Leslie Fish's Blog, page 23

UNDERGROUND WIND

I got word awhile back that my old college roommate Mary had died of a sudden heart attack, and since she’s now beyond any government’s reach, I can safely tell her story.  Understand that all this happened nearly 50 years ago, so the principals are all dead, or far beyond the statute of limitations, or living in another country.  I daresay the boat is now gone, too.
We were in college at the University of Michigan at the height of the Vietnam War, and the protests against it, working particularly to help boys escape the draft.  Yes, boys: in those days, legal age was 21 – but draft age was 18.  We got involved when our student newspaper did an expose on some professors who were in the habit of taking down the names of male students whose grades slipped to C or below, and sending them to the local draft board.  We connected with the draft-resistance people, and Mary got us into the definitely-illegal business of getting boys whose Number Had Come Up over the border into Canada.  Since I was taking Art classes, and using the techniques thereof to forge ID cards for the escapees, I had very little idea what Mary was up to…
…Right up until the Friday afternoon she dashed into our room and said: “You’ve got to help me.  There are four ‘packages’ I’ve got to ship tonight, and my usual buddy is in the hospital.”  Having a rough idea what that meant, I agreed to help.  I grabbed up four fresh IDs, we threw on our cold-weather clothes, ran down to the corner where a friend in a nondescript car picked us up, and took off.  The drive was long, and after awhile I realized that we were bypassing Detroit.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“The lake shore,” said Mary.  “You don’t need to know exactly where.”
“I thought we were going to drive them across the Ambassador Bridge,” I gasped, knowing that was the quickest way from Detroit to the city of Windsor, Canada.
“We can’t do that anymore,” Mary explained.  “The cops have taken to searching the crossing cars and busses, on every bridge across the rivers.  We’re going straight across the lake.”
I gulped, knowing that the lake she meant was Lake Saint Clair, and this was autumn.
To pause for a brief geography lesson, Lake Saint Clair is the little lake connecting the St. Clair and Detroit rivers, which in turn connect Lake Huron and Lake Erie.  Detroit is at the southern end of the lake, where the Detroit River begins, with Windsor on the other side.  The lake is less than 30 miles across, but it’s still part of the most heavily trafficked waterway in the world.
“How?” I managed.
“Sailboat,” she said.  “A 20-foot sloop, very easy to steer.”
“Uhuh.  Why me?” I asked.  “I don’t know anything about sailboats.”
“You’re reliable,” Mary ticked off on her fingers, “You’re a strong swimmer, and you can at least paddle a canoe.  The Canadian Indians used to paddle canoes full of whiskey clear across Lake Superior during Prohibition.”
This didn’t reassure me. 
We pulled off the highway, drove through some very upscale neighborhoods, and down to the shore by a tree-lined road that could have been anywhere between Grosse Pointe Farms and Saint Clair Shores.  We stopped by a short wooden dock, with nothing else around but a few tree-flanked well-to-do houses, five people and a small sailboat, just at sunset.  Out on the broad water, I could see a distant ore-freighter, heading northeast. 
The wind was light but steady, flickering the furled sails on the trim little boat.  I knew nothing of sailboats, but I could tell that she looked…neat, is the best way to put it.  Her hull was painted dark green, her mast was of dark wood, and the lines I could see were slender and looked to be made of something other than common rope.
There was a gray-haired man walking about on the deck, frowning thoughtfully, tugging at the lines here and there.  He straightened up as he saw us get out of the car.  Mary walked down the dock, stepped onto the boat and started talking to him quietly.  The only words I heard him say were: “Bring her back in once piece, dammit.” 
I turned to the four other people on the dock – clearly the ‘packages’ – and began handing out the false ID cards.  The first of the lot was a stocky young man who was having trouble keeping tears out of his eyes.  The second was a skinny Black kid who looked as if a strong wind would blow him away.  The third was an even skinnier White boy who didn’t look a day older than 13, but had a new wedding ring on his finger.  The fourth, who wouldn’t let go of the third one’s hand, was a painfully young girl – also wearing a new wedding ring, and clearly pregnant.  I had to shuffle the IDs a bit to give her one with a gender-neutral name.  One didn’t ask escapees why they were willing to give up their citizenship to get away from the draft, but I could make some good guesses.
“These are school IDs,” I explained.  “Memorize them.  Hide all your other IDs, and put these in your wallets.  You’ll have to get better ID when you reach Canada, but these will do if anyone stops us during the crossing.  We’ll say we’re a bunch of students, taking the weekend off to go sailing.”
At that point Mary and the gray-haired man came up off the boat.  The man walked away, not looking back, but Mary came up and gave all of us life-jackets, and me a quick list of the parts of the boat and how to work them.  It soon became obvious that Mary was going to sit at the tiller, and I’d have the job of moving the sails around.  The others were to sit in the hold and keep still.  “It’s going to be a long night,” she said, as she moved the escapees into the hold, “Even with a good wind.”
“What wind have we got?” I asked, dutifully untying the boat from the dock as the last of the sun slid under the horizon.
“Due east, and due to pick up,” said Mary.  “Call it the draft-dodgers’ wind.”
With that, she gave me a paddle so I could sidle the boat away from the dock.  I was surprised at how easily that 20-foot boat could be moved with a single paddle.  Then came more orders on how to raise and set the sails, while she worked the tiller.  The work was complicated and laborious, but again, I was amazed at how responsive the little boat was.  Finally I took two small lamps and hung them out on the bow and stern, and we set out into the dark, running – as Mary said – before the wind.
The wind did indeed pick up.  The sails filled and grew difficult to manage.  Twice the boom-crutch got knocked into the water, and I had to fish it back by the line tied to it while Mary swore at the delay.  Except for the wind, I had no idea where we were headed.  Except for the dim and tiny light from the lamps, and intermittent gleams from the three-quarter moon, I couldn’t see a thing beyond the boat.  Mary warned us that we were drawing near the shipping channel, so I kept constant watch for any lights on the water that would have meant another boat;  some very big ships cruised these waters, and not just the Coast Guard.  I trusted that Mary was steering by her compass, and knew where we were. 
I did bother to ask what speed we were making, to which Mary gleefully replied “Almost 17 knots.”  Knowing how wide Lake Saint Clair is, I did a rough calculation as to how long the trip would take us, and felt a little more reassured.
That’s when we saw the ship lights.
There were a lot of them, and they were big.  There was one ship directly ahead of us, going northeast, another beyond that heading southwest, and a third coming right toward us from the north.  Mary swore fiercely and yelled at me to take the tiller, which I did, and she got up and ran to work the sails.  I hauled right and left as she ordered, and the boat turned fiercely.  This shoved the passengers around, and the girl began to wail.  Mary yelled for quiet, and got it, and tied the sails down. 
I saw then that she’d steered us out of sight of the oncoming ship, crossing the wake close behind the northeast-bound ship, and set to likewise pass behind the southwest-bound one.  The ship’s wake made the sailboat buck, bouncing the passengers around again.  The stocky boy announced that he was going to be sick, and I snapped at him, “Over the rail!”  The girl started crying again, though quietly, and her young husband murmured softly to her.  The Black kid tried to sing jauntily about “Round and round, and-a up and down” to keep his courage up, but he was off-key.  I heard the stocky boy retching, and hoped he’d thought to do it downwind.
Mary shushed them all, a little more gently this time, and explained.  The sailboat, she said, was all wood – not enough metal for radar or sonar to notice – and this had advantages and disadvantages.  The advantage, especially in the dark, was that nobody could see us and report what they’d seen to any government agency.  Likewise, the ship being without engines, nobody could hear us if we kept ourselves quiet.  The disadvantage was that, since nobody could see us, a ship could run right over us in the dark.  The little running lights were just enough to make us technically legal, so if anyone did see us they’d be unlikely to think twice about it.  They weren’t enough to give warning to any of the big ships, such as ore freighters.  We’d have to do all the ducking and dodging ourselves.  Fortunately, our boat was agile enough to manage it.  While the kids were thinking over the implications of that, Mary went back to the tiller and I moved up to the bow to watch for more lights.
There were more of them, all through the next hour.  Fortunately none of them were close enough to make us zig and zag so fiercely again, and the wind stayed reliably steady.  The only real problem we ran into was the passengers needing bathroom services, and we had only an empty coffee-can.
When the ship-lights thinned out, Mary checked her watch and guessed that we were approaching her landing-point on the Canadian shore (remember, this was long before GPS locators).  Now I looked for dim stationary lights, far apart, and eventually I saw them.  Mary traded places with me again and went to lower the sails.  Then followed a miserable hour of tacking back and forth along the shore, looking for a particular light.  “Look for a campfire,” Mary said, and we all looked, but saw nothing.  Eventually Mary decided we were too far north, so we turned and floated on the current for a couple miles – for which I was very grateful, since my arms were about to give up. 
Finally we saw the campfire, on a narrow stretch of pebbly beach.  We lowered the sails completely, broke out the paddles – and I recruited the stocky boy to help – and rowed toward the fire until the boat’s hull scraped on the pebbles.  A half-dozen people left the campfire and came running down to the water to secure the boat and help the escapees off onto land.  Our passengers needed the help;  they were all wobbly on their legs.
For that matter, so were we.  Mary secured the anchors, and broke out two sleeping-bags.  “Get some rest,” she said.  “We’re going to have to sail back again, remember.  It’ll be easier by daylight, but we don’t know what the wind will do.”
While I was gratefully spreading out my sleeping-bag, one of the receiving crew brought us a picnic basket full of sandwiches and thermos bottles of hot herb tea.  By the time we’d finished, the receiving crew had vanished -- after shoveling and raking away every sign that they’d ever been there.  We rolled up in our sleeping-bags and got to sleep before dawn.
By the time we woke, it was nearly noon and the wind had shifted;  now it was light and northwestward.  I was stiff with cramps, and I suspect Mary was too, but we crawled out of the sleeping-bags, hauled in the anchors, broke out the paddles again and pried the boat off the pebbles.  50 yards out, we put up the sails and started back toward Michigan.
It was a much slower cruise, going home.  There were more ships, large and small, but plenty of time to see and avoid them.  There were also many sailboats, much like ours.  Nobody paid us much attention, and we didn’t lose the boom-crutch even once. 
It took only an hour to find our original launch-site, which showed me that Mary had sailed this route before, but I didn’t ask.  The gray-haired man was waiting at the dock, eager to help tie up the boat and inspect it for damage, and very relieved to find no harm done except some scratches in the paint.  He and Mary went off for a brief talk while I sat down to wait for our ride back to school.  It occurred to me that I still had a whole day to study for Monday classes, and that seemed incredible.
In later years I told this story a few times, but I mislabeled our actual route.  That was really the only time I sailed with Mary on the draft-dodger wind, but I don’t doubt she made many other trips.  I eventually wrote a song about it, which disguised the details even further.  I’ve often wondered if the old Who song, “Wooden Ships”, wasn’t a vague reference to the liberation sailboat system, for I doubt if Mary was the only such sailor.
What I do know is that the war eventually ended without any government agency catching, or possibly even learning about, the little sailboats that all their diligence couldn’t see or hear.       
            And there is no such thing as outdated technology.            Knowledge forgotten puts freedom in sight.            We sail out unnoticed by radar and sonar,            And take you to freedom tonight. 

An Open Letter to Glenn Beck

Dear Mr. Beck:
You and I couldn’t be further apart politically, but I’ve always respected you as a historian.  I’ve always enjoyed your tales of the obscure and remarkable corners of history, and what they imply for the modern age.  Therefore I was delighted to pick up your book, “Dreamers and Deceivers”, especially when I learned that it had a chapter – “The Muckraker” – about the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, which I know some odd things about.
First, my bona fides.  Back in the late 1970s, when I was an idealistic youngster – having supported the Civil Rights movement, the Anti-Vietnam War movement and the Feminist movement – I grew interested in the Radical Labor movement, moved to Chicago and joined the Industrial Workers of the World.  Yes, the Wobblies: they’re still alive, and growing today.  I became well acquainted with some of the great Old Timers:  Fred Thompson, the great Wobbly historian;  Ottalie Markholt, the investigative bookkeeper and organizer;  and the ancient Joe Vlad – who was there.  More about Joe later.  I also had access to the Wobbly headquarters’ library, which contained some surprising books.  I still have my old Wobbly membership number, X306686.  I worked for several years as an editor and cartoonist of the Wobbly newspaper, The Industrial Worker, and as a musician and songwriter for the union band, “The Dehorn Crew”.  Eventually I took an offer to move to California and work full-time as a writer and musician, but I always maintained my contacts with the old union.  That’s the main source of my information.
But anyway, on to your story.  Upon reading it, I was disappointed to see that you’d gotten your information from the usual sources, including the Socialist ones, with nothing from the Anarchist side of the story – and remember, Sacco and Vanzetti were Anarchists, not Socialists.  The divide between the two ideologies had already started with the Russian revolution.  It grew wider with the Kronstadt Revolt (which a lot of the Wobblies witnessed), wider still with Trotsky’s betrayal of Nestor Makhno, and eventually became an impassable gulf when the Communists betrayed the Republican alliance in the Spanish Civil War.  I find it hard to understand why political researchers still assume that the Socialists and Anarchists are always allied.  You really should have talked to the Wobblies.
Here’s what they could have told you.  In 1920 on the east coast, including Boston, the Italian wing of the labor movement was primarily Anarchist, and of an explosive temperament.  The only radicals more fiercely active were (and are) the Spanish;  in Spain they had bomb-throwing Liberals, if you please!  Now the Anarchists were divided on the subject of money;  there were those who claimed that the majority of money had been stolen from the working class and – since money was needed to further the revolution – it was only just to steal it back.  Then there were those who claimed that money itself should be abolished and replaced with a system of labor/barter chits, or IOUs.  Sacco and Vanzetti – and the Wobblies – fell into the second camp (largely because they had connections with farming co-ops out in the countryside that could barter food).  Still, there definitely were Italian Anarchists who were willing to commit armed robberies and throw bombs – though not that many of them.  A couple of them definitely could have committed the robbery at the Slater-Morrill shoe factory.  Then again, a gang of completely non-political robbers could have done the deed, leaving the Italian Anarchists to take the blame.  To this day, nobody knows who really did it.
Now, one thing the Anarchists were (understandably) short on was competent lawyers.  When the police decided that Sacco and Vanzetti, because of their prominence in the Boston Italian Anarchist movement, simply hadto be the perpetrators, where were the defendants to get a lawyer?
Enter Frederick Moore, Socialist – and from a wealthy enough family to have gotten him through law school.  He had also worked for the railroad companies, before making enough money and contacts to establish his own office in Los Angeles.  There were also those who said he left the railroad’s employ because he was “quarrelsome” and “opinionated” and “wouldn’t get along with anybody”.  Not all of this could be blamed on his taste for cocaine.  In any case, sometime during his years in Los Angeles he became a Socialist – but of a peculiar sort. 
He was the sort of rich Socialist/Communist whom the Wobblies came to call a “Parlor Pink”.  That is, someone wealthy enough that s/he’ll never have to join with others to contest with a boss over wages – in fact, will never have to worry about income in their whole life – and who joins a radical political movement for purely psychological reasons.  Now there have been rich radical sympathizers who have done a lot of good – primarily because they were willing to listento the people directly involved in the problems and conflicts, and don’t assume that their superior education automatically gives them superior minds and a superior right to steer the “peasants” in the right direction.  Then there’s the other sort, best typified today by characters like Bill Ayers, who assume that a revolution is coming and they should be the kingmakers, if not the kings, thereof.  Fred Moore was that sort.
He gained his contacts with the Radical Labor movement when an acquaintance of his, who happened to be a Wobbly, was arrested for making a pro-union speech (which was illegal then) in San Diego.  Moore, upon learning that there were hardly any lawyers willing to defend union organizers, saw an opportunity.  He didn’t manage to get his friend off on the charge, but got him a sentence much reduced from what the police wanted.  The word spread, via the Wobblies, and Moore became the lawyer for labor organizers to hire.  He didn’t make much money at it, because his clients were usually dirt-poor and their struggling unions couldn’t raise much from their entire memberships, but oh, did he become famous.  His clients, often recent immigrants who understood little or nothing about American law, would always follow his advice – which gave him a considerable sense of power.  He successfully defended Giovanitti and Ettor, scapegoats of the Lawrence strike, and Charles Krieger in the Tulsa Standard Oil frame-up, after which his fame went nation-wide.
It was at this stage that Moore learned about the Sacco/Vanzetti case, and agreed to defend the men.  It should have been a slam-dunk defense;  neither man had a criminal record, both had good alibis, and the witnesses to the shooting and robbery only got a brief look at the robbers from a second-floor window (at a time when no man with any self-respect went outdoors without a hat, usually a broad-brimmed fedora), and neither of them knew the defendants on sight.  Even the main witness, who had obviously been carefully coached by the police, admitted when asked about Sacco: “I wouldn’t say it was him, but he’s a dead image of him.”  Any good lawyer should have torn those witnesses’ statements to shreds in short order – say, with a lineup of other Italian men resembling Sacco – not to mention clearing Vanzetti easily.  There were witnesses who saw Vanzetti in Plymouth, selling fish, at the time of the robbery, and others who saw Sacco getting a professional photo taken of himself and his wife in Boston at the time.  The only retort the prosecution had was that all the witnesses were Italians, and therefore couldn’t be trusted.
Ah, but there wasa witness to Sacco’s whereabouts that day who wasn’t Italian.  Remember Joe Vlad?  Joe was quite young when he came to America from Hungary in 1901, and he joined the Wobblies soon after they were founded in 1905.  He was living in Boston at the time, and often hung around at the Italian Social Club, which was a Wobbly/Anarchist watering-hole, because he liked the discussions and also preferred wine to beer.  He recalled clearly that he saw, and talked to, Nicola Sacco on that day in the Italian Social Club in Boston, and that Sacco had left to go get his photo taken with his wife less than ten minutes before the robbery took place – clean across the city, in Braintree.  No way in hell could Sacco have gotten to the robbery in time.
So Joe Vlad asked around, and looked up the address of the hotel where Moore was staying, and went to the courthouse, and tried everything he could think of to tell Moore his story and offer himself as a witness.  Well, Moore refused to see him, left orders not to admit him at the office, and used various schemes to keep him out of the courthouse – even unto getting Joe arrested, but then getting the charges dropped before Joe got to court so that there was no chance that Joe could hang out in the courthouse and run into anyone who would listen to him.  So Joe never got his chance to give his evidence to the jury.  Fifty years later, he was still telling the story.
So, why didn’t Moore want Joe Vlad’s testimony?  Why didn’t he use a simple lineup to show that the witnesses could easily have been mistaken?  Why didn’t he lean on the witnesses to reveal how the police had leaned on them?  Why did he sabotage his own case?
It was because he was a Parlor Pink, and he had an Agenda. 
As a Socialist, Moore had no love for Anarchists.  He saw them, as Stalin saw intellectuals, as “useful idiots”.  Likewise, he had no respect for Italian “peasants” who could barely speak English.  What he did want was to use them to expose class warfare, class prejudice, and the corruption of the legal system – particularly in Boston.  For that purpose he sent his assistant to Italy, supposedly to collect character witnesses, but really to publish inflammatory articles in the Italian radical papers.  For that purpose he alienated the judge, who was known to have sizable anti-Anarchist sympathies, instead of using legal methods to get the judge replaced.  For that purpose he needed “martyrs”, and a couple of Italian Anarchists fit the bill perfectly.  He never intended to get Sacco and Vanzetti acquitted;  he intended to use them as pawns in a political circus, which required keeping the trial going as long as possible.  It was a carefully orchestrated passion-play, and had to end in the martyrdom of his hapless pawns. 
How did telling Sinclair that his clients were guilty further his cause?  Most likely because that would keep Sinclair from investigating any further, possibly questioning witnesses to Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s alibis – and possibly running into the insistent Joe Vlad.
Joe Vlad died in 1982, at the age of 96, still sharp as a tack, still telling his tale of meeting Nicola Sacco at the Italian Social Club on that particular day in 1920. 
By then, the gap between the Socialists/Communists and the Anarchists was as wide as the ocean, thanks to betrayal after betrayal, and the Libertarian movement had started up, changing the traditional definitions of political left and right beyond repair.  The labor movement has risen and fallen, and is beginning to rise again with new allies.  And the Wobblies are still here, and growing. 
Still, Fred Moore does deserve to be remembered, along with his various imitators, as a fine example of why you cannot trust a Parlor Pink.  The False Flag tactic is alive and well, and needs to be watched for.
Think.

--Leslie <;)))><  Fish  IWW #X306686      

Just What's Wrong With Islamophobia?

Right now the death-toll in the Brussels bombings stands at 30, all mass transit out of the city has been shut down, and the president of France, if you please, has announced: "We are at war."  ISIL/Daesh has taken the credit for the attack, and promised more -- and it looks as if the governments of the EU are finally taking the threat seriously. 

High time.  Jihadists have been responsible for more than 28,000 terrorist attacks, successful and thwarted, worldwide since 9/11.  Various government agencies in the US and Europe have tried hard to manipulate the numbers (the FBI, for example, includes property crimes -- such as tree-spiking -- as "terrorism") so as to make terrorism anybody else's fault, but there is no denying that the vast majority of fatal attacks have been performed by Jihadists. And then there's the long list of robberies, assaults and gang-rapes performed by all those poor-poor "Syrian refugees" in Europe, not to mention the subtle and not-so-subtle attempts by well-funded Islamist organizations to push Muslim propaganda -- and blatant antisemitism -- in the schools.

Now, seeing all this, how can anyone say that Islam is not something a sensible person would fear?

Still, "Islamophobia" is the term the Jihadist apologists toss around, equating it "hate crimes", racism, and anything else likely to make Liberal knees jerk -- and never mind the facts.  First off, "Islam" is a religion, not a race, and religions are fair game for criticism.  For no other religion have governments and academics bent so far over backwards not to be "offensive";  just ask the Pagans -- or the Jews.  Even the FBI, which traditionally supports Democrat administrations and (therefore Obama's) policies, admits in its Uniform Crime Reports that the most common victims of religious "hate crimes" are Jewish.  Second, if Muslims in the west really feel so "threatened" as we've heard them complain, there's a simple way to avoid being picked on;  lose the head-rags.  Nothing in the Koran commands women, or men for that matter, to cover their necks and heads.  There is a line which commands women (not men) to "veil your bodies for modesty", but "modesty" is a relative term, depending on what the local culture says it is.  In the western countries, it's perfectly modest to wear a tank-top, cut-off shorts, and nothing on one's head.  Both sexes can wear a ball-cap, a T-shirt, slacks and sneakers and go totally unnoticed.  Of course the apologists will whine that Orthodox Jews can get away with wearing their traditional costumes in public, but -- as those FBI records show -- it isn't necessarily safe for them.  Besides, Jews are not famous for bombing buildings, train stations, subways, night-clubs and airports full of innocent people, let alone a host of other well-known atrocities;  the only common resentment against Jews is that which is carefully nurtured by Jihadist propaganda.

That list of atrocities and terrorist attacks is forcing the tide to turn, regardless of the best efforts of propagandists, governments and academics.  The citizens already know, and their governments are finally admitting, that "Islamophobia" is a sensible reaction to reality.

But just what is it that makes Islam such a danger to the world?  Yes, its holy-book is full of really vicious commandments and examples, but the assorted gods know, and any Atheist can tell you, that the world's other religions -- especially the monotheistic ones -- have plenty of traditions and holy-books full of vicious exhortations and bloodthirsty history, so why don't they act on them the way Muslims feel obliged to do?  Perhaps the answer lies in the religion's relative youth.  Islam is 700 years younger than Christianity, and 2000 years younger than Judaism.  It never went through 2000 years of being kicked around half the world, always a powerless minority, as Judaism did.  It never went through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the secular revolutions as Christianity and Judaism did.  In short, it never learned to criticize its own holy-book, never learned to accept the eternal presence of successful unbelievers, and never got the fundamentalist arrogance largely kicked out of it.  A recent UN poll found that 80% of the Muslims on Earth believe in the absolute unquestionable truth of their Koran, believe that Islam really should dominate the world, and want Sharia law made supreme everywhere.  Even if most Muslims really don't want to get up and go conquer the neighbors, they form a worldwide support system for those who do.

So, what to do?

First off, the European countries have to admit to their danger and deport those "refugees", if not all the Muslims living in their countries.  To where?  Well, the most humane solution would be to give each of them a new suit of clean white pilgrim's clothes, about $100 apiece for the necessary bribes, and a one-way ticket to the one place where all good Muslims want to go at least once in their lives: Mecca.  Send them off as pilgrims, but take every precaution to keep them from ever coming back.  Let them become the Saudis' problem.

In the United States it'll be a little more complicated, but there's legal and historical precedent.  First, while it's unconstitutional to bar immigrants because of their religion, no law requires us to allow any immigration at all.  We could bar all immigration for a number or years, or for "the duration of the crisis";  this would mean fortifying our borders, patrolling them with drones as well as personnel, hunting up all illegal immigrants and deporting the lot of them.  The federal government has deported large numbers of people as "undesirables" before this -- usually for radical politics or union organizing -- and could legally do it again for "giving aid and comfort to the enemy".

What enemy?  Well, it's obvious that the US and the western nations will have to formally declare war on the Jihadists as a group, whatever their local designation: ISIL/Daesh, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, or whatever -- in whatever country they may be found.  That by itself would make various whaffling maybe-maybe allies stop straddling the fence pretty damned fast.  And yes, we will really have to go after the known Jihadists with hammer and tongs -- and with drones, particularly spy-drones to find enemies who like to hide among human shields of harmless civilians -- and then with precision pin-point bombing, mini-missiles or drone-mounted gunfire.  And yes, we will have to hammer them flat.  Once a Jihadist has identified himself by his actions, don't leave him alive.  Leave none of them alive.  This is an absolute war, and we must fight it as hard, fast, and thoroughly as possible.

But what of that 20% of Muslims who aren't Jihadists, want no part of them, and hope to create a modern reformed Islam?  What they do in their own countries is their own affair, but those living in the western countries have got to declare themselves, and damned fast, for the world is rapidly drawing lines of division.  They've got to announce the new Islamic reform movement as publicly as possible, trumpet from the roof-tops and all over the media their rejection of fundamentalism and bibliolatry: that the Koran is not unquestionable, but a good Muslim's duty is to question and criticize it in the light of modern knowledge.  Of course this will win them fatwas galore from the Jihadists, so they must necessarily return the favor -- promise (and be ready to deliver) death to any Jihadist who tries to enforce Jihadism on them.  Perhaps they can even give themselves a new name, one that doesn't mean "submission".

And let "Islamophobia" become a badge of honor, as it deserves to be.

--Leslie <;)))><  )O(           

     

Organizing Riots for Fun and Profit

As an old labor organizer and Lefty propagandist myself, I can recognize a staged riot when I see one, and that's exactly what I saw at the Trump riot in Chicago a few days ago.  I can even guess who staged it.

First off, various anti-Trump forces have been working up to this for several weeks now, sending noisy hecklers into Trump rallies to test the waters, seeing how his staffers and local security handle the attempted disruptions, and hyping the reactions thereof (as "racism", of course) in the media, until they were ready for a big showy blow-up.  You could see them doing this, right on TV.

Now hecklers at political rallies are usually given short shrift;  I once heard a local independent candidate announce to the crowd "Somebody throw a saddle on that jackass and ride him on out of here", whereupon his rally-security people grabbed the heckler and gave him the bum's rush out the nearest door.  It's widely understood that if you want to ask a speaker embarrassing questions, you wait for the question-and-answer period and get in line;  you don't jump up in the middle of the speech and start shouting insults (though nowadays exceptions seem to be made for Muslim students attacking Jewish speakers on campus).  There's nothing new or illegal or unusual or ray-ray-racist about it.

Ah, but look what emphasis the media has been putting on Trump hecklers getting the bum's rush!  As if this had never-never happened before!  And look how they've zoomed in on the one case where a strapping young heckler got right in an old Trump supporter's face, and the old man punched him.  Ooooh!  What shocking and unprecedented vi-o-lence!  Apparently they've forgotten about the old Kentucky saying, "As sure as murder on election day in Harlan County".  They've forgotten about the 1968 Democratic convention, too, which was also in Chicago.  These pious pundits whaffle about election vi-o-lence the way the current campus Politically Correct crowd whine about "microaggression" -- as if they'd never seen real violence or aggression in their lives.     

Anyway, at the Chicago rally the hecklers -- oops, "peaceful protesters" -- were out in force, truly amazing numbers of them.  In fact, any good investigative reporter could have bothered to find out how many rental busses dropped off lots of passengers carrying picket-signs on the day of, and before, the Trump rally and calculated just how many "protesters" there were -- and how many were brought in from out of town.  (Having been to a few big political protests myself, one of them in Chicago, I can tell you that most of the serious protesters are brought in by rented bus and bring their signs with them.)  This was definitely orchestrated and the local police were clearly aware of it, because they tried really hard not to let the protesters get into the building where the rally was going to be held.

What's interesting is what happened next.  The hecklers started too early; besides attacking obvious Trump supporters, they started yelling at and threatening totally unconnected passers-by.  They attacked the line of cops -- who, fortunately, had better sense than to respond by chasing after them.  They made a huge, noisy, threatening spectacle of themselves for the media to lap up.  The lesson was simple and clear: Trump rallies attract vi-o-lence like this.  Yes, the smartest thing Trump and his crew could have done was cancel the rally.

And of course the news shows yesterday and today have been all about Trump being responsible for the vi-o-lence.  Uhuh.  Trump's "divisive rhetoric" and of course earlier "vi-o-lence" toward the hecklers caused the protesters to rampage around the rally site before he -- or his followers -- even got there.  Right.  Note that the one word the talking-heads have scrupulously avoided using is "provoked" -- maybe because it might make some people think of the word "provocateur".  This whole incident was so obviously staged that one has to wonder if anybody was really taken in by it.

The next question is who staged it.  Well, the major actors were pretty clearly Black Lives Matter, as their own slogans proclaimed.  Who hired them (knowing BLM, you can be sure that they insisted on being paid)?  Obviously somebody wanting to dump Trump -- but this doesn't look like the style of the GOP's old guard.  Could it be the Democratic Party in general?  After all, Trump is beginning to look like a serious contender in November.  Or was it specifically Hillary's backers and campaign managers?

Well, I saw -- and a few news-pundits noticed -- that some of the protesters (primarily the White ones) were carrying professionally-printed "Bernie" signs.  Among them was no less than Bill Ayers, whom I know well of old, still playing his old game of egging on other people to commit his violence for him.  That's how he tried to get me killed, all those years ago.  Alas for Billy-boy, radical students back then were a bit more intelligent and mature back then than they seem to be today;  they didn't stampede on anybody's unsupported word.  And anyway, Billy is a staunch Obama, and then Hillary, supporter.

Now there hasn't yet been any heckling, let alone vi-o-lence, associated with Bernie Sanders' campaign, nor has he approved of any, nor has Bernie particularly gone after Trump, so why should his apparent supporters show up at a stage-managed anti-Trump riot?

Well, who benefits?

Seeing how surprisingly well Bernie has done in the primaries and the polls, there just might be a chance that he could whisk the nomination out from under Hillary.  Linking his name with the anti-Trump protesters, and the vi-o-lence thereof could hopefully kill two birds with one stone.  As much as the old guard of the GOP worries about Trump, so does the old guard of the Democrats worry about Bernie.  The Republicans discount Bernie because, after all, he's publicly proclaimed himself a "socialist" (though he isn't), and that should automatically make him a pariah, shouldn't it?  It's Hillary who has cause to worry about Bernie, as well as Trump.

In any case, this has been the year of the Dark Horse -- the out-of-nowhere candidate who upsets the expected political applecart and wins surprising numbers of voters who are fed up with politics as usual.  What I find amusing is that neither party seems to have realized just how fed up those voters are, and that this -- not either Dark Horse candidate -- is the real reason to worry.

--Leslie <;)))><       

The Republican Circus

Rasty and I have been watching the political pundits on TV and the Internet for the past week, and laughing ourselves silly over the spectacle of the GOP frantically trying to stop its most popular candidate -- and tearing itself apart in the process.  Frankly, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of hypocrites.

As I've mentioned before, the Republican Party sold its soul for votes back in the 1960s, when the Dixiecrats -- the troglodyte reactionary racists mostly inhabiting the deep South -- finally figured out (a whole century later) that just because Lincoln was a Republican when he freed the slaves, that didn't mean that the Democratic Party would sympathize with slavers.  When the Democrats began actively sympathizing with the Civil Rights movement, those reactionaries -- now calling themselves Conservatives -- went looking for a new home.  Despite prophetic warnings from Barry Goldwater, a real classic conservative (who could easily have been called a Libertarian if the concept had existed then), the GOP welcomed in the ex-Dixiecrats with open arms, and thus began its long downward spiral.  The reactionaries, eventually gaining the name NeoCons, proceeded to take over the GOP and steadily push out the libertarian wing of the party.  The GOP's shabby treatment of Ron Paul and his followers in 2012 made libertarians quit the Republican Party in disgust, leaving only Rand Paul as the last of the breed, with the NeoCons in almost complete control.  

So down to the present day.  Thanks to an encouraging phonecall from Bill Clinton, Donald Trump came galloping into the presidential race, brash and bumptious and beholden to none of the Republican standbys, campaigning on his own money and crowdfunding from the public, and knocking the old GOP order on its ear.  Worse, his wide-open style and blatant dislike of certain Republican backers -- Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the Koch brothers, and the 1% in general -- attracted a lot of the younger Republican voters who were disgruntled with GOP business as usual.  He began cutting a swathe through the primary elections that absolutely horrified the old guard -- even though his popularity made him a really serious rival to Hillary Clinton, as none of the other candidates were. 

This is why not only the usual Democrat opinion-mongers but Republican ones as well have been attacking Trump and his followers under any excuse whatever.  The hyper-left Southern Poverty Law Center has been howling "Racism!  Racism!" with all its might, claiming that KKK members like Trump, and plenty of sympathetic parlor-pinks have fallen in line with it.  This has encouraged Trump's GOP rivals to make laughable attempts to woo Blacks, Latinos, and even Muslims (perhaps on the CAIR-fully cultivated lefty assumption that "Muslim" is somehow a race).  Lefty comedians have made professional hay out of Trump, even unto making a point about his great-grandfather's name being Drumpf.  The lefty media have solemnly linked Trump's popularity to "disturbingly widespread right-wing American racism" and the usual NeoCon bigotries.

This is all particularly ironic, since Trump is far less right-wing and racist than his rivals are.  Yes, he's bullying, bigoted, and not overly observant of the Constitution -- but he's refreshingly honest about his positions.  Cruz, Rubio and Romney are actually far worse in that regard, but they're more covert about their bigotries, not to mention their connections to the same old power-brokers.  It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that so many disaffected voters flock to Trump because (and I can't think of a worse indictment of the GOP than this) he's the most honest of the Republican candidates.  Besides, he's dared to tackle a subject that nobody else in the race has brought up: the current plague of Political Correctitude -- and he's against it.

If the GOP old guard does manage to defeat Trump at the convention, it will also lose a huge percentage of its voters -- which will definitely make their candidate lose in November.  If they have the sense to nominate Trump he'll give Hillary a good run for her money, but the whole squabble will leave the GOP permanently fractured.  Indeed, Bill Clinton knew what he was doing when he made that phonecall!

Not that Trump will win, of course.  The fix is in, the Democratic National Committee's long-laid plans will pay off, and Hillary will be the next president.  The only possible rival she has -- Bernie Sanders, the "socialist" gremlin -- is fighting a good fight with logic and honesty on his side, not to mention his willingness to actually listen to the majority of voters and refusal to back the Democrats' disastrous obsession with gun control (Vermont is second only to Arizona in gun-friendliness, and has an even lower violent-crime rate), but he doesn't have the covert backing of the DNC that Hillary does.

So the best we can hope for is that Hillary will pick Bernie for vice-president, and that the disgusted voters will fill Congress with anything-but-Democrat senators and congresscritters who will slam the brakes on Hillary's tendency to wipe her butt with the Constitution.  That isn't so implausible as it seems;  there are a lot of voters these days registering as third-party or independent.  Here in Arizona, traditionally a Republican state, there are more voters registered as Libertarian or independent than the registered Republicans and Democrats put together.  No one in the mainstream media seems to have noticed this trend yet.  That's not surprising, seeing that no one except Trump among the Big Two parties seems to have noticed how disgruntled the voters have become with politics-as-usual.

As for me, I intend to keep broadcasting my personal analysis of the whole mess: "A plague on both their houses!  Vote Libertarian."

--Leslie <;)))><  )O(  

     

INDEPENDENCE, SELF-RELIANCE AND COMPETENCE (Part III)

Throughout the last half-century, the grand strategy of the aristocracy – not just American, but from every country capable of supporting even a small super-wealthy class – has been to maintain their position through what Kipling called “The Peace of Dives”: interdependence for the rich, and complete dependence for everyone else.  “Globalism” is part of this pattern, devoting whole countries to single industries so as to make them dependent on other countries for everything else they need, let alone want.  Meanwhile, the aristocracy – the “one percent” – take care to own and control as many various industries, and lands, as possible;  “diversification” they call it, a means of guaranteeing their own continued wealth and safety no matter what catastrophe strikes anywhere else.  The problem is keeping the peasants at home from getting out from under proper control, which they have a lamentable tendency to do, especially in America.
When you start with a culture that emphasizes the value of the individual -- and individual competence, self-reliance, and responsibility -- and a government structured as a democratic republic, a would-be aristocracy has an uphill fight to establish or even maintain its power.  Suborning the national and local governments isn’t enough, because ultimately the politicians must keep the goodwill of the people at large in order to keep their jobs.  Even appointed or hired bureaucrats can be displaced – or even hauled into court – if they mistreat the citizens enough.  This limits how blatantly the aristocracy can use the government to loot the peasants.  Throwing the occasional politician or bureaucrat to the wolves of outraged citizenry is only a stopgap measure, because the peasants will notice, soon enough, that nothing about their condition has really changed.
Likewise, dominating the economy and weakening labor unions isn’t enough, because – despite lots of cunning government regulations designed to hamper small businesses (while being barely a sneeze to big ones) – the citizens still insist on creating small businesses of their own.  An independent businessman may work harder, at longer hours and with more responsibility than a hireling, and may be constantly at the mercy of the current market, but he’s still not dependent on any particular boss.  He doesn’t have to vote, speak, worship or think the way his boss wishes.  He’s in the position of the old English yeoman-farmer, or the Russian kulak – which is precisely why the British aristocracy and Russia’s Stalin made such efforts to wipe them out.  The American aristocracy may have severely weakened the middle-class, but they can’t eliminate it entirely.
Besides, those pesky mini-entrepreneurs are constantly finding new products, new services, new tactics, and new ways of getting in on the ground floor of new industries.  It won’t help to ruin your mini-rival’s credit if he can get funds by crowd-sourcing.  You may stop him from advertising his product through the mail or the news-media, but how do you keep him off the Internet?  You can price him out of manufacturing his product in a big standard factory, but you can’t keep him from 3-D printing.  Worst of all, you can’t keep him from learning these tricks by censoring the schools, because there are always libraries and the Internet.  You can try to censor the local Internet servers, but there are always hackers and pirates willing and able to dodge around you.  You can’t censor the phone system, because you need its capacities for yourself.  You can’t even starve an area into compliance if its people have learned the tricks of urban mini-farming and aquaponics.  So long as that enterprising and libertarian spirit is common among the citizens, you can’t quash them completely. 
All you can do is remain alert for particularly successful up-and-coming rivals, and stomp them individually.  For example, take the case of Changing World Technologies – which came up with the Thermal Depolymerization process for converting any carbon-bearing garbage to its essential minerals and light crude oil.  It set up its first factory next to a turkey and chicken processing plant in Carthage, Missouri, and began churning out 500 barrels of diesel fuel per day.  Certain residents promptly sued the company for creating bad smells (as if the poultry slaughterhouse hadn’t been doing that already for decades), and forced the company to shut down.  Also, some other company (which kept its actions and name remarkably secret) offered to handle the poultry waste at a better price.  The result was forcing Changing World Technologies into bankruptcy.  Its resources, including the conversion technology, were bought up by a Canadian company called Ridgeline Energy Services – about which very little is known.  So much for that rival.
Still, there’s no way to stop the proliferation of very small businesses, not with modern communications.  The “buy locally” movement is quietly growing, and attempts to quash it – especially with government intervention -- are met with surprising resistance.  Note the nationwide uproar (perpetrated through the Internet) that resulted when the FDA attacked dairy farmers selling “raw” milk, or the kids who sold homemade lemonade off a table in their own front yard.  There’s also a growing revolt against copyright law being used to prevent home repairs of computerized machinery, as in the case of the farmers versus John Deere and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.  And all the hasty laws against 3-D printing didn’t stop the creation of the Liberator II printed pistol.  The supposedly ultimate power of money, including the push toward abolishing cash in favor of more readily controlled electronic cards, has already engendered BitCoin and the expansion of barter – both online and face-to-face
And of course there’s the proliferation of urban farming, homeschooling, and home energy production.  These are usually denounced by the media as politically motivated, and of course the politics are branded fascistic – regardless of what the practitioners actually believe;  it’s in the interest of the aristocracy to persuade the populace that the government (and its professional cohorts) is always benign, and no one but an outlaw of some sort or another would even want to be independent of the proper rulers.  Still, the citizens don’t always believe what they’re told.  A concerted propaganda campaign during the ‘90s managed to discredit the name “survivalist”, but the survivalists themselves cleverly changed their names to “preppers” and their image to suburban white-collar, and have continued as before. 
American culture has always held that the basic unit of society is not the tribe, the household, or even the family, but the individual – which means that the individual must contain within him/herself the skills to survive if not succeed.  This takes broad and practical education, which the public schools are notoriously poor at providing, but the Internet makes this readily and cheaply available.  Anyone with intelligence and will can get it.  As for the unintelligent and apathetic, well, sheep have always been shorn. 
So it all comes back to competence and self-reliance, the ground and root for independence.  The cultural tendency to be competent and self-reliant is too strong and too widespread to be stamped out, so the grassroots rebellion continues to spread, and the aristocracy can’t stop it. 
How will this end?  There are three scenarios, but they all conclude – sooner or later – with the fall of the aristocracy, as such have always eventually fallen.  The first, the peaceful change, would come if the increasingly disgruntled populace elects a smart and libertarian collection of politicians who legally dismantle the structure of laws, policies, and bureaucracies which maintain the status quo, and the aristocracy will have the sense to cut their losses and run, keeping their comfortable living – and their heads, literally. The second is that some catastrophe will cripple and preoccupy all governments simultaneously, leaving the people to slip out from under control and run their societies themselves without interference, until they have the capability to shed their former masters.  The third is that the citizens don’t wait for a distracting catastrophe, but begin sliding out-from-under by themselves.  In scenarios #2 and #3, the actual liberating will be only a matter of strategy and tactics, which competent and self-reliant people can readily choose for themselves.
It’s anyone’s guess which of the three is most probable.
--Leslie <;)))><                      

PETA: Now Endangering Humans

The latest bit of PETA propaganda shows a solemn-faced longhair holding what appears to be a partially-skinned lamb, along with the headline "The rest of your wool coat" and the claim that shearing sheep for wool is horribibibly Cruel.  Anyone who knows anything of sheep-raising, or has even looked closely at real lambs, can tell this is a lie:  1) Nobody mangles a valuable animal like that, not when its chief value is in its hair and hide;  2) Many of the cuts are along the creature's lower legs, and since there is no wool on the lower legs, nobody shears there;  3) The supposed lamb is anatomically wrong;  the legs are too short, the rump is too small, and the ears belong on a Nubian goat -- not a lamb. The supposed lamb is a plastic sculpture, meant to be realistic, but sculpted by someone who knows nothing about real sheep.  Already there's a meme making the rounds on the Internet, comparing the PETA picture with a real freshly-shorn lamb, and exposing the PETA people as liars.

But this isn't the first time the PETA hypocrites have used realistic plastic sculptures to propagandize the public.  I personally saw one of their efforts, nearly ten years ago, on a busy Los Angeles freeway.

I forget the exact date, or just which convention we were coming back from, or just which curve of and elevated stretch of freeway it was, but I was at the wheel of my old Thunderbird and some four other fans were in the car with me.  We came around the right-turning curve of a busy ramp, and right ahead of us -- crammed against the right-side retaining wall -- was what appeared to be the corpse of a pregnant doe, hind legs spread wide, vulva pointing toward the oncoming traffic.  At freeway speed, it was visible for only a few seconds -- just enough for shock-value.  But even in those few seconds, even as everybody else in the car was gasping in shock, I realized it was false.

"It's a fake!" I snapped.  "The legs are wrong!"

And wrong they certainly were, as I explained;  the lower legs were as smoothly round as PVC pipes.  Anyone who has ever seen a real deer,  up close and personal -- such as, while butchering a fresh-killed deer for food, as I've certainly done -- can tell you that a deer's lower leg consists of a slender bone in front and a big cable-like tendon in back, with a very visible hollow between them.  That highway-deer had been made by a sculptor who knew the appearance of deer only from photos, and not very close ones either.

"Besides," I added, "Deer are forest creatures.  What would a deer be doing on the elevated ramp of a busy freeway in the middle of Los Angeles?  Think: how on Earth would it have gotten here?"

It took only a few minutes' discussion for us to come up with a logical explanation;  the sculpture was made and placed by the PETA people, probably as some sort of protest about deer-hunting.

Later we learned that the shock-value sculpture had caused at least one wreck on that stretch of highway, as shocked drivers tried to steer away from it.  Nobody was killed, but three cars were damaged and several people were injured.  PETA wasn't mentioned in the news report we heard, but we guessed that the police had drawn the same conclusions we had.

I wonder if the PETA people had even considered what their shock-value trick might do in fast-moving heavy traffic -- or if they even cared.

In any case, I notice that they've stopped putting their realistic sculptures in public places, but they're still using the fakes in photo-ads.

--Leslie <;)))><    

      

Beware the Rat-Lovers Conspiracy!

The organization calling itself People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is probably crowing over its latest victories: forcing Barnum and Bailey's circus to give up its performing elephants, after a century of displaying them, and steadily running Sea World (and its marine studies division) out of business.  Flushed with victory, PETA has let slip that the next step in its agenda is to get rid of all circus animal acts.  Apparently there are enough gullible people out there, with more money than sense, who are happy to contribute millions to PETA every year.

But cracks are appearing in the facade;  more and more animal welfare organizations are turning on PETA and publishing revelations of its real behavior and intentions.  As the director of Humane Farm Animal Care reveals:

"I don’t think you can stand in the way of progress for farm animals, euthanize more dogs and cats than other animal shelters, and still call yourself a “humane” organization.

"The PETA animal shelter in Norfolk, Va., euthanizes dogs and cats in far greater numbers than does other animal shelters in Virginia.  According to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA has euthanized more than 33,514 animals since 1998 at its Norfolk shelter. In 2014, the group euthanized 2,454 of the 3,369 cats, dogs and other animals there. Most were “surrenders” – pets turned into shelters by their previous owners. Only 23 dogs and 16 cats were adopted.

"By contrast, the Lynchburg Humane Society (LHS), also in Virginia, took in about the same number of animals as PETA in 2014, but saved 94 percent of its homeless pets. Other animal shelters in the state found homes for more than 90 percent of their animals, and without the $51,933,001 that PETA raised in contributions and merchandising in 2014.

"Tabitha Frizzell Hanes, of the Richmond SPCA, once wrote on the shelter’s blog, “Over the past decade, as save rates at private shelters across Virginia have risen and euthanasia rates have fallen, the PETA facility euthanizes the animals it takes in at a rate of about 90 percent. It is out of step with the progress being made for our state’s homeless animals for a private shelter to operate not with the purpose of finding animals adoptive homes, but almost entirely to take their lives.”

"Meanwhile, the elimination of pets rather than finding the animals new homes appears to be something PETA embraces. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk once admitted, “I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself … I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day. The animals…got the gift of euthanasia, and to them it was the best gift they’ve ever had. How dare you pretend to help animals and turn your back on those who want an exit from an uncaring world!”"

Now personally I have never seen an animal indicate that it wants "an exit from an uncaring world".  But it gets worse.

"According to an article published in the Huffington Post in 2015, a former PETA employee, Heather Harper-Troje, the wife of a U.S. diplomat, alleged that Newkirk authorized her and other employees to steal and kill pets, then falsify records in order to cover their tracks. Harper-Troje said, “If we felt an animal was in immediate danger we would steal them . . . It was what she told us to do — it was standard operating procedure . . . If you adopt out dogs you steal then you leave a trail, in theory. If they just go poof, there is no trail.”

"America has been hoodwinked to think that PETA wants to help animals, when in fact it wants to eliminate pet ownership and sever all our ties with the animal kingdom.

"PETA’s Web site and print material states: 
“Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation.”

“Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles — from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it.”

“The cat, like the dog, must disappear…We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist.”

“As John Bryant has written in his book ‘Fettered Kingdoms,’ they [pets] are like slaves, even if well-kept slaves.”

“In a perfect world, all other than human animals would be free of human interference, and dogs and cats would be part of the ecological scheme.”

[ Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild…they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch T.V.”

“The bottom line is that people don’t have the right to manipulate or to breed dogs and cats. If   people want toys, they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship, they should seek it with their own kind.”

"That will not likely sit well with the estimated 70 million to 80 million dogs and 74 million to 96 million cats living with people in the United States. [Source: American Pet Product Association]

"As the executive director for Humane Farm Animal Care (HFAC), I have spent 35 years working on animal protection issues. After seeing laying hens crammed in cages and pigs confined to gestation crates, I launched HFAC in 2003 to improve the lives of farm animals raised for food.

"However, HFAC’s mission is not to turn everyone into vegans. With 95 percent of the U.S. eating meat, HFAC offers a realistic approach to helping farm animals with standards of care written by the world’s top animal welfare scientists. These standards ensure farm animals cage-free, allowed to exhibit natural behaviors, receive humane care throughout their lives, and includes humane slaughter guidelines. The standards also require the animals’ diets are free from hormones, antibiotics, and animal by-products. HFAC uses third-party independent inspectors to perform audits for the Certified Humane Raised and Handled® program, which has grown from 143,000 farm animals in 2003 to more than 103 million farm animals today in four countries.

"All too often animal rights groups such as PETA sabotage farm animal welfare progress. Although they may appear to attack factory farming, they go after animal welfare groups such as ours that are trying to improve the lives of farm animals. They would rather see farm animals suffer to promote their agenda than support compassionate standards and systemic change to the farm animal system. That’s the height of hypocrisy to me.  They would rather go after companies and farmers who have actually worked very hard to raise the animals the right way.

"A growing number of farmers, producers, grocery stores, and retailers who want to improve the lives of farm animals, are under constant pressure by PETA to halt this progress because PETA believes factory farming will result in more vegetarians and vegans. Recently, fast-food retailer, Tasty Burger succumbed to PETA’s pressure to drop HFAC’s Certified Humane Raised and Handled® label from its menu because as PETA puts it, “the only truly humane meal is a vegan meal.” PETA also went after Whole Foods, asking that firm to remove “humane,” “humanely-raised,” and “raised with care” from its marketing materials.

"Humane Society of the United States President Wayne Pacelle quickly came to Whole Foods’ defense, saying, “This is why I am troubled that PETA has chosen to sue Whole Foods in an apparent attempt to undermine or call into question the value of the GAP program.  This is counterproductive, especially in a marketplace where there are dozens of other chains nearly exclusively selling factory farm animal products. Not one of them has done as much as Whole Foods has to promote more plant-based eating and to advance farm animal welfare and fight factory farming in very practical terms.”

"PETA’s Newkirk was once quoted as saying, “Businesses are terrified. They have no idea what I’m going to do next.”

"People who choose to be vegans and vegetarians will not be persuaded to eat meat because of
HFAC’s standards. Putting pressure on businesses that want to make a difference for farm animals and keeping the status quo of factory farming alive only increases animal suffering. Any progress for animals is seen as a loss by PETA because  it wants animals gone from our lives . That’s PETA’s warped strategy – a strategy that causes farm animals to continue to suffer in factory farms because that better supports their agenda.

"The fact that this group continues to portray itself as the humane stewards of animals is duplicitous. I don’t think you can call yourself “humane” while you’re standing in the way of the humane treatment of farm animals and euthanizing dogs and cats at a 99 percent rate at your shelter. They’re not interested in creating a humane world, only a world where our relationship with animals is broken. Does this sound like an organization working on “humane” changes for animals?"

In fact, PETA's agenda is not only inhumane, it's cruelly insane.  Humans have always lived with animals, and animals with us, and certain of those animals will not be willing to break the connection with us.  One in particular will definitely not go away willingly, and I don't just mean the cockroach.  There is one animal that not only eats, happily, all the foods we eat but will gladly eat us as well -- and also carries catastrophic diseases.  It infests all of our habitat, city or country, taking advantage of unprotected food stores and unprotected humans too.  In the countryside, its numbers are kept in check by bird, reptile, and mammal predators.  In cities, all that keeps its population down, besides regular poisoning by humans, is the presence of -- yes -- dogs and cats.  Get rid of all the dogs and cats, and this animal would swiftly overwhelm us.  There are already, according to the UN, more of this animal in the world than there are humans -- and there are 7 billion of us.

This animal is the rat -- particularly the brown rat, rattus norvegicus.  

The last time humans drove small dogs and cats away from a large geographic area, the result was an explosion of the rat population -- and the Black Plague, which killed one-third of the human population of Europe.  One has to wonder if the PETA people are ignorant of history.

Or, perhaps, given their famous slogan "A boy is a dog is a rat", they're perfectly aware of it -- and hopeful of a rerun.  They've revealed, many times, their real contempt for human beings.  They've said, many times, that there are too many humans in the world.  Iis this their plan for cutting our numbers down?

  --Leslie <;)))>< 
    

An Open Letter to 'Black Lives Matter'

It's not just Black lives, you fools!

Trying to make political hay out of police corruption isn't doing Blacks any favors, either.  Yes, yes, you can stampede this or that city council into giving you and your cronies money, sinecures, and political clout, but the tactics you're using are going to backfire on you.

Look, from the top, thuggish cops are quite ready, willing, and eager to attack, beat up, and even kill poor folks who aren't Black.  If you want specific cases, look up Corey Kanash -- Paiute Indian, Misty Holt-Singh -- Sikh, Samantha Ramsey -- White, and for a real horror-show go up on YouTube and search 'The Death of Kelly Thomas'.  But with that last one, turn the sound down once the beating starts;  the screams get very loud.  Anyone, of any race, is fair game when dirty cops go out to play;  all you have to be is poor and powerless when a bored cop wanders by.

...Or a drugged one.  One of the best-kept secrets in America is how many police are taking steroids -- or stimulants, or both.  It's difficult to catch them with random drug-tests, because steroids break down quickly in the bloodstream, though stimulants leave more obvious traces.  Still, bi-weekly random tests would help, if only by making the cops more circumspect about what they take and when.

The government's deliberate policy of militarizing the police is another obvious culprit, which could be reversed if the federal administration really wanted to do it.  Surely the army keeps records of just when and where it has sold -- or given -- that military hardware to various police departments.  It would be easy enough to round up those goodies and send them off to the local National Guard armories, where they belong, and replace them with a lot of tasers.  Since so many cops are willing to shoot first and think later, let them do it with non-lethal weaponry.

Now those are solutions that would work, but I don't see you guys yelling for them.  Instead, we've seen a lot of obstructive demos -- like that stunt of blocking streets on Christmas eve -- which are guaranteed not to win you any sympathizers, even in the Black community.  Worse, you're public speeches have stopped barely short of inciting fools to go out and shoot cops.  If you'll recall, that tactic didn't do the original Black Panthers any good, either.

It sure as hell isn't winning you any sympathy in cases where assorted Black looneys have actually gone out and done it.  Neither is staying noticeably silent in public about those incidents. 

Note the present case of Edward Archer, Black, in West Philadelphia, who ran up to a cop-car and fired 13 rounds through the window.  I find it ironic that he managed to hit the cop with only three of those shots, all of which hit in the arm.  This doesn't say much about Archer's shooting ability.  It's also remarkable that the cop then jumped out of the car, chased Archer down, caught and cuffed him, and only then called for help.  The cop is in stable condition in a local hospital, and Archer is still alive, thank you.  Now that's one tough cop -- and a remarkably restrained one.

Archer then compounded his stupidity by bragging in public that he'd pledged allegiance to ISIL/Daesh, and did the attempted assassination "in the name of Islam".  That, to say the least, made him look like a terrorist -- even though the Philadelphia mayor and district attorney promptly tried to divert attention by blaming "too many guns on the street".  This argument was rendered even more laughable when it turned out that Archer's gun had been stolen from, if you please, the local police department.  Everyone who's heard the story can readily assume that Archer was a Muslim terrorist, who are sympathetic to nobody but themselves.

Now, have you guys made a point of publicly denouncing this murderous idiot, or taken care to separate your cause and complaint from any and all Muslim terrorists?

Believe me, the last thing you need is to make Black Lives Matter look like an ISIL/Daesh front!

That's guaranteed to make the clash between cops and urban Blacks escalate to a real war, not to mention getting your members hunted down and prosecuted by Homeland Security.

So just how far do you want to push your proud-and-loud, emotionally-satisfying but none-too-smart protests?  At what point are you going to take a deep breath, calm down, and start running your campaign with some real political common sense?

--Leslie <;)))>< Fiah     

INDEPENDENCE, SELF-RELIANCE AND COMPETENCE (Part II)

(Sorry I took so long getting back to this.  I’ll continue quicker hereafter, I promise.)
Suppose that you were a proper British (or French, or Dutch) aristocrat, just after the American Revolution.  Of course you'd believe that the aristocracy were a superior "race" (or at least bloodline) – more intelligent, moral, beautiful, graceful, etc. than the "lower orders", and therefore naturally fit to rule them.  Of course you'd be appalled at this horrid vulgar "democracy", which allowed any coarse peasant to vote, to choose his leaders and laws, or even (horrors!) get rid of them if he so chose.  Oh, outrageous!  But those peasants and their "class traitor" generals had won the Revolution, and even written a Constitution and made it the supreme law of the land.  What could you do to restore the Proper Order of Things?
At first, you and your class of Proper People would simply ignore these upstart new laws by the time-honored process of suborning the agents of government.  The ink was barely dry on the Constitution when the new Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts – whose basic purpose was to prevent Irishmen from immigrating to the United States, gaining the vote, and voting for that original Traitor to His Class, Thomas Jefferson.
That didn't work.  First, that upstart new Supreme Court made it clear that no citizen was required to obey, nor any government agent required to enforce, an unconstitutional law.  The Alien and Sedition Acts were repealed, Irish refugees came to America anyway, and Thomas Jefferson got elected President.  One of the first things he did was to pass the Homesteading Act, which gave portions of federal land, free, to any peasant who would work it and claim it.  He also funded the Merriweather and Clark expedition to explore and map the unknown territories to the west, to provide more lands for individual settlement.  The War of 1812 ended not only with Britain failing to take back its old colonies, but with America owning more territory than before. The Mexican War ended much the same way.  One result of this was that the early 19thcentury saw an explosion of American small businesses – starting as small as the family farm, and growing from there.  At the beginning of the Civil War, the average American lived on a family farm and provided most of their necessities for themselves.  Even city-dwelling craftsmen and businessmen owned houses on plots of land big enough to provide a kitchen-garden and a small pen of livestock – poultry or rabbits, at least, and often a horse.  The average American citizen, even in the slave-states, was distressingly self-reliant and independent. 
By the end of the Civil War it was clear that direct opposition – openly trying to establish a de facto aristocracy – wouldn't work, and more subtle manipulations were necessary.  The obvious means was the manipulation of money, either by establishing large factories to sell products and make money and crowd out the small-fry competition, or by directly manipulating money through the burgeoning "financial industry".  The factory system led to the growth of labor unions (horrors!), but the financial manipulators suffered no worse than an occasional slap from various governments – and that happened only when the government was effectively petitioned by those pesky citizens.  By the turn of the 20th century it was clear that the only major obstacle to establishing the New Aristocracy was the competence and vigilance of the citizenry.  What could the would-be ruling class do about that?
Well, since 1852 there had been a growing movement toward public schools, and every private-interest group in the country had been trying to take them over.  The aristocracy was just one voice out of many, each trying to insist that the schools teach their agenda --   religious, economic, or political – but at least it could use money, by suborning state and local governments, to become a major voice.  This is why the public school system was originally designed along factory-model lines: to teach working-class children to become good, obedient, interchangeable factory-workers, while the private schools continued to teach the children of the better-off how to become good managers and rulers.  Besides teaching propaganda that was acceptable to the major factions, schools could also be used to divide the populace into classes according to skills – and keep each class from learning the skills of the others, on the excuse of "division of labor".  Thus evolved the difference between "blue-collar" and "white-collar" workers, with the "white-collar" workers assuming themselves better educated and of a higher class, even though the "blue-collar" workers might actually have more skills and earn more money. 
But working against this effort was the folk tradition of learning cross-class survival skills as "crafts"— which included gardening, livestock raising, hunting and fishing, even among the new industrial urban poor, and never mind the rural middle-class and poor.  Also, there were various social crusaders, often religious, who made a point of spreading literacy and survival skills among the "less fortunate".  By the turn of the century, every American had the means, or at least access to them, of self-reliance – therefore independence.  And of course, most of them could vote.
By the early 20th century, despite the wealth it had gained during the age of the Robber Barons, the aristocracy was embattled on several fronts.  The labor movement was growing, women were agitating for the vote, education and literacy were widespread, and the average citizen was still dangerously competent, self-reliant, and independent.  What to do?  How to reduce them to that dependence which ensures the rule of the aristocracy?
Well, first there was the growing influence – often mistaken for power – of the media.  William Randolph Hearst's newspapers covered the nation with his own attitudes, which had been influential enough to stampede his readers, and then the federal government, to waging the Spanish-American War.  It was lost on nobody that one way to power was to gain a monopoly on the public's source of information.  Thus began the trend, continuing today, of publishing companies buying each other up until only half a dozen giants are left.  This pattern was followed in turn by later-developing media: film, radio, and television.
The drift toward monopolies, which had begun in the 19thcentury and suffered only temporary setbacks with Teddy Roosevelt's Anti-Trust crusade, spread to other industries too.  Mining and manufacturing companies, which were in the front of the wars with the labor unions, ate up any of their weaker brethren who faltered.  Service industries were slower to follow, but managed to consolidate the medical business – especially after the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act – into the "closed shop" of the A.M.A. and the narrowing handful of big pharmaceutical, medical equipment, and hospital companies.  The financial industry made its greatest gain with the establishment of the Federal Reserve, which empowered a collection of banks to control America's money supply regardless of actual wealth created.  And on, and on.  The point was to concentrate ownership and control of what Marx called "the means of production" in as few hands as possible, leaving the rest of the citizens dependent on the "job creators" for their survival.
World War One provided a marvelous new tool to the aristocracy, in the form of the federal government's bureaucracy.  The mass regimentation necessary for raising, arming, training, transporting, and supplying the biggest military America had yet seen required a similarly huge bureaucracy which the aristocracy could easily influence and use.  This is where the now-famed Military-Industrial Complex got its start.  The tendency toward growing bureaucracy and monopoly was only encouraged by World War Two, which followed just over twenty years later.
Unfortunately for the aristocracy, the skills learned during WWI also assisted the "peasants" in forming labor unions.  The "labor wars" of the '20s-to-'50s were real shooting wars, in which the aristocracy hired private guards and government troops, but the "blue collar" workers outnumbered and often outshot them.  Eventually the aristocracy realized that some concessions – and a more subtle attack – were necessary.  The National Labor Relations Board was formed not just at the request of the working class for legal protections but also at the urging of the aristocracy, who managed to work in some legal restraints on unions as well, and followed with a few more – as note the Taft-Hartley Act.  The last shooting labor-battles happened in the 1960s, in the coal-fields of Harlan County, Kentucky, and by then most of the aristocracy had already changed tactics.
Since most unions were clustered in the “blue collar” jobs – primarily mining and manufacturing – the aristocracy did its best to take the jobs away, moving them overseas to countries where the peasants had never heard of the concept of unions.  The fact that such labor was lamentably unskilled was beside the point;  cheap, if shoddy, goods would always sell among the poor at home.
Alas, the tactic wasn’t entirely successful.  Some industries – such as construction, medical treatment, firefighting, police work, teaching, and weapons construction (for obvious security reasons) couldn’t be moved, and those industries found themselves unionized in short order.  It was no coincidence that the era of greatest union membership in America also happened to be its period of greatest prosperity;  a rising tide lifts all boats.  But this isn’t what the aristocracy intended.
What to do, what to do?  Well, first, try corrupting those unions.  It’s easier to corrupt a poor man than a rich one, because it’s cheaper;  wave $10,000 at a rich man, and he’ll sneer and hold out for $100,000 – but wave $10,000 at a poor man, and he’ll think of all the necessities (like paying off the mortgage on his house, or buying decent health-insurance, or paying for his kids’ college) he could buy with that money, and his knees will shake and his morals will quake.  From the 1950s on, a distressing number of union officials were corrupted by big money – which was dutifully exposed and gleefully moralized about in the mainstream media, giving the impression that unions were all corrupt. 
Second, playing on that phenomenon, launch a long and thorough and subtle propaganda campaign to discredit the very idea of unions among most of the population.  And, of course, every time a business raises prices or closes a mine or factory, blame it on the cost of union demands.  It’s cheaper to dig minerals or make goods overseas, anyway.  As we’ve seen recently, blame the cost and inefficiency of government on government-workers’ unions – teachers, police, firefighters, garbage-collectors, and all.
Third, mechanize whenever possible.  No workers = no unions, and never mind what this does to your product quality or the overall economy.  There’s an old tale of Henry Ford taking John L. Lewis on a tour of his newest, most thoroughly automated factory, and then bragging: “How are these machines going to join your union, John?”  John L. replied: “How are they going to buy your cars, Henry?”  There is no record of what Henry Ford replied, or if anyone learned from that exchange.
In any case, today – 60 years later – union membership is down to less than 10% of the American work-force, and our economy is in wretched shape.  It seems that a falling tide lowers all boats, too – except for the aristocracy, now labeled “the 1%”, who own more than half the physical wealth in the country.

                                                              (To be continued)