Showing posts with label state-sponsored terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label state-sponsored terrorism. Show all posts

Sunday, March 3, 2013

I Stand Corrected - Perhaps There is Much More to Say: Is My Local State Rep a Fascist Toady?

3/28/13 UPDATE: Happy birthday to me! Well, a few days late – because, on my actual birthday, I was yet again struggling with an unexplained illness. Or rather, an illness for which I had no risk factor and yet came with a multitude of explanation. It began last week like any old cold: an occasional sneeze; then, a horrific sore throat Sunday evening, followed by a headache, lethargy, and, eventually, a fever and nasal and chest congestion. The person I live with had been sick for a week with a much more benign cold, which nevertheless did not prevent him from going to work. He claimed he had caught it from one or another of his family members with whom he had recently visited. At first throat pain, I immediately began taking some leftover Zithromax I had, and I had to beg him to get a script for himself, which he reluctantly did – 2 weeks after he began to get ill, when he claimed to be well over it. These upper respiratory tract infections always happen to me just as I am about to embark on some new project – usually, trying to locate allies – and, for some reason, I seem not to be able to make antibodies to whatever pathogen(s) creates this crud. And he always gets ‘sick’ with a much less benign illness first.


Such is the way of life for a genuine political dissident in the U.S. these days. The covert war in which we are targets is waged with the bioweapons this country has spent more than 70 years ceaselessly developing, despite being a signatory to the Bioweapons Convention Treaty, which is a law like any other – only as good as its ability to be enforced. And we’ve never had UN inspectors in any of our many, many bioweapons research labs.  In a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Department of Defense by the Foundation for Economic Trends, “The Pentagon admits that it is operating 127 chemical and biological warfare sites in the U.S. . . . “The DoD is applying recombinant DNA techniques in research and the production of a range of pathogens and toxins including botulism, anthrax and yellow fever.”  What’s interesting about the botulism research is that it’s culminated in the very popular commercial product Botox, which is 1/300th the strength of botulinum toxin and genetically engineered so that users will never develop antibodies to it. That’s the reason wrinkled rich people can get their Botox injections until the day they die to get rid of their crows’ feet. And if they can do it to botulinum toxin, they can do it to other pathogens, to be sure.

We’ve heard a lot of outcry from the managed left about Obama’s hit list and drone strikes, both actual and potential, against U.S. targets lately, but I can assure you – the covert war for which Obama signed these diktats into ‘laws’ is waged with covert weapons, and nothing is more covert these days than the Lord-only-knows-how-big bioweapons arsenal our covert warfighters have at their disposal.  I am also routinely poisoned with some type of horrific allergen I never knew existed until I began this blog; once, my pepper mill was contaminated, and I saved some of the pepper that was in it. Within a day, it had grown a nasty, black fungus the likes of which I had never seen before. Even freezing it didn’t stop the growth of whatever this contaminant is, and the last time I was hit with it was – ta-dah – just the day before yesterday, the morning of my 51st birthday, which made my actual birthday not a lot of fun, recuperating as I was, after having taken several Benadryl Liquid Gel caps. No – it’s not going to be a drone that gets me; if it’s not one of the fast-acting cancers our government has developed, such as pancreatic cancer, it’ll be some other type of pathogenic systemic overload.

Such is the way of life for a genuine political dissident of the U.S. these days.

3/21/13 UPDATE:  Ah - the second full day of Spring.  And the terrorism campaign continues.  Today, the subwoofer noise torture began promptly at 6:00 a.m. and lasted for an hour and a half.  I don't know why - perhaps because it's so commonplace by now - but it didn't bother me all that much, even though it was certainly loud enough to wake all the other people in the building, had they been real neighbors instead of other agent provocateurs bivouacking occasionally in the other apartments to make the illusion of our Potemkin village seem authentic.  By far the most disturbing of these has to be the woman across the hall, whose mailbox says she lives there with two of her grown children and her daughter's children - in a 1-bedroom apartment with less than 400 square feet.  I say she is the most disturbing not because she, herself, is a graceless hypocrite - implied that I was a manipulative maneater like Eve the one time I was afraid I had been too loud and went to apologize to her for it.  No - it's because of the way she uses children in the persecution campaign into which she has been dragooned.  For four years, her 'grandson' has been taught to run, screaming at the top of his lungs, up and down the hall, whether it's 11:00 o'clock at night, or 6:00 o'clock in the morning.  Screaming.  And if it's not his screaming that can be heard ringing through the upper floors of the apartment building on the occasions when they're in 'residence,' it's the woman who claims to be his mother, berating and threatening him at the top of her lungs.  I'm certain it's no coincidence that these provocateurs are a race different than my own; attorney Brian Glick noted in his 1989 book, War at Home:  Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, "In the past, the FBI had to rely mainly on informers or local police infiltrators because it had very few Black, Latin, or female agents, and its strict dress and grooming code left white male agents unable to look like activists.  As a modern 'equal opportunity employer,' today's FBI has fewer such limitations.  (As of 1988, however, its agents were still only 4 percent Black, 4 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent female, and members of all three groups had sued the Bureau because of employment discrimination.99)."  (So. End Press, p. 41)  Of course, it's no longer merely the FBI that's running provocateurs these days; thanks to deregulation and privatization, any contractor, or subcontractor can run terror campaigns and be shielded from detection while at the same time operate with impunity; whatever cult this woman may belong to may very well be supported with "faith-based" funding from her church to do so, for all I know.  While I find it hard to listen to the abuse this child and his sister are subjected to because I, too, was subjected to the capricious violence of a rage-a-holic parent as a child (a fact I've often wondered whether was the basis for the design of this particular persecution, since it does trigger some lingering PTSD in me), what I find even more despicable is their training these children to become violent, racist, antisocial beings.  Of the 2 interactions I've had with this young man, 1 was to give him a picture book which I thought would entertain him long enough for his 'grandmother' to discipline him with understanding and care; the other was when I politely asked her if she couldn't importune the children to be a little more quiet because I was convalescing - and he told me that he didn't like me. He couldn't have been more than 6 then, and it really broke my heart, seeing how twisted his mind had been made against someone he didn't even know, someone who had only been kind to him, at such a young age.  Child soldiers don't exist only in Mogadishu; they're being trained right here, in PSYOPs, by those who are supposed to protect and nurture them.  Really very disgusting.  Of course, I'll be called a racist for insisting all children be treated with loving kindness, told I simply don't understand the 'culture.'  But who's the real racist here?  Child abuse is no culture's value, and these children are being abused.  (And I can say that, even though my degree in cognitive development and early childhood education isn't from that perennial defense contractor/creator of PSYOPs, Harvard.)

3/19/13 UPDATE: Turns out, yesterday was a two-fer - not one, but two fire drills, the last conducted at 8:45 PM, which took the fire department across the street 20 minutes to respond to, and only after someone had called them.


This, on the same day that Chris Hedges wrote in "Truthdig.com" about the exact same type of torture inflicted on those incarcerated in our real, not virtual, prisons. Someone should tell him he needs to defend those of us who are not criminals but still subjected to our police state and its covert war nevertheless.  It is we, after all, who are the legatees of our nation's endless covert war against civil rights activists and social reformers, and, as Ghandi wisely noted, the level of freedom a government claims for its people ought not to be judged by the freedom of the average person, but the freedom given to its political dissidents.  You are not free.

3/18/13 UPDATE
This week, I decided to re-double my efforts to contact potential allies.  These efforts were, of course, met with like-wise oppressive ferocity, as you can see from this and the last update; our bi-weekly fire drill came at 8:00 a.m., and, as usual, I was the only resident in the building to scramble out into the 23-degree weather.None of my other ‘neighbors’ seemed too concerned about being burned to death, as though they knew, somehow, that there was no fire (you’d think our fire department would have better things to do than to participate in this type of terrorism, but apparently, they comply willingly with the charade that our building has a nuisance fire alarm, which the city seems unconcerned about fixing, because they’ve been seconded under the ‘Patriot’ Act to wage covert warfare against decent people).I began my week by visiting the offices of a purported civil rights attorney, whose work has included prisoner’s rights.I was followed there by a man wearing a gray fleece pullover – and law-enforcement issue navy blue slacks –and followed from there to the train station by the same man, who sidled up next to me at the crosswalk next to the station; they love to let you know you’re being watched because if you tell anyone, you prove what they will later assert to discredit you – that you’re paranoid. The provocateur who started this latest battle, in fact, gleefully sneered at me, when I went to his apartment to ask him to turn down his ‘music,’ “See you next time,” assuring me that provocation is what he is all about, and letting me know that he could torture me as much as he wanted with impunity. Would that that were the only weird thing to have happened that morning.

When I entered the attorney’s office, I was greeted by a young man at the reception desk.I introduced myself and asked to make an appointment for a consultation with the attorney.There was one man in the room with us, sitting directly across from this young man. The young man introduced himself – gave me the name of an attorney who, I later learned from checking Martindale Hubble’s website, practices at a much larger commercial M&A law firm around the corner – and explained that he didn’t keep the calendar of the attorney I wished to see, but offered to take some information from me for him to contact me. I followed him into an office.

The young man – let’s call him ‘Tom’ – began by asking the nature of my problem.  I said it would best be described as civil rights, specifically, COINTELPRO.  I asked him if he was familiar with it, and he said no.  I explained as briefly as I could the history of our government persecuting its political dissidents with COINTELPRO, specifically, PSYOPs, including the use of instruments of torture and terrorism.  I said that I had been targeted in my home with noise torture devices, among others.He then asked, “Now, what makes you think the city is torturing you in your tiny little apartment?”And I had to reply, of course, “I don’t think the city is torturing me; these are weapons that were given to local law enforcement by Janet Reno’s justice department, in a plan conceived by George H.W. Bush, and you can read the case history of it on the Justice Department’s website.”I hadn’t thought to mention that Victoria Snellgrove isn’t hasn’t been the only victim of this militarization of local law enforcement; Tom had said he hadn’t much time and I was trying to be succinct – until it became clear that Tom was not who or what he appeared to be.I gathered my coat and scarf and rose to leave.“You understand I’m just trying to constrain the issue as best I can for attorney X . . .” he mumbled.“Yes – you said you hadn’t much time, so I’ll make it even easier for you. I’ve ‘constrained’ it even more for you.”I left the letter explaining who I am and the problems with which I was seeking help resolving with him, along with the first 50 pages of the essay I have been working on for the past 2-1/2 years about the covert war in which we are all potential targets or covert warfighters.I thanked Tom and told him I would call on the attorney later in the week to see how he might help me.

I thought it best to phone Tom on my way home to let him know that I had been followed, in case something happened to me along the way, but my earliest opportunity to do so was on the train, going over the salt and pepper bridge.I apologized for not being able to hear him; I had just enough time before the train entered the tunnel to tell him about the cop that had followed me and assure him that I wasn’t asking for the attorney to help me fight this covert war alone – just looking for guidance and some references, if he, himself, couldn’t help me.

I think that’s probably the most appropriate road to take from here on out – nominating proxies to act on my behalf to gather potential allies.  The laws that have been passed to prevent political dissidents like myself from having contact with others – prohibiting people from talking with those of us who’ve been deemed ‘terrorists’ as provision in the Patriot Act provide – are aimed at isolating us, and, therefore, must be confronted head-on.It’s a terrible position in which to place others in, especially, those from whom you hope to gain assistance, I know.But I’ve given up feeling uneasy about doing this since I am not the one who set up this perverse system, which has a lengthy, pre-War on Terror history in our government’s arsenal.I’ll not feel guilty for needing help, nor sorry about asking for it.If I do nothing to create justice for myself and others like me, you will one day find yourself in my position, and no one wants that.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to keep passing out cards, asking for help finding safe housing, civil rights’ representation (c’mon people, the Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that contractors and subcontractors in the War on Terror could be sued in qui tam –whistleblower – lawsuits for the torture they inflict on their targets, and I am certainly a verifiable tortured target), and other support.But instead of putting my name and phone number as a contact for myself, since I’m not allowed to receive calls (when I first began to hand out these cards, I started receiving repeated calls that simply have dead air and then a recording, saying, “Good-bye.”When I try to reverse search their owners, I get messages saying my request timed out, even after mere seconds of making it.), I’m going to put the name and phone number of a community member whose reputed vocation it is to help others.Not sure who it will be – a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, rabbi, or minister, or all of the above– but it will be someone whose life’s work is, reputedly, to help the defenseless.Of course, the problem becomes planning.Since nothing I do isn’t unknown to the police state, this forces me to act precisely the way PSYOPs campaigns dictate – impulsively – which makes me look exactly as covert warfighters wish me to appear:unstable, and therefore, subject to incarceration in a psych ward.Be that as it may, my hope is that those who make the effort to visit this site educate themselves so they understand this is the way the covert war is being fought. And then, let the chips fall where they may:I will apprise them of my need for help, direct them to this blog so they can learn with what it is I need help, and then let them decide for themselves if they will be decent human beings, or like the vast majority of disinterested Germans in Nazi Germany, complicit (or worse –collaborators with our nakedly fascist government and its police state by working with its minions).

I’m not sure, at the moment, whether or not I’m going to publicize this list of potential allies; anonymity does have its benefits, even if it’s only a surmised and not actual anonymity, which, as you can see from reading this blog, none of us has anyway.I don’t expect many people will view themselves as fascist collaborators if/when they help oppress and persecute people like me; they’ve been propagandized thoroughly to believe that they’re “patriots,” when, in fact, they’re nothing more than dupes and tools, if they act to support this vile police state, even by turning their backs on its victims (or, more rightly, because of their turning their backs) – such as the ACLU, the National Lawyer’s Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the AFSC, the UUSC, and Amnesty International have all done.That’s right – I’ve approached and asked them all, sometimes, repeatedly, for help, and received nothing but contempt from them. I know full well the frustration Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., felt when he observed, “It is not the actions of our enemies that we will remember but the silence of our friends” just before he created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Other targets deserve to know what they’ll find, if they’re attempting to trod an ultimately fruitless path.

Then, at some future time, I’ll re-visit these potential allies to see what’s transpired – what offers of ‘help’ have surfaced, legitimate, or other – and follow up on them.Be sure to check back to see what happens because, barring my incarceration or death from one or another of the many bioassaults I routinely suffer, I will be posting on my progress.

And – don’t forget –all of this is because I have the audacity to merely try to speak out about being reified in our government’s heinous bioresearch programs to create all the types of AIDS it has, just as untold hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, were during the atomic era research projects, and the still untold number of victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. They had to find a way to keep our growing numbers silent somehow. Covert war? Mission accomplished.

3/14/13 UPDATE: Today's Terrorist Ambush
Happened about 11:00 this morning. A collaborator with our fascist city's "Special Services" department, and a fascist cop, showed up at my door - even though I didn't buzz them into my building - claiming the police 'were concerned about me" - so concerned, apparently, they thought tortious infliction of emotional distress by forcing their way into my apartment building and creating a nuisance by banging on my door (and addressing me by some other name than my own) was worth the risk. Creating committed women out of social refocuses and activists has long been the means police in this country have terrorized and dispatched 'inconvenient women whim they have no other means of locking up because their behavior is lawful. Look at what they did to Alice Paul and her fellow suffragettes! I informed this 'woman' her presence was not welcome here, that's why I hadn't buzzed her into the building, and when the cop began interrupting her tiresome theatre performance, I reiterated that he had no reason to be here since I had not done anything illegal, like make the harassing phone calls his colleague erroneously claimed I had made in his previous ambush. I can't remember who said it, but it's as true today as it ever was: no woman who's ever made a difference has ever been called anything but crazy.

Happy women's history month!

Sheesh - where's a civil rights attorney in Boston when you need one?
3/9/13 UPDATE: Well, it's been quite a week. The day after I posted the previous update, we had another fire drill - promptly at 9:00 PM, just as I was sitting down to do my meditation practice. At least the fire department showed up this time. Nearly a half dozen times last year, when the fire alarm went off, they never even bothered to show up. Once, I walked across the avenue to my fire station and asked if they were going to come over and check out the fire alarm. I was told to call the building management so they could shut it off -- which is against the law; only they are allowed to shut off fire alarms -- and then I was told to call the nuisance fire alarm hotline to report it. That shouldn't surprise anyone; I went to the local chapter of Citizen Corps. and discovered that my city's fire chief is an auxillay captain. Citizen Corps. says this is its mission: "The mission of Citizen Corps is to harness the power of every individual through education, training, and volunteer service to make communities safer, stronger, and better prepared to respond to the threats of terrorism, crime, public health issues, and disasters of all kinds." Police departments have long worked with the military to persecute political dissidents, as you can see from reading this website, and since the Patriot Act was signed, quasi-private organizations such as Citizen Corps, manned by purported civil servants, do the same thing, thanks to provisions of the The Patriot Act, the NDAA, and other policies of the Department of Defense. My 'neighbor' told me he had been accepted to the training program for the fire department when we gathered in the snowy early morning hours of yet another fire drill. "I passed the test," he said, eyes gleaming. I asked him at the following fire drill when he was to begin his training, and he couldn't even tell me where he'd be studying. Methinks it was some other type of test he 'passed' than to be admitted to the fire department training program, though no citizens name, curiously, appear on the Citizen Corps. local chapter roster under "citizen" members. Very curious.
3/8/13 UPDATE: International Women's Day
Brought more harassment from my 'neighbors:' door buzzer ringing continually at 5:50 PM, followed by the stomping up the stairs of people entering the apartment under mine. I guess they must be reading my blog.  Would be nice to be allowed to move, but are there any other property owners who aren't sociopaths and terrorists?

3/4/13 UPDATE: Instead of receiving the follow-up call from my local state rep. she assured me I would, this morning, at 10:45, some people I had not buzzed into the building and were not expecting knocked on my door -- persistently, for the better part of 10 minutes. I didn't answer the door this time; the building management has my phone number and can reach me if it needs to, so I know it couldn't possibly have been them. And then a number I didn't know came up on my cell phone, and when I reverse searched it, White Pages said it belonged to someone living in my city and that I could have the name of the person for $1.99. I input my cell number to receive the info by text - and was told my request timed out, over and over and over again. I tried looking it up this way from a desktop computer at the library - and got the same 'error' messages. Well, didn't some AT&T executive testify in court a few years ago that the phone company is just another branch of the government? Just another very curious ambush.
ORIGINAL POST

     I am routinely terrorized with various types sound torture in my home.  This is what agent provocateurs do – and the reason they do the type of torture they do is because it’s torture from a distance; there are no waterboards, no briefs from corrupt U.S. attorneys general authorizing the torture.  It’s just your word against the word of those in your close proximity that engage in this torture-from-a-distance persecution.  On Christmas day, for example, just as I was sitting down to eat, I got burned by a directed-energy weapon – one of those so-called less-than-lethal weapons Janet Reno’s justice department thought local police, and consequently, all their subcontractors now, ought to have – on my shoulder, which was directed from the apartment across the hall through the wall our apartments share.

Usually, I’m able to withstand this torture without reacting, but tonight, I was tired, and easily provoked from having sustained sleep deprivation for more than a month. This evening’s mission started at 7:30 precisely and consisted of amplified sub-woofer bass sounds, pseudo-techno pop, and both an amplified male and amplified female voice.  The former are the types of sound shown to cause pneumothorax.(1)  Tonight, it came, as usual, from the apartment underneath mine, which is inhabited at times by some of the same people that variously inhabit the apartment across from the hall from mine, who like to run back and forth between the apartments through the back hallway, which is in the middle of my less than 384 sq. ft. abode.  At its peak, the noise torture reached 105 decibels on my decibel app.  Fifty-five decibels is the noise level of a busy office, according to the app.

     I called my new local state rep because, in the past when I’ve been assaulted – once, right in front of a city police officer – and I’ve asked for help from the police they have done nothing other than abuse me further. The one time I called to complain about the noise coming from the next door at midnight, the officer claimed not to hear it – though it was clearly emanating through the room. The police woman who witnessed my assault in my former bank refused to file a report on the matter when I asked her to do so, even though I had obtained the name, address, and phone number of the man who assaulted me from the clerk that waited on him.

     When my local state rep answered her phone I asked – several times – if she had time to speak with me since I was calling her at her home at 8:10 in the evening. She assured me, though she was putting her kids to sleep, she did. She asked me for a quick synopsis of what it was I wanted to speak with her about. I assured her it was a complicated issue and asked if she wouldn’t rather speak with me the following day, a Saturday. She said she wouldn’t be able to do so until Monday and that she’d like to know briefly why I was calling.

     I told her about the campaign of persecution to which I had been subjected, about the sound torture to which I was being subjected even as we spoke, and why – that I am a political dissident, though I am not a terrorist. She agreed it was a complicated issue – and asked me if the local state rep she had replaced in the last election had known about it; I told her those working for her predecessor didn’t want anything to do with me and made sure I was easily rebuffed by her (who simply passed the buck by referring me to others who also refused to help me). I told her that someone from whom I once sought help after being assaulted on the MBTA assured me he had been told by the city police that I was “the complaining sort of woman,” as if that meant I had no right to equal protection under the law. I explained that I didn’t call the police for help because the police had given me plenty of reason not to trust them. Then, she took my name, address and phone number.

     Twenty minutes later, a man identifying himself as a city police officer showed up at my door. He rang the buzzer for my apartment, and I didn’t answer because I wasn’t expecting anyone. Every now and then, the terrorists charged with tormenting me like to ring the doorbell just to annoy me. He kept ringing, and apparently rang someone else in the building, who let him in. I answered the door after he kept knocking and knocking on it, and his first words weren’t, “We’ve had a report of a noise complaint.” No. Instead, it was the decidedly smart alecky comment, “I understand you’ve been making some phone calls this evening,” as though I had no right to use a phone, let alone contact my local state rep, and in any case, owed him an explanation about my phone use.

     I told him that I had, indeed, called my local state rep and not the police because every time I went to the police for help all they did was abuse me. I told him it was clear the police worked with the Pentagon to persecute its targets, its political dissidents, as they always have, and that his real business was downstairs, with the noise terrorists. I opened the door and motioned for him to come inside and investigate, since the sound was clearly and evidently resounding through the apartment. My decibel app was open and recording the noise, and I wanted him to see what it had recorded. It had been so loud, it had caused a motion operated toy mouse to move around my cat’s toy box, and rattle wine glasses in a rack on the wall until they chimed. At one point – the point I thought I may be in physical danger – two miniature sonic booms resounded off the walls in the hallway, “pop, pop.” Instead, he refused to come in and gave me a veiled threat concerning the committal of my person to a mental institution: “How are you feeling this evening,” this snarky little brat taunted.(2)  I replied, “That’s really none of your business. Your business is downstairs, at the least. But thanks for stopping by.” After I closed and locked the door, he continued to pound on it for several minutes, and then he interviewed my other ‘neighbors’ across the hall – apparently, friends of his, given the warm way they were catching up with each other – before leaving.

     I left a message and wrote an email to the director of the National Lawyer’s Guild. I seriously doubt she received either, but in any case, I haven’t heard from her. I don’t expect I ever shall; this was the second time I tried to reach her since the Boston office of the National Lawyer’s Guild declined to help me.

     I was awakened at 7:00 AM this morning by the same amplified sub-woofer sound torture, albeit at a much lower decibel – just loud enough to hear, and sensible to shock the eardrums.

     Now, I know the mayhem the secret police in this police state create with telecommunications. One of their tried-and-true tactics, back before synthetic technology could mimic a person’s voice (or interrupt, or relay phone calls to dead lines, or minions of the state) was to impersonate activists in organizations working for their civil rights, such as the women’s movement, to call one another and concoct arguments among them, causing rifts and schisms that ultimately led to the disintegration of the group.(3)  And, of course, we all know from watching movies such as There’s Something About Mary how easy it is for the average busy body to buy eavesdropping equipment; my tormentors have long made it known to me that they listen to everything that happens in my home by repeating back to me fragments of conversations I’ve had in private telephone conversations – often, the most technically oriented or personally relevant bits.  So I don’t want to impugn my local state rep.’s credibility by claiming it was she who called the police on me for simply seeking her representation in a difficult situation.  “Officer Abredo” was so unprofessional, in fact, that I thought at first he wasn’t even the police officer he was pretending to be, despite his uniform, badge and walkie-talkie.  “He may be as illegitimate as George Zimmerman,”(4) I thought – just another sub- sub- sub- contractor with quasi authority to persecute whomever he pleases. But the person with whom I share my apartment saw a city police cruiser in front of our apartment building while Officer Abredo was here, as he was coming home from work, which makes me wonder why this PSYOP, clearly aimed at threatening me with imprisonment through commitment in a mental institution, was conducted mere days after I mailed to the state rep who is seeking to replace John Kerry in the senate not the donation for his campaign for which he had solicited me, but, instead, my declaration that I was committed to fighting the fascists that control our government, who have closed American society and made it a police state. It was on a business card I hand out on occasion for this blog, and on the back was a description of one of the many MK-ULTRA campaigns they’ve waged against me. It read:

“There is only one reason a veterinarian would tell one of his clients the reason her cat’s integument had a moth-eaten appearance was because its tongue is so rough it pulls the fur out, and that is to discredit her to anyone to whom she repeated such a ludicrous statement, which no veterinarian familiar with parasite infestation would make. That means such a ‘veterinarian’ is really a covert warfighter conducting PSYOP on the law-abiding, non-extremist, non-terrorist cat owner – which makes him a fascist toady psychological terrorist. (I suppose this may explain why the person answering the phone of the actual vet had a voice like James Earl Jones, and the person who showed up pretending to be said vet sounded like Jose Carreras.) If you do the same, that makes you the same. If you don’t, you should be outraged your government pits people like you against other non-terrorist Americans. And you should resist them.”

     They always make me pay for merely trying to speak out and tell the truth about my bioenslavement.

     I’ve tried many times over the past 24 years to leave the home where I have been persecuted – to rent an apartment and to buy property – but always, I am thwarted.  There was the time the mortgage lender offered me a mortgage at 4.5% DPR – that’s daily percentage rate, not annual – which isn’t, strictly speaking, predatory lending because, of course, I didn’t purchase the loan (I have no doubt the bank's appraiser would never have approved such a loan, just as I have no doubt I wasn't given a genuine mortgage product to purchase because this 'mortgage lender' simply wanted to rebuff me without taking any direct, possibly discriminatory action - and so he did).  Today’s shenanigans were little different.  I don’t know who it was I spoke with when I called a realtor about an apartment I saw listed on craigslist, but, while he did say the apartment was still available, he also said that the management was closed for the weekend and not showing the apartment, which made no sense to me at all, since it had just been posted on Craigslist the day before, just in time for the busy real estate weekend.  He simply said he’d call them on Monday – by which time, I’m sure, the apartment will be let.  Clearly, I’m to be kept in this virtual battlefield to be tortured no matter what.  I have serious doubts that I even spoke to the realtor who posted this apartment listing, and wouldn’t you, if you were me?

     So, if you think you don’t live in a closed police state operated at the behest of the most powerful fascists in the history of either fascism, or history itself, think again, my friend.  This has been a long time coming and is very firmly established and entrenched.  And it will, eventually, happen to you, too, no matter whose ‘side’ you think you’re on.

--------------
(1)  Reuters:  “Music Fans, Beware the Big Bass,” www.wired.com, Med-Tech:  Health, September 2, 2004  (http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/09/64829, accessed August 29, 2012).  Contributors:  “Sonic Weapon,” www.wikipedia.org (http://en.m.wikipedia.wiki/Sonic_weapon#Demonstrated_infrasonic_weapon, accessed March 2, 2012).
(2)     Weinberger, Sharon:  "Report:  Nonlethal Weapons Could Target Brain, Mimic Schizophrenia," www.wired.com February 18, 2008 (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/02/report-nonletha/ accessed September 24, 2012).
(3)    Glick, Brian:  War at Home:  Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It (South End Press, 1989), p. 31.
(4)     Lee, Trymaine:  “George Zimmerman Neighbors Complained About Aggressive Tactics Before Trayvon Martin Killing,” The Huffington Post, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/03/12/george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin_n_1340358.html, accessed March 2, 2013).

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Here’s the thing . . .

Many people around the world are celebrating Easter today. For the past week, they’ve been shopping for new clothes, shoes and hats; the fixings for sumptuous meals; and greeting cards for their families and friends, and today, they got up – some, even, before dawn – put on those clothes, gathered their families together, perhaps stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee and a bite to eat on their way to church, and sat (or stood), bleary-eyed, as an equally somnolent ecclesiastic delivered a fairly predictable homily. Then each went home with his or her family, hunted for colorfully dyed hard-boiled eggs and chocolate goodies, and spent the afternoon feasting with extended family and close friends. That’s how most Christians in America, at least, spent Easter. Comforted by the routine performance of family traditions, many may have subconsciously wished to (but few did) ask themselves, ‘What are we really doing today? Why – and what – are we celebrating? Don’t good people die everyday? What’s so special about Jesus, and why do we celebrate his death?’

What, indeed, are we really doing on Easter Sunday?

We all know the folklore contained in the story of Jesus’ martyrdom, the (what some people consider) irrational and unfathomable stuff for which the word, ‘faith,’(1) is wrongly interchanged by members of many Christian denominations with the word, ‘belief:’ Jesus was crucified, he died but then recovered his body(2) so he could fight Satan (that is to say, not the hockey player, but evil incarnate, which requires a body since evil needs human hands, or corporeal matter, in order to manifest itself) and then took it with him into the celestial realm, the nature about which he seems, in this legend, to have suddenly changed his mind since the time his disciple, Mark, witnessed him telling one of his students, “Thou art not far from the Kingdom of G_d,” or heaven [when you seek to know G_d all the time, in every way, and treat others as you wish to be treated](3), or the time he told his disciples heaven is a way of being in the world much the same as that which is created by our relating with any generative earthly thing that sustains us, as noted in The Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 13.(4) It’s a shame we don’t think more about our spiritual legends – how they were created, and why – especially this one, and especially at this time of year, because it seems rather obvious that Jesus died first and foremost to prove to us that anyone, even we (as social and political activists), could (and should) make the ultimate sacrifice for non-tangible things called ideals – specifically, for the inviolate ideals of truth, liberty, justice and egalitarianism, not merely the perverted symbols of them for which we reflexively ask our young to die in empire-building missions such as the invasion/occupation/colonization of Iraq.

We really don’t have the chance at any other time of the year to talk about this obvious fact (surprise, surprise), or the fact that the meaning we can access by looking at Jesus’ death is very liberating: ‘Gonna die anyway and live on in spirit – might as well die in a way that means goodness prevails in the world after I’m gone.’ Regrettably, we also don’t think about the fact that, as Americans, we live in a place and in an epoch that are as morally bankrupt as the ones in which Jesus and his first followers lived – in a country and at a time where those ideals for which Jesus both lived and died are socially unacceptable, where it’s even dangerous to talk openly about honestly pursuing them, for all the government-administered rhetoric about them that pervades our war-worshipping culture. We who, in our own modest ways, work as Jesus did to fight the social and political injustices in our communities and in our world with openness and passion are being exterminated just as Jesus and so many others throughout history have been, and it’s as difficult for us to be alive here, in this community, as it was for Jesus and the first Christians to be alive in anno Domini uno, Jerusalem. Wouldn’t it be a shame, when this opportunity to reflect on these facts is staring us in the face, to let it slip away? The reasons for Jesus’ death couldn’t be more relevant than they are today, though few religious leaders openly acknowledge this fact, and some even deny it. I can’t.

Jesus was a political – not merely a social – activist. That’s why his government (and not whatever social service agencies may have existed when he lived) administratively murdered him. He confronted those people in the Temple who were feeding taxes to the corrupt government under which he lived through their business activity right there, on holy ground. He didn’t mutely accept, or grumble half-heartedly under his breath about, the comfortable agreement between the civic and religious leaders in his community whereby the latter traded their complacency about the oppression and terror suffered by Jews such as he for protection by the former because their mutual relationship was profitable. Say what Benedict XVI will about Jesus not being a political activist,(5) Jesus, while he wasn’t a murderer like Barabbas, was every bit as radical a political activist as his pardoned fellow political prisoner. That’s what Jesus’ outburst in the Temple at the money-changers’ table was all about – political activism. He was protesting the collusion between the Temple priesthood and the immoral Roman government. Can you imagine any one of the Enron employees that lost their livelihoods and pensions walking into the churches of the principal executives of the failed company after it went bust and screaming at them, demanding they turn over the company’s liquidated assets, including the million-dollar-plus tax refund the company got from our government that year, to those that lost their jobs? But no one did – because we’ve grown complacent about the illegal and immoral activities of those who sit in the pews next to us, thanks to our government condoning and supporting them. The SEC had plenty of evidence that Enron was a Ponzi scheme; it could have revoked the company’s corporate charter the moment Enron’s whistleblower CFO told them it was a Ponzi scheme, but it didn’t. It didn’t even fine the company for its illegal activity. Jesus wouldn’t have stood for it. He even mouthed off to the civil toady, Pilate, who interrogated him by answering Pilate’s questions with pointed questions of his own while Pilate was persecuting him, without bar, nor lawyer, between them.(6) Jesus took action, wherever and whenever he could, and he didn’t apologize for, or recant in any way, the justifiable things he did to overthrow his corrupt government. That’s what political activists, such as Aung Sun Suu Kyi and Ken Sara Wiwa, do. They’re not silent, or complacent. And because Jesus wasn’t silent, or complacent, he, like Sara Wiwa, was administratively murdered by his government.

Jesus was not just about doing the social work for the poor and underprivileged his religious leaders ought to have been coordinating but weren’t. That wouldn’t have gotten him killed, never mind the kind of attention from his local enforcers that prompted them to form a posse to take him in (by the order of Caiphus’, the high priest and head of the Sanhedrin, or local Jewish ‘sheriff’s office;’ there’s that collusion), much less Herod Antipas’ notice. Rome was the civic government in Jerusalem – its occupying forces – and Roman soldiers were commanded by Rome’s politicians, not by its social welfare agencies (if such agencies had existed). One might ask why, if Jesus wasn’t a political activist who was murdered for his political activism, the Pope bothered to waste his time saying otherwise more than 2,000 years after Jesus’ death. Wouldn’t it have been obvious by now, if he weren’t? The fact is, Jesus’ political activism has been obvious to, and inspired, a great many people throughout history, and just as we must consider the motivations of the first people who created the fantastical window-dressing of bodies flying through the air to a mythical realm for the story of Jesus’ martyrdom, we should consider the Pope’s motivations for proffering his ludicrous opinions; he is the head of an organization that has, once again, made itself the justifiable object of scorn. Pragmatically pandering to the organization’s remaining adherents with sentimental and unfounded notions of Christian dogma must seem like the easiest way to appease those who fund the enterprise of which he is CEO. Some people like fiction; other people, non-fiction. It is obvious that Jesus was a political activist, and there can be no argument about it, just as there can be no argument that the same type of mob (including, eventually, his own disciples, with the exception of the female ones) which denounced Jesus (exterminating him first socially by making of him a pariah) also operates to exterminate political activists here in America today, just as they have operated everywhere throughout history. Sadly, we seem to have learned little since Jesus’ death about the corrosive effects of political repression and the way in which it creates each epoch’s martyrs.

What’s important in the story of Jesus’ martyrdom is his act of sacrifice – whatever was the outcome. Elevating the importance of his death even beyond the importance of the deaths of any other martyrs relegates the profundity of the way in which this sage acted every day (including the day he died) by standing up for communitarian ideals that made the society in which he lived more G_d-reverent to a place so far into the background of the story that we don’t readily see how Jesus set the example of right-living, not just right-dying, for us to emulate (which pleases the political powers who oppress us no end, I’m sure). Jesus showed us – not merely told us – that we each can have the courage to stand up for what is right – for our inviolate ideals – all the time, come what may, and be in G_d’s kingdom thereby. “The Kingdom of G_d is at hand.”(7) Consider that Jesus traveled to the poor and talked with them about all aspects of the Pentateuch and his interpretation of them -- his own “Midrash,” the fruits of his own undertaking of the two-item agenda he gave us -- including what we call mysticism, because, as a child, he had had the opportunity to do the same with the learned men in the Temple. He thought knowledge about the spiritual life and G_d was so important for everyone, he didn’t throw in his lot with the elitist priests who only served those by whom they were paid. More importantly, he didn’t just lecture those he taught; he championed free (what we would call today, ‘public’), SOCRATIC education, which trains people to think critically through dialogue (and not simply to perform doctrinaire mind exercises). Jesus listened to people, as we can see him doing in The Gospel of St. Mark, 12:29-34. Here, he’s talking with a scribe – someone who squatted in a marketplace stall all day copying documents in languages he more than likely couldn’t read for hardly any money at all. We seem to have forgotten almost entirely that Jesus did these things to encourage others to live as he did, not sit back and coast, letting others oppress us.

For far too long we have told ourselves that Jesus took care of business 2,000 years ago, and so we don’t have to now. “He died for my sins, and now I’m clean.” Pardon? How does that work? So many people see this perverted dogma (or dogma equally as pernicious, such as predestination) as a license to do whatever they want, to create not heaven, but hell, here. Purchasing ‘dispensations’ with membership fees and donations to a religious organization, or a couple laps around the rosary beads, is just as bad. We may rightfully ask, ‘whatever happened to Jesus’ primary teaching? That simple, two-item to-do list recorded in The Gospel of St. Mark, The Gospel of St. Matthew (the ‘Sermon on the Mount’) and elsewhere?’ Jesus was Jewish, and he believed in the one, true, omnipresent, omnipotent G_d(8) – in creation, as it is present to and resident in us, and our ability to ‘commune’ with G_d all the time. He understood deeply that G_d is not some stagnant, paternalistic, symbolic god that lives above the sky somewhere, or any type of entity at all. And Jesus believed that creating a just, kind society honored in the best way possible this understanding – because bringing to fruition the ideals of charity, justice, compassion, and equanimity requires using one’s heart, mind, strength, and soul. It requires a passionate commitment, a love, of knowing G_d, of understanding this ongoing creation and the spiritual nature of our relationship to it. Consider that Jesus was a skilled healer. He probably became one because, at some point in his life, he needed – but didn’t have – a healer. So he learned how to heal sick people and did so whenever he could; that was his contribution to creation, evidence of his communion with G_d. He championed GENUINE health care for everyone (not anything like the price-fixed crap that passes for it in America today, which only those fortunate enough to pay into the ineffectual system that parsimoniously doles it out can obtain anyway). Curing people who are sick? Do it. Reifying the bodies of the sick for profit? Don’t do it. It’s only what you’d want, and both actions create the kingdom of G_d. Consider that Jesus worked with and was sponsored by women from all castes in his society. He championed an egalitarian society. Do you like being discriminated against? Then don’t discriminate against others -- on any basis. Do you like being murdered? Then don’t murder others. Do you like being slandered out of society? Then don’t slander others out of society. Do you, when you’re the victim of political and social oppression, like being sacrificed by those you’re trying to help? Then help the victims of political and social oppression. But by not doing the two little things Jesus advised us to do to know G_d, and by doing whatever we please or what we find easiest to do instead, we’ve gotten ourselves into a pretty big – if not predictable (at least, to Jesus) – pickle.

The ‘I-don’t-have-to-do-anything-but-coast’ mentality created by a dogma that holds Jesus’ death washed us clean of our sins 2,000+ years after that death occurred is pernicious not merely because it is in direct opposition to Jesus’ teachings, but because it also divides us from one another; it groups us into enclaves of those who ‘go along to get along’ and those who protest the outrageously violent, inhumane society and culture in which we live that free-market lust for the spoils of (for example) war-making, both here and abroad, has created. And you know what happens once we are divided; we are all conquered -- by the same type of oppressive, freedom-denying leaders who persecuted Jesus. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’(9) and all that. Heads up – no matter who you are, it’s coming at you. You could be as good a ‘Christian’ as Jesus (who, as we know, was Jewish), go to Church every Sunday, or mass six or seven times a week (or Temple, if you’re Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Sikh), but if you’re only one, or a fraction, of those in power, and you see the plain truth in, for example, what is said here, you’re going to wind up an outcast, or in a prison – or worse – unless others who value truth, justice, liberty and egalitarian ideals actively stand by you. Your only hope is to take back your power together even if it means that only your progeny will have the chance to enjoy the benefits of your sacrifice. Because collusion never works. Though we may be tired of constant protest – shell-shocked, even, over the never-ending man-made cataclysms that keep us reacting and reeling – we just have to align our minds and strength and our respect for our spirits with our hearts and keep working to create the kingdom of G_d because it’s the right thing to do. As obvious as this fact is, something else keeps us from standing up for what’s right: fear.

‘Save Barabbas,’ the mob demanded. ‘Crucify that pain in the ass, Jesus. He’s making us all look bad, and collective punishment is no fun,’ they effectively told Pilate, when they should have rioted against the government like Chinese nationals in Beijing, June of 1989, after Jesus’ arrest. But they didn’t – because they were afraid they would end up tree ornaments themselves. It seems humankind will never learn but by the hard way that if one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. We can’t afford to sacrifice anyone, especially those working to create heaven here on earth, because who can say when the sacrificial quota is reached? Who knows that number? What if, through nothing you’ve said or done, you suddenly find yourself in that group?(10) That’s the way all repressive governments administratively murder us -- indiscriminately. Barabbas, or Jesus – it didn’t matter to Pilate that Good Friday since both were heading for the same destiny anyway in his mind. It was that way in Jesus’ time; it was that way in mid 20th century Germany; it was that way in South America in the 1970s and Central America in the 1980s. It’s that way here, today. Either we’re all expendable, or none of us is, and if you’re a Christian, let me remind you, you’ve already said none of us is. You’ve pledged your fealty to those who believe none of us is expendable – in any way, for any reason; that’s truly that ideal of the sanctity of life in action, not some murderous anti-choice campaign to save what may very well be no souls at all, since sages throughout time, including St. Augustine, have tried and failed to determine the exact time of ensoulment (it’s probably as variable as any other human growth process, such as the day we lose our first baby teeth, or sprout our first gray hair, and known, therefore, only to each individual soul). That’s how stupid fear makes us; it makes us forget that we’re Christians, and then we do ridiculously anti-Christic things, such as persecute and sacrifice our fellow human beings, or even kill them. Agitate for what’s right and true. That’s how Jesus lived, and in our hearts (well, in the hearts of those of us who assiduously pursue the to-do list he gave us), we know it is because he importuned us to live this way. We just have to align our minds and strength and our respect for our spirits with our hearts. That love of G_d, not fear, must be our motive force.

Fear, Jesus shows us, has no place in our lives as a motivating factor, when we’re truly alive, truly living our spiritual ideals. It doesn’t matter if we’re killed, Jesus’ example shows us, when we stand up for the right things; our spirits will live on. If this observation is a little too mundane for you, and you think the simple fact Jesus was a radical political activist isn’t enough to explain his awesome martyrdom – if you find you just can’t cleave the wheat of the story from the extraneous, superfluous chaff of supernaturalism – then I have to ask you, ‘When was the last time you were hunted, jailed, and tortured because of something you said, or did? Are those things so routine to you that you can shrug your shoulders when we talk about Jesus’ – or anybody else’s – political repression and execution?’ (That must be why we have no wars today.) Not looking so boring now, is it, Jesus’ less-than-glamorous life? “To be, or not to be? That is the question.”(11) Jesus knew the answer. Few have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as he did, and surely, anything that obfuscates the lessons of Jesus’ martyrdom and diverts our attention from his teachings cripples us spiritually. We need to be as fearless as Jesus was because the ‘I-don’t-have-to-do-anything-but-coast’ mentality that has wrongly absolved many of us of our duty to help others – including our modern-day martyrs – cripples us spiritually. Not only has it paralyzed us into submission to the fascism that has completely overtaken our society,(12) it has especially damaged the kingdom of G_d here because so many people today act as the mob that sent Jesus to his death acted – if not with complacency, then with extreme diffidence. Thanks to fear and the diffidence and complacency it breeds, evil has won. We need to put aside our fear of losing that in which we have invested for so long, our folklore and our ineffectual religious institutions -- stop 'throwing good money after bad' -- and reexamine the lessons Jesus' death can teach us about ourselves.

Jesus didn’t die for our sins in some bizarre, not even metaphysical, act of transmission. That’s not how spirit works. Your soul has as its moral agenda, its modus operandi, the same work that any other soul – including Jesus’ – has, an agenda that he neatly outlined in that two-item to-do list cited on page one. Two. Just two. Not none; not one – but two. Not three. Two. Two required actions. Jesus died because of our sins – the things society didn’t do according to moral prescriptions (the work he was doing to reform his corrupt society as well as the work to defend him in his hour of need), and the things society did do (collude with the corruption he was fighting, and then throw him under a bus, so to speak, when he tried to persuade them to stop). Jesus died to show us that we could accept all our responsibilities to live meaningfully with grace, no matter the consequences. He told us very plainly that the only ‘way’ we can save our souls is by losing our lives for the betterment of the world.(13) He certainly didn’t allow his life to be taken from him to somehow prove he was better, or different, than any other right-thinking martyr; he was in no sense an elitist. He traveled all over his country and talked with everyone about this best of all possible ways to live, not just the rich. That’s not the behavior of someone who thinks they’re better than anyone else. That’s why the last supper is so important to his story – because Jesus knew it would be his last, and he wanted his friends to understand that even death was preferable to the hell of the emptiness of a life lived as a pragmatist, without any ideals at all, doing whatever nefarious thing it takes to get by (or living by bad ideals, like exploiting and selling out others for expediency’s sake). He knew the mob of Roman, Jewish and all the other classes and castes living in Jerusalem who preferred living their lives as pragmatists would be happy to nail him to a tree because they did that all the time to “inconvenient” truth-tellers they feared. And that’s the reason people at some point in time thought it would be a good idea to remember him and the way he died – because they understood that Jesus knew that he was sacrificing himself by standing up for truth, justice and the way of G_d just to show others no different than he that they could as well. That’s what the last supper was all about – Jesus disclosing his foreknowledge of his sacrifice to his friends. Everything Jesus did, including his death, was a demonstration of the quintessentially human experience of life – and death: the conscious creation of them meaningfully, by effectuating our best ideals, and that's the thing. What more proof do you need than the willing suicide of the best of the best of us for mankind’s folly to make you understand the rest of the story is dross? Isn’t that part astonishing enough? Thankfully, not every Christian (or other ethically inclined world leader) has committed that sin.

Ghandi. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Sofie and Hans Scholl. Steve Biko. All those nameless and faceless western European Resistance fighters during World War II. John, Martin, Bobby, Malcolm, Medgar Evers, the four little girls, the Chinese national who stood against the tank outside Tiananmen Square in 1989. The disappeared in Argentina. The liberation theologians of South and Central America. The Sandinistas and their compatriots who are being systematically murdered today by “neighborhood watch” vigilantes bent on retaliation. SO many modern-day Jesuses. Rebecca Nurse and the other 19 Salem Village martyrs, including an unnamed newborn. The adherents of the “old” religion that rightly worshipped creation as G_d, as well as the first Protestants who were also burned at the stake for challenging the political and religious powers who ruled them. What did they all have in common? They all died because they were incorruptible and unwilling to sell out their ethical ideals – like Jesus. They didn’t murder other people, the way fundamentalists of every stripe, including Christian as well as Arab and Jewish, do today because of some perverse notion that doing so is ‘God’s work.’ They allowed their lives to be taken from them because they were not corrupted by the power of religious dogmatists; they weren’t pragmatists who went along to get along. Like Jesus, they worked for the good of all society. They stood up to the goons who immorally ran their societies, because, like Jesus, they knew the spiritual life of all humans is inexorably actual, omnipresent, and that the only life worth living is one that acknowledges and respects this truth. They believed human ideals could create not merely a different type of meaning in our lives than the procurement (and certainly, the unbridled pursuit) of material goods, but that living inviolate, good ideals into existence – creating their tangible artifacts -- was the paramount human experience, and that dying in the defense of our G_d-given right to live in that meaningful way was a worthwhile endeavor. This is the essence of the spiritual life, and all the aforementioned people knew it. They didn’t mindlessly go to church, or temple, and snicker up their sleeves on the way out the door, thinking they got away with something because they showed up to make themselves look good, all the while planning to, for example, carpet bomb innocent civilians in some far-away country. They weren’t hypocrites. They understood completely their two-item to-do lists and they undertook them each and every day. That’s why their lives were taken from them. And here’s a horrifying fact that presents itself when we consider what’s left after they’ve gone: still the same old incarnate malevolence in people that has always existed, manipulating the rest of us. As Marian Anderson so eloquently noted, “As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.” There’s a lot of people not soaring today as they otherwise might.

Your community is a mess run by fascists and their minions. Take a minute to read this. Fascism(14) is the aggressive oppression of civil society’s public government by those people who advocate the use of wealth without restriction, such as civil law, including laws that prohibit the physical enslavement of people, which in today’s America means the slavery of institutionalized homelessness, and ineffectual human subject research laws, and the commercialization by biopharma giants of the manipulation of human proteins (by “small molecule medicine”), as much as it means tax slavery to support a national debt incurred solely to fund our military's empire-building missions, or social extermination of activists fighting these representations of fascism by the creation of "wall-less" prisons with military-developed PSYOPS, all of which have been created by groups of people as diverse as Christian Dominionists and those who believe Homo sapiens are animals, not humans capable of just societies, who claim slavery as their right either because 'slavery is in the Bible,' or the law of the jungle compels the powerful to subjugate the weak. If you don’t understand this, and you don’t see the fascism around you when evidence of it is everywhere, then you have already been conquered and are, yourselves, slaves.

Apparently, it’s not that different in other parts of our own, or any other, country than it is right here:

∆ Robert Woodward was shot as he lay unarmed, face down, in a Unitarian-Universalist church on Sunday morning, December 2, 2001, by Brattleboro, Vermont, police. You can read about the progress of the legal case his family brought against the state of Vermont on the website of one of its lawyers. Your local police are no different than police in any repressive regime anywhere in the world, only today, instead of beating African-American civil rights protestors and shooting unarmed students to death, they work hand-in-hand with America’s secret government agencies to terrorize and torture individual American political activists at the behest of the Pentagon. And that’s not all they do.

∆ Infotainment syndicates are experiencing a boon in the bottom lines, producing stories that further exploit the victims of what have become commonplace sexual slavery rings in America. MSNBC tells the story of one girl who was ‘befriended’ by another girl at her school, who aided her parents in kidnapping the girl, and E! channel has it’s Teenage Trafficking documentary. As bad as all that is, as we learn from the first story, local police (like the ‘friend’ of the girl who was kidnapped) are actually aiding those who run sexual slavery rings. The girl’s father, after discovering who had kidnapped his daughter and seeking the help of police to rescue her, was told by those police they couldn’t help him – but was nevertheless given the phone number of a contact of the girl’s captors by them, with whom he subsequently met (alone) and from whom he was able to learn his daughter’s whereabouts. He, himself, then undertook her rescue. We may, with outrage, ask how the hell the Toledo, OH, police knew the contacts of the network of people, and apparently even the key people, running this sexual slavery ring and why they did nothing to put them out of business. The answer? In America, as elsewhere, markets must be protected – and there’s a huge market for sex slaves.

∆ In addition to our local police force, the ‘neighborhood watches’ they run and the ‘business first’ organizations proliferating today are nothing more than mobs organized to commit character assassinations, and worse, on behalf of those who’ve turned our society from a civil one into a lawless, vigilante-repressed one. They are today’s SS – our secret government agencies’ employees working through quasi-private secretive organizations such as infragard-boston.org. And they have to go.

∆ As for other targeted individuals of our secret government agencies, not only do we have testimonials by brave insiders who tell us there is a direct line from the Pentagon to local police forces that runs through the CIA, the FBI and other secret agencies, we have the accumulation of bad legislation since Ronald Reagan’s presidency which evinces this close, unconstitutional relationship.

∆ Our government has always – and never stopped – persecuting law-abiding political activists for speaking out against it, and it is persecuting ordinary, law-abiding people today for not supporting the prurient social order it, through unhindered free-marketing crusading fascism, has created.

Workers who demonstrate a reluctance to be amoral renegades for the unbridled greed pursued by the corporations that employ them fare no better in this ‘new world order’ (to quote then U.S. President, George H.W. Bush) than anyone else who refuses to support this new and unprecedented change in American society:

∆ Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace records with great specificity what can only be called the fascist practice of forced unemployment through character assassination and workplace terrorism campaigns that routinely create employees who “go postal” on their colleagues. These practices have become standard business procedure in today’s American workplace and were once so ubiquitous in the late 20th century in modern western European countries that many of those countries– including Germany – effectively outlawed them. Here, they go unacknowledged. When (if ever) employers are sued for creating and/or allowing a hostile work environment, such cases are prosecuted using very narrow anti-discrimination laws because no laws which specifically outlaw workplace terrorism exist here. If victims happen not to belong to any protected class, or if they do but have no money with which to bring a suit, workplace terrorism continues.

∆ If you haven’t seen the documentary, The Corporation, or read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, or John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, then you are clueless about the extent to which we are all slaves of one or another type – utilitarian only for others’ profit, or disposable when that profit is maxed out, and about how our government’s sole purpose is to protect the so-called ‘free’ market businesses that profit from treating human beings thusly. (In 1998, 53% of the GDP was derived from government contract work.(15) Who knows how much it is today.).

So -- what’s a Christian to do? Live for material, or live for spiritual, ideals? Stand by and let this corruption rule us all, or take action. It’s a no-brainer if you’re a Christian, because, as a Christian, you’ve already committed yourself to honoring human life as spirit first – the kind of entity that responds to the a priori good ideals which compel us to participate in creation, in G_d(16) – and not see yourself or others as just amoral meatsickles (your body is the temple for your spirit), who do whatever is easy, or expedient, to get by. Emperor Constantine may have declared that only Jesus had this aspect of divinity in 300 A.D., but that doesn't mean Jesus' followers for the previous 3 centuries were wrong to believe otherwise, and we who believe in the divinity that resides in each of us aren't wrong, either. Constantine and his First Council of Nicea were politicians, like the people who killed Jesus physically, and all of the aforementioned people understood inner divinity and chose to live their spiritual ideals into existence. All of them. Jesus’ ramble to Golgatha was Rome’s version of the National Guard’s defilade against Kent State students in 1970; of the cavernous cells filled with political activists in Moabit and other German prisons in 1944; of South Africa’s secret night-time rendition of attorney and activist, Steve Biko; of the fortified grounds outside the Imperial Palace in Beijing June 4th, 22 years ago (an event which many of today’s Chinese citizens are forbidden to talk, or even know, about, like Americans are forbidden to know about Robert Woodward’s murder in Vermont); of the cart ride from Salem jail to a kangaroo court in spring, summer and fall Danvers, MA of 1692; of today’s probable night-time renditions of political activists to any of the who-knows-how-many secret CIA prisons around the world. His meditation in Gethsemane is every targeted individual’s walk to the grocery store today, knowing there are those lying in wait for us. Jesus was absolutely a political activist – and a radical one, at that. And he knew exactly what he was doing and why; he was living his life – and his death – for meaning. We would do well if we did the same.

It’s not too late for us to learn the lessons Easter has to teach us. Let’s start by acknowledging of supreme importance the patently obvious in the story of Jesus’ political persecution and execution – that it was just that. Let’s dare to hear the story of Jesus, the martyr, just as it is, as he intended it – and resist the sentimentalizing hearsay that may very well be supernatural embellishments. Let’s not forget that the first Christian church was started by a guy who had once worked as a tax collector for the repressive regime he joined Jesus in fighting and had no occupation to which he could return after Jesus’ murder. Talk about burning your bridges! How’s that for a questionable motive to begin an enterprise that couldn’t afford to fail? It’s not even important whether we can ever say with certainty that Jesus survived the crucifixion, though he may very well have because of a Houdini-like mastery over his body he could have developed along with the many other mystical capabilities he demonstrated. He was, to all outward appearances, a magician, one of many magi around at the time, after all.(17) Since the only possible way Jesus could have arisen from true death is as a spirit, just as we all do, it seems obvious that if we say his post-mortal life is somehow remarkably different than anyone else’s we denigrate the spiritual life of everyone, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus would want us to do.(18)

It’s our sin today when we pervert the importance of Jesus’ exemplary death with finger-pointing over who was actually responsible for it, or hocus-pocus that obscures this willingness of his to sacrifice himself in a moral lesson of incomparable magnitude. These sins prevent us from seeing the parallels in our society and in our natures with Jesus’ society and the state of humanity when he died, and that diminishes the thing, because it takes us students of ethics out of that moral classroom which Jesus sacrificed himself to create for the sake of our eternal lives (that is to say, the edification of our souls on how to live effectively as human beings, lifetime after lifetime). To say that Jesus died ‘for’ any other reason than that he courageously ‘walked his talk’ is to add insult to injury, and offend the sensibilities of many who believe and act as he did. Even worse, it causes an ethical paralysis in us the world can little afford. The traditionally Christian ideals of compassion and justice seem to be of so little consequence to our society today they appear absolutely annihilated. But it hasn’t always been so, and it needn't be so in the future.

The two final questions you must ask yourself this Easter season are, then: for what are you living? For what are you willing to die – something as spiritually stultified as your yearly trek to CVS to buy bulk-packaged foil-wrapped chocolate eggs you tuck into plastic grass that’s nestled into bamboo baskets made by third-world citizens for pennies a week so you can watch your children scramble around your yard for a few hours one (hopefully) sunny spring morning, or the same thing for which Jesus and others have lived and died so that you -- and those children -- have the chance few throughout history have had to live with dignity, without social and political repression: the everlasting life of the spirit? Generating taxes for endless war (including covert war on your fellow law-abiding citizens) and for TARP and for tax bailouts to the wealthy and to service the debt we owe to other repressive regimes such as China and Saudi Arabia, who underwrite our corrupt government (which makes us de facto citizens of those countries); or generating taxes with your hard work that go to pay for quality universal education that includes accurate history, civic and science education, and for healthcare that cures instead of enslaves, and for satisfying our national debt once and for all so no one else owns us and we don’t have to answer to them ever, and for a peace department that makes peace a way of life instead of war and whose budget replaces that of the Pentagon because we’ve already got all the bombs anyway and can destroy the world 500 times over? WWJD, you ask? TWJWD. It’s not even too late to help those political activists who are telling you of their oppression and persecution, and today, you have a decision to make: help us, or do nothing. Be a Christian and live your ideals for truth and justice into existence, or be a pragmatist and ignore our pleas. That's the only way to bring to fruition the ideals Jesus cherished and for which he died.

There are other things you can do, too.

We – all of us – need our own Pastors’ Emergency League and our own Confessing Church. We need our ethical leaders to act like ethical leaders and set the example of Christian courage in every church in America today. No more turning away, as if to say, “Oh, those zealots or fundamentalists are only a fringe movement.” That simply will not do any more because when many of those zealots say, in their mega-churches every Sunday, that they are Christian soldiers, they mean they are at war with everyone not like them. They mean they are out for blood. They mean to take no prisoners -- just blood, either by forcing targeted individuals to commit suicide, or by engineering suspicious accidents to which targeted individuals fall prey. That's what zealots do -- whatever nefarious thing achieves their goal -- in the case of religious zealots, conversion to their cult. If ever the misguided needed our prayers, it is these unfortunates who've been indoctrinated into this war-mongering cult that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the community Jesus bade us to create. We need to stop deluding ourselves that we live in any sort of ideal society that mimics the one Jesus told us we could – and should – manifest for us all (if we were free to accept our responsibility to do so). So long as these types of perverters of truth control our society, as they apparently do, Jesus does not live. Hitler claimed over and over his was a Christian mission ordained by God, just like George Bush and Ronald Reagan have done – but they’re all hypocrites. We need to acknowledge these facts, and depose the politicians and religious leaders who've created this anti-Christic culture, which has much less to do with Jesus and G_d than it has with mass control of human consciousness.

We need to start listening to the witnesses – and stop dismissing them as ‘crazy’ because it’s convenient to do so. That just plays into the hands of the power brokers who’ve exerted enormous energy to make witnesses (such as Elmer Allen(19)) appear illegitimate because they courageously speak about their persecution (in his case, reification by our government, his bioslavery). When we say, ‘what you are living with today in America is a fascist-controlled government,’ we’re not delusional; we have legitimate proof for our assertions – much of it, in our government’s own words, and we need, all of us, to understand the depth and pervasiveness of the propaganda our government messages to us, non-stop, to convince us its unholy machinations are somehow righteous. Their portraits of the allegedly irredeemable behavior of its native opponents, including its bioslaves, is fiction. We need to offer these targeted individuals our community, not our contempt, with no strings attached, other than the expectation that they, too, will be model ethical members of it. And most importantly, we need to teach our church congregants to stop creating targeted individuals with their gossip mongering and contrivance of entrapments of the political activists of our times, who are guilty only of trying to live ethically our inviolate ideals. They are exactly what Jesus was to the authorities in his day – pains in the asses of them, but nevertheless, right.(20) Isn’t that what you believe Jesus was, after all – right? Our fellow congregants who don’t understand this (and they’re easy to see, with their goose-stepping to every wave of Old Glory our fascist government makes) are the timeless pawns of the powerful. They’re not Christians, and we don’t have to entertain their company as though they were. We need to pray for them, as Jesus advised in his Sermon on the Mount, but we also need to tell them that we will not tolerate, or collude with, their asocial, uncivil, unlawful and inhumane stalking and terrorizing campaigns, no matter who pays them to conduct those campaigns. We need to tell them that they, in fact, don’t have to participate in the political oppression of their fellow citizens – that there are communities where they will be accepted for not doing the bidding of fascists, and such things as anti-discrimination laws that cover religious beliefs with which they can refuse to gangstalk and mob their colleagues in their workplaces, if they feel themselves threatened with retaliatory treatment and unwarranted dismissal in the event they refuse to aid the minions that bid them in those places. Send them on their way, armed with the contact information of those in your communities who can provide safe harbor and who practice law, and given them the assurance of financial support in their fights, or shun them from your communities, if they refuse to behave as Christians would by fighting their oppressors. That’s worth giving up altar flowers and donuts on Sunday after service, or some advertisements, surely.

If you don’t think your fighting American fascism is the most worthwhile cause of our time, I beg you to read my blog and reconsider your opinion. If you refuse to see that your local, as well as your state and federal, government serves only those private enterprises (which are private in name only) that, in pursuit of government defense contracts of all kinds, terrorize and torture your neighbors, your parishioners, your friends and your family, and those who would defend them (me!), then you are as guilty of collusion as any German national in the third and fourth decades of the 20th century who mouthed the rhetoric of Aryan supremacists and denied the existence of the concentration and extermination camps, and (not to put too fine a point on it) you owe your personal apology to all those of your acquaintances who ever had family who either fought, or died, thinking they were defeating, or had defeated, fascism. Take a moment of silent meditation to think about that last statement, please, and think about the martyrs who’ve given their lives for the perversion of the ideals of truth, justice, liberty, and egalitarianism foisted on us by the government under which we now live. No one else is going to do it for us except ourselves. Clearly, civil government has only colluded with the fascists, so civil disobedience must be undertaken. Protests. Divestment. Boycotts -- particularly of charitable brands that institutionalize the unjust socioeconomic class society in which we live now. Buycotts of any product or service that provides what we need to live without further harming the planet. Tax resistance. SHARING our common wealth to ensure the survival and continued work of the political activists who fight on the front lines (and they’re not the alleged ‘opposition’ to those who’ve been, or are, in power in America; that’s why the ‘war’ has raged on) – because doing so manifests right ideals, the ideals Jesus bade us to give life to.

He has risen – but only if you invite his spirit to live within you as you go about creating the world, today and every day. Christians and pains in the authorities’ asses, unite! Roll up your sleeves. There’s lots of Jesus-type political activism to do.

________________

(1) "I discovered later, and I am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith; by this, I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, sacrifices and failures. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of [G_d,] taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of [G_d] and the world. That, I think, is faith." (Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter to Eberhard Bethge)

(2) “’Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I, myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’ And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, ‘have ye here any meat?’ And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them.” (The Gospel of St. John, 24:39-43)

(3) “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our G_d is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy G_d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one G_d; and there is none other but [G_d]. And to love [G_d] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of G_d.” YOU must strive to know G_d, not leave the task up to some cleric, and then participate in G_d’s creation; own your G_d ‘force.’ (The Gospel of St. Mark, 12:29-34)

(4) “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field.” (The Gospel of St. Matthew, 13:24) “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field.” (The Gospel of St. Matthew, 13:31) The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” (The Gospel of St. Matthew, 13;33)

(5) Regarding philosophical interpretations of Jesus’ activism such as those encompassed by ‘liberation theology,’ the Pope, in Encyclical 7, Spe Salvi, 2007, tells his followers they shouldn’t put their hopes for justice, redemption and a better life in things of this world, negating Jesus’ specific admonition to each one of us to undertake our own two-item agendas, as outlined in The Gospel of St. Mark, 12:29-34, and give life to those very things thereby.

(6) “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me? (The Gospel of St. John, 18:23) Here’s that cheeky “prove it” repartee we master as children.

(7) “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of G_d is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel.” (The Gospel of St. Mark, 1:15) Jesus was saying to his students, essentially, that they had ‘nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.’ This was after his forty days in the ‘wilderness’, that is, outside his nascent Christian community, being tempted with evil, and it gave him cache to effectively say to others, ‘Look, there’s no new evil under the sun – just the same exploitation people have always committed against one another, in a different disguise, that leads to self-degradation and hell on earth for everyone. Jesus was rhetorically asking the people in Galilee, who were up for grabs in this war of wills, ‘Are you going to succumb to temptation and continue to exploit others for your gain?’ Just change your behavior; stop exploiting other people – committing the same sins – and then you’ll find yourselves in heaven, because “the kingdom of G_d is at hand.” In other words, heaven is what you make it. (Make a clean break with the pragmatist’s way of life – douse yourselves in a little aqua vitae so you remember forever the moment you chose to live in this different way.) Teach others this way of living. (The Gospel of St. Mark, 1:17) Simple. Straight forward.

(8) “And Moses said unto G_d, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The G_d of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And G_d said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM, hath sent me unto you.” What is, is the ongoing source of creation, that impulse everywhere, its effect, and the omnipresent relationship between the two. (The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus, 3:13-14) The Force in Star Wars, the Source in the Old Religion, or G_d – it’s all the same thing: omnipresent, overpowering, ongoing creative impulse.

(9) “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.’” (The Gospel of St. Matthew, 12:15)

(10) “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” (Former German POW and Pastor, Martin Niemöller, Lectures on the Work of Germany’s Pastors’ Emergency League During WWII, 1945)

(11) Shakespeare, William: The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, 3:1.

(12) Hedges, Chris: American Fascists, Free Press, 2006.

(13) “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” (The Gospel of St. Luke, 17:33) Meaning, if you’re grasping for your material life, you’ll lose touch with the fact you even have a more important, spiritual one to save, but if you care less about your material life than you do about your spiritual one, you’ll do whatever it takes to preserve that spiritual life, including risking the material one, for a good cause, and your spiritual life will persist thereby.

(14) “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.” Copyright © 1983 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Reproduced by permission from The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Paperback Edition

(15) Rampton, Sheldon, Stauber, John: Trust Us, We’re Experts! 2002 Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

(16) "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend unto heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." (Psalm 139:7) Creation, G_d, is – always, in all places.

(17) The feeding of the 5,000 (The Gospel of St. Matthew, 14:13-21; The Gospel of St. Mark, 6:31-44; The Gospel of St. Luke, 9:10-17; The Gospel of St. John, 6:5-15), and his first ‘miracle,’ turning water into wine (The Gospel of St. John, 2:1-9)

(18) “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in His name, when they saw the miracles which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for He knew what was in man.” (The Gospel of St. John, 2:23-25) Jesus was a free agent. Were he alive today, he wouldn’t belong to any church or type of exclusive organization, such as the Masons, because he would not want to be venerated like a pop star. He knew the truth of which he spoke needed no flak and that any truly spiritual person would eschew stardom and groupies because s/he would know that the masses didn’t need those things to understand truth. No televangelism; no mega churches; certainly, no White House prayer breakfasts. Jesus would have been appalled -- with two P’s and two L’s – by such things.

(19) “CAL-3,” as he was known to his Los Alamos federal government researcher handlers, who deliberately misdiagnosed Mr. Allen for over 40 years, through every doctor he ever saw, all across the country, as a paranoid schizophrenic, to conduct their nuclear radiation research on him without scrutiny. (Welsome, Eileen: The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War, Delta, 1989)

(20) “Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognized and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.” (Wolff, Tobias: This Boy’s Life, Grove Press, 1989)


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