested anonymity for this story, was pained by the news of Palfrey's death as well as the related older news of the death of University of Maryland professor turned call girl Brandy Britton, 43, who killed herself in January 2007 while awaiting trial on prostitution charges. Britton was a one-time employee of Palfrey's; after Britton was found hanging in her living room, Palfrey pronounced, ironically: "I guess I'm made of something that Brandy Britton wasn't made of."

The call girl I interviewed was struck by the emotional stories behind these public deaths. "The first thing I thought about was the incredible isolation that both of them probably felt," she said. "Because you're doing something that's perceived to be so morally wrong that you're immediately outside society, as a prostitute or a madam. You've got this secret life or a compartmentalized life, and then to be pushed out there and villainized -- I can only imagine the incredible isolation they must have felt."

As a sex worker, she went on, you live a "double life." A madam whom she worked for before she went freelance was intensely paranoid, "crazy," prone to anxious late-night phone calls. "It got to her. She would call me up and panic, thinking they were out to get her. It was the psychology of sex work, the fear of being outed."

When the call girl I spoke with worked at an agency, she says, she was kept isolated from other women. Then, when she started writing online about sex work, all that changed. "I know the moment I started blogging about it at length, I started connecting to other women online. It made a huge difference. I stopped feeling alone. I stopped feeling like I had to hide everything from anybody. It felt as though I had a connection to the outside world that I didn't have before." After all, sex work is not easy. "You have these very intimate connections, but you're totally disposable with clients. You're a ghost moving through their world."

Read all of it here. / salon.com
See Palfrey Suicide Notes Released. / Washington Post
And see the suicide notes. / The Smoking Gun
Also see Bloggers discussThe D.C. Madam's Suicide. / Slate

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Freedom and the Internet

Why The 'Right' Gets Net Neutrality Wrong
By Art Brodsky / May 5, 2008

Just in time for the House Telecommunications Subcommittee's hearing tomorrow (May 6) on Net Neutrality legislation, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) and the American Spectator are out with new attacks on the simple idea that people should not have their Internet experiences subject to the whims of telephone and cable companies.

My day-job employer, Public Knowledge, even achieved a new level of notoriety when we were prominently mentioned in a blog post on the American Spectator, the publication best known for funneling millions of dollars to investigations of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The April 28 blog post, cleverly headlined, "Public Know Nothings," -- a play on Public Knowledge -- read like a basic corporate hit job on Net Neutrality of the kind one might read at any number of blogs or by any columnists in the thrall of the corporate world. But the story, combined with Armey's April 22 Washington Times headlined "Spare The Net," raise the inevitable question -- what is it about individual freedom that "conservatives" like the Spectator and Armey don't like?

To be fair, the debate is larger than the Spectator and Armey. Most congressional Republicans oppose the idea of giving consumers freedom on the Internet. They take shelter in their anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric, preferring to allow Internet freedom to apply to the corporations which own the networks connecting the Internet to consumers, rather than to consumers themselves. There could, of course, be a larger discussion about the meaning of "conservative" and Republican, and whether the two are synonymous.

(To be fairer still, it's not only Republicans. Many a Democrat also speaks out against Internet freedom. They don't have the fig-leaf of misbegotten ideology to hide behind, as they largely back worthwhile government action in many other areas. They are simply servants of corporate and/or union interests. The question applies equally: What about freedom don't they like?)

The clues to discovering how the opposition to individual freedom came about are in the two recently published pieces. Each them, in their own way, shows a tragic misunderstanding of how telecommunications policy, markets and technology worked in the past and how they work today. As a result, their interpretations of Net Neutrality, and the role of government, are also wrong.

At the heart of the opposition is the "mythology of the market," that once government "got out of the way," as Armey put it, new technologies emerged. "Telecom became a text-book case demonstrating that markets work and are good for consumers," as the Internet developed and dial-up modems yielded to broadband connections, Armey wrote.

Similarly, Peter Suderman, writing on the Spectator site, misses his telecom history. He criticized the testimony of actor and Internet entrepreneur Justine Bateman, who spoke to the Senate Commerce Committee about the need for a free and open Internet. Bateman asked whether Google and eBay would have been as successful as they are "without the freedoms we enjoy on the Internet today."

Suderman's analysis: "In fact, not only were all of these companies [eBay and Google] born in an era with no mandated net neutrality, it's utterly unclear that a lack of neutrality would've impeded them in any way whatsoever."


Government Helped Create The Internet

Let us review the history. Even setting aside the very basic fact that the underlying technology for the Internet was created under a government program, and was set free for commercial purposes by Congress, it's still hard to get away from the reality that the Internet as we know it was started, and flourished, in a regulated environment. While the content that went online, through bulletin boards, America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and the rest, wasn't regulated, the telecommunications carriers to a large extent were.

Before the advent of the cable modem, the telephone companies that carried the online traffic not only were under tight rate-of-return regulation, but they were also subject to the sections of the Communications Act barring unreasonable discrimination (Sec. 202). They also had to sell their services wholesale. Amazingly, with all of that regulation, the first iteration of the online world grew, with thousands of local Internet Service Providers able to afford access to the network so they could offer their services to the public.

The new and fancy equipment came because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1968 broke through the tariff of then Bell System and allowed outside, customer-owned devices to be connected to the network. That decision brought competition in long distance as well as setting the stage for the fax, modem and other gadgets.

For the record, eBay was founded in 1995. Google came along three years later. It wasn't until 2002 that the FCC under Chairman Michael Powell started the process of classifying nascent cable-modem service as an "information service" under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Both cable and DSL were taken out from under most regulations by the FCC in 2005, when today's Internet took shape. That decision, combined with some archaic, in-the-weeds technical matters, combined to wipe out the hundreds of local online and Internet Service Providers along with most of the competition for the telephone companies. One of the rules swept away was the prohibition against unreasonable discrimination -- the part of the law that enforced what we now know as Net Neutrality. That's what the proponents of a free and open Internet are trying to reclaim. It's very simple -- those companies carrying traffic can't play favorites.

Google's founders have said repeatedly they wouldn't have been able to get off the ground if they had been required to pay extra fees for telecommunications services to get onto a "fast lane" of service.

Market-Based Myths Abound

The argument against Net Neutrality really goes off-track when it gets into the nature of private property, the state of competition, and the effect of regulation. That's more than one track to be thrown off of, so it's quite the disaster scene. We may need CSI: Telecom to sort it all out.

Public Knowledge earned its headline in the Spectator because of the petition we filed with the FCC asking that companies like Verizon which offer text messaging not be able to decide which groups should be deemed worthy of service and which shouldn't be.

Read the rest of it here. / The Huffington Post
Also see Net Neutrality by Christopher Kuttruff / truthout

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Quote of the Day - Totalitarianism

"When any person is intentionally deprived of his constitutional rights those responsible have committed no ordinary offense. A crime of this nature, if subtly encouraged by failure to condemn and punish, certainly leads down the road to totalitarianism."

J.Edgar Hoover 1952

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M. Wizard and T. Dreyer on Alleged Child Abuse at Eldorado Compound

Religious freedom is not a cloak for abuse.
By Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / May 1, 2008

Just wondering; what are people thinking now about this stalwart group of religious freedom pioneers? Yesterday's news that the little boys of the group seem to have had an inordinate number of broken bones, even for active little boys, also made me quite nauseated. Is this how abusers are created??

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS NOT A CLOAK FOR ABUSE, but it has been used as such, MAINLY BY RIGHT-WING NUT-CASES, since way before Hitler's day.

The article further alleges that employees in the sect's "defense" industries work for extremely long pay, and that much of the companies' earnings go to the FLDS church each month. David Hamilton had wondered in The Rag Blog last week if part of the official investigation of the sect stemmed from antipathy to their communal lifestyle. I am reminded, Bro. David, that pre-capitalist economic systems involved a kind of primitive communism; only, as soon as any SURPLUS VALUE appeared, so did feudal serfdom. If those cats in El Dorado are practicing a "communal lifestyle"; I would suggest it may have more in common with the medieval kind than the Cuban model...

("Sharing husbands,” indeed -- NO, honey, that is NOT what they are doing; each man gets SEVERAL WIVES to wait on him hip and elbow, is how polygamy works. The women share housework and child rearing. [INCOMING JOKE WARNING -- ALERT --- JOKE WARNING -- TAKE COVER!!] PolyANDRY, where each woman has several men to support her; now that is a system we should investigate!!)

The government's tactics set a frightening precedent.
By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / May 1, 2008

One thing I'd say, Mariann, is that they're trying to cover their asses.

Today's Austin American-Statesman quoted Dr. David Teuscher, a Beaumont orthopedic surgeon, who said that 41 of 464 children with a fractured bone "could have been the elementary school around the corner."

"It is really not an extremely high number," he said, "We see children all the time who do crazy things and break their bones."

The ranch's on-site physician said, "Probably over 90 percent of the injuries are forearm fractures from ground-level or low-level falls."

I don't know who's right, Mariann, but I do know that there have been a lot of unproven assertions here. And it would be hard to deny that, legally, this was a fishing expedition, based upon one, apparently bogus, phoned in accusation.

And that there is a concerted public relations effort to justify it after the fact.

There would still seem to be nothing that would have justified wholesale removal of children from the site and then from their mothers, something that is usually a move of last resort. Nothing that could not have been investigated on-site rather than turning first to the extreme tactic of mass removal.

Nobody's calling these people a "stalwart group of religious pioneers." At least no one I know. To me, this has to be a terrible, stifling way to live and to bring up children, and the idea of planned marriage, even when the bride is of age, is anathema to me.

But we cannot let our distaste for -- or unproven accusations about -- a certain subculture color our thinking, allow us to overlook a highly questionable assault on that subculture based on no evidence whatsoever -- at least no evidence of which I am aware.

There certainly could have been better, legal, ways to deal with suspicions of abuse. The tactics they chose set a frightening precedent.

In another circumstance the same kind of tactics could have been -- still could be --used against us or other unpopular groups whose lifestyles may differ from the norm, from the generally-accepted.


And other comments from Rag Bloggers:

Insinuation is supposed to make you nauseated. This is an "if, then" proposition. If there was abuse then that would be terrible. The Austin American-Statesman wrote a very critical article (May 1st.) on CPS (Child Protective Services) commissioner Carey Cockerell's canned speech to the state senate committee. Carey would not elaborate, senators were not allowed to ask questions, he would not talk to reporters.

Two doctors said that the number of broken bones is what one would expect out of a population of 400+, nothing unusual in itself. The bone doctors went on to explain what types of fractures are normal and certain age categories and others types which would unusual. Carey knows he is in trouble and so must keep up the drum beat of accusations. If one only reads the headline and the sub header then the article looks as if the abuse was fact but if one reads the entire article then Carey looks like he is grasping at straws.

Meanwhile mothers have their children spread 500 miles apart. Maybe Carey will pay their travel expenses?

Alan Pogue

One thing that probably cannot be denied is that prosecutors tend to maintain a rigidity about guilt in relationship to who they are prosecuting, regardless of exculpatory evidence. The broken bones might be a ridiculous example of supposed evidence of abuse.

It's interesting to me how so many "authorities" jump onto the governmental bandwagon carrying condemnations of this or that, such as drug abuse or the Branch Davidians, while the history of governmental honesty, reasonableness, or fairness is lacking.

From my perspective, the govt is acting in the way we used to allege Communists did. I'll be happy to change my mind with some evidence.

As the Dulles brothers said, let's protect United Fruit, change the regime, and help the new president implement a campaign of terror. Good ole Ike said, Right on!

Don Laird

Previous discussion of the raid at Eldorado on The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog

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Atheism and the Army

Specialist Jeremy Hall, 23, outside Fort Riley, Kan., where he has been stationed since being sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers. Photo by Ed Zurga / NYT
Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats
By Neela Banerjee / April 26, 2008

FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

Eileen Lainez, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, declined to comment on the case, saying, “The department does not discuss pending litigation.”

Specialist Hall’s lawsuit is the latest incident to raise questions about the military’s religion guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to proselytize. In general, the armed forces have regulations, Ms. Lainez said, that respect “the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs.”

To Specialist Hall and other critics of the military, the guidelines have done little to change a culture they say tilts heavily toward evangelical Christianity. Controversies have continued to flare, largely over tactics used by evangelicals to promote their faith. Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group.

“They don’t trust you because they think you are unreliable and might break, since you don’t have God to rely on,” Specialist Hall said of those who proselytize in the military. “The message is, ‘It’s a Christian nation, and you need to recognize that.’ ”

Soft-spoken and younger looking than his 23 years, Specialist Hall began a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, to support others like him.

At the July meeting, Major Welborn told the soldiers they had disgraced those who had died for the Constitution, Specialist Hall said. When he finished, Major Welborn said, according to the statement: “I love you guys; I just want the best for you. One day you will see the truth and know what I mean.”

Major Welborn declined to comment beyond saying, “I’d love to tell my side of the story because it’s such a false story.”

But Timothy Feary, the other soldier at the meeting, said in an e-mail message: “Jeremy is telling the truth. I was there and witnessed everything.”

Read all of it here. / New York Times
Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

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Skeletor Is Gonna Be Watching You

Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in US
by Spencer S. Hsu

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

“There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans,” Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

“I think we’ve fully addressed anybody’s concerns,” Chertoff added in remarks last week to bloggers. “I think the way is now clear to stand it up and go warm on it.”

His statements marked a fresh determination to operate the department’s new National Applications Office as part of its counterterrorism efforts. The administration in May 2007 gave DHS authority to coordinate requests for satellite imagery, radar, electronic-signal information, chemical detection and other monitoring capabilities that have been used for decades within U.S. borders for mapping and disaster response.

But Congress delayed launch of the new office last October. Critics cited its potential to expand the role of military assets in domestic law enforcement, to turn new or as-yet-undeveloped technologies against Americans without adequate public debate, and to divert the existing civilian and scientific focus of some satellite work to security uses.

Democrats say Chertoff has not spelled out what federal laws govern the NAO, whose funding and size are classified. Congress barred Homeland Security from funding the office until its investigators could review the office’s operating procedures and safeguards. The department submitted answers on Thursday, but some lawmakers promptly said the response was inadequate.

“I have had a firsthand experience with the trust-me theory of law from this administration,” said Harman, citing the 2005 disclosure of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program, which included warrantless eavesdropping on calls and e-mails between people in the United States and overseas. “I won’t make the same mistake. . . . I want to see the legal underpinnings for the whole program.”

Thompson called DHS’s release Thursday of the office’s procedures and a civil liberties impact assessment “a good start.” But, he said, “We still don’t know whether the NAO will pass constitutional muster since no legal framework has been provided.”

DHS officials said the demands are unwarranted. “The legal framework that governs the National Applications Office . . . is reflected in the Constitution, the U.S. Code and all other U.S. laws,” said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner. She said its operations will be subject to “robust,” structured legal scrutiny by multiple agencies.

© 2008 The Washington Post

Source / Common Dreams

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Police State Amerikkka - Just Another Episode

Irish Anti-War Activist Refused Entry Into The United States
by Pat Flynn / April 9, 2008

AN anti-war activist, who was acquitted of causing damage to a US military jet at Shannon Airport in 2003, has been deported from the United States.

27 year old Damien Moran, an English teacher and former seminarian originally from Co Offaly, was refused entry to the US by Homeland Security agents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Sunday. Mr Moran had been invited to attend and speak at a conference against the U.S. Government’s missile defence plans.

Currently working as an English teacher in Warsaw, Poland, in November 2006, Moran was acquitted along with 4 other anti-war activists of causing €2m worth of damage to a US Navy logistics warplane shortly before the outbreak of the Iraq War.

In the early hours of February 3rd 2003, Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O’Reilly and Damien Moran entered a hangar at Shannon Airport and damaged the Navy jet. All five later went on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court charged with two counts each of causing criminal damage worth €2m to the aircraft.

However, after their trial collapsed twice they were acquitted at a third hearing in 2006. The jury returned a unanimous ‘Not Guilty’ verdict on both charges in the cases of all five accused. The jury accepted defence evidence that the accused honestly believed they were acting to save lives and property in Iraq and Ireland, and that their disarmament action was reasonable taking into consideration all the circumstances.

Speaking about his deportation from the US, Damien Moran said: “I was immediately detained and questioned by Homeland Security officers about our non-violent and legal action at Shannon in February 2003. The information the border authorities claimed to have was, that I was arrested for damaging a U.S. fighter jet at Shannon. I let them know that their database was out of date and that it should also read acquitted as an Irish jury had decided unanimously we had a lawful excuse to help save life and property in Iraq.”

Mr Moran added, “My mobile phone was seized and I was interrogated about the purpose of my trip and why I had damaged US military property. I had been invited to speak at a university in Colorado Springs and at a conference in Omaha on US militarism in Poland and Ireland. Homeland Security’s unjustified refusal to allow me to enter the US and meet family, speak with US citizens is just another example of how quasi-fascist the U.S. State apparatus has become.”

Reacting to the news, leading Cork based anti-war activist Dr Fintan Lane said, “I’m not surprised. The US administration under Bush is utterly paranoid. I suppose at least they didn’t attempt to snatch Damien and transport him to their torture camp in Cuba. The sad irony, of course, is that Damien gets booted out of the US for engaging in a peaceful protest against war and mass murder, while every day hundreds of US gunmen are allowed through Ireland on their way to kill people in the Middle East.”

© 2008 The Limerick Reader

Source

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The Raid on the Compound at Eldorado : A Rag Blogger Discussion

Investigators bused dozens of women and children from the polygamist compound in Eldorado, Texas, yesterday, as other law enforcement agents continued to search the compound for more evidence. They were taken to San Angelo, about 45 miles away. Photo by Tony Gutierrez/AP
Updated April 10, 2008 / The Rag Blog

The following comments were originally posted on the MDS/Austin listserv. There is no pretense towards a comprehensive analysis here; these are simply obvervations and reactions to the event and responses to those reactions. I do believe there are some important points made here and if you would like to add your opinion, please do so using the "Opinion" function below.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / April 9, 2008

Everyone knows that the goverment is a better and more loving parent than a heathen religious cult with barbaric attitudes toward sex and marriage.

It's just too bad the government wasn't around when the Mormons moved to Utah or they could have nipped these very same dangerous practices in the bud long ago, right?

Here is the Los Angeles Times story on the raid.

Roger Baker


Roger, I'm not so sure about the "bud" part, and I don't defend anyone here, but as between the government and the cult lies the right to a jury trial, and this is the foresight of the founders who distrusted big government, as you know.

Julie Howell


Well answer me this. How many of the Branch Davidians had the right to a jury trial when the government invaded their compound and killed most of them?

How many pot smokers have been locked up by the government to save them from their sins. And the list goes on.

I don't think the corporate morality of the government is likely to save many sinners compared to their close friends and community.

An exception to that is if you are a fundamentalist Christian, the Bush administration will open every possible door. Karl Rove figured out that angle a long time ago.

Roger Baker


The DEA undercover agent, Mr. Gonzales, warned the DEA/government against storming the Brach Davidian compound but the DEA -- Treasury Agents -- and all wanted the publicity more than they wanted to save any lives. They could have simply arrested Koresh while he was jogging or at the local cafe. In this latest case they could have investigated before moving in for the mass arrest, which is what it was.

The police will say there was an "Imminent Harm" situation but that doesn't answer the question of why they rounded everyone up and hauled them off. The head guy, Jeffs, was already in jail. Has the caller ever shown up? Who was the complaint against? Would not detaining that or those specific persons been enough?

What ever happened to "police work"? Careful police investigation would be too much work and not have given them the headlines. Then there is always the attitude that "we make the rules, we don't play by them". The ultimate power for control freaks is having no restraint on themselves while having the ability to kill anyone with impunity. Barbara Erenreich's book "Blood Rites" contains a lot of insight on this. The ability to terrorize a marginal group sends a message to the whole society, "You could be next".

Alan Pogue


That's exactly the point. The government can be very dangerous when it doubts it's ability to win a jury verdict. There is injustice committed in your name every day in courts of this country, but the ultimate arbiter IS the community. What I'm saying is, cult v. government is a false dichotomy here due to the right to a jury trial….

The factor y'all aren't taking into consideration is, this is not a police investigation, per se, it is a Child Protective Services (CPS) case. These people think they are god. They respect no authority. When they see "imminent harm," Katie bar the door. Forget "probable cause," "right to privacy," or "innocent until proven...." This is one of the most dangerous government agencies in terms of their high-handiness with people's personal lives.

Julie Howell


I'm with you all the way. The sad thing is that there are real cases of child, spouse and elderly abuse but the budget for investigators and psychological help is always being cut. But anyone can make an anonymous phone call and they will come down on you like a SWAT team. Be the first to call.

I'd like to see some investigation leading to solid evidence before anyone is arrested for anything. So I was speaking to why the "authorities" are often disinclined to do a professional job. Where does the sadism come in. If the obvious job for a sexual predator is "camp counselor,” "religious leader" and such then the obvious job for the sadist is "police and prison guards" and such. A good psychological screening could be put into place if one were wanted.

The problem for society is that no one is effectively policing the guardians. Those who do not mind pushing people around will gravitate to jobs that allow them to push people around. I even see this at self-policing left events. The tendency to abuse power is universal. In Austin police cadets used to be given the ink blot (what do you see?) test but that was dropped in favor of a simple/cheap multiple choice test that most could figure out. The cops (of various kinds) are supposed to channel their sadistic tendencies toward the disenfranchised so no one who "matters" will care. If a good system were put in place to curb/modify the power of the police (of all kinds) then the powerful would be less so.

I'm mad at MADD but they only wish they had the power of CPS.

The difficulty, as always, is organizing people to create the new system.

Alan Pogue


What makes this case different is the fact this is a Child Protective Services (CPS) case. These people think they are god and their mission is to make folks behave. They are the ones who took the "outcry" call and organized all the response. This is one of the most dangerous state agencies in terms of its high-handedness and disregard for all civil liberties. Judges do anything they ask.

Especially at the outset of a case. And of course the rationale is, better safe than sorry. CPS is the one behind this case and they have never heard of "innocent until proven ...."

Julie Howell

i have thought long and hard about how to reply to this issue. i spend most of my work time representing either children or parents in child abuse/neglect cases. i deal w/cps on a daily basis. my experience with them is therefore from a different perspective.

does cps have some ridiculous policies? you bet. does it overstep its boundaries at times? of course. i often fight them tooth and nail. other times i am in alignment with them. i am all too versed in the spectrum of child endangerment. i have represented hundreds of children and scores of parents. i will not go into any specifics. let me just say that these are real life situations that are uglier than anything most of us have ever seen or lived through.

i have read the affidavit that was the basis for the ruling that allowed cps to go into the compound. there are very serious allegations contained in the affidavit that sound quite plausible to me. i think what cps did in this instance is probably a good thing. it is not okay in my book for girls to be raised from birth to be the sacrificial lambs for procreation with an older man. that is what is happening. it is not about religion. screw religion. someone needs to hold the men in this group accountable for their behavior. it may seem like a drastic way to do it because it is.

the group is represented by a lawyer from jerry goldstein's office. so they have the best lawyers that money can buy. each child will be appointed an attorney ad litem & a guardian ad litem. the attorney represents what the child wants if the child is old enough to direct representation. the guardian represents the child's best interests.

so the children will be protected.

child abuse cuts across all racial, gender, religious, and socio-economic strata. yes poverty and lack of education make it even worse. social services in texas are of course almost non-existent. that is a much bigger picture issue. i deal with this every day. i often joke that i live in cps world.

i think we all need to be less knee-jerk in our reactions.

lori jo hansel


The fact that the sexual abuse went on with the consent of the community is what I am having trouble wrapping my mind around. And the scale of the problem - I just read that there are 416 children that were removed. I'd say your chances for being an advocate for one or more of these kids is pretty high.

Fontaine Maverick


A few thoughts about mind wrapping:

Just like the women in the burkas, there are women who appreciate life in the functional state of polygamy. Look, they get to have a family of many women and children as opposed to one man per woman which quite often can be very abusive. If there are many women per one man, they can manage to fly under his radar most of the time.

If the sexual "duty" is the abuse, when it is divided among dozens of women it isn't all that frequent. I'm sure it is excessively onerous for the young and nubile women who the head honcho thinks require impregnation, to keep the family growing. He probably justifies it in that motherhood provides them with their purpose in life--taking care of their babies and young children.

As they age and new ones take their place the sex drys up. The community of women and children develops close ties as though members of one huge family. There is a kibbutzen quality to it. Imagine endlessly being away at summer camp.

I worry for how all these children will be absorbed into the larger community. Who will support them? Who will provide basic food, shelter and clothing if the big daddy of them all is in prison? Did he really father all 400 or were some procured in other ways? I'm sure the story will continue to unfold for years to come.

It kind of reminds me of that convent of cloistered nuns who lived over in Tarrytown in a righteously valuable manse while they were on welfare, having no man to provide--except god who saw no reason to waste money on them. After all they had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience--they became brides of Christ. Since He isn't around anymore they became perfect candidates for state aid.

There are reasons that the practice has gone on uninterupted in places like Utah for decades on end. Providing all these women and children with alternative life stations in the larger community is going to be tricky. Will there be a human version of a pet adoption shelter? Group homes funded by the state? Arranged marriages?

Texas takes it on. Wow. It could have been worse. It could have been the feds with tanks and firepower--ATF, FBI with orders coming out of the AG's office in DC.

Frances Morey


Yes, they may have to go as far as Austin to get 832 lawyers, as every client has a conflict with every other client. The problem here is getting the clients to use the options the law provides. No matter how good the lawyer, the client runs the case.

Julie Howell


On further reflection, I agree that I should have been less knee-jerk about this issue.

It is an important topic, because I think the US global empire is breaking down and I think this trend will gradually lead to many more religious cults and localized community reorganization attempts.

The raid on this FLDS cult instantly brought to my mind the botched government attack on the Branch Davidians, which almost everyone can now agree was a horrible mistake. The whole concept of government-imposed morality reminds me of Bush destroying Iraq in the name of bringing democracy.

The real objection to this particular religion is that it does seem to be socially engineered to allow a few older males to appropriate young females as wives, which drives out younger males. One of the women wrote a scathing indictment of her experience titled "Escape."

Here is a link.

I think the ultimate litmus test may whether a majority of the cult members were happy and might wish to go back to the security and support of the cult, as alien as that might seem to the outside world. It might be that a majority were contented, as the Branch Davidians apparently were. I am most curious about where their money came from, but I'm sure the mediaand pundits will soon be all over this issue from every angle.

As strange and repressive as this cult may seem to mainstream America, I believe we are living within a political system and economy that is just as crazy right now.

Instead of a few cult elders running things for their own benefit in a commune, we now have a tiny number of billionaires acting to push the great majority of humans off the edge of an environmental cliff, and virtually assuring mass misery through over-population of the planet in the next century. The corporate empire is destroying the planet through global warming, killing off nature and countless brethren species, and assuring human misery on a vast scale in the name of greedy unlimited profit.

I think it is hypocritical to go after a religious cult for arguable abuses, while being blind to the similar problems that our civilization and culture are creating on a planetary scale, however
normal we may consider our current policies according to the conventional thinking.

Has anyone read the "World Scientist's Warning to Humanity," signed by a majority of the world's Nobel Prize winning scientists about a decade ago? Our current policies amount to a short-sighted economic and political cult of power junkies, leveraged with fossil fuel based
technology, applied on a global scale -- and at gunpoint. Let us try to look at these things in perspective.

Roger Baker


Marci Hamilton from the Washington Post did a long and comprehensive Q & A about the subject of these cults, with all of the social consequences and legal problems. She mentions the possibility that some of the clients (young mothers who have no education or job skills) may not cooperate. You have the problem of the child/wives having to testify against the cult "fathers".

She also talks a lot about the young boys who are kicked out of the tribe to make room for the older men to have all of the women to themselves. These boys are simply dumped on the streets. It's tragic. If I had any illusions about this being a "freedom of choice" issue, I am now cured.

Here is Marci Hamilton's story.

Fontaine Maverick

There is no bright line right and wrong here.

The government is, as usual, overstepping.

But the fate of those children is hard to justify. The girls get to be sex machines from puberty and the boys get thrown out as veal is produced from dairy farms....

What is the significance of "consent" among kids who have no knowledge of the possibilities?

Isn't this a natural consequence of home-schooling? Isn't the whole point of home-schooling to avoid the contamination of the dominant culture? Or to avoid the discomfort to parents in having to put their ideas in direct competition with the dominant culture with the stakes being the loyalty of their children?

No easy answers.

Steve Russell

See The Raid at Eldorado : Two Views on The Rag Blog

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The Raid at Eldorado : Two Views

The FLDS temple at Eldorado
Photo / Randy Mankin / Austin Chronicle.

[Look for a discussion by Rag Bloggers about the Raid on the El Dorado compound, to be posted soon.]

Affidavit: Polygamist Ranch Rife with Sexual Abuse
By Wade Goodwyn / April 8, 2008 ·

A culture of child sexual abuse existed at a West Texas ranch run by polygamists that was searched by police last week, state child welfare officials allege in court documents released Tuesday.

The raid – which resulted in more than 400 youngsters being taken into protective custody – occurred after a 16-year-old girl reported she was beaten and raped. The documents also provide new details about her conversations with police.

An affidavit filed by state officials depicts a religious culture rife with sexual abuse of young teenage girls. Texas Child welfare officials allege that for generations, women in the polygamist group were taught to prepare themselves and their daughters for sexual relations with older men as soon as they reached puberty.

"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," stated the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, an investigative supervisor with the Department of Family and Protective Services.

The court documents also describe a desperate 16-year-old girl's whispered calls to authorities. Using a borrowed cell phone, she told of being raped by her 50-year-old "spiritual husband," and then beaten until her ribs were broken and she had to be taken to an emergency room. The girl, who is alleged to have given birth to a child at the age of 15, has still not been located by authorities.

Patrick Crimmins of Texas Child Protective Services says, "That investigation determined that there was either abuse or neglect that already occurred, or abuse or neglect that could be occurring in the particular household that we were investigating. This household happened to be very, very massive and contained not two or three or four children, but more than 400."

The occupation and search began Friday, and the Associated Press reported that at least two FBI agents were seen entering the back entrance of the compound's 80-foot-high temple on Tuesday.

The homes at the ranch run by the polygamist group, known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, consist of large three-story buildings, each with scores of bedrooms. Outbuildings are scattered around the ranch, and the gleaming white temple sits in the center.

The women and children who lived there had been virtually isolated from direct contact with people outside the faith. They're now being housed in former Army barracks inside a historic Western Fort built in 1867, which is surrounded by TV trucks, white dishes pointed at the sky.

The raid and removal of children was unprecedented in scope, but not in context. During a standoff with U.S. officials in 1993, David Koresh released all of the children from the Branch Davidian religious sect's complex in Waco, Texas, that were not his own. But the action in El Dorado is on a scale many times the size of that intervention.

To remove and take custody of 401 children from different families, the state must have cause. A state judge has granted Child Protective Services temporary custody, which gives the agency 14 days to put together its evidence and go to court.

Because the state took every female child from the ranch, it is likely to argue that the parents' polygamist beliefs constitute jeopardy for under-age sexual abuse. Lawyers for the polygamist group filed a motion this weekend protesting that the search warrant was too broad and too vague, thus unconstitutional.

A news conference Tuesday became a little testy as some reporters asked Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner what right the state had to take so many children from so many families.

"You're ripping families apart and you're not explaining to us what is the real reason for it," one reporter asked.

Meisner replied, "I can tell you it that it was certainly enough that a district judge in the state of Texas determined that these children were at risk, and judges in Texas don't take those accusations lightly."

Merrill Jessop, a presiding elder of the polygamist group, also complained about the children's removal.

"There needs to be a public outcry. The hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia and Germany," Jessop told the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Two members of the polygamist group were arrested at the ranch earlier this week, one charged with interfering with police and the other with destroying evidence.

For audio, go Here.
Source. / All Things Considered / NPR / The Rag Blog

Texas FLDS raid has odious smell to it.
By Prairie Fire Journal / April 8, 2008

I'm not a supporter of religion of any kind, but I can't help but feel that there's something really rotten smelling about the recent raid on the FLDS ranch outside of El Dorado, Texas. Was the raid really about possible child abuse and underage marriages, or is there more to it than that?

It's no secret that the State of Texas has been itching for a confrontation with the FLDS ever since their arrival in Texas in 2003. The problem wasn't with their isolationist or patriarchal behavior. If that was the case, then every Christian fundamentalist in the state would have to be rounded up. Mennonites in my part of the world require their girls and women to wear funny costumes, while the boys and men wear regular clothes.

I'm sure that the FLDS doesn't have the market cornered when it comes to strict patriarchal religious dogma. If allegations of child abuse are grounds for raiding a church's property and executing a wholesale roundup of all of its members, then why aren't all the Catholic churches and schools in America padlocked and all their occupants warehoused? Why aren't SWAT teams sent into Amish enclaves to rescue those women and children who are subjected to a harsh patriarchal lifestyle?

The state's aversion to the practice of polygamy is what this is all about. The allegations of abuse are just the excuse used by the state to justify this broad use of police powers. The protectors of traditional marriage had to take decisive action. Is it just a mere coincidence that some of the buses seen hauling away FLDS women and children belonged to the local First Baptist Church?

What about the use of Baptist volunteers to help with the mass roundup? Is the State of Texas so strapped for resources that it was necessary for CPS to use manpower and transportation provided by a Baptist church?

What about the mysterious phone call allegedly originating from the ranch by a 16-year-old girl? CPS has no clue as to what happened to the girl, if, in fact the call actually came from the ranch.

After rounding up 416 children and 139 women, CPS claims that so far it has found 15 possible cases of abuse. That's as many people as live in my small West Texas community, and I imagine that if you rounded up this whole town you could find 15 cases of possible abuse. As for teen pregancies, show me one town in Texas that doesn't have teen pregnancies and I'll show you a town that's completely celibate. For all intents and purposes, this police raid amounted to a large scale invasion of a small town.

Perhaps what most people don't know is the fact that the Texas Legislature changed the marriage law in 2005 concerning the minimum age at which a parent could give consent for a child to marry. The new law raised the age from 14 to 16 and made violations of the law a third-degree felony. The primary reason for this legislation was the arrival of the FLDS in Texas. Up until that time, the state had no qualms about 14 year olds getting married.

In conclusion, I'm not a supporter of the FLDS, child abuse or underage marriges. But neither do I support heavy-handed police-state tactics as it appears the state has used in this instance.

Many questions remain unresolved. The DPS and the CPS are keeping the public and the press at a distance, just as they did in Waco. Both agencies have been evasive in providing information, and are selective in what information they do provide in order to ensure maximum shock value and cover for their actions. After the Waco tragedy, we shouldn't trust the government to give us the truth.

txwordpounder

Source.
The Rag Blog

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Moon over Miami : Spyin' on My Love and Me...

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), aka Spy in the Sky.

He SEES you when you're sleeping. He KNOWS when you're awake. He KNOWS if you've been bad or good. So be good for goodness sake...

Spy-in-the-sky drone sets sights on Miami
By Tom Brown /Reuters / March 26, 2008

MIAMI - Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.

A small pilotless drone manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and "staring" using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to make its debut soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.

If use of the drone wins Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14-pound (6.3 kg) drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting.

"Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes," said police department spokesman Juan Villalba.

"We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission," he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with "barricaded subjects."

Miami-Dade police are not alone, however.

Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the country have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions.

Known in the aerospace industry as UAVs, for unmanned aerial vehicles, drones have been under development for decades in the United States.

The CIA acknowledges that it developed a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the "Insectohopter" for laser-guided spy operations as long ago as the 1970s.

And other advanced work on robotic flyers has clearly been under way for quite some time.

"The FBI is experimenting with a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles," said Marcus Thomas, an assistant director of the bureau's Operational Technology Division.

"At this point they have been used mainly for search and rescue missions," he added. "It certainly is an up-and-coming technology and the FBI is researching additional uses for UAVs."

SAFETY, PRIVACY CONCERNS

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well.

This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.

Citing numerous safety concerns, the FAA -- the government agency responsible for regulating civil aviation -- has been slow in developing procedures for the use of UAVs by police departments.

"You don't want one of these coming down on grandma's windshield when she's on her way to the grocery store," said Doug Davis, the FAA's program manager for unmanned aerial systems.

He acknowledged strong interest from law enforcement agencies in getting UAVs up and running, however, and said the smaller aircraft particularly were likely to have a "huge economic impact" over the next 10 years.

Getting clearance for police and other civilian agencies to fly can't come soon enough for Billy Robinson, chief executive of Cyber Defense Systems Inc, a small start-up company in St. Petersburg, Florida. His company makes an 8-pound (3.6 kg) kite-sized UAV that was flown for a time by police in Palm Bay, Florida, and in other towns, before the FAA stepped in.

"We've had interest from dozens of law enforcement agencies," said Robinson. "They (the FAA) are preventing a bunch of small companies such as ours from becoming profitable," he said.

Some privacy advocates, however, say rules and ordinances need to be drafted to protect civil liberties during surveillance operations.

"There's been controversies all around about putting up surveillance cameras in public areas," said Howard Simon, Florida director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Technological developments can be used by law enforcement in a way that enhances public safety," he said. "But every enhanced technology also contains a threat of further erosion of privacy."

(Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Michael Christie and Eddie Evans)

Source.

From Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

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Signs of a Sick Society

This is also a well-known characteristic of fascist governments.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog



Quaker teacher fired for changing loyalty oath
Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008

California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word "nonviolently" in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.

Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.

"I don't think it was fair at all," said Kearney-Brown. "All they care about is my name on an unaltered loyalty oath. They don't care if I meant it, and it didn't seem connected to the spirit of the oath. Nothing else mattered. My teaching didn't matter. Nothing."

A veteran public school math teacher who specializes in helping struggling students, Kearney-Brown, 50, had signed the oath before - but had modified it each time.

She signed the oath 15 years ago, when she taught eighth-grade math in Sonoma. And she signed it again when she began a 12-year stint in Vallejo high schools.

Each time, when asked to "swear (or affirm)" that she would "support and defend" the U.S. and state Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Kearney-Brown inserted revisions: She wrote "nonviolently" in front of the word "support," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm." All were to conform with her Quaker beliefs, she said.

The school districts always accepted her modifications, Kearney-Brown said.

But Cal State East Bay wouldn't, and she was fired on Thursday.

Modifying the oath "is very clearly not permissible," the university's attorney, Eunice Chan, said, citing various laws. "It's an unfortunate situation. If she'd just signed the oath, the campus would have been more than willing to continue her employment."

Modifying oaths is open to different legal interpretations. Without commenting on the specific situation, a spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown said that "as a general matter, oaths may be modified to conform with individual values." For example, court oaths may be modified so that atheists don't have to refer to a deity, said spokesman Gareth Lacy.

Kearney-Brown said she could not sign an oath that, to her, suggested she was agreeing to take up arms in defense of the country.

"I honor the Constitution, and I support the Constitution," she said. "But I want it on record that I defend it nonviolently."

The trouble began Jan. 17, a little more than a week after she started teaching at the Hayward campus. Filling out her paperwork, she drew an asterisk on the oath next to the word "defend." She wrote: "As long as it doesn't require violence."

The secretary showed the amended oath to a supervisor, who said it was unacceptable, Kearney-Brown recalled.

Shortly after receiving her first paycheck, Kearney-Brown was told to come back and sign the oath.

This time, Kearney-Brown inserted "nonviolently," crossed out "swear," and circled "affirm."

That's when the university sought legal advice.

Read the rest here.

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