The Geronimo Manifesto

Nixon's Shameful War on Marijuana Users

2009-05-16T15:08:00.009-07:00

History is replete with examples of governmental attempts to modify human behavior by imposing prohibitions. All attempts failed, most of them miserably.

In the 16th century, coffee was banned in Egypt and supplies were burned. Coffee consumption increased rapidly.

In the 17th century, the Tsar of Russia executed people caught using tobacco. Among unexecuted Russian citizens, tobacco usage increased.

Similar results obtained when tobacco usage was banned in Bavaria, Saxony and Zurich. Violators were executed, by order of the Sultan. Among survivors, tobacco usage increased.

In England, the 1736 Gin Act was intended to increase prices to the extent consumption would decrease. General lawbreaking resulted. Gin consumption increased.

In China, a 1792 law required strangulation of keepers of opium shops. Opium usage increased.

San Francisco County recently banned smoking in all public buildings. This ban was deemed to include the jailhouse. The price of black market jailhouse cigarettes immediately jumped to $120 per pack.

The Puritans who sailed to Plymouth Rock in 1620 should have provided a clue. They packed 14 tons of water as emergency backup for 42 tons of beer and 40 tons of wine.

America imposed a tax on distillation of whiskey in 1791. The resulting civil protests quickly grew into armed rebellion against the new government. In 1794 President Washington called out the militias of several states to form an army roughly the size of that which defeated the British, put down the rebellion and established the right of the federal government to make war against its own citizens.

But the Army couldn't enforce the Whiskey Tax, which was repealed in 1803, long after unlicensed stills relocated to secluded forests in remote mountains in eastern Kentucky, where alcoholic beverages have been produced under shining moons for over 200 years.

Between 1875 and 1914, 27 states and cities banned smoking of opium. In those localities, opium consumption increased sevenfold. Abraham Lincoln earlier called this one right:

"Prohibition... makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... and strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Under President Obama, a few fragile green shoots are becoming apparent to those who seek to provide a dose of Hope, Change and basic sanity to America's war on citizens who use marijuana.

Which leads inquiring minds to ask: Where did this insane and inhumane war come from, and were the reasons valid?

The answer to the first question: Richard M. Nixon.

The answer to the second question: No.

Nixon initiated America's War on Drugs based almost solely on personal hateful racial bigotry and a profound level of ignorance of history.

Nixon was recorded telling his chief of staff:

"You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."

Those emotions have have blindly controlled national policy on marijuana ever since.

Under President Johnson, the progressive 1966 Narcotic Addiction Rehabilitation Act allowed treatment as an alternative to federal prison. A 1968 amendment allowed suspended sentences and for the criminal records of people who stayed out of trouble for a year to be expunged.

In 1969 the Supreme Court ruled the Marijuana Tax Act, the 1937 law that made marijuana illegal, was unconstitutional. In response the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act, commonly called the Controlled Substances Act, was passed in 1970.

Some provisions of the 1970 law were progressive. Congress determined that prisons were overflowing and the courts were ineffective because, due to the barbaric 1951 Boggs Act, they had no flexibility to make the punishment fit the crime. Mandatory sentencing requirements that treated a casual user possessing a quarter-ounce of marijuana the same as a determined dealer with a wheelbarrow full of heroin waiting outside an elementary school for his customers to be dismissed were recognized as a failed policy and were eliminated.

Other provisions were not progressive. With some Congressional misgivings, marijuana became a Schedule I substance, a drug with high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use. And also because it was used primarily by anti-war protesters and hippies, who were intent upon undermining Nixon's anal-retentive policies.

But Congress had lingering concerns about the dangers and medical benefits of marijuana. To resolve those concerns, Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse early in 1971. Unfortunately, nine of the 13 members were appointed by Nixon.

Because Nixon was personally opposed to drugs, he stuffed the commission with hardliners. The chair was Raymond Shafer, a former prosecutor and Republican governor of Pennsylvania, well known for his tough law and order approach to drugs. At the time Shafer coveted, actively sought and was being seriously considered for lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

The commission sponsored over 50 research projects, conducted numerous opinion polls and held many hearings, at which it took thousands of pages of testimony. To this day, the commission's work stands as the most thorough, unbiased study of marijuana ever conducted by the federal government.

Recently released tapes of 1971-1972 Oval Office conversations concerning Shafer and his commission reveal that Nixon, in his uniquely homey style, provided staff with extraordinarily lucid explanations for a number of societal issues that had long perplexed learned scholars. One of his more startling revelations explained the cause of decline of ancient Greek civilization:

"You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates."

Per Nixon, a similar fate befell the mighty Roman Empire:

"Do you know what happened to the Romes, Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags... The last six. Nero had a public wedding to a boy."

And the Roman Catholic Church as well:

"You know what happened to the Popes? Its all right that, po-po Popes were laying the nuns, that's been going on for years, centuries, but, when the Popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual..."

Britain and France suffered the same terrible affliction:

"Now that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France."

Russia escaped this moral plague, only to be engulfed by another:

"Why the hell are those Communists so hard on drugs? Well why they're so hard on drugs is because, uh, they love to booze. I mean, the Russians, they drink pretty good."

Nixon offered an eminently reasonable explanation for why booze is beneficial to society while marijuana is not. Nixon, who was known to drunkenly stagger through the halls of the White house while having incoherent one-sided conversations with portraits of presidential predecessors, piously explained:

"People use marijuana to get high."

"People use alcohol to have fun."

But these were merely gratuitous side comments provided to enliven discussions about Shafer, his commission and its findings.

The tapes make evident the extent and direction of Nixon's preconceptions about the causes of marijuana's increasing popularity:

"Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish."

Anti-war protesters represented the disastrous results of America's lenient drug policy:

"These uh, more radical demonstrators that were here the last, oh, two weeks ago. They're all on drugs. Oh yeah, horrible..."

The commission took almost 12 months to complete its work. On a number of occasions during that time, Nixon prematurely proclaimed the commission's conclusions and recommendations.

His comments to his staff and to Shafer, made at various times, in equally coherent terms, included:

"I think that's what you want to do, take a strong line."
"Now, this is one thing I want. I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, uh, Domestic Council?"
"I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them."
"We are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss, I want to find a way of putting more on that."
"I want to hit it, against legalizing and all that sort of thing."

The day before the Commission released its final report, Nixon said:

"We need, and I use the word 'all out war', on all fronts... We have to attack on all fronts."

Knowledgeable government professionals were not allowed to provide input. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare wasn't to be consulted:

"Don't go to HEW. Well, we might, we might have big problems with HEW too."

Input by the National Institutes of Health was forbidden:

"Did you see this statement by Brown... this morning? Uh, he should be out. I mean, today, today. If he's a presidential appointee all I do is fire the son- of-a-bitch, and I mean today."

No wonder Barry Goldwater was quoted as saying:

"I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone."

"America's Public Enemy Number One is drug abuse."
"...present efforts to control drug abuse are not sufficient... The problem has assumed the dimensions of a national emergency. I intend to take every step necessary to deal with this emergency."

In remarks to media executives the next day, Nixon claimed:

"Drug traffic is public enemy number one domestically in the United States today and we must wage a total offensive, worldwide, nationwide, government-wide, and, if I might say so, media-wide."

The war was on.

Why? Because "Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish."

And because "... radical demonstrators that were here the last, oh, two weeks ago. They're all on drugs..."

Insane reasons for an insane war. The time for government to recognize it has lost yet another war and to surrender is long past.

Chuck Simpson

John McCain's Agent Orange Issue

2009-04-14T07:46:00.008-07:00

During an April 6th speech to students of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam in the capitol city of Hanoi, Senator John McCain acknowledged:

"US wartime use of the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam remains an issue between the two countries."

This astoundingly casual statement should arouse curiosity: What are the current facts on the ground that would cause wartime aerial spraying of Agent Orange, which ended 38 years ago, to remain an "issue"? And why didn't Senator McCain pledge to use his power as a United States senator to help resolve this issue in some reasonably equitable manner?

During what the Vietnamese refer to as the American War, local hearts and minds were "won" by American military forces through aerial spraying of herbicides that were identified by the color of 4-inch bands painted around their 55-gallon drums. Agent Orange has by far received the most attention, but five other herbicides also were used.

Agent Blue contained cacodylic acid, an arsenic compound, and was sprayed at the behest of a South Vietnamese president who thought poisoning his own people was a good thing because they were his enemies. The American military obliged the President by intentionally spraying the people America was supposed to be defending from evil Communists. Over a period of nine years, about 1.2 million gallons of Agent Blue were sprayed on rice paddies in an attempt to starve and poison South Vietnamese civilians.

Agent White was a 4:1 mix of 2,4-D and Picloram. Agent White was contaminated with hexachlorobenzene and nitrosamines, both known carcinogens.

Agent Pink was used during early stages of Operation Ranch Hand, before 1964. The only active compound was 2,4,5-T, which was contaminated with dioxin, at that time the most toxic man-made substance known to mankind.

Agent Purple consisted of a combination of the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Agent Purple is alleged to have contained 45 parts per million dioxin and was only used between 1962 and 1964.

Agent Green was also used only during that period. Agent Green's only active ingredient was 2,4,5-T, presumably with similar dioxin contamination levels.

All six herbicides were defoliants, used to destroy food crops and to clear jungles, mangrove swamps and forests of foliage, the better to see while dropping bombs on defenseless villages from planes flying safely at six-mile altitudes.

For years the Pentagon admitted that, during 9-plus years of Operation Ranch Hand, about 19.4 million gallons of Agents Blue, Orange, White, Pink, Purple and Green were sprayed on slightly over 30,000 square miles, about 24 percent of South Vietnam.

In 2006 scientists at Columbia University discovered documents that indicate over 2 million gallons of herbicides were sprayed between 1962 and 1965 that were not included in totals provided by the Pentagon and relied upon in earlier studies.

Based on detailed analysis of flight records and available population data, the 2006 Columbia study estimated that 20,585 towns and villages were within spraying regions. As many as 4.8 million civilians could have been present in those towns and villages while spraying operations were conducted.

The mightiest and most powerful and fearsome military force ever assembled by mankind made war against millions of unarmed and defenseless civilians, predominantly women, their children and the elderly, in the country they were supposedly protecting and supporting.

Agent Orange was by far the most widely used defoliant. During that nine-plus year period, approximately 11.7 million gallons of Agent Orange, a 50-50 mix of the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, was sprayed on South Vietnam.

Because of time and money-saving shortcuts that resulted in insufficient heating during manufacture, the 2,4,5-T was contaminated with 2,3,7,9-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, or simply dioxin.

The dangers of Agent Orange became known in 1952, nine years prior to the onset of use in Vietnam, when Monsanto Chemical warned the Army that 2,4,5-T was "contaminated by a toxic substance". This was confirmed in 1965 through a study of involuntarily exposed and uninformed inmates at Holmesburg state prison in Philadelphia. The progress of their resulting cancers was monitored and studied but no treatment was offered or provided.

The Holmesburg report and subsequent confirming reports all were hidden. Millions of Vietnamese and a quarter-million American soldiers were exposed. As in the 1991 Gulf War, Pentagon brass used chemical weapons of mass destruction on civilians in violation of Geneva Convention rules of warfare, prevented all independent efforts to study their horrific effects and refused to acknowledge existence of overwhelming evidence of those horrific effects.

For over 50 years the Pentagon has evaded the truth and deceived the public by claiming Agent Orange was harmless.

EPA has a slightly different outlook.

Pursuant to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA established a maximum contaminant level goal of dioxin in drinking water of zero. The maximum contamination level allowed is 0.00003 parts per billion.

For many years the Pentagon claimed an Agent Orange dioxin contamination level of three parts per million. Independent testing has established average contamination levels of about 13 parts per million. That is 425 million times the concentration allowed in American drinking water.

Granted, very few if any people actually drank Agent Orange. But, conservatively assuming 2,500 drops per pint, one drop of Agent Orange accidentally ingested would result in the intake of the same amount of dioxin as would be contained in 21,250 gallons of drinking water which meets federal standards. A person would ingest the same amount of dioxin in one drop of Agent Orange as he would ingest by drinking 2 quarts of conforming drinking water daily for over 116 years.

These comparisons illuminate the very real possibility that substantial numbers of Vietnamese villagers might well have suffered from Agent Orange poisoning.

Soil contamination examples are similar. One example: Over 30 years after spraying ended, soil at the Bien Hoa former military base had dioxin contamination at 180 million times EPA's maximum safe level.

Today, at least one million and perhaps as many as three million Vietnamese suffer serious health problems as a result of countrywide spraying of Agent Orange. That number includes about 150,000 with serious birth defects, including spina bifida, severe retardation, blindness, tumors and grotesquely deformed or missing limbs. For the caretaking parents of these children, the war never ended. For these children the war never will end.

In the village of Cam Nghia for example, one child in every ten is born with serious defects. That ratio understates the problem because about 30 percent of village pregnancies terminate by miscarriage or stillbirth.

The war was allegedly fought to prevent Vietnam from "going Communist". On April 30, 1975, over two years after the last American fighting forces were removed from the country, the last remaining Americans were evacuated from the roof of their embassy by helicopter as masses of North Vietnamese troops entered the northern sections of Saigon.

Without an American presence, a unified Vietnam rebuilt their war-devestated country. The American government called this an act of an evil communist society. The Vietnamese called this a demonstration of solidarity, with everyone unselfishly helping everybody else. A unified Vietnam transitioned with a communist-style government for 11 years. Left to their own devices without American interference or influence, Vietnam then freely chose to move to a western-style free-market economy in 1986.

Since 1986, while the American economy has remained stagnant for all but the richest, the Vietnamese economy has grown dramatically. For several years they recorded 20 percent annual growth rates for the export of goods produced by local companies listed on the booming Vietnam National Stock Exchange. Vietnamese investors own stocks of businesses in one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

Unfettered free market capitalism. Some Americans recognize the sickening irony of the Vietnamese people of their own volition and without American influence doing exactly what America tried to force down Vietnamese throats, via support of what was at the time widely recognized as being the most corrupt government on the face of the earth.

Today, American companies like VISA and American Express sponsor floats in the annual parade celebrating victory over American forces in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City. That parade passes down Hong Thap Tu, past the site of the former American Embassy, which was razed over ten years ago.

Being American-style capitalists, the Vietnamese people attempted a capitalist solution to obtain redress for damages caused by America's illegal use of Agent Orange. In January, 2004 the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange filed suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Monsanto, Dow Chemical and eight other manufacturers of Agent Orange.

The suit was dismissed early in 2005. The judge ruled that plaintiffs had failed to show that any domestic or international law had been violated. In March of this year, the Supreme Court refused to hear plaintiff's appeal.

The primary hurdle that faced the plaintiffs was lack of internationally accepted studies that establish a link between exposure to Agent Orange and birth defects, cancer and a host of other serious illnesses. That's because no definitive studies have been made by the Pentagon, because positive findings would support claims filed by tens of thousands of American soldiers. Instead, the Pentagon for almost 40 years has steadfastly denied any and all responsibility for the harm they intentionally caused:

"Dioxin contamination... is harmless and causes no serious health problems or serious birth defects."

The Pentagon has also steadfastly refused to acknowledge harm caused to a quarter-million American soldiers who were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

In 1991, Congress authorized financial assistance to these wounded veterans. The Pentagon and the Veterans Administration responded by calling the link between Agent Orange and health problems "presumptive" and refused to pay legitimate claims. Only 1,800 claims, for 0.72 percent of the number of veterans who came into contact with Agent Orange filed have been approved for payment of compensation to American vets for the adverse effects caused by exposure to Agent Orange. To this day the American government is financially able but morally unwilling to fairly and honestly accept responsibility and compensate and support its patriotic wounded and disabled veterans for the damage the Pentagon knowingly and willfully caused.

The Pentagon refused to perform the necessary studies and prevented others from doing them. And war-ravaged Vietnam had no funds to do studies. Partially because in 1975 America vindictively imposed a Cuban-style economic boycott on a unified Vietnam as punishment for winning the war. American efforts concentrated on oppression and continuation of suffering.

One example: India attempted to provide 100 water buffalo, to replace a small part of the buffalo population deliberately killed during the war by American soldiers. America objected and threatened to cancel Food for Peace aid. The trade embargo was finally ended in 1994, 19 years after America lost the war. Diplomatic relations were established in 1995.

Legally established liability or no, America has, for the past 20 years, graciously provided funding for disabled Vietnamese citizens.

During that twenty year period, America has provided 46 million dollars.

Assume this money was used only to support the estimated 150,000 Vietnamese born with birth defects. The financial assistance so graciously provided by America would result in a monthly benefit of 1.28 cents per child.

One point two-eight cents per month per child.

Fifteen cents per year per deformed child for damage America illegally and intentionally inflicted on defenseless women in violation of Geneva Convention rules.

For lifelong damage intentionally inflicted upon the innocent children of the people America was supposed to be supporting.

Senator McCain, the accompanying photos depict but three examples of the "issue" you so casually referenced in your speech.

Senator McCain, I say stop trying to count the number of houses your wife owns long enough to open your eyes and see what you condone by refusing to use your senatorial powers to assist these innocent children.

Refusing to do anything at all.

Look and consider: One point two-eight cents per month.

The fact that you, as a United States Senator with power of leadership that could bring about partial atonement for this terrible injustice committed against innocent children, casually tossed this comment out without hanging your head in shame conclusively establishes that you don't have the moral authority to serve as the Hooterville assistant street sweeper, let alone as a President of the United States.

Or as a senator.

Chuck Simpson

Happy Birthday Mary

2008-11-09T20:02:00.003-07:00

November 9. As America celebrates an astounding electoral exhibit of possibilities for true progress, a fitting time to celebrate the 72nd birthday of an American who's fought for social justice for over 45 years. A woman who fought for civil rights in the 1960s. The fight that made Tuesday's victory possible. For over 45 years, she's fought for justice in all its forms the world over, in the process proving that one individual, or three, really can make a difference.

Through folk music. With messages of love and hope and defiance. As she explained:

"It's not about politics, it's about humanity, it's about humanity, it's about finding a way to live".

"We came from the folk tradition in a contemporary form where there was a concern that idealism be a part of your music and the music a part of your life ... the music becomes an extension of your caring and your soul--there's no schism between what you can do on stage and who you are. What we're trying for is a kind of health--and that's what we were always trying for."

For over 45 years, she and her partners haven't merely sung the songs. They've lived the songs. As she explained:

"The songs tell you, 'If you're going to sing me, you have to live me, too."'

Mary Allin Travers, born in 1936 of two politically active newspaper reporters in Louisville, Kentucky. Soon after, the family moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where Mary became musically active. She was first recorded at age 17 as a member of Song Swappers, a folk group that sang background for Pete Seeger. While in high school she twice sang with the group at Carnegie Hall. Although she never planned on becoming famous:

"I had never wanted to be famous. It never occurred to me. It never occurred to me that I was going to be a singer. I sang as a hobby, something I did for fun."

After high school, Mary worked at a clothing boutique, at day jobs in advertising and waited tables at Cafe Wha? while living in a third-floor walk-up apartment in the Village. Mary didn't live for money, so she could accumulate expensive but worthless possessions. Mary lived for music - her path to personal creativity and discovery. Mary spent Sundays at Washington Square, singing with friends in a series of impromptu groups.

In 1961 Mary connected with Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow. Peter Paul and Mary premiered at the Bitter End coffeehouse. After rehearsing for seven months, the group was signed by Warner Brothers and released their first album in March, 1962, accompanied by a single, Lemon Tree.

Their second single was released that fall. Pete Seeger's If I Had a Hammer was a hit, resulting in the trio being awarded two Grammy Awards. That song, which later became almost an anthem of America's Civil Rights Movement, was the trio's hopeful shout for freedom and Mary's expression of overflowing vibrant energy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKvpONl3No

Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind became an instant hit after being released by the trio in June 1963. In August they performed the song to a quarter-million people in Washington as part of the assembly where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech from the Lincoln Memorial.

The following year the trio became involved with the anti-war protest movement and worked for Eugene McCarthy's presidential campaign - a beginning of their many years of protest against the war in Vietnam.

Peter Paul and Mary quickly became famous. They used their fame to increase their level of protest, and broadened their activities to protest social injustice worldwide, in all its forms.

In the spring of 1965 Mary, with her mother, rejoined Martin Luther King, marching from Montgomery to Selma, in the process singing If I Had a Hammer under threat of violence. Two generations of protesters. Years later that number expanded to three, when Mary, her mother and her daughter all were arrested at an anti-apartheid protest. Mary referred to this as an example of "bridging the generation gap".

Later in 1965 the trio introduced Canadian Gordon Lightfoot to the United States, including in their See What Tomorrow Brings album his Early Morning Rain. In my opinion one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever performed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPnLK1WnXxg&feature=related

Mary sang with a voice that was sometimes subdued but always powerful. Powerful to the extent that, for many years, she leaned forward and sang to Peter's and Paul's microphones. Two years later they did America another great favor - by introducing John Denver to the country, with their rendition of his Leaving on a Jet Plane.

In 1969 Peter helped organize the March on Washington, where Peter Paul and Mary sang Give Peace a Chance and Blowin' in the Wind at the National Mall.

Mary participated in missions to Nicaragua during Reagan's wars for his version of "freedom and democracy", and to El Salvador, with her daughter, a former Vista volunteer. In 1983 Mary visited the Soviet Union in support of Russian Jews. In 1985 she accompanied exiled South Korean leader Kim Dae Jung back to his country. In 1985 Yarrow wrote Light One Candle for the trio. Proceeds went to the Sanctuary Movement and self-determination effort in Central America. In 1986 the trio issued No Easy Walk to Freedom in support of the anti-apartheid movement and were honored by the Free South Africa Movement benefit held at Washington's Kennedy Center. The album cover features a photo of the three being arrested for protesting apartheid.

Over the years, Peter Paul and Mary have actively supported a wide range of worthwhile causes, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Children's Defense Fund, Greenpeace, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, the Beth Israel Institute for Neurosurgery, Live Aid, One World, Public Broadcasting Service, World Hunger Year, Human Rights Watch, Second Harvest, the NAACP, the National Coalition for the Homeless, United Farm Workers Union, United Nations Children's Fund, Bread and Roses, Farm Aid, Project Momentum, Easter Seals and Crop Walk. Throughout those years, the trio performed Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind, with its phrase:

"How many years can a people exist, before they’re allowed to be free..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8U6Oh9uSY8

As Mary explained:

"When you sing that line in a prison yard for political prisoners in El Salvador; if you have sung it to a group of union organizers – who have all been in jail – in South Korea; if you’ve sung to Jews in the Soviet Union who have been refused exit visas; if you’ve sung it with Bishop Tutu protesting apartheid, the song breathes. It lives, it has a contemporary currency."

In 1997 the trio joined with the federal Department of Agriculture in an effort to fight hunger in America. In 1998 they performed at a benefit in support of United Farm Workers in California. On March 19, the 30th anniversary of the benefit they performed for Cesar Chavez at Carnegie Hall.

In 1999 the trio recorded Songs of Conscience and Concern, sold in a jacket with an explanation of the trio's choice of venue:

"Folk music springs from the lives of people, telling of their hard times and triumphs, their heroes and outlaws, their loves and loves lost. It not only tells the story of how we got here, but reveals the bond we share with past generations. They, too, had hopes and dreams similar to our own. They, too, sought to heal the world in their own time, ridding it of war and injustice--and they, too, were nurtured by the songs that bound their mutual vision, that helped to renew them in the wake of loss and disappointment."

"Let the music tell its story and perhaps you, too, will be moved to join your voice with others who are committed to the realization of a better world."

A portion of the proceeds were donated to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Children's Defense Fund and Oxfam, which fights global hunger.

Throughout, Mary found time for a wide variety of interests, all in furtherance of her long battle against all forms of social injustice. She recorded solo albums and toured, hosted a syndicated radio show, wrote newspaper columns and created the BBC series Rhymes and Reasons, which dealt with social traditions and changes.

In the fall of 2004 tragedy struck, and Mary began yet another battle. She was diagnosed with leukemia. After five weeks of chemotherapy, doctors told Mary:

"You were supposed to go into remission, and you haven't."

In April 2005 Mary received a bone marrow transplant, from a Republican named Mary. The transplant was successful. One month later, Mary was discharged from her hospital.

Seven months later Mary used a cane to limp onto the stage and join Peter and Paul to perform with the New York Choral Society at Carnegie Hall.

Through the years Mary has offered words of advice and encouragement that are pertinent today more than ever:

"Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophesy, and apathy is one of the greatest dangers."

"All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It’s a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice."

"It’s important for young people to perceive that there are acceptable avenues of dissent, because we live in a world where dissent is hard-pressed; treated as if it were unpatriotic."

"We’ve learned that it will take more than one generation to bring about change. The fight for civil rights has developed into a broader concern for human rights, and that encompasses a great many people and countries. Those of us who live in a democracy have a responsibility to be the voice for those whose voices are stilled."

As Mary Travers notes of the trio:

"We've always been involved with issues that deal with the fundamental human rights of people, whether that means the right to political freedom or the right to breathe air that's clean."

Mary's health problems have continued After her transplant she suffered knee problems, and underwent two surgeries on her back in 2007.

The last few years have been physically hard on Mary, and that shows. But her voice and her spirit remain strong. Physically, Mary has aged. Spiritually, she has not. Mary continues to fight on for a better world for all of us.

Even at age 72, Mary remains a fighter. Peter Paul and Mary performed in Hartford, Connecticut on September 28th. Mary was wheeled onto the stage with a supply of bottled oxygen nearby. And she performed. Magnificently. As Paul said after:

"Mary's ballad voice has never been more beautiful."

On November 4, the trio announced Mary has a lung infection. The remainder of the fall concert tour was rescheduled to 2009.

Not canceled. Rescheduled. As Mary said:

"It's my job to continue to try."

As for the future, at age 72:

"We have no plans to retire".

Many Americans talk the talk. For over 45 years, Mary Travers has walked the walk - in the finest example of a true American patriot who has always been willing to stand up and be counted in the ways that make America a great nation. Mary Travers truly has made a positive difference in the world.

Please show your love for Mary and your appreciation of her work by sending her a belated Happy Birthday and Get Well Soon message at:

http://www.marytravers.com/guestbook/gbook.php

She reads every message she receives. Please include a giant Thank You Mary. For over 45 years Mary Travers has been our trailblazer, acting for all of us who understand what America is and what America stands for, working to make a better, more just world, through her music.

All of us owe Mary a debt we can never repay. We can only say:

Thank you Mary, and Bless You and Keep You.

Chuck Simpson

The National Marrow Donor Program:

http://www.marrow.org/

CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS - THE INSANE PROBLEM AND THE RADICAL BUT SANE SOLUTION

2008-09-24T13:16:00.005-07:00

The paramount reason for today's cancerous credit crisis is seldom even hinted and never explained.

First, a simple definition. A credit default swap is a form of insurance. A variant of mortgage insurance required of many home purchasers. An insurance policy that requires a company with financial strength to step up to the plate and pay the mortgage if for some reason the home buyer defaults.

A credit default swap is similar: If default occurs, an insurance company pays the income stream of the mortgage.

With one extremely important difference: Payments are made to the owner of the policy, not to the financial institution that stands to suffer a loss.

Financial institutions are allowed, through total lack of regulation, to buy and sell credit default swaps, or insurance they will be paid in event of default, on financial instruments in which they have no financial interest.

Start with a simple example. Assume I know the young son of the couple next door likes to crawl into closets and play with matches. I therefore see a reasonably good shot at "winning the disaster lottery" so to speak, by buying fire insurance on their $200,000 house.

In simple terms, I now have a financial interest is seeing that disaster occurs. If the house, for whatever mysterious reason, burns down an insurance company will pay me the insured value of the house - even though I suffered no loss, financial or otherwise. My neighbor's misfortune is thus magically transformed into my good fortune. A polite way of saying I was paid $200,000, the insured value of my next-door neighbor's house, after I paid the $400 insurance premium.

Being bright and suitably equipped with an MBA from a prestigious eastern university, I well and fully understand the desirable objective of maximizing my return on investment. I can accomplish this in one or both of two ways - increasing the return or decreasing the investment.

I can increase the return by artificially increasing the value of the house - say from $200,000 to $400,000. This will allow me to collect twice as much for suffering no personal loss. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to hire one of my buddies, who happens to be a real estate appraiser, to "document" the higher value.

I could also decrease my investment - meaning the premium I paid for the insurance, say from $400 to $200. The easiest way to do this would be to hire a widely acclaimed "fire risk rating agency" to send out an inspector who will look around (or perhaps only drive by without stopping) and then solemnly declare: "This house is fireproof".

Poors and Standard Fire Rating Company and Doomys Fire Rating Agency would be excellent choices, based on their prior experience.

In the real world, meaning Main Street as opposed to Wall Street, this would be illegal. Against the public interest, because it encourages houses to mysteriously burn down. The insurance policies owned by people without a financial stake in the fire would be declared null and void because they are contrary to public policy, which sees minimizing the number of mysterious house fires as a good thing.

Rather than a bad thing, as now occurs under America's predatory capitalist system.

Now change an assumption. Assume I tell 99 of my poker-playing gambler friends about the boy's strange and dangerous interest. Starting with my appraiser buddy, who's predatory income as a result of a mysterious fire will double, as a direct result of his appraisal.

Now assume the $400,000 house burns to the ground. One hundred or so insurance companies will collectively pay $40 million in claims on the loss of a single $400,000 house. The benefits of a $400,000 disaster are magically multiplied by a factor of 100 and transformed into a $40 million disaster - with one family suffering a loss and 100 families experiencing a gain. The losses of the insurance companies don't count, because, in America's capitalist society, they are in the business of writing insurance - and paying claims for losses.

But in today's society, fire is not the only disaster that can be insured against. Of particular interest, default on a home mortgage can be insured against. And possession of an interest in the mortgage or actual risk of financial loss as a result of default is not required in order to purchase the insurance.

In this case also, I can increase my return with an inflated appraisal and decrease my investment by declaring the risk to be minuscule - meaning rated AAA by widely acclaimed rating agencies.

We can now change another assumption. Assume the playing with matches problem is removed and a new problem is substituted. A problem like the husband and wife both having low-paying jobs and no health insurance, coupled with knowledge that many employers refuse to accept illness as a legitimate reason for missing work and have iron-clad policies that require ill workers be fired for failing to report to work.

Or assume both husband and wife have no seniority and work at jobs that may not exist tomorrow because they were shipped overseas last night.

If I knew one or both of them were developing health problems or that one or both were at risk of being laid off, I would see a reasonably good shot at "winning the disaster lottery" so to speak, by buying mortgage default insurance, also known as a credit default swap, on their $400,000 house.

Then I could sit back, relax and wait for the hoped-for and expected misfortune, which will be my good fortune. As could 99 of my gambling buddies.

Back to the neighbor's home that mysteriously burned to the ground. This tragic event is a great deal for me and my 99 gambling buddies. Our biggest risk is that, having paid the insurance premiums, the home stubbornly refuses to burn to the ground.

Being capitalists, we desire to increase the odds that a disastrous fire will occur. My friends and I with fire insurance policies on my neighbor's house have two options for increasing the odds. One, teach the young child the joys and wonders of paying with matches in closets. Two, hire a professional arsonist.

Holders of credit default swaps have similar but more numerous and less risky opportunities to increase their odds of "winning the disaster lottery".

The best way would be use of fine-print, non-understandable escalator clauses that increase the hard-working couple's monthly payments by a factor of two or three. With rampant inflation, confined to core goods that officially "don't count" in Washington, such as $4.00 gasoline, $5.00 milk and $3.00 bread. With rampant if covert support of immigrant labor, legal or otherwise, who are willing to work for less, without any benefits at all, let alone health insurance, thereby increasing the risk of job loss.

We could destroy OSHA, making on-the-job causes of illness and injury more likely. We could buy legislation that benefits pharmaceutical companies while making both medicine and health insurance unaffordable. We could destroy the economy of Main Street, making job loss more likely. The list is extensive, collectively making early default all but inevitable.

That issue addressed, our biggest worry becomes the solvency of the insurance companies. That problem can best be solved by requiring substitution of a "bigger and better" insurance company with deeper pockets.

Purchasing legislation and regulations (or the lack thereof) is the preferred method.

Roughly a quarter-century ago, when I was owner of a new and small consulting engineering firm in a Midwestern state, a law was passed requiring that operators of coal strip mines reclaim the messes they made. To ensure this might actually happen, the new law required coal mine operators to post reclamation performance bonds, payable to the state. So if the operators went bankrupt, the state could call the bonds, thereby obtaining funds for the state to hire and pay remediation contractors.

I never understood at the time why the small independent strip mine operators had so little interest in hiring a consulting engineer to design mining and reclamation operations so as to minimize reclamation expense, or even to provide honest estimates of expected reclamation expenses. Until, in an unguarded moment, one small operator explained Plan B.

At the time, only $250,000 in financial assets were required for formation of an insurance company, and once formed, no limits were placed on the value of insurance written. Same for performance bonds written to the government that granted the license and regulated.

As chance would have it, a dozen or so small mine operators joined together and kicked in about $20,000 each, thereby building a kitty of $250,000. They solicited a straw man and formed their very own little insurance company. That company specialized in writing strip mine reclamation bonds, with the state as an insured party. The amounts of the bonds were based on remediation cost estimates that were provided by the operators who paid for the bonds. This insurance company was issued a license even though the owners never at any time had any intention whatsoever of paying claims they knew would be filed.

Mining operations continued as before. Meaning horrendous messes were left behind. When the meses were discovered, ABC mining companies declared bankruptcy. Corporate assets, usually consisting only of a worn-out backhoe and a dilapidated dump truck, were liquidated for each of the companies. DEF mining companies with different well-used backhoes and dump trucks were formed to exploit the next sites.

As to ABC's sites: The state called upon the insurance company's performance bonds so the state could clean up the messes. And the state did.

Reclamation work "estimated" by the mine operators to cost about $6 million was performed, at a cost of about $70 million. All but about $250,000 was paid for by the taxpayers, after the insurance company filed bankruptcy.

Substituting A.I.G. and similar institutions for the name of the miner's small insurance company will explain much of America's current situation.

As with reclamation of strip mines, the insurance companies will file for bankruptcy. Government, via a $700 billion emergency rescue plan, will step up to the plate. The costs will be paid by taxpayers who have seen only losses and no gains. Pursuant to a rescue plan that prohibits any and all forms of congressional or judicial oversight or opportunity to object.

Except for reports, to be filed twice yearly. Something akin to the fox being required to periodically report how many chickens he stole from the hen house, without being required to return any of the stolen chickens. And who will keep this count? The fox.

The inevitable bankruptcy of A.I.G? What other option exists for a company with a market value of $12 billion and liabilities of about $450 billion on credit default swaps written to hedge funds, many of which are headquartered offshore and thus pay no taxes in the United States. For this, the government is paying $85 billion in taxpayer's money. In return, the government, meaning the taxpayers, will be entitled to receive 80 percent of the company's stock. Stock that is all but assured to be totally worthless.

For insurance company executives, financial risks of corporate bankruptcy are all but non-existent. Lehman Brothers is a prime example. On September 15, Lehman filed bankruptcy - the biggest in America's history. Hours before, the New York headquarters was scrambling for cash. Other banks were refusing to provide loans to Lehman. Banks with loans outstanding were demanding immediate repayment. Counter parties to Lehman's credit default swaps were selling out at ten cents on the dollar.

Lehman's response: Hours before the bankruptcy filing, Lehman transferred $2.5 billion from the London office to the American holding company. This money had "accrued as part of group profits from the first nine months of the year" and will be used to pay employee bonuses. As a result, the London office had no funds with which to make the payroll.

Presumably. part of that money will be used to pay a bonus to Lehman CEO Richard Fuld, Jr. Last year he made $71 million. In better times, namely 2006, he was the fifth-highest paid CEO in America. His total compensation was $122.67 million.

Working American taxpayers rightly question whether firms such as this, managed by people such as this, should be bailed out. And question if the bailout will be administered fairly.

Just cause exists for questioning. Should taxpayers be concerned (or outraged) that the fox who wrote the emergency plan and will be responsible for guarding government's $700 billion hen house is Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson?

Paulson, who amassed a fortune estimated to total $700 million during his 32-year career at Goldman Sachs, the main competitor of Lehman?

Paulson, who will be allowed to purchase worthless securities from Goldman Sachs and offshore hedge funds at prices that he alone will determine but probably not disclose, without being subject to congressional or judicial oversight of any sort?

Paulson, who refused to even consider bipartisan calls for tighter regulation or reform after sending his emergency proposal to Congress at 1:30 A. M. last Saturday?

Paulson, whose previous employer Goldman Sachs was granted a request to convert to a bank holding company with full access to the Federal Reserve's emergency loan program by his buddy Bernanke?

Paulson, who failed and sometimes refused to regulate and now claims changes to his proposal aren't possible because of an emergency that resulted from his failure or refusal to regulate?

Paulson, who last Sunday rejected suggestions that his taxpayer-funded program be revised to provide any sort of relief for homeowners facing foreclosure?

Paulson, who steadfastly refuses to consider taking a hard look at A.I.G. and other financial firms. How could these companies, managed by the so-called "best and brightest" guys in the room, have committed such a long and horrendous series of "poor judgments"?

By accident, or sheer incompetence?

Hard to believe, given that everyone in the room knew millions of explosive mortgages were being written to families without sufficient income, or in some cases no documentation of any income at all, based on fraudulent appraisals and supported by fraudulent AAA ratings.

Given the size and blatant nature of the disaster, accident and incompetence excuses simply don't fly. Something more was involved. That something is the number and size of vultures who bet on and stand to gain from the disaster, and how much they stand to gain. Too many people owning fire insurance on my neighbor's valuable house.

In my house fire insurance example, the insurance companies that wrote the polices risk going broke, due to an unprecedented number of mysterious house fires, each resulting in an unprecedented number of claims.

The proposed bailout asks for $700 billion. The number of homes through, in the process of or facing foreclosure is currently about five million. Meaning the cost will be about $140,000 per home.

But the problem as to credit default swaps is much bigger. The notional value of credit default swaps outstanding is estimated to be about $62 trillion.

This is about $12.4 million per home. About 31 times the value of a $400,000 home.

No wonder America is experiencing an emergency of mysterious financial house fires. And who will benefit? Those who taught and then encouraged the boy to play with matches.

The Sane Solution

Our leaders warn of dire consequences: If the $700 billion bailout bill is not passed immediately, without debate, let alone modification, economic growth will "suffer".

But America has already experienced years of economic growth. And suffering. The parasitic, predatory type of growth I've described has already resulted in many years of much suffering on Main Street.

More suffering? The honest, hardworking people of Main Street USA who would never dream of attempting to make a profit on someone else's disaster deserve to see much more than suffering. They deserve to see death. Of all the financial institutions that sought to get rich on the backs of hardships suffered by or intentionally inflicted on others.

This is not the type of economic growth that should be saved. This is the type of growth that should be killed in its tracks, as dead as possible, the quicker the better.

One excellent first step would be rejection of the $700 billion burden to be placed on the backs of taxpayers.

An excellent second step would be judicial declaration that the value of any and all credit default swaps is zero, as being against public policy that requires that activities than encourage mysterious fires or other forms of disaster are illegal as contrary to public policy.

Yes, you heard me right. Judicial determination that all $62 trillion worth of credit default swaps are null, void and totally worthless.

Only then can a just and humane financial system can be constructed upon the ashes of the old.

This process could and should be facilitated by all honest citizens withdrawing all their funds from all financial institutions, notably including bank checking and savings accounts and money market funds, but possibly excluding local credit unions that loan in and support the local community. I urge all American citizens to do this, as quickly as possible, to the maximum extent possible. If for no other reason, then for self-defense. All must realize no bank is safe and FDIC is one major collapse from insolvency.

The intended result: The quick death of the financial system that has sentenced all of us to a slow death.

All citizens should consider and choose: Will they be among those meekly walking to the cattle cars because of vague promises of a better life, or among those who stood up so bravely in Warsaw.

Chuck Simpson

Please disseminate as widely as possible, including to all members of Congress. Preferably starting with Ron Paul.

The Supreme Court - Capitalist Puppets Dancing on Exxon's Strings

2008-07-01T07:01:00.003-07:00

On June 25 in Exxon Shipping v. Baker 07-219, the Supreme Court squarely avoided opportunities to rationally and impartially rule on two issues: Whether (1) a District Court finding that punitive damages that actually would be punitive were justified and appropriate for twelve years of blatant fraud committed by high-level management of Exxon, or (2) whether punitive damages previously imposed were excessive and could be negated by a court-written statute as being "not in the best interests of a well-functioning legal system".

On both issues, the Court ruled squarely against the interests of its human citizens, in order to provide more important corporate citizens with limits on and predictability of punishment for intentional, malicious wrongdoing undertaken for increased profits.

Justice Alito recused himself due to ownership of over $100,000 of Exxon stock. Five Justices ignored mountains of evidence and established case law supporting multiple rulings of the District and Circuit Courts, refused to honor the discretion of both the trial judge and the District Court of Appeals, overturned a jury's legitimate findings based on the evidence and in effect wrote a new statute based on an infantile attempt at statistical analysis and flimsy or non-existent excuses desperately grabbed from thin air.

In the process five Justices blatantly displayed themselves to be nothing more than obedient, fawning and dancing puppets of corporations that control America and all three branches of its government. The Court in effect thumbed their noses at American citizens and granted "Get Out of Jail Free" cards to corporations to trash America, American citizens and their natural resources carte blanche as required or desired in the single-minded pursuit of increased profits, resulting harm be damned but not punished.

History

In July 1957 a commercially viable oilfield was discovered in the Swanson River area of Alaska, within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Kenai was established by President Roosevelt in 1941 to protect habitat of a large population of moose and over 200 other species, including Bald Eagles, Trumpeter Swans, brown and black bear and wolves. Oilmen did not view the refuge's environmental sensitivity as a major stumbling block to development.

This discovery established that Alaska could support itself through privatized exploitation of natural resources without being a burden on the federal budget. Statehood quickly followed, in July 1958. As did the first Alaskan oil and gas lease sale in 1959 and initial commercial oil production from Swanson River in 1961. By June 1962, fifty wells had been drilled.

Discovery of a major oil field at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope was announced in March 1968 by Humble Oil, which was 98-percent owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey, now called Exxon Mobil. Oil was to be collected from over 3,300 wells and transported through a 48-inch diameter 800-mile long pipeline to a tanker terminal to be built at Valdez, at the head of Prince William Sound.

Environmentalists predicted disaster and filed a lawsuit in April 1970. Gasoline shortages occurred in the United States following the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Congress responded with passage of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act in January 1974, which exempted the pipeline project from legal challenges on environmental grounds. Construction of the $8-billion Trans-Alaska Pipeline began in April 1974 and was completed in May 1977.

The Disaster

On March 24, 1989 the predicted disaster occurred. The oil tanker Exxon Valdez, owned by an Exxon subsidiary, ran aground at Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. About 10.8 million gallons of crude oil were released in the worst oil spill in history. A 3,000-square mile oil slick quickly resulted. Eventually, 11,000 square miles of ocean were covered with oil, stretching 470 miles southwest to the village of Chignik.

About 1,300 miles of shoreline were contaminated. Hundreds of thousands of birds and marine animals, including harbor seals, sea otters, river otters and orca whales died. Best estimates are that between 250,000 and 500,000 birds were killed, including 250 bald eagles.

Of particular importance to the Chugach Natives of the Valdez community, who depended on fishing for their livelihood, billions of pink salmon and herring eggs were destroyed.

Damages to natural resources were amicably "resolved". In September 1991 Alaska and the federal government signed a consent decree with Exxon that released all present and future claims against Exxon for damages to natural resources, in return for Exxon's payment of $90 million annually for ten years. Exxon recovered a significant portion of the settlement through insurance claims and tax deductions, which in effect treated the disaster as a "legitimate business expense" to be paid by American taxpayers. Settlement allowed Exxon's CEO to boast:

"The company... voluntarily compensated more than 11,000 Alaskans and businesses."

The amount of Exxon's liability for future or then-undiscovered damages to natural resources was capped at $100 million. This cap was based on Exxon's claim that "the area recovered quickly" and that claims of severe, continuing environmental damage "are simply untrue". These claims in turn were based on "scientific" studies that Exxon contracted for, paid for and controlled. Local residents could not successfully counter these studies with their own investigations because they had no money. Because Exxon had destroyed their local economy and their livelihoods.

Exxon's claims proved untrue. Nineteen years after the incident, an estimated 85 tons of oil residue remain in area beaches and sea bottom. The aroma resulting from kicking rocks on local beaches eerily resembles that emanating from south Texas oil refineries. Recent studies predict this oil will remain, be readily detectable and harm wildlife for decades to come.

Worse, two years after the settlement herring, which had been scooped up by the millions by local fishermen, disappeared. Recent studies indicate the herring population may never regenerate. This was an economic disaster for the local population of Chugach Natives, who earned their livings in the fishing industry. Soon after the spill, the fishing fleet decreased by half. Three of the five canneries in Valdez filed bankruptcy. A former mayor, upset by the destruction, committed suicide.

Today, the fishing boats are permanently harbored or have been sold or repossessed. The herring processing plants and canneries have been closed and may never reopen.

The natives asked Exxon for compensation sufficient to buy boats and rebuild their villages. Exxon produced more studies to "prove" there was no link between the spill and destruction of the local fish population.

The Natives were offered pennies on the dollar for their claims, take it or leave it and wait twenty years for payment of any court-ordered settlement. To survivors. Exxon warned:

"Exxon is immortal. Natives die."

Litigation

Commercial fishers, seafood processors, cannery workers, landowners and business owners filed suit. In 1994 in Baker vs. Exxon, a jury in Anchorage awarded 32,677 plaintiffs $287 million in actual damages and $5 billion in punitive damages.

Most of the Chugash Natives didn't take part in this award. Years earlier, many took Exxon's threats seriously and settled, for $22.6 million.

Exxon appealed. And funded research by economists that "proved" that juries aren't competent to rule in punitive damage cases like the one at bar and are incapable of making fair awards.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the District Court judge to reduce the amount of punitive damages. In December 2002 the trial judge announced a reduction to $4 billion, which he concluded was justified by the facts of the case.

Exxon again appealed. The Circuit Court ordered the District Court to consider the amount of punitive damages in light of a recent ruling by the Supreme Court. The judge complied and increased the punitive damages to $4.5 billion, plus interest.

Exxon again appealed. In December 2006 the Circuit Court reduced punitive damages to $2.5 billion, in conformance with holdings of the Supreme Court in Due Process cases.

Exxon appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled on June 25 that punitive damages must be limited to the amount previously paid for economic losses, or $507.5 million. Equivalent to $15,531 per person for malicious, permanent destruction of plaintiff's economic livelihoods and their traditional way of life.

Payment will be distributed to plaintiffs or their estates. Over six thousand of the original plaintiffs have died, including over one-third of the Native seal hunters and fishermen. Their families will receive 10 percent of what would have been their share had they survived nineteen years of lives ruined by Exxon.

The Supreme Court held that Exxon's actions were "worse than negligent but less than malicious". This holding requires a detailed look at Exxon's actions.

The Publicly Stated Cause of the Disaster

The publicly stated cause of this accident was widely accepted. Captain Joseph Hazelwood admitted he was drunk at the time of the accident and was asleep (or passed out) in his cabin. Hazelwood admitted to "having some alcoholic drinks" earlier. Before the ship left port, Captain Hazelwood was seen drinking at least five double martinis in a local bar - enough that a non-alcoholic would have passed out. Experts testified that at the time of the accident, Hazelwood's blood-alcohol level must have been about 0.241 - slightly over three times what is required for a legal finding of intoxication.

This was not Hazelwood's first unfortunate experience with alcohol. Hazelwood was a drunk, and had been for years. Four years earlier, Hazelwood admitted to drinking while on his ship and to returning to his ship while drunk. Over a three-year period, Hazelwood drank with employees on 33 occasions that were documented. The actual number is thought to be higher.

Hazelwood completed an alcohol treatment program but dropped out of a prescribed follow-up program, stopped attending AA meetings and resumed drinking, among many other places in parking lots, at ports and aboard Exxon oil tankers. Exxon executives, knowing Hazelwood had started drinking again, ignored repeated warnings and placed him in charge of the Exxon Valdez.

At trial Exxon claimed Hazelwood was "the most highly monitored person in the Exxon fleet". Exxon was unable to provide the jury with so much as a single scrap of paper documenting this astounding claim. In fact, Exxon was unable to document that it monitored Hazelwood at all, in spite of numerous reports of Hazelwod's drinking, including one lodged one week before the accident.

At the time of the accident, Hazelwood's driver's licenses had been revoked in two states for multiple drunk driving convictions. Hazelwood wasn't even allowed to drive a compact Chevrolet six blocks to the neighborhood grocery. This is the man Exxon placed in charge of its largest oil supertanker in an environmentally sensitive area.

Exxon fired Hazelwood and claimed it should not be held legally responsible for his actions. Exxon executives, the parties actually responsible for this disaster, weren't fired. Instead, they received raises and bonuses.

The Actual Cause of the Disaster

Many Americans would claim the facts of this case support a finding of maliciousness and justify the $5 billion award. But this sordid history of Captain Hazelwood doesn't explain the true cause of the disaster.

Within eight years after beginning operations, over 800 million barrels of oil had been shipped through Valdez, establishing that the real estate under the tanker terminal was worth several hundred million dollars.

In 1969 Humble Oil officers, being capitalists, had offered to purchase the tank terminal site. The Chugach Natives, being humane, offered to sell the site for $1 and refused to accept a higher payment. With one condition: That Humble promise to protect their fishing and hunting grounds from contamination.

In 1971 specific safeguards were agreed upon. Humble promised to have them incorporated into federal law. These promises were written into the 1974 Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, which allowed shipment of oil from Valdez. The commitments were crucial to enactment. The bill passed the Senate only because of a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Agnew.

Exxon promised to use modern on-board radar. At the time of the accident the radar wasn't turned on. The "modern radar unit" had been broken for over a year. Exxon management knew but refused to make repairs, to save Exxon money.

Exxon promised to use only double-hull tankers. The Exxon Valdez was a single-hull ship that could not legally even enter Prince William Sound.

Exxon promised to use local pilots when transiting the sound. The local pilot exited the Exxon Valdez shortly after the ship sailed, to save Exxon money.

Exxon promised that escort tugs would be provided for all tanker trips. No escort tugs had been provided, to save Exxon money.

Exxon promised to have equipment readily available to contain and capture a 200,000-barrel spill. The equipment was not maintained and kept readily available because it had never even been purchased, to save Exxon money.

Exxon promised to maintain spill-response teams in a state of readiness around the clock. Local Chugach Natives were hired, trained and then fired two years later, in 1979. State inspectors were deceived by creation of sham emergency response teams, listing names of workers at the tank farm. Those workers were never trained on the equipment that was never purchased and in some cases were never even told of their duties or responsibilities.

Two minutes before the accident, while the ship was making a tricky course correction maneuver, Hazelwood turned on the autopilot, increased the ship's speed and left an unlicensed, inexperienced third mate in charge while he "retired to his cabin to do paperwork".

The third mate was in violation of federal law that required he have six hours off-duty in the 12-hour period prior to beginning his watch. The National Transportation Safety Board determined crew fatigue to be a contributing factor to the accident. Partially because Exxon reduced tanker crew size from four to three, to save money, and didn't add a fourth crew member until four years after the accident.

The Supreme Court Ruling

The Supreme Court ignored this mountain of evidence, retried the case for the District Court and concluded Exxon's conduct over a 12-year period was not malicious, was not intentional and was not undertaken primarily for financial gain. The Court was clearly wrong on all three counts.

Then the Court noted that a majority of states allow punitive damages to be three times actual damages. This rule of the majority was thrown out because some states did not, leading to inconsistent results. A ratio of one rather than three was deemed "appropriate".

The Court decreed that consistency is an adequate substitute for fairness and then decreed that low awards are more fair than high ones, ignoring the possibility that high awards may be justified. Particularly to punish conduct such as exhibited by Exxon.

The Court properly noted the intent of punitive damages is to punish the defendant and deter similar actions in the future. The Court then reduced the punitive damages to such an extent that Exxon will be neither punished nor deterred.

The District Court that actually tried the case and heard the evidence determined punitive damages should be $5 billion, $4 billion and $4.5 billion plus interest. The District Court of Appeals determined punitive damages should be $2.5 billion.

In the interest of "predictability", the Supreme Court reduced Exxon's punitive damages to $502.5 million. But the economic destruction occurred 19 years ago. Using a 6 percent interest rate, the value of $1 increases to $3.02 after 19 years. Meaning the damages can be paid now with roughly $166 million placed in escrow when the disaster occurred. This is less than half the $351 million golden parachute awarded to Exxon CEO Lee Raymond in April 2006 following his retirement.

Betrayal

Roughly 20 times the $8.2 million in donations made by Exxon employees to Republicans since 1990, the year after the disaster occurred. In 2000, Exxon was the second-largest contributor to George Bush's campaign. Exxon was outbid by Enron.

This decision wasn't a matter of imposing "fair and reasonable" punitive damages. This was a matter of brazenly legislating from the bench to protect the interests of America's richest corporation at the expense of America's much less rich citizens. Some would say a sellout: Yet more evidence the "independent" third branch of the federal government has become an enemy of the people. I and millions of other American patriots would agree.

Memorial Day 2008 A Commemoration of Shame

2008-05-28T11:46:00.003-07:00

On Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, hallowed ground from which George Bush should be banned in perpetuity, America's Commander-in-Chief self-righteously attempted to pay tribute to America's fallen warriors. By uttering a number of astoundingly insincere platitudes:

"It only remains for us, the heirs of their legacy, to have the courage and the character to follow their lead and to preserve America as the greatest nation on Earth and the last, best hope for mankind."

Us, presumably meaning Bush and his deceptive and manipulative Vice President, who on rare occasions "courageously" sneak into and out of undisclosed safe positions in Iraq under cover of darkness, protected by gunship helicopters and hundreds of soldiers, all the while striving to make America not the last, best hope but rather the worst fear of peace-seeking mankind the world over.

Have the courage and character? This from the man who owns what surely must be the only ranch in Texas without horses, because he is afraid of them.

Rational Americans rightfully wonder when, if ever, Commander-in-Chief Bush will display a single ounce of personal courage. Even for so safe and simple a task as meeting face to face one on one with a single Gold Star mother and truthfully explaining the noble cause for which her son Casey died.

"On this Memorial Day, I stand before you as the Commander-in-Chief and try to tell you how proud I am..."

Proud? Pride as exemplified by years of success in his unceasing efforts to deprive soldiers and veterans of counseling medical care and benefits to which they are entitled.

"I am humbled by those who have made the ultimate sacrifice... "

Humbled? An all-time first for President Bush. Astounding. Unbelievable.

Solemn pronouncements quickly completed, Bush's armed, fortified and heavily protected motorcade left the cemetery. Bush returned to the White House, for an "important" Memorial Day meeting.

With head coaches of five college football teams.

But not before admonishing American citizens to pause for "a moment of remembrance". To place a flag at a veteran's grave or go to a battlefield or say a prayer.

Presumably upon his request, the nation "appropriately" honored its many fallen warriors. Major league baseball games paused, if only momentarily. The National Memorial Day parade halted, also momentarily. Amtrak trains blew their whistles.

Such severe sacrifices our Commander-in-Chief called upon American citizens to make in time of war. Words like shallow and insincere do not even begin to do justice.

A Legacy of Vietnam

In the Vietnam era, the Pentagon trained our finest young men to be warriors, sent them out on patrol as sitting duck targets for lack of a better strategy, or even any coherent strategy at all, and then ordered them to retaliate by killing defenseless women and children and to commit atrocities against an enemy the Pentagon couldn't even identify, let alone understand or engage effectively.

And then refused to humanely provide for the injuries its troops suffered as a result of its arrogance, ignorance and incompetence.

Mental injuries as well as physical injuries. The Pentagon continues to hide the shameful fact that, as of 1990, the number of American soldiers killed in combat in Vietnam was exceeded by the number of vets who died by suicide. The end result of training our soldiers to be noble warriors and then ordering them to be common killers of everyone who might associate with an enemy the Pentagon was never able to even identify.

Ordering them to be compassionate to small children suddenly rendered orphans because their mother had been gunned down moments earlier under the Pentagon's "Mere Gook" rule, by which any and all unarmed, defenseless, non-threatening native women in the country we invaded were automatically considered enemies.

The President's Personal "Sacrifice"

The President took his own Memorial Day admonishment to heart long ago. He personally "sacrificed".

Over three months after declaring "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003, a truck bomb exploded outside the United Nations headquarters in downtown Baghdad. An event that profoundly affected George Bush's life.

During a May, 2008 interview, Commander-in-Chief Bush explained his solemn August 19, 2003 decision to "honor his debt to the families of America's fallen soldiers" by standing in solidarity with the sacrifices being made by our troops.

Bush declared that he had "made the ultimate sacrifice":

He gave up golf.

Allegedly, for the duration of the war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf."

"... I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Sane, astute readers will immediately note the hypocrisy: For Bush, the issue was not a matter of honoring our fallen. The issue was merely avoiding being caught at refusing to honor our fallen. A subtle distinction that's surely lost on America's infantile, psychopathic President.

Suicide

The predictable course of "progress" has since accelerated substantially. As to Vietnam, 25 years were required from the start of major hostilities in 1965 to the time a shameful milestone was reached.

As to Iraq, the time required was shortened, to a matter of months.

In December 2007 Ira Katz, head of mental health at the Veteran's Administration, confirmed that four to five suicides occur daily among vets who are actively receiving treatment from the VA.

For two reasons, the actual number is far higher, and has reliably been reported to be about 18 per day. That is 126 per week, or 6,552 per year - a number far in excess of the 4,082 combat deaths in Iraq officially reported by the Pentagon.

First, VA routinely turns away vets who seek help in treatment for mental disorders. Numerous reasons are invented to justify denying health care to vets with mental problems resulting from their service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Second, VA has a 600,000-vet backlog of claims for benefits that have not been processed. A backlog resulting from America's Commander-in-Chief steadfastly refusing to request that Congress provide funding VA so urgently requires.

The refusal to provide help for suicidal veterans in need is nothing short of criminal. Jonathan Schulze stands tall as one shameful example. A Marine who was awarded two purple hearts for wounds suffered in Iraq. Thirty-five Marines in Jonathan's unit were killed there, 17 in a 2-day period. Upon return to Minnesota, Jonathan suffered nightmares while asleep and flashbacks while awake.

On December 16th he went to the Minneapolis VA center seeking help, met with a psychiatrist and was told he couldn't be admitted for 4 months.

On January 11th he went to the VA hospital in St. Cloud seeking help and advised he was suicidal. VA refused admission and turned Jonathan away.

On January 12th Jonathan called VA, again advised he was suicidal and was told he was number 26 on the waiting list.

On January 16th, Jonathan was found dead, hanging from an electrical cord.

The Plague of PTSD

The primary cause of suicide by American veterans is thought to be PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This has not been confirmed. Because, five years after America's invasion of Iraq, the VA has not yet completed a study of possible links between PTSD and suicide.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, VA claimed the expected number of PTSD cases would not exceed 8,000.

According to a recent study completed by a division of the RAND Corporation, about 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer symptoms of PTSD or major depression - almost 38 times the projected number. Spouses left alone, together with their dependent children, increase the total number to about one million.

Only 53 percent of the vets sought help. The low percentage is primarily due to widespread belief in the military that seeking treatment is a sign of weakness, and resulting fears that admission of mental distress will adversely affect military careers.

A variant of the Stockholm Syndrome, in which victims protect those who have caused them harm. A syndrome that also affects many die hard Republicans who continue to support leaders whose insane, obscene policies are destroying their country. And ours.

Of the roughly 160,000 soldiers and vets who bravely sought medical attention for PTSD or depression, only about 50 percent received treatment considered to be "minimally adequate".

In addition, an estimated 320,000 service members may have experienced traumatic brain injury. Only 43 percent report being evaluated by a physician.

The RAND study was sponsored by a grant from the California Community Foundation. No Pentagon or VA funds were made available.

Government Treatment Programs

The Pentagon currently has only 1,431 mental health professionals among its 1,400,000 military personnel. Slightly more than one per thousand. VA has about 20,000 full-time and part-time health care professionals. Not nearly enough to meet the needs. As Veteran Affairs spokesman Stephen Xenakis admits:

"... the need to help these men and women goes far beyond whatever any government agency can do."

Especially an agency without adequate funding, the result of repeated budget slashing, necessary to pay for tax cuts for the richest, very few of whom ever served their country in the military.

About 300,000 soldiers and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan currently suffer from depression or PTSD or both. Only about 60,000 vets have been seen, let alone effectively treated. Partially because VA is overloaded with current treatment needs for about a quarter-million vets who still suffer from PTSD as a result of their tours in Vietnam.

Tours that ended well over 30 years ago. An ominous indicator of the troubles Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers, and by extension all American citizens, will eventually be forced to face.

Private Treatment Programs

Some patriotic American psychologists are attempting to do what the Pentagon refuses to do and VA is unable to do, primarily because the Commander-in-Chief continues to oppose all efforts to provide necessary funding.

Brenna Chirby, a private psychologist in Virginia with $1 million in funding from a private foundation, has founded Give An Hour, which encourages fellow professionals to donate one hour weekly to provide free treatment. So far, 1,200 of her compatriots have joined hands with her. She seeks to increase that number to 40,000 over the next three years.

Nearly 200 professionals have volunteered through the Soldiers Project in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York. The Coming Home Project in San Francisco has attracted dozens of professional volunteers.

As spokesman Xenakis recently admitted, thousands of professionals across the country are donating their time to support America's veterans. Thousands of true American patriots who volunteer to meet responsibilities the American government adamantly refuses to face.

The Pentagon's response to this outpouring of effort volunteered in the finest traditions of what in years past made America great:

Begrudging acquiescence. According to a Pentagon spokesman:

"... the military health system does not endorse volunteer health care organizations..."

Veteran's Shameful Health Care

All forms of health care for vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan lie somewhere between horrid and non-existent.

VA health care is now based on artificial budget constraints rather than need and obligation. The White House, while urging all citizens to patriotically support their troops and labeling all who object to the war as traitors, demands that VA health care need forecasts and resulting budgets be cut, that vitally needed medical services be denied because of cost and that all health care for veterans of World War II and Korea be terminated.

As a result of Bush's demands for lowered funding levels, the number of vets seeking treatment in the first three months of 2005 year was about 25 percent more than the total number budgeted for during the entire year. Effective, timely treatment was simply not available, because of budget restrictions.

Similar or even worse variances exist today. Budget limitations imposed for purely partisan political reasons have forced America's war veterans to literally become beggars for the health care they were promised and are legally and morally entitled to.

Health care for wounded or disabled veterans is now being derided as a form of parasitic welfare to be stamped out. To protect the budget for corporate predators and the rich, the White House has required that vets pay "insurance premiums" for VA health care. Now, a vet with a wife, two children and a monthly income of $2,500 is classified as "affluent" and therefore not eligible for non-war related VA medical services. But affluent is not an appropriate term to use when family health insurance premiums are over $1,000 per month and preexisting health problems are automatically excluded from coverage. Under this dictate, about 2 million vets are being denied the VA services they earned, were promised and morally deserve.

Worse, Justice Administration lawyers recently argued in a court case that vets of Iraq and Afghanistan are not "entitled" to VA health care mandated by Congress.

Because of budget limitations. Billions of peace-seeking people worldwide can only wish America's ability to wage war was based upon similar budget limitations.

About 35 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought medical help from VA. In 2003, almost 250,000 Iraq war vets waited six months or more for a first appointment or initial follow-up. The government's response has been to close VA hospitals and clinics, cut back or terminate VA health care programs, dishonestly and unethically refuse to diagnose injuries and require vets to wait months and sometimes years for treatment. This year, about 600,000 vets will be denied treatment or placed on intolerably long waiting lists to receive needed medical care.

The most shameful method used is false diagnosis of preexisting conditions as an excuse to discharge soldiers with injuries and disabilities while denying them medical and disability benefits. In the last six years, this has been done to about 22,500 soldiers.

Many were wounded in Iraq, including Jon Town of Findlay, Ohio. In October 2004 a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet over Jon's head as he stood in a doorway in Ramadi, Iraq. His ears were leaking blood from a concussion. Shrapnel was removed from his neck. Jon now suffers significant hearing loss and memory failure. He was diagnosed with prior personality disorder, ordered to repay his $15,000 re-enlistment bonus and discharged.

This from a government that orders unquestioning support of the troops while cutting funds for mental health of vets by 30 percent.

This from a government that's eager to pay $108 billion for "Future Combat Systems", over $40 billion for a fleet of 21 sub-sonic B-2 bombers that dropped 583 bombs on Iraq, for a total cost of $68 million per bomb dropped, $200 billion for a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work, $150 billion for modernized nuclear weapons, $65 billion for the F-22 fighter plane and $277 billion to build and $347 billion to fly the "low cost" F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will rely upon unproven technology to get off and hopefully stay off the ground.

F-35 test flights are scheduled to begin 4 years after production begins. By 2013 when operational testing is complete, 424 planes will have been built, at about $90 million each. Those planes will protect America's freedom and democracy from aerial attack by fghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, the Taliban Air Force and assorted terrorists armed with box-cutters that can be purchased in any local Ace Hardware store nationwide for $2.99, no questions asked.

Disability

Similarly unfair approaches are taken as to claims for disability. The VA currently has a backlog of almost a half-million disability claims filed by veterans. Denials are almost automatic and the appeal process often takes years. Almost half of America's 2.7-million disabled vets who persevere through the years-long application and appeals process will receive $337 or less per month in benefits.

Education

Currently, the GI Bill pays just over 50 percent of the average cost of a college education at state universities. Costs of books and housing are excluded, in effect making college impossible for many. Many vets can only afford to attend local community colleges.

Problems are made worse by sheer ineptitude. Some vets can only afford to attend one semester per year because colleges require up-front payment of tuition but VA checks arrive well after classes begin.

Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine Corps officer who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam, recently introduced legislation that would greatly expand education benefits for about 1.4 million veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001.

President Bush has responded with smirks and threats to establish yet another shameful landmark in American history.

President Bush has vowed to veto the bill.

That will be the first time in the history of America that a bill providing benefits for military veterans is vetoed.

The reason: The Pentagon feels the bill is too "generous", by providing benefits after only three years of service, overlooking the fact that soldiers would still be required to serve out their enlistment term in order to qualify.

The Pentagon demands the commitment be no less than six years. A modern-day government sponsored version of involuntary servitude, originating with lies told by recruiters to naively trusting high school students whose future is bleak because jobs were sent overseas in the name of corporate profits and who haven't yet gained the wisdom to view all government statements as cynical, self-serving lies.

Bush's designated heir, John McCain, also opposes Webb's education bill, and has introduced a competing bill that would limit educational benefits and be linked to the consumer price index, which notoriously understates inflationary trends. As a result, five years from now McCain's bill would be expected to provide only about 58 percent of education costs - meaning a return to the status quo.

Voting

Perhaps in response to increased soldier dissatisfaction with the ongoing war in Iraq, the Bush administration, acting through VA Secretary James Peake, even refuses to assist veteran voter registration efforts, as required by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The clear implication: America's soldiers are entitled to be maimed or to die, sometimes because the Pentagon refuses to provide armor, again because of budget limitations. But they are not not entitled to vote. The most basic right of democracy they are supposedly fighting to bring to Iraq.

Financial Issues

Soldiers have only limited protection from financial predators. Today, because of a failure of White House leadership, soldiers in combat are having their homes foreclosed. And refinancing into VA-guaranteed loans is all but impossible, partially because the maximum VA-guaranteed loan available for refinancing is currently only $144,000.

Reeking Putrid Trash

America is the world's only major country that ignores and abandons its wounded and disabled veterans. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, literally throws its wounded and disabled war veterans away as if they were so many reeking bags of putrid trash.

In the villages of the nations of Native Americans, often described with terms such as primitive, heartless, ruthless, cold-blooded, illiterate brutal blood-thirsty savages, a single hungry or homeless disabled war veteran would be an unthinkable tragedy, even if the vet was a total stranger of hostile nationality who somehow got lost and wandered into the village by mistake. Within 20 minutes the tragedy would be rectified by offers of food and shelter made without question or reservation by every last village family owning a tepee, wigwam, longhouse or oversized sleeping bag or blanket, regardless of size, condition or resulting hardship or inconvenience, without exception.

The idea of demanding, requiring, politely requesting or subtly hinting of any form of payment would never occur to either host or honored guest. Both offer and acceptance of payment would be viewed as unconscionably rude insults.

America, the rich and powerful nation that unceasingly sermonizes to the world of its inherent moral superiority, now has about 400,000 homeless veterans, including at least 8,000 women.

America, the moral nation whose government schemes to further deprive vets of the benefits promised them by Congress under the G. I. Bill of Rights in June 1944, based on artificially contrived arguments of undeserved welfare and affordability.

Small but powerful sectors of the American public, the richest nation on earth, respond to disturbing sights of homeless veterans dumpster-diving for scraps of food by turning their heads before entering expensive restaurants. A far cry from the universal attitude of brutal, cold-blooded, savage Native Americans, expressed simply yet eloquently:

"No one starves unless we all starve."

Honor of Bush's Solemn Commitment

As to Commander-in-Chief Bush's devastating personal sacrifice:

On October 13, 2003, exactly two months after declaring a supreme personal sacrifice by giving up golf for the duration of the war in Iraq, Bush spent Columbus Day with three long-time buddies at Andrews Air Force Base.

They played golf together.

And Our Solemn Commitment

Washington and the Pentagon constantly fret and stew and warn us of the dangers Iraq and now Iran poses to the safety of America's soldiers. They hide the fact that, far and away, the greatest dangers to the health and safety of America's soldiers emanate from the White House, the Pentagon and the VA.

Humane American citizens must never give up the fight to take back their country from cowardly thugs and restore the nation's original shining ideals. In belated commemoration of Memorial Day, we must acknowledge we owe the effort. To ourselves, to our children and to our grandchildren.

And to our soldiers and to our veterans.

We owe our vets a debt that can never be repaid. At the minimum, we owe them competent and timely care for physical and mental injury. We owe them life-long compensation for disabilities. We owe them decent levels of assistance for continuing their education. We owe them protection from financial predators. We owe them the right to register to vote.

Most of all, we owe America's soldiers safety from harm. That means we must all work to remove them from harm's way.

By bringing them home. Now.

This will require radical changes in Washington. I believe all true American patriots have profound moral obligations to make any and every possible effort to bring regime change to America and to eliminate all forms of the cancer America's current government spawns and supports.

When Did Cheney Remarkably Know? What Does Cheney Remarkably Know?

2008-04-24T12:34:00.002-07:00

Sane and rational individuals can reasonably be expected to purchase homes where their family roots lie. Sane and rational executives, both in and out of government, can reasonably be expected to purchase homes where their professional careers take them.

Early on, Richard Cheney adhered to such commonsense expressions of sanity. He lived in Washington while serving as White House Chief of Staff and then campaign manager for Jerry Ford.

After playing a pivotal role in Ford's 1976 election defeat, Cheney moved to Wyoming, a bastion of Republicanism. Months later, at a football game, the state's only Representative to Congress casually announced he would not stand for reelection. Cheney was elected to the seat in 1978.

Cheney still maintains a residence in Wyoming, at 4205 West Greens Place in The Greens of Teton Pines, in Teton County. Nothing startling about that.

In September 2005 after being again elected as Vice President, Cheney purchased a waterfront "summer home" for $2,667,500 at 7879 Fuller Road SW in Saint Michaels, Maryland, zip code 21663-2545. A comfy, 3,343 square foot summer home, with white painted brick exterior, a five-car garage, a swimming pool and formal gardens, built in 1930 on 9 acres, with frontage on the east shore of Chesapeake Bay.

This home is located roughly two miles from the residence of Cheney's long-time friend Donald Rumsfeld. Church Neck Road dead-ends at Fuller Road, which is privately owned. Cheney's home, named Ballintober, is about one-quarter mile along Fuller, past four other houses.

Nothing remarkable about the Vice-President wanting to spend week-ends away from the home built in 1893 for the Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Purchase of the Fuller Road property was made by Sumner LLC, a privately held limited liability corporation managed by Debbie Heiden, executive assistant and personal secretary to the Vice President. Given Cheney's penchant for privacy, this also is not remarkable.

What is remarkable is the timing of Cheney's earlier purchase of a residence in Washington.

After serving as Secretary of Defense through January 1993, Cheney joined the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank. In October 1995 Cheney became Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton. Cheney quickly moved to Dallas, corporate headquarters. Nothing remarkable about that either.

A life-long pol, in 2000 Cheney gravitated to George Bush's presidential campaign. He maneuvered to be placed in charge of the vice-presidential selection committee. Several months later, Cheney selected himself. On July 25, 2000, George Bush invited Richard Cheney to be Vice President in his administration.

Which brings us to a remarkable coincidence of timing.

Over six months earlier, on January 12, Cheney spent $1,350,000 to purchase a home at 1126 Chain Bridge Road in Fairfax County, Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington DC.

But not to live in or to entertain guests, either on behalf of Halliburton or otherwise. Soon after the purchase, Cheney had the existing home razed. The lot remained vacant for years.

This raises a logical question:

When did Richard Cheney know, with confidence sufficient to justify purchase and demolition of a $1,350,000 residence, that George Bush would be elected and that Cheney would be selected to play an important role in the administration and need to move to Washington?

The Supreme Court held its own version of a national election and elected Bush and Cheney, by a vote of five to four. The answer to this question is therefore academic. After spearheading almost eight years of horribly destructive national policies, the answer no longer matters to the increasingly bleak future of America or its citizens.

But the answer to a logically following question surely does matter, or soon will.

Since 2001, Cheney has consistently declared he wishes to retire to private life when his term expires in January 2009.

This also is not at all remarkable, given that he will be almost 68 years old, particularly in view of his long history of serious heart problems.

In June 1978, while campaigning to be Wyoming's Representative in Congress, Cheney suffered a heart attack. He was 37 years old at the time. Cheney suffered a second heart attack in 1984 and a third in 1988. Two months later, Cheney underwent a four-vessel bypass operation, commonly called a quadruple bypass.

On November 21, 2000 the Florida Supreme Court ruled that recounts should be made in the contested Florida presidential election. This decision gravely imperiled Cheney's planned professional future. At 3:00 AM the next morning, Cheney suffered a fourth heart attack.

The Florida Supreme Court decision was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Cheney recovered and was seated as Vice President.

Less than two months later, in March 2001, Cheney experienced unstable angina and underwent percutaneous balloon angioplasty. Cheney was found to suffer episodes of asymptomatic ectopy. A defibrillator was installed in his chest.

At least since 2006, Cheney has displayed as being in Stage C heart failure, previously referred to as congestive heart failure.

This history collectively presents an unremarkable reason for Cheney's February 2005 statements to Chris Wallace on the television show Fox News Sunday:

"I've got my plans laid out..."

"I'm going to serve this president ... and then I'm out of here."

"... I've still got a lot of rivers I'd like to fish and time I'd like to spend with my grandkids, and so this is my last tour."

Unremarkable statements, individually and collectively. But, if Cheney was being honest with Chris Wallace and the American public, an additional question logically arises:

Why is Richard Cheney now spending an estimated $1,500,000 to construct a 12,765 square-foot "bungalow" with four bedrooms, nine baths and his and hers libraries with fireplaces on his long-vacant lot at 1126 Chain Bridge Road?

Does this have any implications as to when George Bush's term will come to an end, or Cheney's plans to continue to influence American policies? After eight long years of pain intentionally inflicted upon Americans and tens of millions of others worldwide, what further damage does Cheney have in store?

What precisely are those "plans he has laid out"? Sane and rational people can only conclude those plans do not include fly fishing for trout in the Potomac or Chesapeake Bay.

azchuck

Delusional Insanity. Cheney in Baghdad

2008-04-21T11:19:00.001-07:00

On Monday March 17, in victorious celebration of the fifth anniversary of the "three-week cakewalk" attack he masterminded and cheered for, Vice President Cheney bravely visited the rubbled residue of what was once the thriving city of Baghdad.

The trip was made in secret, because advance announcement was thought to be "too dangerous". Reporters were ordered not to report Cheney's schedule or location until after his departure.

Cheney arrived via Britain's Mildenhall Royal Air Force Base, making the flight to Baghdad while safely encased within a heavily armored stainless steel Airstream executive travel trailer cabin securely strapped in the hold of a C-17 military cargo plane.

The specially constructed travel trailer was delivered to Al Anbar, or Baghdad International Airport. The ten-mile trip to the "heavily fortified" 4 square-mile Green Zone was made by military helicopter, with the fearless Cheney wearing a helmet and body armor. The flight was escorted by a large number of helicopter gunships. Additional gunships circled over downtown Baghdad.

Cheney spent almost all his time in Baghdad within the Green Zone, where he was briefed on "progress". However, on Monday evening, Cheney daringly ventured about one mile outside the Green Zone, for an extremely important meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Cheney made that short trip in a convoy of armored Humvees with darkened windows. The convoy was protected by additional armored military vehicles, manned by gunners and equipped with bomb-detectors. Helicopter gunships circling overhead provided additional protection. Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers stood guard along streets that had previously been swept for explosive devices. Streets along the route were closed and protected by concrete barriers and rolls of concertina wire.

The reason for this dangerous foray outside the Green Zone? The current crude oil differential between the $1.50 per-barrel cost of production and the $117 per-barrel value on spot markets. Cheney made this dangerous expedition to urge Iraqi leaders to quickly approve a law that will allow American oil companies to take over Iraqi national resources for their private gain. As a result, Iraq will be stripped of the ability to pay the multi-billion dollar costs of reconstructing the destruction America inflicted and now refuses to pay to rebuild.

Cheney's presence was quickly followed by that of John McCain, whose trip was also undertaken in secret, for briefings on gains in security in the country.

Those "gains" were affirmed by comparisons with a similar trip by McCain a year earlier, when he purchased a rug in an open market near the Green Zone.

A year ago, news photographers took pics of McCain as he proclaimed by personal demonstration that Americans could "walk freely" around Baghdad.

Those photographers were ordered to only take close-up shots, so as not to show that McCain was protected by about 100 heavily armed American soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships.

This year, McCain wasn't allowed to visit the market, because of "markedly deteriorated security conditions". The market is now controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia.

American-supported Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Miliki is similarly protected. While venturing to headquarters of the Dawa party, located one-half mile outside the Green Zone, Maliki customarily travels along streets cleared of all people by soldiers waving guns in the air. Maliki rides in one of six identical bullet-proof vehicles with blackened windows, protected fore and aft by American Humvees, all led by four black armored cars, each with three machine gunners projecting from roofs.

Similar security concerns affect operations at the American embassy in the Green Zone. But constructive solutions to lessen violence are not being sought. Instead, increased levels of protection against escalating levels of violence are being sought.

Embassy employees had been sleeping in trailers protected by walls of sandbags.

No more. That is now forbidden. Employees are now required to sleep in blast-resistant structures. All embassy personnel are required to remain under hard cover at all times, except for "mission essential" reasons. Outside activities undertaken for those essential reasons must be sharply limited in duration.

Personnel have been ordered not to leave reinforced buildings unless absolutely necessary. On those occasions, employees are required to wear body armor, helmets, protective eyewear and other protective gear.

Long-term, the State Department has a better plan. Saddam Hussein's palace will be vacated. Despite hundreds of construction defects, the department recently accepted construction of the "hardened" embassy compound.

This 27-building complex, constructed on 104 acres by a Kuwaiti contractor using slave labor imported from the Philippines at a cost of $736 million, including $144 million in change orders, is "heavily fortified" and will, according to Ambassador Ryan Crocker, provide " some added protection".

Added protection is undoubtedly necessary and prudent. In the three weeks following Cheney's heavily protected visit, four Americans died in shellings of the Green Zone. At least 14 non-Americans have also been killed there, and at least 17 American soldiers were wounded. Helicopters, military vehicles and buildings have been destroyed.

A spokesperson for the State Department, America's bastion of truthfulness, commented on reports of rocket attacks:

"I'm not aware of any."

During his visit, Cheney reacted in his uniquely delusional fashion, by expressing admiration for the "phenomenal" improvements in security. He expressed a number of other similarly delusional conclusions during his visit:

... "great progress" has been made in both security and governance...

"... significant progress in the last ten months..."

The invasion five years ago and efforts to install "democracy and stabilize Iraq" ... was a "successful endeavor".

There we have it. According to Cheney, the five-year goal of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq has been accomplished. Personal safety, and such basics as food, electricity and drinkable water be damned.

As these insane pronouncements were uttered, explosions occurred. In Kerbala, a female suicide bomber killed fifty people and wounded dozens more. Near the Green Zone, bombs killed four people and injured thirteen.

Cheney deceitfully implied these isolated, last-throes dead-ender attacks were carried out by people associated with al-Qaeda:

"... it is pretty clear that there was a link..." between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein before the invasion.

Three days later, the Pentagon issued a report stating there is absolutely no proof whatsoever of any significant operational link between al-Qaeda and Hussein, who actually were bitter enemies. This latest report confirmed conclusions contained in dozens of previous studies made over the past five years.

General Petraeus begged to differ as to the cause of the violence. He proclaimed "... Iranian-provided, Iranian-made" rockets were being used to attack the Green Zone. They were launched by groups trained and funded by the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Apparently Petraeus views these attacks as yet another indication of America's "phenomenal progress". During congressional hearings, General Petraeus informed Senator Lugar:

"We have our teeth into the jugular..."

Whoever the enemy of American-style Iraqi freedom and democracy is, Cheney ignored all traces of reality and vowed to press ahead:

"I think... it's very, very important that we succeed."

... US forces will not quit before the job is done..."

"... our objective here is victory..."

The terms "succeed", "job" and "victory" were not defined. These terms have never been rationally defined, either by Cheney or by anyone else in a position of authority in Washington. All we know for certain is that these terms don't refer to bringing genuine freedom and democracy to the long-suffering people of Iraq.

Perhaps the "job", after five years of war, at a cost of over 4,000 American soldiers killed, tens of thousands wounded and $500 billion dollars, is securing the Green Zone, where American personnel will continue to be viewed as enemies and hated by the people of Iraq.

Perhaps "victory" means stealing Iraqi national resources by American oil companies.

Perhaps "success" is the term for America's destruction of the infrastructure of Iraq, with the deaths of hundreds of thousands and displacement of millions more.

Or perhaps that term "success" refers to the bankruptcy of America, the destruction of its middle class and loss of trust worldwide.

Sane and rational Americans need to understand what the insane and delusional Vice President cannot understand or accept:

America has decisively and conclusively lost the gratuitously waged war against Iraq. After five years of efforts so costly in blood in money, there is no other sane and rational explanation for America's inability to even secure its embassy against attacks that occur almost daily.

America is the loser.

The winner?

Iran, the self-proclaimed enemy of America. Iran, whose President Ahmadinejad recently traveled from the airport to downtown Baghdad without special security precautions to conduct what Iraqi Prime Minister called "friendly, positive and full of trust" talks.

Almadinejad's sane, rational and absolutely correct explanation for this glaring contrast:

"I am welcome in Iraq. The Americans are not."

azchuck

Bush's Insane Solution for a Falling Satellite

2008-02-19T18:57:00.002-07:00

In December 2006 a top-secret photo-reconnaissance satellite was launched from the Vandenberg Military Space Center in California.

This satellite is owned by the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO. That agency builds and operates numerous spy satellites and also coordinates collection of information obtained from planes and satellites operated by the military and CIA.

The NRO was created in 1960 and has always been a highly secretive operation. To the extent that its very existence was denied until 1992.

The NRO operates from a recently constructed headquarters at a secret location, which is on the east side of the Tee intersection of Lee Road and Conference Center Drive in Chantilly, Virginia, a Washington suburb.

The NRO tracks this satellite from its Satellite Mission Control Center, at a secret location on Lockeed Martin Way immediately north of highway 237 in Sunnyvale, California.

The Falling Satellite

The satellite of concern is reportedly designated US193 by NASA and the military and NROL-21 by the NRO. The satellite is reported to be the size of a small school bus and to weigh 5,000 pounds.

The satellite's purpose is classified but is thought to be provision of high-resolution radar images, which can be obtained under all weather conditions and can even detect underground features. This satellite is thought to be the fifth LaCrosse satellite currently in orbit.

The satellite was successfully placed in a 220-mile high orbit. However, for unexplained reasons, all power was lost and the central computer failed. All radio communication with the satellite was lost soon after final positioning.

The satellite became uncontrollable and is falling to earth. Fragmentation is expected to occur, but the time and location of impact of larger pieces is unpredictable.

The Dangers: First Low, Now High

The risk of human death or injury was initially determined to be minimal. The Defense Department initially considered the satellite failure to be "low risk".

That assessment quickly changed. The "dangers to mankind" became high. This justified the administration's decision to shoot down the satellite, to "protect mankind".

As the Defense Department explained, the President has decided to take action to:

"... mitigate the risk to human lives..."

Mitigation efforts will be, according to the Defense Department, "extraordinary". Three sea-based tactical missiles and three ships will attempt to destroy the satellite during re-entry.

Right The First Time

The original risk assessment was correct. Dr. Ruediger Jehn, a space debris analyst with the European Space Agency, states that satellites come out of orbit without causing harm about once per year. Most re-entries are controlled and directed to the Pacific Ocean, but some are not.

The Defense Department has tracked re-entry of 20,176 space objects. During the past 40 years, almost 6,000 tons of space debris has fallen from the sky. The most spectacular example was the uncontrolled descent of space laboratory Skylab I in 1979. This satellite weighed between 20 and 30 times the satellite of current concern.

In all cases, adverse results to humans has been negligible. Per Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center:

"In the history of the space age, there has not been a single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling from space."

Although one woman near Davenport, Oklahoma was brushed on the shoulder by a piece of debris in 1997. No medical treatment was required.

This track record justified the warning of only a few hours issued by NASA late in January, 2002 when a similarly out-of-control satellite was falling from orbit:

"A retired satellite with no onboard steering system should re-enter Earth's atmosphere within hours and leave a trail of debris..."

That satellite weighed about 7,000 pounds. According to NASA, a handful of metal chunks ranging from 4 pounds to 100 pounds were expected to impact Earth.

Somewhere in the middle latitudes, on either side of the equator, from as far north as Orlando, Florida to as far south as Brisbane, Australia. The danger zones included parts of Florida, Central America, South America, the Caribbean and much of Africa, South Asia and Indonesia.

The Need to Protect Mankind

A very few Americans are surely touched by the Bush administration's newly revealed compassionate concern for the "safety of humanity", which for over seven years has been blatantly and callously ignored or scoffed and sneered at.

Many more Americans, including all those with more than an eight of a brain, recognize this newly discovered concern to be nothing but another in a long series of farcical, cynical presidential lies.

Hydrazine

The administration's sole concern is the 40-inch diameter metal container holding roughly 120 gallons of hydrazine, the fuel for small rockets used to re-position the satellite.

Hydrazine is used for many other purposes besides rocket fuel, including as a component of photographic developers, as a corrosion inhibitor in boiler systems, and in production of plastics. Worldwide, about 130 million pounds are produced annually. In the United States, about 36 million pounds are produced and transported by truck and rail, without special protective measures, each year.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration acknowledges that hydrazine is highly toxic and "may be harmful if inhaled or swallowed" and "may cause severe skin and eye irritation or burns". Symptoms of acute exposure may include:

"Irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures and coma."

OSHA recommends:

"Use safety glasses, gloves and good ventilation. Handle as a carcinogen."

OSHA also recognizes that hydrazine is:

"an extremely unstable compound and can explode on casual handling."

This unique and remarkable characteristic explains hydrazine's suitability for use as a rocket fuel.

The Defense Department, which has not always proven to be a reliable source of truthful information, tells us:

"Direct contact with skin or eyes, ingestion or inhalations from hydrazine released from the tank upon impact could result in danger."

"... the impact could affect humans - perhaps kill some - out to a distance of 20 - 30 yards."

So the suddenly benevolent Defense Department will come to the rescue of mankind. By doing the one thing it knows how to do well. Bomb and violently destroy.

The Defense Department will shoot off one or more rockets to blow up the satellite in mid-air. If successful, one large piece of space debris will be transformed into hundreds or thousands of smaller pieces of space debris:

"If this operation is successful, the hydrazine will then no longer pose a risk to humans."

Re-entry Temperatures

All these solemnly declared dire risks to the health of mankind are totally irrelevant.

The space shuttle, which is aerodynamically designed to minimize heat generation, re-enters the atmosphere at a 40-degree angle of attack.

The shuttle relies on a sophisticated thermal protection system against excess heat during reentry. Nose caps and leading edges of wings are the areas subject to the highest temperatures. They are protected by a laminated composite reinforced carbon-carbon material made of graphite rayon cloth impregnated with a phenolic resin. Areas subject to less extreme temperatures are protected by surface insulation tiles, made of very pure silica sand.

These exotic materials are used because of high temperatures experienced during controlled reentry. The tiles protect to temperatures up to 2300 degrees F. The carbon-carbon composite protects to temperatures up to 3000 Degrees F.

Expected Debris Reentry Temperature Levels

The NROL-21 satellite is not aerodynamically designed for minimized reentry temperatures. Given the inability to control descent, the attack level can reasonably be expected to approximate or exceed 40 degrees.

Meaning surface temperatures on pieces of debris can reasonably be expected to exceed 3000 degrees F.

The Stated Dangers Are Not Relevant

For comparative purposes, readers should note that hydrazine melts at 36 degrees F and vaporizes at 236 degrees F.

Vaporization occurs only under tightly controlled conditions, because:

Hydrazine, even without an igniter, spontaneously explodes at 101 degrees F.

End products from explosion are water vapor and nitrogen, both of which are benign.

Humans therefore will face no risk of injury from ingesting liquid hydrazine or from breathing hydrazine fumes, even if the tank survives to impact and then ruptures.

The Preferred and Only Solution: Bomb and Destroy

Humans may however face risk of injury from explosion as a tank containing 120 gallons of hydrazine heated to 3000 degrees F explodes upon impact. Assuming the tank doesn't prematurely explode during "de-orbiting".

Risk of explosion has never been mentioned by the Defense Department. Apparently because that risk was not worth mentioning.

This cavalier attitude should be expected from the Department responsible for dropping almost 500,000 pounds of bombs on Afghanistan during the first six months of 2007, to liberate the citizens from harsh government rulers with inhumane policies while winning their hearts and minds. One more explosion simply isn't significant.

This number exceeds the 222,000 pounds of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007, as a way of spreading freedom and democracy to survivors of years of earlier bombings. This period began over 41 months after President Bush declared the "end of major combat operations".

The Pentagon's preferred and only solution to the problem of a falling satellite is the same solution it reflexively proposes for any and all problems. Bomb and destroy, mitigation of risks to human lives be damned.

The Pentagon's attitude toward "mitigating the risk to human lives" as applied to lives of Iraqi citizens has been starkly expressed by Pentagon officials:

"We don't track them."

"They don't count. They are not important."

"If we have to go in by force to kill them, the numbers don't make a difference. It's not something we are concerned with."

President Bush's attitude is exactly the same. A hint of the basis for his lifelong attitude toward mitigation of risks to human lives can be gleaned from the attitude of his dearly beloved nurturing mother. On March 18, 2003, two days before the Iraq invasion began, Barbara told ABC-TV's Diane Sawyer:

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many... It's not relevant..."

Another Display of Bush's Impotency and Inadequacy

I say President Bush should, for once, stand tall like a real man, and make an untested, experimental effort to be honest with the American people.

By explaining he didn't authorize a risky multi-million dollar untested, experimental effort to "mitigate the risks to human lives".

He did this because of his infantile psychological need to prove to his father and the Chinese he isn't impotent, irrelevant, incompetent and inadequate, and that America is "the world's only superpower", a code phrase for impotent world-class bully.

Bush refuses to negotiate peaceful solutions because his handlers know he isn't intellectually or psychologically capable of conducting negotiations against savvy and sane opponents. Instead, he does the only thing of which he is capable: He flexes his muscles, beats his chest like a modern-day Neanderthal and issues provocations and threats, like a schoolyard bully.

Provocation of China

In December 2001 Bush unilaterally terminated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The clear intent was to proceed with development of space weapons, in violation of the 1968 United Nations treaty on outer space.

For the past six years, Russia and China have worked cooperatively to curb proliferation of weapons in space. Last year, China displayed its frustration at America's continuing failure to even consider negotiations by destroying its Fengyun-1C weather satellite.

As to the pending race to develop space weapons as a path to ensure world domination, Bush has again chosen to respond with the only alternative available to him: Shoot rather than talk, provoke China and attempt to initiate yet another arms race, predictably horrendous consequences be damned.

The space arms race in competition with the Chinese will be frightfully expensive. America currently spends over $600 billion annually for national defense, more than is spent by all other nations combined and more than is spent for all other federal purposes combined. America runs a federal budget deficit of over $400 billion annually. America has a national debt of over $9 trillion. All signs of weakness rather than strength.

A question logically arises:

How will Bush pay the costs of waging a space arms competition against the Chinese?

In the same way he's paid portions of previous military costs:

By borrowing from the Chinese.

I again ask millions of American patriots to stand with me and demand:

Stop this insanity. Now.

Chuck Simpson

Chapter 1

2008-02-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

On January 21, 1776 at Woodstock, Virginia the Lutheran Reverend John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg concluded the final sermon of his career with Ecclesiastes 3 verses 1 to 8, modified to express a deeply held personal conviction:

"To everything there is a season. There is a time to preach and there is a time to pray."

"But those times have passed away."

"There is also a time to fight, and that time has now come."

Reverend Muhlenberg threw off his clerical robe to reveal his newly sewn Revolutionary Army uniform, marched out of his church, mustered his 300 recruits of the new Eighth Virginia Regiment and set off to join George Washington in the fight for freedom and liberty. They would fight together, to create a just and democratic government that would provide freedom and fair opportunity for the citizens of a new nation. What Thomas Paine named the United States of America.

In 1776 Muhlenberg was a rebel and traitor to the British, known as "Devil Pete" on the battlefields. Today he is known as a freedom fighter and patriot whose statue graces the small rotunda of Congress. Like Sophie Scholl of The White Rose, whose member's names now grace streets, squares and schools throughout Germany, Muhlenberg was a true patriot, with courage to stand and fight for freedom and justice, prevailing public attitudes be damned.

On February 22, 2005, the six-month anniversary of Marilyn's merciful death, Malcolm Hammett set off to fight against some of the many injustices and oppressions of civil liberties imposed by the government of the United States of America upon its citizens. In the spirit of Patrick Henry, Malcolm would have either liberty or death.

And he would have revenge. He would make them pay for what they had done.

The time had come to put the painful past behind and march on, to a new life in a new season with a new mission. For Malcolm also, the time to fight had come.

At dawn he packed his camping gear and left his self-imposed hermitage at the edge of the reservation campground. Near Supai, the only American community still receiving mail delivery by pack mule, twice a week. Malcolm hiked 11 miles to the primitive parking lot and drove south 63 miles on barely passable dirt trails to Route 66 at Peach Springs, then east 120 miles to Flagstaff. To a restaurant dinner and a motel with a real bed, with sheets and pillows.

Two hours after sunrise, Malcolm was in his self-storage unit on Main Street in the old-town area of Payson. After sitting for months, the over-pampered Jag started right up. The over-abused Jeep was unpacked, camping gear was stored and the convertible trunk was filled with summer clothes, personal things, a few stacks of books and a framed photograph of Marilyn, taken 18 months ago on top the Mogollon Rim. Computer gear filled the rear seat.

Malcolm walked west along Main to a small shop that caters exclusively to Arizona-style sportsmen and paid cash for one box of prime-time Arizona-style sporting supplies. On the way out of town, he stopped at Cindy's Gems and Minerals shop. He innocently browsed like a real rock collector would do for about five minutes before selecting a specimen of wulfenite, a rare oxide mineral of lead and molybdenum with delicate translucent yellow and orange crystals. This Saturday he will be the proud owner of a newly discovered one-horse wulfenite mine. Prudence dictates he possess a sample of his mine's output, just in case.

Another stop, one-half mile further south, at the one-plus acre Mazatzal Casino on the 85-acre reservation of the Tonto Tribe of the Apache Nation. Malcolm used a credit card to buy five hundred slot machine tokens. Suitably equipped for some heavy lever-pulling action, he prowled the aisles, obviously searching for the proverbial lucky machine. Until the floor monitor was momentarily distracted, when he slipped into the coffee shop and drank three cups while reading the Arizona Republic cover to cover.

Thirty minutes later he paid and tipped for coffee and a bagel with four tokens and returned to the cashier's cage, where he traded 496 tokens for the real McCoy. Cash, in used twenties. His luck hadn't been good, he explained, but it hadn't been bad, either. He hadn't lost hardly any money at all.

Malcolm's next stop was Round Valley, 4 miles southeast, to test-drive the handy-dandy general-purpose remodeling tool he'd bought several months earlier in Kingman.

Screw social and personal equality. Malcolm needed an anti-equalizer. A tool that would make a definitive statement even before being conclusively demonstrated to be of overwhelming advantage. His personal, portable version of Rumsfeld's shock and awe. Through the Internet he'd found the perfect tool advertised in the Kingman Daily Miner, driven 240 miles and paid cash, no questions asked, to recently widowed Janice. She knew nothing of government regulations. She only knew that Hershel's finally dead and she wanted the damn-fool thing out of her house.

Hershel's hobby was remodeling rattlesnakes in an efficient and spectacular manner. With a nickel-plated Colt Anaconda 44-Magnum, with 8-inch barrel and custom burled English Walnut grips. Malcolm spent 45 minutes at the shooting range with his new tool and sporting supplies, 50 rounds of 240-grain ammunition, practicing quick one-handed firing. And getting used to the kick, which was considerable.

One hour and sixty miles later Malcolm repeated the cash program at the McDowell Casino on Highway 87 northeast of Scottsdale. He netted $494 in cash and a light lunch.

Malcolm's destination was the Extended Stay Marriott on Baseline Road adjacent to I-10 in Tempe, southeast of downtown Phoenix. He requested and was assigned a suite downstairs in the back, where it would be quiet. Where members of his soon-to-be assembled team could come and go quietly, more or less unobserved.

Malcolm signed in for 10 days, through Friday March 4th, paying casino cash to minimize the trail of computer records. He registered under his real name, using his old Indiana driver's license. Not by preference, but because he only had licenses in his real name, Malcolm Hammett. That would have to do for now. He'd move when he was properly equipped with documentation for his new names.

Malcolm returned to the front desk with a gentle inquiry. The phone directory is missing. The counter clerk supplied one from a stack in a back room, handing it over with a smile and simple apology. Guests are always taking the directories and putting them in their cars. Five minutes later Malcolm's phone directory was in its proper place, in his car.

With his clothes and books unpacked and his computer set up, Malcolm was settled in his new digs. He took a quick tour of his new neighborhood and located all the essential places: a laundry, Albertson's grocery, Domino's Pizza, Borders and two used bookstores. Of particular importance, he found three branch banks, each with 24-hour ATM machines in the front wall. He would use these daily. Two hundred dollars per machine, three machines, seven days a week. He would pay living expenses and generate almost $4,000 cash every week, in used twenties. When questioned, he'd explain his gambling habit had gotten out of hand since the tragic death of his wife. He'd taken to frequenting casinos on the Indian reservations in the area. Where gambling is legal.

Malcolm consulted his phone book and set out for more distant horizons. The Staples store on Elliot Road for a 10-sheet package of 80-pound card stock, a metal-edged ruler and an Exacto knife. Wal-Mart for a pre-paid cell phone and pre-paid long distance calling card. The branch library on Southern Avenue for activation of the phone and calling card through someone else's Internet connection.

When Malcolm tested the phone card by calling from a convenience store pay phone, his new cell phone displayed a missed call from the 719 area code. Colorado Springs, the base of operations for the issuer of the phone card. Not totally untraceable, but close. A monumental records search would be required.

Errands completed, he returned to his suite and produced a dozen business cards with his new cell phone number and the Marriott address. Malcolm would become Bill Stephenson, an investor in commercial real estate.

Then he tried the Internet. Service was on, but with exorbitant Marriott rates his use would be sparse. And cautious. Malcolm recalled the woes that fell upon a friend at Eielson Air Force Base south of Fairbanks. Surfing the web, Arnold wandered into a site that warned his visit was unauthorized and instructed he immediately exit. Arnold ignored the warning and instruction and clicked to a second page. The warning and instruction again appeared. Arnold continued to a third page. He was immediately given a "MR. BINGHAM, YOUR VISIT IS UNAUTHORIZED" message at the top of the screen and an "EXIT THIS SITE IMMEDIATELY" message at the bottom, all in bold red letters.

The central portion of the screen displayed his driver's license, with color photograph. One small but shining example of security measures Malcolm would be required to avoid or surmount.

There remained one matter of some significance. The major dent that would develop in his investment account because of $600 daily cash withdraws. He'll become active again with his trading account and watch small high-tech medical companies. Stocks that offer the best opportunities for high monthly premiums.

Malcolm has experienced 15 years of success with a buy-and-write approach to investing. Every month he buys stocks on short-turn up movements and one or two days later sells near-month call options at strike prices at or slightly above the current price.

At the end of trading on the third Friday of every month the stocks are automatically sold, through exercise of the options. New investments are made the next week, again for slightly less than one month. With that program, Malcolm not only makes money when the stocks went up, he makes money when they stay flat or don't appreciably drop.

The stocks are sold at 2 to 4 percent over the purchase price, plus Malcolm gets the option premiums, which typically are over 5 percent of the stock price. Over the years and always margined to the hilt, this approach has generated around 10 percent a month. A fantastic return, understood only by people who understand the first-order marvels of compound interest.

Everyone would say the Mohican tribal elders who sold land to Peter Minuit of the Dutch West India Company for the New Amsterdam settlement had been screwed royally by a paleface. That land was sold in 1626 for 60 guilders, what would have been equivalent to about 26 American dollars, and consisted of the entire island of Manhattan. Probably fewer than one person in a thousand would understand that those 60 guilders, deposited in the recently formed Bank of Amsterdam at 7 percent interest for 379 years, would now total roughly $3.40 trillion. Enough to buy Manhattan back. All of it, including all the buildings and infrastructure.

The $50,000 trading account, his "playing around money" as Malcolm called it, will eventually fill the dent, but Malcolm will need permanent living quarters. Telephone and Internet fees would be prohibitive when four hours daily are consumed in research. He'll begin investing when he moves to permanent quarters. In the meantime, he has no immediate needs, so the withdrawals aren't really important.

At any rate the investment account is much larger, even factoring in the developing dent, and Malcolm has no doubt it will continue to grow. Malcolm is one of the very few who understand that successful investing is ninety percent psychology. He's one of the very few who has adopted the required mindset:

Think like a criminal.

That mindset has produced years of successful investment returns. Adopted full-time for the next few months, that mindset will result in major societal changes in the Phoenix region.

The investment account contains a number of foreign and natural resource stocks, all far into positive territory. Especially the second-tier gold mining stocks of companies that haven't sold future production at today's prices. They will continue to appreciate because of the continuing devaluation of the American dollar. A devaluation being forced upon America by foreign investors and the governments and central banks of the world. Just one natural and inevitable if not widely appreciated result of unsustainable federal budget and current trade account deficits, which together total well over one trillion dollars annually.

The result of insane federal policies that help increase corporate profits by screwing the American citizens. Shipping their jobs overseas while a corrupt Congress gives multi-billion dollar tax cuts to the richest. Malcolm doesn't doubt that most natural resources, railroad and water supply stocks in his portfolio will eventually be subject to tender offers by the Chinese, who will lose faith in America and convert their paper dollars into real assets with real value that can be used to squeeze the country. As for the market in general, Malcolm knows a crash is coming. When it arrives, he'll reverse his program by shorting stocks and selling puts against them. And make money all the way down, as he did in the spectacular dot-bomb crash of 2000-2001.

Wednesday night Malcolm quietly contemplated while eating in. Dominos pizza. A real treat, after eating native food on reservations for several months. Months spent developing his plan while absorbing the lessons of Native American shamans and tribal elders in the ways and meanings and purposes of life.

In his grief, Malcolm had developed a convoluted, sophisticated plan. Machiavellian, almost diabolical. In part a tribute to Marilyn. In part a way of performing vitally needed civic duties and do what government refuses to do. Make Phoenix a safer and better place to live while easing the pain countless citizens like Marilyn must suffer because of cruel and inhumane governmental policies.

And also in part to avenge her death. To make others pay for what they had done or enabled or allowed to happen.

Tonight he'll again study his punch lists:

Required personnel, each with specific and unique abilities and personalities.

How to find them and identify and push their hot buttons.

How to morph them into fictitious people with fake IDs that will never be questioned, even by law enforcement.

How to identify the targets and their vulnerabilities.

Required equipment and things to be done, in what order.

Malcolm's plan was really nothing more than any other complicated design project to be analyzed and organized. Not so much different from planning Malcolm had done in over thirty years of civil engineering practice.

Except that as a result of this plan, overwhelming pain will be eased for a number of seriously or terminally ill Arizona citizens. And Phoenix will become a safer and better place to live.

In the process of accomplishing those noble objectives, a number of government agents will be utterly destroyed and a number of civilians will be assassinated.

Chapter 2

2008-02-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

Malcolm's first priority is identifying and recruiting team members and instilling loyalty. Total, absolute loyalty. Five people with widely varying talents, abilities and personalities. Five true American patriots willing to rise up and act against a government that unfairly stacks the deck against its own citizens for the selfish benefit of the richest one percent. An inhumane government that daily demands its citizens be patriotic by supporting government without question. An elitist government bought and owned by traitors who steal uncounted billions from the national treasury while callously relegating the most basic needs of its citizens to the trash heap.

Needs like personal security and quality education and decent jobs with fair pay and vested pension plans and affordable health care. Five people who recognize that drastic action is the only way to bring about drastic changes in governmental policies. Five people who agree they must do what government refuses to do. Make life safer and better for its citizens.

The requisite abilities and characteristics of two members are rare. They will be hard to find. Malcolm elected to approach the problem gradually by filling the easiest slot first, in the process honing his recruitment skills. He would start with someone experienced in home building and remodeling.

But his plan dictates that not just any contractor will do. Malcolm needs someone who's suffered and as a result has a sharpened sense of justice, coupled with a burning personal drive that can be satisfied by carrying out the plan.

A contractor with a harsh understanding of tragic results of mean-spirited, spiteful government policies, developed through harsh personal experience. Thankfully, that person will be relatively uncommon, but not nearly uncommon enough under a government that arrogantly preaches to the world of moral superiority while starving its own children.

A very few such contractors, or ex-contractors more likely, are around. One needs to be identified and recruited. The problem of how to identify that person, bordering on insoluble at first glance, is actually a no-brainer. Because the contractor who's witnessed the pain firsthand will have become neglectful of other matters. Neglectful of friends and neglectful of business.

A neglected construction business sooner or later turns into a first-class disaster, almost always sooner rather than later. Success in construction is above all a matter of maintaining focus: the ability to anticipate and constantly track and juggle a thousand details. That requires dedication and continuous, undivided attention.

The Phoenix metropolitan area for the past ten years has been one of the fastest growing regions in the country. Phoenix is great for builders of new homes for the roughly one hundred thousand people who move to the region every year. With demand so high, contractors easily recoup costs and earn a healthy profit on construction in all three housing categories: spec homes, tract homes and custom homes.

Profitable sale of spec homes, constructed on the come with outside financing and listed for sale near completion, presents no problem for competent builders. Spec homes are eagerly snapped up by those few who desire and can afford something other than tract homes, line after line of homes all identical, even to colors of stoves and shingles.

Construction of affordable, quality tract homes is a booming business in the Valley. Some of the more appealing projects have waiting lists or even sell units by lottery. People who're lucky enough to have their name drawn out of the builder's white hat are granted the privilege of purchasing. In the third class, buyers of custom homes eagerly line up and pay without qualms or complaints. For them, cost is at most a secondary consideration in the construction of their dream home.

Bottom line, homebuilders simply don't go bust in Phoenix unless something goes terribly wrong. Serious medical problems, personal or in the immediate family, are near the top of the list of things that can and occasionally do go wrong.

Above all, Malcolm is a man with a logical brain. Sometimes coldly and brilliantly logical, the epitome of modern scientific rational man. One of the rare people who can almost immediately and instinctively identify the one most productive route to the solution of a problem that others view as insoluble.

Malcolm used those extraordinary mental skills to recognize the most direct and efficient method of identifying a builder whose business has turned into disaster.

Review of petitions filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court.

Thursday morning, Malcolm visited the Bankruptcy Clerk's office on the third floor of the federal office building at Thomas Road on Central Avenue, the main north-south street from the heart of downtown.

These are modern times, even for select parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy. Bankruptcy Court filings are now computerized and readily available for review by fretting creditors. The public area in the Clerk's office is equipped with a monitor, keyboard and mouse on a small table at one end of the counter.

Malcolm quickly scanned the personal petitions, most of which were filed because of huge medical bills, coupled with inadequate or non-existent health insurance. A result of government policies that extol free health care in Iraq as a way of spreading freedom and democracy around the globe while viewing the possibility of fair and affordable health insurance for its own children as a way of spreading evil communistic socialism.

The common assumption that bankruptcy is used by reckless spendthrifts to rip off their creditors after amassing truckloads of luxury items ignores the real problem. This assumption applies only to a small percentage of filers. In 2001, about 1.5 million bankruptcy petitions were filed, covering about 3.9 million people. Medical expenses were a major reason for about half the filings, or about 2 million people.

Those filers were overwhelmingly middle-class Americans by education and occupation and three-fourths had medical insurance. Those people endured multiple hits, including high co-payment requirements, high deductibles and numerous loopholes used by profit-hungry insurance companies to deny coverage. Worse, in far too many cases, illness or injury resulted in loss of employment. With resulting loss of medical coverage, just when it was most needed and the families were most vulnerable.

This problem is getting worse. In 1981, only about 25,000 families filed for bankruptcy after incurring major medical expenses. In the following 20 years, that number increased by a factor of 23.

Partially because, in our capitalist society of trickle-down voodoo economics where corporate profits reign supreme, 46.6 million Americans, including 8.3 million children, cannot obtain or afford health insurance that is riddled with exclusions and loopholes.

Leaders of other countries, being more compassionately conservative, understand that insurance company decisions to save money by denying health care claims are inherently immoral. American corporate leaders never give the moral issue a thought, because they are predatory and inherently immoral. They therefore don't understand the perversion of viewing people's sicknesses and suffering with glee, as potential sources of profit.

America is the only industrialized country in the world that does not have universal health care. And America has per capita health care costs twice the average of the 32 developed nations. About 23 percent of Americans say they have had problems paying their medical bills. And about 60 percent of the people with problems had medical insurance.

American per capita health care costs are by far the highest in the world, roughly double the average costs in the other developed countries. In 2005, national health care costs will be about $1.85 trillion, over 15 percent of the gross national product. The per-capita cost will approach $6,000. This is almost twice as high as in France, which ranks 4th in quality.

In stark contrast to France, the World Health Organization ranks American health care fairness 54th and health care quality 72nd, below "primitive" countries like Chile and Costa Rica.

Twenty years ago America ranked first in the world in longevity. Now, American women rank 19th and American men rank 28th, roughly the same as men in Brunei. American infant mortality is 41st, the same as in Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia.

Because the healthcare industry is the top spender in Washington. For the 2000 elections, they spent $230 million on contributions and lobbyists. In 2002, they used 675 lobbyists to spend $91.4 million, all to protect their profits. A small part of the more than 34,000 lobbyists who purchase government favors for their clients, the public be damned.

Contributions were made to cooperating senators and congressmen of both parties. Meaning institution of change through the ballot box will never be effective. A more radical approach will be required to bring about positive change.

Among other favors, political contributions purchased Part D of the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act, which prevents the federal government from negotiating lower prices for pharmaceuticals purchased from manufacturers through federal programs like Medicare. In passing this law, government went beyond its usual non-caring, hands-off approach and used its power to guarantee that consumers will be required to pay higher rather than lower prices for medicines - up to 3 times what residents of Mexico and Canada pay for the same drugs in the same containers manufactured by the same companies.

Congress can no longer even mandate that drugs be safe. Requirements of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act are now violated with impunity.

According to a General Accounting Office report:

"Cosmetics are being marketed in the United States which may pose a serious hazard to the public. Over 2,983 chemicals used in cosmetics…and one-third (884) of these ingredients have been reported as toxic substances…"

Even lead-tainted lipstick is not being regulated. No effective regulatory scheme is in place to protect the public. According to the FDA, regulation is unnecessary because the skin doesn't absorb chemicals. Except for FDA-approved chemicals, primarily trans-dermal patches used for absorption of FDA-approved pharmaceuticals.

Instead of assuring removal of toxic substances from cosmetics, the FDA directs efforts toward regulating sale of vitamins and natural substances that have been proven effective, sometimes through thousands of years of experience. For the FDA, natural nutrients are dangerous and synthetic chemicals, more than 300 of which are typically found in the blood of Americans, are safe. Because profits of pharmaceutical companies must be protected at all costs.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, poisoning by FDA-regulated products is now the second-leading cause of unintentional death.

One example of approved but dangerous drugs is produced by Eli Lilly, which so far has paid $750 million for out-of-court settlement of 8,000 lawsuits. Plaintiffs claimed Lilly withheld information that its best-selling Zyprexa anti-psychotic drug sometimes causes unmanageable weight gain and raises the risk of developing diabetes. Thousands more suits are pending. Lilly quietly settles the claims out of court, in the process extracting gag orders which seal court records and forbid participants from public discussion of the dangers.

Lilly meanwhile continues to promote Zyprexa as being "safe and gentle". Paying claims for deaths and injuries is a "cost of doing business". Claims total only a reasonable percentage of total sales revenue from Zyprexa, which are over $4 billion annually.

In the federal government's contest pitting profits against safety and pain and suffering, profits won hands down. Selfish corporate desires for profit protection were granted by Congress at the expense of the health of the American citizens Congress was elected to support. Tragically, Congress places a higher value on the profits of medical and pharmaceutical companies than on the health and financial security of citizens.

In 2002, pharmaceutical industry profits totaled $35.9 billion. In the Fortune 500 list of largest corporations, profits of ten pharmaceutical companies were greater than profits of the other 490 companies. Partially because pharmaceutical companies spend far more on marketing, beating down or eliminating competition and lobbying, than on developing new drugs. In 2005, the industry will spend an estimated $4.2 billion just on direct-to-consumer advertising, primarily targeting middle-aged, upper-income people who are healthy. In 2001 Pfizer spent over $11 billion on marketing, more than twice what it spent on research and development.

This year Americans will spend $240 billion on prescriptions. If sold as generics, a $170 billion savings would result. The drug industry claims monopolistic patent protection is required so they can spend about $40 billion annually on research.

But two-thirds of that amount is spent to develop copycat generic drugs. Research has resulted in only a handful of truly new drugs. In 2002, the FDA approved 78 new drugs. Only 17 contained new active ingredients, and only 7 were classified by the FDA as improvements over drugs already available. The other 71 were copycat drugs. And almost all of those drugs treat symptoms rather than provide a cure. This assures long-term dependency, and long-term assured streams of profit.

Bottom line, Americans spend an additional $170 billion annually to support $14 billion in private research to develop new drugs.

Research and development costs for these new drugs were paid primarily by universities and the National Institutes of Health. All of which receive tax funding. Bluntly, taxpayer funds are used to support development of new drugs that are patented by pharmaceutical companies and sold to the taxpayers at inflated prices. Concentrated marketing efforts are undertaken to assure that America remains the per-capita world leader in consumption of pharmaceutical products.

Chapter 3

2008-02-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

In 2003 big drug companies stepped up the pace and spent over $300 million lobbying and contributing to Congress, plus an additional $44 million on lobbying state governments. They contributed $123.7 million for 2004 campaigns, and will spend over $180 million in the first 6 months of 2005.

America now has an army of lobbyists successfully assaulting Washington - over 65 lobbyists for every Congressman. Together, the lobbyists will spend $2.4 billion corrupting America's lawmakers and buying legislation that benefits their clients but harms the citizens.

Many polls indicate about two-thirds of American citizens support a single-payer health care system with universal coverage. In 2002, 76 percent agreed that access to health care should be a right, not a privilege.

In 2003, a national poll found 72 percent of respondents felt the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all citizens, even if that would require repeal of recent tax cuts. This proposal was accepted by 67 percent even if it would require raising taxes.

Early in 2004, this response increased to 69 percent. In a recent Harris poll, an astounding 88 percent of respondents regarded expanding health insurance coverage for the uninsured as either absolutely essential or very important.

Even insured Americans are disconcerted with their employer paying almost $1,000 a month for coverage for a family of four. That amount has increased by almost 60 percent in the past five years. Costs have become unbearable for the 58 percent of American workers who earn less than $15.00 per hour.

Those costs explain why 63 percent of American businesses also support government-sponsored universal health care, even if that would mean higher corporate taxes. Those businesses include all three American automakers, who see Toyota build new plants in Canada to avoid paying exorbitant American health care costs.

Wal-Mart, by far the nation's largest employer, doesn't care so much because a majority of its employees are already on public assistance plans anyway. This year, 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million employees will either be on Medicaid or uninsured. That's because the average wage for Wal-Mart employees is $8.23 per hour and employees can't afford to pay 41 percent of the cost and 22 to 40 percent of their net pay for insurance that comes with a $3,000 family deductible, a $1,000 hospital deductible and a $300 pharmacy deductible.

In the halls of Congress, where legislators long ago voted themselves unrestricted and unlimited health, eye and dental care for free at government expense, the idea of government-sponsored universal health care is called communistic, politically impossible, lacking in political support or too expensive.

Congress overlooks and ignores their own studies that conclude that billions of dollars would be saved annually. One example is Tommy, a 12-year old in Maryland whose mother lost Medicaid benefits due to federal budget cuts and couldn't afford $80 to extract Tommy's infected tooth. After two weeks of hospitalization and six operations, Tommy died. His hospital bills totaled over $250,000.

Americans now spend at least $66 billion annually in excess costs for drugs and about $98 billion annually for excess administrative costs of claim denial and marketing. These costs exceed the estimated $77 billion annual cost of providing full care for all uninsured citizens.

Policy makers point to the large number of profit-making hospital beds as reflective of a successful of health policy. They don't realize that large number is a reflection of a sick rather than healthy society. Because sickness is viewed as an opportunity for profit, preventative medicine is almost non-existent. That wouldn't be the case if America adopted the traditional Chinese model, where patients pay their doctors a small sum regularly only so long as they are healthy.

Instead, the federal government proposes and enacts cuts in existing care levels. Such as eliminating Medicaid reimbursements for schoolchildren with disabilities, cutting funds for services for disabled veterans and cuts in payments to pharmacies for 50 million poor Americans.

This from a government that spends $8 billion a month in Iraq and $1 billion a month in Afghanistan. The government that's happy to pay $108 billion for "Future Combat Systems", over $40 billion for a fleet of 21 sub-sonic bombers that dropped 583 bombs on Iraq, $200 billion for a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work, $150 billion for modernized nuclear weapons, $65 billion for the F-22 fighter plane and $277 billion to build and $347 billion to fly the "low cost" F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will rely upon unproven technology to get off and stay off the ground.

F-35 test flights are scheduled to begin 4 years after production begins. By 2013 when operational testing is complete, 424 planes will have been built, at about $90 million each. Those planes will protect America's freedom and democracy from aerial attack by Cuba, Venezuela, the Taliban Air Force and terrorists armed with box-cutters that can be purchased in any local Ace Hardware store for $2.99. For terrorists, that cost compares favorably with a delivery cost of over $68 million for each bomb dropped on Iraq by B-2s.

Massachusetts recently mandated a particularly ill-advised solution to the problem. The state now requires that all adults obtain insurance, overlooking the experience of California, where 20 percent of the population is denied coverage by private companies, sometimes for the most trivial reasons. Massachusetts followed the federal lead in attempting to solve cost problems by adding to the burden of its citizens. Massachusetts never attempted to understand that the healthcare cost problem can never be solved by imposing requirements that increase profits derived from illness.

In response to these acute problems and rational solutions, Congress amended the bankruptcy law to make it more difficult for families to file and imposed harsher repayment requirements. These changes were forced through Congress by the Speaker of the House soon after he received a half-million dollars in contributions from credit card companies.

After contemplating the personal tragedies represented on the screen, Malcolm reviewed the index of commercial petitions filed within the past twelve months. He quickly found a likely candidate. A petition filed in May of last year by Roberts Construction Company, Inc., Roy Roberts, President.

The schedule of unsecured debt included the expected materials suppliers and sub-contractors, but was unusual in that all of the delinquent charges were incurred in only 3 months.

Review of the personal filings index disclosed the simultaneous filing by Roy Roberts. The unsecured creditors schedule included charges from a number of medical services providers, all incurred in about 6 months. Apparently his insurance hit the coverage limit and his personal funds ran out. The unpaid medical bills totaled slightly over $300,000.

One of the last unsecured charges was for a funeral home. The bankruptcy petition had been filed singly rather than jointly. Apparently Roy's wife had died.

Malcolm studied the personal petition closely. The cause of death was found in the answer to question 5B, the listing of addresses for the prior 7 years. Roy and his wife had moved to Phoenix from Richland, Washington.

Richland. The epitome of a government that deliberately poisons its most patriotic citizens and then ignores their health care needs.

Richland was the Manhattan Project company town for the Hanford nuclear weapons facility, which in 1944 began producing plutonium-239 by bombarding uranium-238 with neutrons in nuclear reactors. Initial production was used in the Trinity test bomb at White Sands, New Mexico on July 16th, 1945 and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th.

A bomb requires a minimum of about 14 pounds of plutonium. Hanford produced slightly over 60 tons. In the process, the region was badly contaminated.

Ten months before plutonium production began, government officials knew emissions would present "a grave health problem" according to a classified memo, particularly a high risk of thyroid cancer. The risk was reduced by installing filters on the smokestacks. In 1951, production efficiency was deemed more important than health and the filters were removed, with resulting massive increases in emissions of radioactive iodine.

Worse, the area and its people were intentionally contaminated by a secret test of radiation monitoring equipment called "The Green Run" when scientists poured caustic chemicals onto a ton of uranium fresh from a nuclear reactor. As expected, the reaction spewed radiation through a smokestack. The radioactive plume measured 200 by 40 miles and dropped high concentrations of radioactive fallout on nearby cities.

Green Run emissions measured 220,000 times current allowable levels. By drinking contaminated milk and eating locally grown contaminated fruits and vegetables, some children received the radiation equivalent of 36,000 X-rays. The equivalent of one X-ray per minute, 24 hours per day, for almost a month.

No public health warnings were issued and there were no follow-up studies on the health of residents, although Kodak was notified, so they could protect their photographic film from exposure and their profits from decline.

Worse yet, for decades government officials lied to the public and perjured themselves in court. Reports were falsified or buried so citizens would accept the government's propaganda that there was no danger. Between 1990 and 1995, the Department of Energy spent $97 million defending against lawsuits filed over nuclear testing and production. In October 2000, Congress finally acknowledged that workers were harmed during production of nuclear weapons and enacted the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act to pay workers. Their families and neighbors aren't covered by the program.

In four years, the Department of Energy spent about $74 million to process nearly 23,000 claims. Process but not pay. Four years after enactment, the backlog for processing claims was seven years. The physicians panel had rendered findings on only 259 claims. A grand total of one single claimant had actually been paid.

As of this spring, the number of claims filed has increased by 2,000 and 31 claims have been paid. Congress appropriated $95 million for the program, of which about $700,000 has been used to pay an average benefit of $22,500 to cold war veterans who sacrificed their health for the grand cause of fighting communism.

The administration is blocking congressional attempts to improve the program. The White House budget office claims improvements would result in an unworkable program with increased delays and costs and an increased scope of coverage. This for a program which currently pays out less than one percent of its total funding to achieve the objectives for which the program was intended.

Chapter 4

2008-02-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

More than enough reason for Roy to fight government. But Malcolm needed confirmation Roy would be the right man for the team. Malcolm walked back to the parking garage and the Jag with the phone directory. The one sure source of information was located five miles northeast, at Camelback Road and North 32nd Street.

The offices of the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona are modern and the young receptionist is pretty, friendly and helpful. She immediately ushered Malcolm into a relatively plush office and introduced him to the Assistant to the Executive Director. The man in charge of liaison and coordination with members of Association committees.

"Yes, Roy Roberts is a member. At least he was. Technically he's no longer a member, because his dues are delinquent."

"A shame, really. Roy's a nice fellow. He served on the Maricopa County Building Codes Committee. A smart guy, and a pretty good builder, too. A good mix of spec homes and custom homes. Good designs and good quality."

"But something went wrong. Not with a house though. Not something built wrong that came back to haunt him."

Details were vague, but the hints were present, almost obvious to the astute listener.

Malcolm was an astute listener. The personal problem sounded suspiciously like an extremely ill wife.

Roy dropped out of sight for over six months but he's back doing construction now. Remodeling and room additions, trying to put his operation back together.

"We have a phone number. You might try that."

One of the good things about contractors is that they're always available to answer the phone. As a group, they are the original carriers and earliest beneficiaries of those modern marvels of high technology, cellular phones.

Roy was in the north end of Scottsdale building an Arizona room, with glass walls neutralized by industrial strength air conditioning. He answered on the second ring and was definitely interested in talking with Bill Stephenson, retired civil and structural engineer and current investor in distressed commercial real estate. Over coffee at Coco's on Cactus Road at 4:00. Roy's driving an older white Ford F-250 pick-up. A little over 6 feet tall and a little under 200 pounds, not one of them gone to fat. A 38 year-old Irishman with an Irishman's joviality, temper and long red hair, a perpetual good-natured grin and an unquenchable thirst for adventure and excitement.

Roy arrived exactly at 4:00 and enthusiastically shook the extended hand of an older gentleman in the entrance foyer. He was handed a business card hot off a Hewlett Packard laser color press, simple almost to the point of being stark; William F. Stephenson, Commercial Real Estate Investments, with a phone number and address on Baseline Road near Interstate 10.

Bill Stephenson turned out to be an interesting guy; pleasant, well mannered, quick-witted, clearly of far higher than average intelligence and obviously extremely knowledgeable about both real estate and construction. He moved to Phoenix from Indiana 3 years ago, is bored with retirement and is looking to become active again.

Bill's a civil and structural engineer, from Purdue, and later got both an MBA and a law degree from Indiana University. Those schools are both way back in the Far East, which in Arizona means east of the Mississippi River.

Bill worked predominately in the engineering field but also combined the two professions. He's done some really interesting work on commercial properties with a wide assortment of construction or environmental problems. He owned his own small consulting firm for over twenty years and during the last ten or so traveled the country, working on commercial properties for various clients, mostly based in Manhattan.

Bill's owned commercial properties himself and is interested in investing out here. Phoenix is much better than Indiana for investing in real estate.

Bill's interest is distressed properties that require some sort of remediation. Bill has a knack for designing practical and economical solutions for problems that other engineers can't seem to solve, or sometimes can't grasp or even define. Part of the funny way his brain works sometimes.

Take a pile of lemons and make a lemon pie. There's good money in it and there's good money for a contractor too. One who's smart and competent in messy jobs, big tin cans full of worms. Bill isn't interested in bidding the work; the jobs will be too messy, with too many unforeseeable conditions, meaning snags. Bill needs a good contractor whose operation is small enough that he can pay close attention to all the gory details, some not so little. An equity stake will be available too, so the contractor will have a long-term investment in the finished products.

The upshot of the dialogue was that Bill needs a bright contractor that can do unusual, complicated jobs. Someone Bill can work well and closely with.

Roy's definitely interested. This would be his chance to get back into real jobs with meat on their ribs. He's just doing small jobs right now, but hoping to grow his company again and get back to where he'd been.

Roy suffered some major personal and financial setbacks so he's doing little jobs now. Remodeling and room additions.

Malcolm saw the opening. Not large, but large enough. He took the plunge, off the board and into the pool. Now or never, do or die.

"So I've heard. That's why I looked you up."

"Yeah. I wondered, you coming out of the blue like this."

Malcolm became more intent. "Tell me some. Give me the story."

And Roy did. Everything was cloud nine until 5 years ago when his wife Susan came down with a bad cold. The doctor found a lump below her Adam's apple. Her thyroid was removed and found to be cancerous, but it had already spread. The beginning of a horrible downward spiral. Susan lasted almost 4 years before she died last year at the age of 38. She suffered 4 years of unbearable pain as the doctors kept cutting on her. Her lymph nodes, both breasts, her cervix, her spleen and one lung.

But the doctors couldn't remove three tumors in her brain, and she died. A sweet, innocent young woman who never even smoked or drank but unfortunately grew up near Richland, ate vegetables from the family garden and drank fresh milk from the neighbor's cow.

Susan's father was a World War II vet. In 1956, the Army offered vets the opportunity to homestead on farmland in southeastern Washington, near the Columbia River and Richland. And Hanford. The vets didn't know they had been induced to undergo secret radiation experiments or why the farms were available.

The farms were available because the Atomic Energy Commission bought them from the local hospital.

Mr. Smith, the prior owner of Susan's family farm, was a nuclear technician and part-time farmer, with a wife and two children. The son developed thyroid cancer and was sent to the local hospital. The credit department quickly learned Smith didn't have health insurance and demanded money up-front. The hospital also placed a lien on the farm for the cost of future care.

When the daughter developed thyroid trouble, Smith sold a cow and some wheat in the child's name to raise cash for her medical treatment. He thereby committed a "conversion of assets" in violation of the lien and the hospital foreclosed on the farm. Not long before both son and daughter died of thyroid cancer.

When Mr. Smith died 2 years later, his body was almost totally consumed by cancers of the lung, bronchial lymph nodes, diaphragm, spleen, pancreas, intestines, stomach, liver and adrenal glands.

The Veteran's Administration denied responsibility for the sickness and deaths in his family until 1988, when benefits were awarded to his widow. One year later that award was revoked without explanation. An attempt to deny and cover up all government responsibility for the horrors it caused.

Susan's father wasn't told the history of the farm he homesteaded. The farm was located 7 miles east of the Hanford plant, in what is called "Death Mile". All the homesteaders who moved there had nothing in common except being vets. They came from all different religious and ethnic backgrounds and had different genetics. The only thing they had in common was the homegrown vegetables they ate and the locally produced milk they drank.

And suffering from thyroid problems, cancer, birth defects and death. Of 28 families in Death Mile, 27 suffered severe health problems associated with radiation. Of 108 people in those families, 28 died of cancer.

Susan's father suffered from hypothyroidism before dying in 1992 of anaplastic carcinoma, the most lethal type of thyroid cancer. Susan's brother Jimmy had thyroid cancer and then leukemia before he died 4 years later. Her sister Linda died in 1998 from leukemia. Her mother is still alive but suffers from hyperparathyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Susan was infertile and suffered from chronic indigestion and repressed immune system.

Susan's family was but one of thousands who served as human guinea pigs for the government without knowledge or consent, often with fatal results. Testing began in 1931 when Dr. Cornelius Rhodes infected people with live cancer cells. He later established the US Army Biological Warfare facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. After he was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission, he injected soldiers and hospitalized civilians with radioactive isotopes. Later, soldiers were marched to ground zeros of nuclear blasts and pilots were ordered to fly through mushroom clouds, apparently to verify that horrifying scenes and reports of Japanese suffering were authentic.

Chapter 5

2008-02-19T12:26:00.000-07:00

This was merely one of many government-sponsored experiments conducted to assess adverse health affects resulting from poisoning of all sorts, all done without patient's knowledge or consent. In 1932 in Tuskegee, 200 syphilic black men were denied medical treatment so the progress of their disease could be monitored. Monitoring continued until the last man died.

In 1942, the Navy locked human test subjects in gas chambers and exposed them to mustard gas and a blister gas called lewsite in order to test gas masks, some of which proved to be woefully ineffective. In all, about 60,000 military personnel were used to test chemical weapons, most without knowledge, consent or follow-up medical monitoring or treatment. Those who did know were threatened with military imprisonment if they disclosed the tests, even to their family doctors. For decades afterward, the Pentagon denied that testing had occurred.

In 1945 under Program F, the Atomic Energy Commission intentionally exposed people to fluoride, an otherwise unusable residue from production of nuclear weapons and one of the most toxic chemicals known, to study its adverse effects on the central nervous system. In later years, fluoride began to be added to many municipal water systems, publicly as a "dental health measure" and privately as a way to cheaply dispose of mountains of toxic waste The same waste used in Nazi Germany camps to make prisoners more docile.

In 1950 the Navy demonstrated that cities are susceptible to biological attack by spraying a cloud of bacteria over San Francisco. City-wide monitoring determined that many residents developed pneumonia-like symptoms. This test was followed by release of mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. Army agents verified adverse effects while posing as public health officials. Between 1949 and 1969, a total of 239 populated areas were contaminated with various biological agents.

In the 1950s parents were encouraged to allow their retarded children to join the "Science Club" at Fernald School in Waltham, Massachusetts. Under a joint program operated by Quaker Oats and MIT, about 30 children were unknowingly fed radioactive breakfast cereal.

In 1970 the military intensified efforts to develop "ethnic biological weapons" designed to kill specific ethnic groups of people, meaning blacks. Target groups expanded in 1978 when the Centers for Disease Control advertised for promiscuous homosexual men for testing of an experimental Hepatitis B vaccine in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The first American cases of AIDS appeared 3 years later, in those three cities.

These experiments came to light in bits and pieces. By executive order in November 1969, President Nixon renounced all methods of biological warfare and halted all production and transportation of biological weapons. In February 1970, he ordered destruction of all American offensive biological weapons. In January 1975, America ratified the Geneva Protocol, which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons. In 1987, the military admitted that, in violation of international treaty obligations, biological warfare research was being conducted at 127 facilities around the country. According to a 1994 Senate report, hundreds of thousands of military personnel were intentionally exposed to mustard gas, nerve gas, psycho-chemicals and hallucinogens.

That was the year a doctor at the M D Anderson Cancer Center in Houston discovered that Desert Storm veterans were infected with an American-made microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons and previously tested on Texas prison inmates.

The deaths of Susan and her family were not ghastly aberrations. They were early examples of American government policies that condone the murder of its citizens under the guise of "national security", a term recently replaced by "terrorism".

After Susan's death, Roy sought relief from the pressures and grief. He found it for fleeting moments in wild and wooly sex with the realtor who sold his spec houses. She in turn introduced him to a new form of relief, even more fleeting. Cocaine.

Only on special occasions at first, at night. But before he realized what was happening it was coke during the day. Just late in the afternoons. Then earlier and earlier, but just one small line. At least at first. Then it was two, and then it was starting in the morning, just one small line for the pep, like a cup of super-strong coffee.

Then it was two or sometimes three morning lines, to get him going, and more lines through the day to keep him going. He knew by then of course, but it was hard to quit. For almost six months he couldn't stop, no matter how hard he tried. Alcohol had never been a problem; he could take it or leave it. He still can. He still drinks, and it's never been a problem. But the cocaine was different.

In a lucid fit of desperation he changed the locks and packed the realtor's clothes in trash bags. He left them on the front porch with a note on his way to a rehab clinic.

More discussion, of the problems caused by illegal drugs. The terrible effects they have on people. Not just the users, but other people too, family members and innocent bystanders.

Eventually Malcolm steered the conversation to a more personal level. "You and I have something in common. A similar horrible experience."

"My wife would never have come within 80 yards of the stuff. And yet the drugs killed her."

"We were down here in Phoenix in January a year ago, west of downtown. We were walking to an antique shop when shooting broke out. Two gangs fighting over territorial rights about who would control the sale of drugs in the neighborhood."

"She was in the way. So they shot her. She took three hits. One shattered her hip, one punctured a lung and one hit right in the middle of the gut."

"She lasted a little over six months and then she died. Mercifully, for the pain she suffered was beyond description."

Sympathy was expressed. And then quiet, serious discussion.

Malcolm's intensity became crystal clear. "Two things need to be done. First, something has to be done to stop the drugs. The drugs are evil and the people who sell them are evil. Animals, totally immoral, a terrible cancer upon our society."

"Something needs to be done about them. Not by the law. The law does nothing. We've had 30 years of a so-called War on Drugs, and illegal drugs are worse than ever. Because government covertly supports top-level dealers. Drugs weren't made illegal to remove them from the streets. Drugs were made illegal in order to keep prices sky-high, so covert dealers and sponsors in government can make a lot of money."

"Government won't stop the illegal drug problem because they are the cause of the problem, and the main beneficiary. So something needs to be done by private citizens. They must act privately and do the job of stopping the illegal drugs that government refuses to do anything about."

"Second, something must be done to help victims who suffer, like Susan and Marilyn. To provide something to ease their pain. A humane act that is absolutely forbidden by inhumane government policies."

More explanations and discussions. Bill has a plan. He's putting together a small team. Six people in all. Together they'll act. They'll make a difference and protect future victims of illegal drugs.

The plan isn't legal of course. Illegal in fact. Illegal as all hell. But sheltered. There'll be almost no risk at all. Bill will personally do the most dangerous parts. The others will be protected.

The opportunity to pay back the dealers and their suppliers and government protectors for what they've done. To make them pay for Marilyn and Susan and Roy and all the other users and their innocent families.

The opportunity for a small, dedicated group of American citizens to demonstrate to the government that they also know how to play hardball.

"There will be a meeting with the full team. Six of us."

"We'll talk about morality and legality and money and the plan. I have a good plan, very detailed. I have it all worked out, how it can be done."

They will do their duty, extract their revenge and walk away clean with a big pot of money. And in the process make Phoenix a safer and better place to live.

The program will take one year. During that year there will be construction work, mostly rehab of small apartment projects. And there will be a great deal of money. None of them will ever need to work again. Or there will be money to finance a good-sized construction company. Plus a great deal of adventure and excitement. Malcolm clearly saw that Roy needs financial support, but above all, Roy needs adventure and excitement.

The meeting will be on the 19th. Three weeks from Saturday.

Roy's reaction was even better than Malcolm had dared hope for.

"Huh."

"You're suggesting I do battle against the government. That would be the same government that killed my wife."

"After they refused to help with her pain. After they killed most of her family and then lied about it all. After I spent over $700,000 on her medical bills. Every last dollar I had. After our insurance paid the first million and before I stiffed my creditors for $300,000."

"Two million dollars to prolong five years of terrible suffering, all because of the government."

"I don't need to hear about the money and I don't need any fancy meetings either. Where do I sign?"

"After all my pain and grief and troubles, this is something I will like a lot. More than a lot. You say you have a score to settle, and clearly you do. And so do I. I'm the one who jumped at the coke bait of course, so it's my fault, but still. I'd love to even the score and give them back some of their own medicine."

"And help people who suffer so much. Day by day I watched Susan die and there was nothing I could do. Nobody should be required to suffer pain like she did. I'd do anything to see other people don't suffer like she suffered."

"I'll be there. Count me in. I don't even need details. Not legal, so fine, the more the better. I no longer give the slightest shit about legal, as long as we don't get caught. I care about giving the government some of the shit it gave me. And I care about getting back to where I was and having some fun in the process. Definitely count me in."

Chapter 6

2008-02-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

The first part of Malcolm's plan will involve a series of simple thefts.

In our modern society, computers do 99 percent of what now passes as thinking and decision-making in our society and store almost 100 percent of our information. Computers are everywhere and do everything. Malcolm's thefts will be a type of crime that's totally out of control. Thefts that overwhelmed, understaffed, under-trained, under-equipped and grossly under-coordinated law enforcement agencies are unable to effectively cope with. As a result law enforcement, when it responds at all, treats the thefts as private issues that aren't the concern of police or prosecutors or courts.

Identity theft, one of the most recent and rapidly growing ravages of modern American society.

Malcolm needs new identities. Legends as they were called by KGB and CIA agents in the old days of a divided Europe. Ironclad, airtight legends. Unbreakable legends that would never arouse even the slightest doubt or the most innocent question, even under official scrutiny.

A large number will be needed. One or two permanent new IDs for each of the six team members, plus others for short periods for limited, specific purposes. About fifteen new IDs in all.

Malcolm needs a bright person who's thoroughly versed in all facets of computers. An irreverent hacker with at least a healthy disrespect for law and authority. A disrespect that will, with limited guidance and encouragement, grow into a distinctly unhealthy disrespect.

Malcolm had considered the sect of master teen-age hackers. Eighteen-year olds who spent their tender years mastering the complex rules of Dungeons and Dragons. Youngsters who matured and progressed to pranks like hacking into NSA or NORAD computers simply for the pleasures of momentarily outsmarting "the system". Youngsters who cause aggravation for millions with bulk mailing of viruses and worms and Trojan horses.

Malcolm disregarded this group, for lack of discipline and dedication. Odds are they would view Malcolm's plan as nothing more than another computer game to be played. A momentary amusement for when the mood and moon are right, only to be abandoned for new avenues of momentary excitement. The lack of seriousness and dedication could lead to disastrous results. Including life sentences without parole.

The other logical hunting ground is the Asian community, with its cluster of brilliant young over-achievers. People whose computer-like brains have a natural affinity for computers.

Within the Asian community, the largest groups are the Japanese, the Koreans, the Mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese. All score well as to mental abilities, education and personal dedication. But only a very few cling to nationalistic beliefs and have the necessary "we versus they" attitude. Screening to identify those few individuals would be impossible.

The most likely sub-set is the Vietnamese, based on a natural law that the most recent immigrants strive the hardest to make a new life in their new country. Like American settlers of over 300 years ago. True Americans, in the finest sense of the word. People who traded wealth, property, occupation, family and friends for greater opportunity and personal freedom in an uncharted new world.

A very few members of the Vietnamese population have a unique characteristic of distinct advantage; a sharp division in their value systems. An appreciation of the opportunities of their host country coupled with hatred of the host country's government for its destruction of their homeland, now called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Malcolm needs to identify and recruit one conflicted Vietnamese computer whiz. That will be difficult. In comparison, recruiting other team members will be relatively easy because they'll have good reasons to enlist. Namely, government support of the cancerous influence of illegal drugs that's irreparably damaged lives and wounded souls and brought understanding that something unconventional and drastic must be done.

But the computer expert will be different. Finding a person with the requisite skills for illegal uses of computers, combined with personal experience with the pain of drugs would be almost impossible. So a different reason to do battle against the American government must be identified. The most likely reason is America's war in the home country of Vietnam.

The most likely candidate will be hidden deep within the Vietnamese community of Phoenix. Someone who avoids American life and lives alone or with his own people as much as possible. A Vietnamese loner with strong resentment or even hatred of the American government because of the war.

Phoenix doesn't have a distinct Asian community or Chinatown, like San Francisco or Seattle. In Phoenix, Asians are distributed and assimilated into the overall community. However, Asians are more prevalent between 7th Avenue and 7th Street from downtown north to Camelback Drive, a strip about one mile wide and five miles long.

Phoenix North as it's called is diverse, with a mix of whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, students, young people and gays. Phoenix North people are generally open-minded, more tolerant and less orthodox.

On Friday afternoon Malcolm toured Phoenix North, visiting small shops with discrete inquiries of gays and students. Are there any Vietnamese and where do they gather? Malcolm learned the only gathering places of note are a half-dozen North Phoenix Vietnamese restaurants.

On Saturday Malcolm took a one-day break, with a 120-mile drive southeast to Tucson. To the annual Gem and Mineral Show, where mine operators from around the world sell to wholesalers and shop owners. The show includes a huge number of dealers with table displays under giant tents throughout downtown.

Malcolm will need a large number of small clear plastic cases. The type used for modestly priced earrings and small samples of rocks and minerals.

Bill Stephenson has recently "discovered" a small vein of wulfenite. He hopes to develop his mine and sell specimens to rock shops over the Internet. That explanation, offered while proudly displaying the wulfenite sample recently "discovered" in Cindy's Gems and Minerals shop in Payson, was enviously accepted by a seller of packaging products. Malcolm optimistically bought 3 cartons of 500 cases.

Back in Phoenix on Monday, Malcolm made the rounds of Vietnamese restaurants with casual inquiries. Are there any computer whizzes in the area? On Tuesday at the Pho Hoa Golden Turtle restaurant Malcolm met a young Vietnamese waitress who's a student at Arizona State University. She mentioned her membership in an informal Vietnamese support club of ASU students in Tempe, on the east side of the Phoenix metro area. Perhaps one of the computer science students could help.

An offer of reward was coupled with a request for assistance. Malcolm laid money on the table for his tea with a $20 tip. Would she be kind enough to ask around? It's really important.

Malcolm returned for more tea two days later, on Thursday March 3. During the slack mid-afternoon, after classes and before early diners. The waitress was friendly and anxious to help in return for the twenty-dollar bill of two days ago.

"Yes, there is such a man, a grad student. He's extremely knowledgeable but a little difficult to deal with. Sort of has a chip on his shoulder."

"His name is Ai. When he's not at school he runs a tiny computer repair shop. Sort of a hole in the wall in an old building north of here."

Malcolm found the tiny space, carved off the back of the end store in an old and small shopping center on Indian School Road at 12th Street.

Malcolm walked in and looked around at stacks and piles of computers, printers, monitors and all sorts of accessories, most in various stages of disassembly. The longhaired owner was busy at a workbench and appeared to be 25 to 35 years old.

"Hi. I'm Bill Stephenson and I'm looking for someone to help me with some computer problems."

This opening gambit was met with an unenthusiastic, almost sullen grunt and a hard stare from hard, black eyes that seemed to say "So who gives a fuck?"

Bill Stephenson tried to engage the man in at least semi-friendly dialogue. Bill offered that he's a civil and structural engineer and has been using computers for over 20 years for engineering and drafting. In fact, he purchased the second copy of the AutoCAD drafting program sold in Indianapolis. Version 1.02, back in 1984.

But Bill never became really comfortable with computers. He's too old and from the old school. Bill graduated from Purdue University in 1968. One of the top schools in the country for Civil Engineering.

He'd passed the Professional Engineer's exam in 1972. Everyone used slide rules. There were no computers or calculators in those days. In the afternoon session he designed a three span bridge superstructure in three hours with a slide rule.

After graduating he worked in a consultant's office designing bridges. They used slide rules there too, and a big book with trig functions to six decimal places. There were no buttons like "Cosine" to push in those days. They used the book and extrapolated.

Now he owned at least ten times the computer power NASA used when they placed Neil Armstrong on the moon. Amazing really, how computers have become so powerful and sophisticated and complicated.

Even more amazing is that people like the proprietor can understand them, work on them, fix them and make them do all sorts of fancy tricks. Bill can't do that. He only knows how to run programs, not modify them or write his own programs, even simple ones. Bill has the greatest respect for people like the proprietor. People who are smart enough to do these things.

Malcolm laid it on as thick as he could for about 10 minutes before Ai began to warm. Bill seemed like a nice guy after all. For an American.

"My name is Ai. Ai Quoe Hoang."

"People here in America call me Al."

A hand came up and out, to be shaken. Malcolm was at last beginning to make progress.

Conversation soon to progressed to the prime issue. Bill needs the assistance of a younger man who's grown up with computers and is really smart and comfortable with them. Someone who knows how to make them do all sorts of fancy tricks.

Chapter 7

2008-02-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

Finally, the faintest hint of a smile.

"I can make computers do fancy tricks, as you say. What type of fancy tricks you need?"

Bill offered a slight clue, an oblique opening serve.

"My wife died, about six months ago. Now I have some special computer needs."

Al responded with a reserved show of concern.

"It was a tragic thing. She was killed."

"We were walking down the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon. A shoot-out between two competing drug gangs. She was shot. She died horribly after six months of constant pain and agony. She was an innocent bystander. A victim of war over which gang can sell drugs where."

"Something needs to be done to stop the violence. The drugs are ruining America. And the government does nothing. The government never does anything right anymore."

Al's response to this explanation was very straightforward. "I understand. You are absolutely right."

"Your government doesn't do anything right, and never has."

"We do not have a drug problem in my country. There are no drugs. My people have no need or desire for drugs. Drugs disappeared from my country when your soldiers left and we got rid of the crooked American puppet politicians."

Malcolm caught the implication immediately. That had not been a reference to the old country; it had been a reference to Al's country. There was no question where the national allegiance of this young man lay. Far across the Pacific, in Vietnam.

"Tell me what you're looking for."

An almost perfect lead-in. Onward, to the real issue.

"My needs are special. Not something the government would like, and not something that's legal. But my wife is dead, and the government won't do anything about it. So I need to do something about it myself."

"So I have some sophisticated needs."

Al warmed up appreciably. "I like sophisticated. In computers, I am sophisticated. Much more sophisticated than simple add-ons and up-grades and repairs and virus removal. This place is only a way to make a living until I finish school and go home."

"I do some fun things on the side. Things not fully legit, as you would say. And I like my computer science classes. I learn for when I go home. But too much this is boring. A waste of my brains and talents."

"And you said not quite legal. That means against your government. I like anything that's against your government. I do not like your government."

"I like some Americans, but only a few. Most of them are ignorant and lazy. But a few people are ambitious and industrious and have initiative. I like that. That is like us. And I like the opportunities. But I do not like your government. They practically destroyed my country."

At last, signs of what Malcolm knew must be developed as a common bond between he and Al. Malcolm looked into the coal-black eyes and agreed.

"Yes. They did. The American government almost destroyed your country."

The conversation had made its fateful turn and now would go where it needed to go of its own volition. To Vietnam and the war, as seen through the eyes of a Vietnamese citizen. A refreshing and novel viewpoint, completely contrary to the official propaganda still expounded by the American government.

At that point Malcolm knew. After all the talk is done, Al could be recruited because of his bitterness to the American government because of the savagery and unfairness of the war. Malcolm will hear him out and agree, because Al's version of the war will be a lot closer to the truth than official Washington lies. In the end Malcolm and Al will develop common bonds. A mutual understanding of the futility of that war and its horrible effects. A war that was fought and lost because of far too little governmental concern for honesty, legalities, compassion and morality.

Malcolm pressed on. "It was a terrible time. As you say, the war practically destroyed your country. And did terrible damage to this country. For many Americans, the war destroyed their trust in their government. Some people have never regained that trust. Some people, and that includes me."

"The war in Vietnam was wrong, unnecessary and immoral. And it was all based on politician's lies."

"Not our soldiers. They did what they were ordered to do, and did it very well. But politicians and military brass lied and forced us into war and forced our young soldiers to fight the war immorally. A few Americans understand that now but we didn't back then."

This only riled Al further. "You Americans, you understand nothing. You call us communists and then you try to kill us. All of us, not just the soldiers. You bombed our women and children too, just like you did in Iraq. All because you call Ho Chi Minh a communist."

"All of your American books and speeches and television programs, they all start out with 'Communist North Vietnam' or 'Communist leader Ho Chi Minh' and then everything following makes sense. But the opening line is a lie. Ho Chi Minh was a socialist but he wasn't a communist, in the sense that he was allied with either Communist Russia or Communist China."

"A lie. Your whole war was fought for a lie."

"Ho was never a little puppet in some great communist conspiracy to take over the world like your government claimed. He was a nationalist. All he ever wanted was for Vietnam to be free. France invaded and conquered our country and made Vietnam a colony. That means France owned Vietnam and everything in it and our people were slaves. Ho wanted independence and freedom so our people could live with dignity."

"Yes he lived in Russia for a while, but that didn't make him a communist. He lived in New York City and Boston first, but that didn't make him a capitalist. He left America because he was appalled at the way you Americans oppress your own minorities and poor people."

"He eventually turned to Russia because he had no place else to turn. After World War I, the new Communist Party was the only political movement in the world that supported workers and common people."

"He turned to Russia but he turned to America first. In 1918 after World War I ended, Ho Chi Minh wanted freedom and independence from France with a democratic government, just like America. He asked for American help but your President and Secretary of State wouldn't give him the time of day. So he went to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 and asked for help in achieving basic civil liberties and improvements in living conditions.

His pleas were ignored. He formed the Indochinese Communist Party 11 years later in 1930, because he finally saw that Marxism offered the only hope for his country, where people worked dawn to dusk seven days a week and still couldn't afford to buy enough food to stay alive."

"You Americans don't understand the difference between Russian communism and third-world socialism. Socialism isn't always a bad thing. You Americans are so anti-socialist, you should close your libraries and fire departments. Everybody pays taxes so a few people can borrow books for free. And so your government can have a fire truck so when your house catch on fire the government will squirt it out for free. You fight against socialism, where everybody pays what they can to give everybody what they need. And you support anti-socialism, where everybody pays regardless of ability to give a few of the richest people what they don't need, but want because they're selfish and greedy."

"Your first Thanksgiving Day when everybody pitched in and shared was socialism. Socialism is nothing more than agreements to share. Your rich Americans need to learn to share instead of being greedy and selfish and caring about nothing except money and possessions. You've learned to be rich. Now you need to learn to be humane. Be known for something other than a country where a baseball player makes $170,000 per game that middle-class people can't afford to go see while 20 percent of your children live in poverty."

"You Americans with your 10,000 nuclear bombs run around the world viewing anyone and everyone as a threat to your security and encourage Americans to fear, distrust and hate everyone who is somehow different than you. You Americans don't understand that true security can only be found by sticking together and working together as allies against your true enemies. Like the people who control your government."

"Most of all your government needs to share with all the people instead of taking from the poorest ones and giving to the richest ones."

"Socialism is necessary for bringing a poor, backward nation into modern times while keeping the people from starving to death like they did under the French. Yes. Ho Chi Minh was a socialist. He shared and he helped the people. The little people. The poor people. All the people. But Ho admired America. He wanted to grow his country into a democracy. Just like America. For over 30 years he tried to be America's friend."

Al clearly understood the history of his country and its leaders. When the Japanese invaded in September 1940, the French and the Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai gave Vietnam to the Japanese without a fight. Just like France gave Paris to the Germans without a fight.

But Nguyen Ai Quoc, popularly known as Ho Chi Minh, resisted. In 1941 he formed the Viet Minh, the League for the Independence of Vietnam, to resist the French and the Japanese. At the time, the Japanese were appropriating 90 percent of the Vietnamese rice crop and shipping it back to Japan, for food and to use as fuel in factories making ammunition. As a result, 2 million Vietnamese starved to death.

Ho's Viet Minh guerillas broke into Japanese warehouses and stole the rice back and gave it back to the people. His raids saved tens of thousands of people from starvation. No wonder he was admired throughout the country as a true patriot who wanted to help the people rather than rule them.

Throughout the war, the Viet Minh provided the only effective Vietnamese resistance against the Japanese. The Office of Strategic Services, the World War II forerunner of the CIA, operated in Asia from headquarters in Kunming. Chinese Air Forces Commander Claire Chennault met with Ho, who wanted to help America in the war against Japan however he could.

Soon after, Ho was contacted by an OSS intelligence group code named GBT, for Laurence Gordon, Harry Bernard, and Frank Tan. The OSS appointed Ho Chi Minh Agent Number 19 with the code name Lucius, taken from Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's first tragedy. That play ends with Lucius restoring justice as Rome's new emperor.

Chapter 8

2008-02-19T12:23:00.001-07:00

Through Ho's group, covert OSS operations in Vietnam began in the spring of 1943. The Viet Minh rescued pilots, performed sabotage operations and collected intelligence about Japanese operations. Later, Ho provided 1,000 troops to fight the Japanese. OSS provided small arms, explosives, medicine and radio equipment and trained 200 elite troops of Ho’s army commander. Vo Nguyen Giap, the man who became North Vietnam's top military officer during its war against the United States.

In Operation Deer Team on July 16, 1945, seven OSS men led by Major Allison Kent Thomas parachuted into Ho Chi Minh's jungle headquarters at Tan Trao north of Hanoi. They found copies of the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution on the walls and a framed picture of George Washington on the desk. Paul Hoagland saved Ho's life by administering quinine and sulfa drugs to treat malaria and dysentery.

In August 1945, one day after Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced surrender, Ho sent a message to President Truman. He asked the United States to make Vietnam an American protectorate, like the Philippines.

The next day, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh took control of Hanoi from the Japanese. Ho marched into Hanoi with Operation Deer Team personnel where Ho broadcast a message to OSS headquarters, speaking English:

"National Liberation Committee on VML begs U.S. authorities to inform United Nations the following."

"We were fighting Japs on the side of the Allies. Now Japs surrendered. We beg the Allies to realize their solemn promise that all nationalities will be given democracy and independence."

"If the Allies forget their solemn promise and don't give Indochina full independence, we will keep fighting until we get it."

On August 30th, Emperor Bao Dai publicly declared he would rather be a common citizen in a free and independent nation than king over an enslaved colony. He handed the gold seal and sword symbolizing royal power to a representative of the Viet Minh and abdicated his throne.

On September 2, 1945, the day Japan formally surrendered on the battleship Missouri, Ho gave a speech in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi to hundreds of thousands of cheering citizens, Ho declared creation of the free and independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam and read a Declaration of Independence. Which was modeled after but not identical to America's.

The American Declaration began with the words:

All men are created equal...

When the American Declaration was signed in 1776, "men" meant white men who owned property. Property included women and both black and white slaves. Blacks were given the right to vote 94 years later by the 15th Amendment, after a civil war. That was 50 years before women became full citizens with voting rights, granted in 1920 by the 19th Amendment.

Ho Chi Minh's Declaration began with the words:

"Tat ca moi nguoi deu sinh ra co guyen binh dang."

Translated:

"All people are created equal."

Ho's Declaration of Independence was riddled with words and phrases of inclusion, such as dear fellow countrypeople, common people, citizens and dan toc, the standard classifier of the 54 ethnic groups in the country. The Vietnamese word for "men" did not appear once in the Declaration.

Ho had lived in Boston and New York City, spoke the English language well and had requested and received copies of both the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution from his OSS friends. He clearly understood the true meaning of his words and their meaning was entirely deliberate.

In a country of Confucian influence, where women belonged first to their fathers, then to their husbands and upon their husband's death to their oldest sons, Ho Chi Minh declared to his people and the world a second type of independence. Ho Chi Minh declared independence for Vietnamese women.

Ho concluded his speech with:

"Vietnam has the right to enjoy freedom and independence, and in fact has become a free and independent country."

Following Ho's speech, a band marched through Hanoi playing the Star Spangled Banner while OSS officer Colonel Archimedes Patti and Commander Vo Nguyen Giap stood side-by-side, arms held in salute. The crowd of 400,000 cheered the American flag displayed by a low-flying American military plane.

Throughout and after the war, Ho repeatedly made clear that his primary aim was to achieve independence and self-determination for the Vietnamese people, not promote communism. OSS people on the scene understood Ho was a nationalist who wanted to create a free and democratic country, just like America. Without exception, they viewed Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist first and a communist second.

Ho was supported by William Donovan, the head of OSS, and by every OSS employee with personal knowledge of the man, his ambitions and his dreams. For several months after the war, OSS people helped rebuild infrastructure and Donovan worked to attract American investment capital and help Ho establish a democratic government.

Ho Chi Minh was recognized as a strong, honest and effective leader who genuinely cared about the well-being of his people and the future of his emerging country. He literally begged for the opportunity to be America's ally and protectorate. At the end of World War II, America had Vietnam sitting in the palm of its hand, begging to be an ally, for democracy with free elections and against the threat of Communist Chinese regional expansion.

The golden opportunity to support a national leader who would courageously stand tall against regional communist Chinese aggression was contemptuously thrown away. OSS recommendations were ignored. Donovan's efforts were shut down for political reasons. Ho's affinities for America, American democratic ideals and his American friends were never revealed to the public.

Within six months after war's end, Ho wrote nine letters to President Truman and his Secretary of State, asking for American support and assistance in winning independence from France. The letters were ignored, classified "Top Secret" and hidden away in government filing cabinets. No one knew until Daniel Ellsberg published the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The official response to Ellsberg's publication was typical Nixon:

"Let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail".

His administration obtained an injunction against further publication and had Ellsberg arrested for theft, conspiracy and espionage.

After World War II America could and should have supported Vietnam in its long quest for independence and democracy. Instead, America turned its back and Vietnam reverted to being a French colony. America said World War II was fought for liberty and freedom from oppression but Vietnam only got continued enslavement.

The Vietnamese people suffered horribly during World War II. Almost ten percent of the population died. But for them, the war changed nothing. The Vietnamese got no help at all from America. Or from Russia or China or the United Nations, which was created in October 1945 pursuant to a charter proposed that June at a meeting in San Francisco.

The Vietnamese reaction to being ignored after World War II was both laudable and predictable by anyone who had studied the Vietnamese people. In the finest tradition of 1776 and their four thousand-year history, they revolted against the French, with Ho Chi Minh as their leader.

France was unable to fund the war to keep its three colonies in Southeast Asia. American help was required. The opportunity to con America into assisting France arose through three events. First, in mid-1949, Chairman Mao's armies drove the Nationalists out of Mainland China to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan. Second, early in 1950 Senator Joseph McCarty stridently began making outlandish claims of embedded communist moles subverting and controlling Washington's foreign policies. Third, in June 1950, North Korea attacked the south. Later that year, Chinese troops entered the Korean War when General McArthur disobeyed direct orders from President Truman and marched north to within a few miles of the Chinese border. In response to these three events, the Truman administration frantically sought opportunities to rebut partisan charges they were soft on communism.

France deceptively provided an opportunity. They changed the name "Viet Minh", which means League for the Independence of Vietnam or Vietnamese Allied, to the name "Viet Cong", which means Vietnamese Communists. By deceptive slight of hand, a nationalist rebellion was converted to a communist revolution. Ho Chi Minh was transformed from an inspired nationalist seeking independence from colonial slavery to a dreaded communist seeking to aid Russia and China in attaining world domination.

This transformation was sold to Washington, an eager purchaser, without supporting evidence. A late 1948 State Department study found no indication Ho took marching orders from either China or Russia. In fact, neither China nor Russia were interested in supporting Ho because of his fervent nationalism and refusal to accept their marching orders. Bluntly, the American government was sold a bill of goods by the French.

The CIA warned that Vietnam's problems were political and that military solutions would not be successful. Truman disregarded that advice. In 1950 he sent 123 non-combat troops to the South and began providing armaments.

America began providing financial support for the French war to maintain Vietnam as a colony under the guise of containing the worldwide communist threat. This was publicly justified with the 1950 invention of the Domino Theory, which held that loss of Vietnam to communists would result in loss of other countries. By 1954 the Domino Theory had expanded to predict that loss of Vietnam would result in loss of India and Japan to communism and would threaten the security of Europe.

The Domino Theory was blindly accepted for 17 years before being questioned, analyzed and then ridiculed in 1967. For nine years, even Russia refused to take the Domino theory seriously. Russia finally began providing armaments to the North in 1959.

The American objective of military victory over communist expansion in Southeast Asia was cast in concrete in 1950. From then on, Washington was only concerned with how prevention of communist expansion could be achieved. But the sole justification for the war was the unquestioned claim that Ho Chi Minh was a part of the international communist cabal.

The claim was a lie. The deaths of 60,663 of America's finest and a quarter-century of involvement in the internal affairs of the Vietnamese people were the result of a lie. In the process, 1.6 million native soldiers and over 2 million civilians died.

Chapter 9

2008-02-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

American leaders lost the war without ever losing a battle because they never studied the history of Vietnam and never understood that the people of Vietnam have always been fiercely independent. The Vietnamese fought anybody and everybody who ever tried to conquer their country.

China gained control of Vietnam in 111 BC. Revolts began in 40 AD, led by Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, courageous sisters who freed the country for 3 years. After again being conquered, the Vietnamese fought to evict the Chinese for 900 years before winning independence in 939 AD after the battle of Bach Dang. The original Vietnamese Declaration of Independence was written by General Ly Thuong Kiet after the Cau River battle in 1077, where 100,000 Chinese troops were decisively defeated.

In 1258 and 1285 Vietnam repelled attacks by the Mongol armies of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. In 1288 the Vietnamese defeated a half-million strong Mongol army in another battle at the Bach Dang River to ensure their independence. The Mongols conquered Europe and China but they never were able to conquer Vietnam.

In 1406, China attacked with 800,000 troops. The Vietnamese drove them out in 1428.

The French landed their army at Dang Nang in 1858 after pounding the city from warships. The Vietnamese fought for 29 years before French Indochina was formed in 1887.

With a history of over two thousand years of fighting for independence, no rational, informed, intelligent person could ever conclude the Vietnamese people would willingly submit to becoming a communist puppet. Especially a puppet of the Chinese, which attacked Vietnam in February of 1979, less than four years after northern forces took control of Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh was a socialist and a nationalist but he was never a puppet of either Communist Russia or Communist China. Under Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam would have been the best ally America could possibly have had in resisting communist Chinese expansion in Southeast Asia.

As Richard Nixon wrote in 1986:

"No event in American history is more misunderstood than Vietnam... Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic."

Tragically, those "so many people" included Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all claimed America was safeguarding freedom and democracy in South Vietnam. All three used almost identical language, which was almost identical to that used to describe America's role in Iraq.

After almost 2 hours, Al was breathing smoke and spitting fire. There would be no stopping him now. Malcolm's history lesson had progressed to the year 1950. Only 25 years to go. The worst ones.

The Vietnamese fought the French hard and well for 8 years to achieve victory, without support from Russia, while America annually poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the South. In 1954 America spent over a billion dollars supporting the French, paying 80 percent of the war's cost. France fought the war but only because America paid the bills.

Throughout the French war, the South was headed by the French puppet Emperor Bao Dai, a degenerate playboy who could barely read and write. Bao Dai's government was typified by his sale of a gambling, prostitution and opium concession to his personal friend, the head of Vietnam's largest organized crime society. That society was headquartered in the central station of the Saigon police department, which he owned. The friend was later appointed a general in the Vietnamese National Army. This was the Bao Dai America supported and France fought to maintain in power.

During eight years of war against the French, Vietnam suffered 200,000 dead soldiers and over a half-million dead civilians, but fought on. In 1954 France was determined to wage a final decisive battle and strike a fatal blow. France would massacre the Vietnamese army and subdue the country once and for all.

At Dien Bien Phu, an isolated fortress that could only be supplied by air. During the 54-day battle, 62 French planes were shot down, by Vietnamese who supposedly weren't smart enough to shoot artillery they supposedly didn't possess from supposedly unreachable positions in surrounding mountaintops.

Miraculously, 70 French troops managed to escape. France fielded over 17,000 soldiers. France suffered 3,000 dead, 4,000 wounded and over 10,000 captured. One day after the French military surrendered at Dien Bien Phu, the French government admitted defeat and went to the Peace Conference in Geneva. The Vietnamese people had won their war. They were entitled to their freedom and democracy.

President Eisenhower was a retired army general who had served as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II. He knew better than to send American troops to back up the French. But his people began plotting to sabotage the Geneva peace treaty before it was even signed. America refused to take part in negotiations, refused to sign the peace treaty and refused to honor the treaty signed by Vietnam and France.

The Geneva Peace Accords temporarily partitioned Vietnam into North and South and required unification, based on free elections to be held in 1956, to pick the reunited nation's leader. Vietnamese in all parts of the country overwhelmingly supported Ho Chi Minh, the man who led the fight to throw out the French. Eisenhower admitted Ho would have won 80 percent of the vote, including a majority in the South. So America stopped the elections.

Instead of implementing Geneva treaty obligations, America continued supporting Emperor Bao Dai, even as he retired to his plush residence on the French Riviera. When he again abdicated, America chose his replacement. Ngo Dinh Diem, who had deserted his country years earlier and was manipulated and controlled by his opium-addicted brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. Diem returned to his country and oppressed his people with a vengeance. By the end of 1955, 400,000 resistors were imprisoned and 68,000 had been killed.

America refused to discuss free elections to unify the country. Instead, the CIA helped rig Diem's 1956 election in the south, in which he fraudulently received an astounding 98.4 percent of the vote.

Only two words are required to define Diem's ineffective and incompetent government. Corruption and oppression. Corruption infected the entire society and poisoned the entire governmental structure. Diem's primary interest was graft. America supported the most corrupt and oppressive government in the world.

Army commanders purchased promotions and led troops who acted as an occupying army, stealing food and rice and molesting the women. In contrast, the northern guerillas operating in the south were friends and allies of the people. They behaved impeccably, paid for their food and helped in the rice fields. The government of the South supported Diem and his family and friends. The government of the North and the guerilla movement in the south supported the people. Al made that point clear.

After years of corrupt and oppressive rule, Diem's political opponents concluded that violence was required. Some left their homes and formed armed groups in the forests and began a low-key guerilla war.

Diem responded with increased repression. Vietnam became a police state with arbitrary arrests, convictions and imprisonment without a showing of evidence, trial or right of appeal. Diem's brother Nhu instituted a system of military courts authorized to sentence to death within three days after charges were filed. Charges were not required to be supported by any form of evidence. An early, Vietnamese version of America's PATRIOT Act.

In 1956 Diem abolished the elected village councils and replaced them with appointed provincial governors. Almost without exception the appointed governors were corrupt to the core. They purchased their government offices, which were lucrative because of the many opportunities to steal and cheat the people. The provincial governors were deeply resented and hundreds were murdered, initially by local citizens and later by Viet Minh. Americans never understood those assassinations were not random acts of terror. The assassinations were almost without exception encouraged and supported by the local peasants.

Land ownership was the most important issue to the peasants in the villages. Diem took their land away and gave it to his greedy cronies, who charged rent. Families who'd owned their land for three hundred years had their land taken away by their government and were reduced to tenant farmers.

Diem acted like an Emperor. Government was administered by his brother Nhu, who modeled himself after his personal hero Adolph Hitler and adopted Hitler's repressive style of government. Nhu controlled 13 police forces, all used to oppress the people.

By the late 1950s the South was in a state of war against the Diem government. But 90 percent of the fighters were citizens of the South, who ignored Hanoi's warnings not to revolt. They saw the North Vietnam government as their only hope for a better life in a united country. In 1959 they formed the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and made war against Diem. America's puppet Diem. Al made that point clear too.

The NLF waged small-scale war. In 1960, the NLF had only about 5,000 armed guerillas in the South but were instantly accepted and supported. Their number increased to 15,000 in 1961. By 1962, the NLF controlled a majority of the countryside in the South. The South descended into chaos.

South Vietnam was about 70 percent Buddhist but was controlled by the 6 percent of Catholics. In 1963 Buddhist monks were asking the government to show charity and compassion to all religions. When Diem, a Catholic, banned the display of Buddhist prayer flags during their religious ceremonies, they peacefully marched in protest. Diem attacked the monasteries and his troops opened fire on the pacifist monks and nuns. A number of monks were killed and many temples were burned to the ground.

In June 1963, American television showed Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc protesting the government by setting himself on fire and burning to death at a major street intersection in downtown Saigon. Over the next few years, more than 30 other monks emulated. Madame Nhu called them Buddhist Barbecues and offered free gasoline while the government arrested and killed thousands of monks.

Protests mounted, especially in the universities. Diem closed them. Protests began in the high schools, so Diem closed them too. By early fall of 1963, Saigon was in chaos and virtually all citizens opposed Diem's government.

Al's explanations had progressed to late 1963. He was almost apoplectic and his fists surely must have hurt from almost constant banging on his countertop.

"Enough. I get too upset. You go now. I have studies."

"I like you though. You not like the others. You listen. And you seem to understand."

"You come back same time next week. We talk more. I make you understand."

"When you come back you tell me what you need. Maybe I help you if it's against your government."

"I like against your government."

After four hours, Malcolm knew Al clearly had the requisite qualifications. An intense dislike of American government bordering upon hatred, coupled with a lack of concern with legality. Malcolm would be back, same time next week.

Chapter 10

2008-02-19T12:20:00.000-07:00

By Saturday March 5th a contractor had been recruited and a hacker candidate had been identified. The next unique person to be recruited will be a chameleon. A person who can drastically change appearance almost instantaneously and will help other team members with sophisticated disguise techniques.

The days of simplistic masquerades are long gone. Disguises of old, like the mustache, wig and Barry Goldwater eyeglasses used by CIA agent E. Howard Hunt of Bay of Pigs and Watergate fame won't be enough. Not in these days of heightened suspicion and thousands of security cameras that spy upon everyday lives of everyday Americans while doing nothing to detect terrorists. Sophisticated disguises will be essential.

Malcolm needs a master with the best possible disguises. And the best possible disguises are those where gender is changed rather than just hair and facial appearance. Even casual observers might see through beards and changed hair colors and styles to note similarities in size and build and facial appearance. But even the most alert security officers will not be looking for and therefore will not see instantaneous changes in gender.

Malcolm needs a transsexual. A female who, by some freak mistake of nature, was born into the body of a male.

Malcolm had some basic understanding because of the gender confusion difficulties of Marilyn's brother. He used Marriott's Internet service to do research and learned more about gender dysfunction and transsexuals and transvestites and their unique needs and desires.

In about 1970, alternative newspapers began to be published. First in the largest cities and then in smaller ones as the concept caught on, advertising proved effective and printing costs decreased. These free weekly newspapers are designed primarily for the 16 to 30 year-old crowd and list bars and the entertainment they offer. As the alternative newspaper concept caught on, variants appeared, some aimed specifically at the gay community.

Mid-morning on Saturday March 5, Malcolm used the Jag's phone directory to find a likely source of the local paper, near Sky Harbor Airport. Malcolm picked up a free copy of The Echo from a stand just inside the door of at an adult materials store on 40th Street.

The paper contained listings and summary descriptions of major Phoenix gay bars. Leather bars, bear bars, social bars, sports bars, gay neighborhood bars, lesbian bars, dance bars, all types. Most are near the north end of the Phoenix gay area, near Camelback Road between 7th Avenue to the west and 7th Street to the east.

Dressed casually, Malcolm arrived at Cecil's on Camelback west of 5th Avenue at 1:30. A nice little bar, with wood paneling accented by polished brass fixtures in the style of pseudo-English pubs found throughout urban America. Men of all ages were seated or standing at the bar or tables, talking or watching college basketball. No different from any other bar except the clientele is entirely male.

Malcolm took a stool away from the television sets and ordered a Cutty with water from a pleasant young bartender. He guessed the price and fanned a five and three ones on the counter. The bartender saw the $5 tip and lingered momentarily, making an effort to appear sociable and imply his appreciation.

Malcolm seized the brief opportunity he had just subtly purchased. "Perhaps you could be so kind."

"I'm from out of town. Indiana. I just got off the plane. My first time in Phoenix."

"Not to be blunt, but would you tell me where the queens hang out on Saturday afternoons?"

The term queen, not exactly a term of endearment, collectively refers to effeminate men, transsexuals and transvestites, commonly called cross-dressers. Of the latter two classes, cross-dressers are far more common and frequently socialize with transsexuals.

"You want to cruise? The best place is the 333 Tavern on Roosevelt just west of 3rd Avenue. Go east two blocks to the light at 3rd and turn right. Go about four miles to Roosevelt at the north end of downtown. Turn right and it'll be on the left. You can't miss it."

Malcolm thanked him profusely, made a show of memorizing the directions, finished his drink and slid off his stool, to the wishes of good luck and good hunting.

Apparently the 333 Tavern will be Malcolm's best hope for recruiting locally. If the 333 doesn't pan out, he'll be forced to look in greener pastures. And pastures that are greener are distant, Las Vegas or San Francisco.

Castro Street in San Francisco would be fruitful but is 760 miles away. More important, a much higher percentage of the transsexuals will likely be suffering from AIDS, because of the availability of superior medical care. Las Vegas is 290 miles away and chances of finding a serious-minded transsexual who isn't a prostitute would be difficult because most Vegas transsexuals are there to earn big cash from high rollers and conventioneers.

Malcolm isn't exactly jumping with enthusiasm at the idea of a transsexual hooker on the team. Life will be complicated enough without that to deal with. And he can't allow risk of a small-time prostitution bust leading to an unraveling of the plan. All six might end up serving life sentences because of a quick hundred-dollar trick.

Phoenix offers a much lower chance of finding a suitable transsexual, but among the small population from which to choose, offers a better opportunity for finding someone both serious and physically fit.

Malcolm found the 333 Tavern, circled the block, parked the Jag on 3rd Avenue one block south, activated the alarm system, hoped for the best and set out on foot. The neighborhood and the vehicle were not exactly compatible.

The 333 Tavern gave all the appearances of being a first-rate dump. A one-story brick building wedged between and apparently propped upright by two higher but similar brick buildings, built sometime in the 1920s. About 80 years old and the 333 hasn't aged easily or gracefully. Too many of those 80 years have been hard ones. By appearances, a minor hiccup on the San Andreas fault east of Los Angeles could bring the whole place down.

The interior verified Malcolm's suspicions. Black walls and ceiling and a badly worn and creaky wood floor that's also black, although unpainted. The distinctive aroma of stale beer blended with fresh urine was distinct. Lighting was almost non-existent. But once his eyes adjusted, Malcolm saw the little tavern wasn't such a bad place. A mix of about 20 regulars of all ages and a few early cruisers looking for Saturday afternoon action were quietly partaking.

All patrons were obviously males. Malcolm hid his disappointment, sat at the bar at the quieter front end, made another $8 fan and ordered another Cutty with water.

Malcolm wasn't at all accustomed to drinking before sundown and certainly wasn't accustomed to paying $8 per drink, but he had a schedule to keep and wasn't in the mood to spend the afternoon or perhaps days blindly fishing.

This bartender was a pudgy 20s-something flamer. Malcolm sipped slowly, waiting. As he expected, the tip bought a sociable but temporary friendship. The bartender swished back to Malcolm's stool after serving two men in the back. Malcolm explained his desire, a transsexual. Not a cross-dresser, but a transsexual. Someone friendly and willing to chat.

"The girls show up at night about 10:30 or so. Come back then and you can have your pick of the litter."

But that wasn't the litter from which Malcolm desired to pick. Those would be the working girls. For some transsexuals in transition, hooking is the best or sometimes the only available means of survival. But Malcolm wasn't looking for sex, paid for or otherwise, regardless of plumbing fixtures. Malcolm was seeking a team member.

"Actually, I'm not looking for quite that much excitement. I'm looking for a girl who will talk with me. I have a brother-in-law in a similar situation and I need some help with understanding."

"I thought maybe I could find a girl who would explain things and help me understand so that I can help my wife's brother."

"Oh."

"I don't know anything about that."

The bartender swished away, conscientiously providing flamboyant service to his regulars. But 3 minutes later he was back.

"Stephanie would probably talk to you. She's really sweet. Usually comes in around 3:00 or 3:30."

Malcolm thanked the chubby young man for his help and slid off the barstool. He had an errand to run.

When Malcolm returned at 3:40 the bartender gave an exaggerated sideways nod of his head toward a woman in her late twenties. She was sitting at the bar next to the station that's been unused since the waitress stomped out in a rage of disgust, early in 1974.

Stephanie was modestly dressed in dark woman's slacks and a modest top that covered small breasts. She had a black ponytail that's long enough to be pretty but short enough to tuck inside a baseball cap, accented with pale lipstick, minimal make-up, a small watch, a thin bracelet, small gold earrings and 2 unobtrusive rings. Stephanie was a lightweight with a light bone structure and clearly is passable as it's called. She can pass as a woman and never be noticed.

Breaking the ice would be the hardest step. People like Stephanie, particularly in bars like this, are constantly being hassled and hit on as a piece of kinky meat to be momentarily enjoyed and quickly abandoned. People like Stephanie defend themselves by adopting the roles of insurmountable icebergs.

Malcolm gently got her attention and asked if he could sit on the adjacent barstool, did she mind.

Stephanie did not mind.

Malcolm's approach was exactly opposite the normal pick-up lines, delivered with leers and drools. Malcolm ignored her body and clothes, looked her straight in the eye and told her she was pretty.

All women need and appreciate such innocent compliments. Transsexuals need and appreciate them far more. Simple, innocent compliments allow momentary burial of the uncertainties of transitioning that are amplified by hormonal imbalances. Stephanie responded with a quick smile, in the process displaying beautiful snow-white teeth. Malcolm hadn't lied. She was pretty, especially when she smiled.

"Thank you."

Casual introductions and small talk, with drinks Malcolm bought with a twenty. Stephanie was incongruously sipping ginger ale. Malcolm silently breathed a sigh of relief and ordered the same.

Stephanie enjoyed small talk with a stranger who was accepting and interested in her rather than her body and what she might be offering, either for free or for sale. Something of a rare treat for her.

After a half-hour they moved to a quieter small table in the front. Malcolm pulled her chair out. A gentleman, even in a total slum like the 333 Tavern. Talk initially centered on the paramount issue in her life. Her gender, needs, hopes and desires. Talk progressed to the difficulties, uncertainties, insecurities and hopes for eventual completion.

Transitioning through gender change is a long, difficult, lonely and expensive journey.

Malcolm expressed his respect and admiration for Stephanie, someone true to her convictions. Afraid of the future yet brave and willing to plunge in head-on, no matter the risks or pain or costs. Not just financial costs, the whole gamut of costs. Rejection and ridicule by friends and family, lack of employment opportunities, all of it. People like her should be admired and respected. So few people have such personal courage.

Chapter 11

2008-02-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

Stephanie became more and more receptive to this gentleman. Malcolm talked of wishing he could have done something constructive for his wife's younger brother by somehow standing at his side, expressing acceptance and supporting him. There must have been some way to help Brian. But that was long ago when society was uptight and orthodox. Malcolm hadn't understood back then. Like everyone else, he'd stood aside and done nothing.

By doing nothing he'd appeared to be a relative who was opposed to a violation of the common perception of God's will. Brian's mental tortures were terrible. He viewed himself as being hopelessly caught in a terrible trap with no escape. Except the one he ultimately chose, at age 24, the ultimate escape of suicide.

Over an hour passed, with frequent greetings to friends and supporters. For Stephanie, this bar was an afternoon social club and support group rather than a late night frenzied meat market. She has friends here and is accepted for who she is, not as a freak. Male or female or somewhere between, she's a human being who's faced, experienced and survived more than her share of difficult choices and hard consequences. Malcolm understood that the 333 Tavern, although anything but high class, was her haven and safety zone.

Transgender issues were discussed at length. Puberty was also discussed, and how the medical community can claim the normal age for beginning puberty is now eight. Three percent of blacks and one percent of whites in America show signs of entering puberty at age three. This is called premature.

People don't understand that their sons grow breasts at age 12 and their daughters grow pubic hair at age 6, breasts at age 8 and menstruate at age 10 because they eat poultry and drink milk from animals treated with estrogen and growth hormones. They don't connect early puberty with FDA's 1995 decision to allow use of female hormones oestradiol, progesterone, the synthetic progesterone norgestomet and synthetic anabolic steroids trenbolene and Zeranol in feed for cattle. As a way to increase profits, the public and the early puberty of their children be damned.

And they don't understand the hazards of treating female victims of early puberty with injections of Lupron, an expensive drug developed to treat prostrate cancer in men. Lupron suppresses hormones and has 26 listed and as many as 265 possible adverse side effects, including a variety of cardiac problems, general pain, depression and growth of facial hair. Lupron causes tremors, seizures and memory loss and may cause cancer. All these adverse effects are ignored in the medical community. In order to increase profits, the public be damned.

And they don't understand that some people are born transgendered because their mother's genes were damaged by environmental toxics. Others were born with hormonal imbalances caused by their mothers taking supplemental estrogen during the first trimester of pregnancy. People are more accepting of children born from 1957 through 1961 whose mothers took Thalidomide for morning sickness four weeks after conception and gave birth to babies with toes sprouting from their hips and flipper-like hands growing from their shoulders.

American doctors are now callously creating transgendered American males. Millions of men with high blood pressure could be advised to hide the family salt shaker and eat potassium-rich foods like citrus fruits, salmon, apples and bananas. Instead they are prescribed spironolactone, brand name Aldactone, which causes tumors in laboratory rats. Spironolactone is a diuretic, prescribed to eliminate excess fluids, typically at dosages of 100 milligrams daily. Users are advised to avoid nutritious potassium-rich foods. Male development of breasts is listed as an uncommon possible side effect.

Those men aren't told that spironolactone is a steroid and powerful anti-androgen, a drug that blocks the effects of testosterone. Spironolactone is the key drug prescribed for male-to-female transsexuals at dosages of 100 to 200 milligrams daily to eliminate male characteristics. After about 6 months, testosterone levels are drastically lowered. Chemical castration is permanent and irreversible. Male victims are then prescribed the profitable drug Viagra for erectile dysfunction. Their growing breasts are studiously ignored.

People mistakenly view gender as an either/or situation and believe we're all either male or female. The Rambo/bimbo option. They don't understand that gender is a spectrum with all male at one extreme and all female at the other. Men are dominated by testosterone but produce small amounts of estrogen. Women are dominated by estrogen but also produce small amounts of testosterone. In reality, all people are both male and female but preponderantly one or the other, with genitals to match.

Stephanie was well into the female side of the range in every aspect but genitals. She's a special person, both male and female. Instead of being judgmental and condemning, people should emulate our more accepting Native Americans, who determine gender by looking between the ears rather than between the legs.

Malcolm eventually raised the issue of illegal drugs. That brought a vigorous response. "So many people like me turn to drugs to escape the constant pressures. Many people I know are involved in drugs one way or another. Using drugs, dealing drugs, all sorts of drugs."

"I used hard drugs when I was younger, but I learned. I may seem strange, and I am strange, I guess. But I'm also smart. Even then I knew hard drugs are bad. So I don't do drugs. I'm 28 years old, and I haven't done drugs for six years. And I won't either."

"Just look around here. You see it everywhere, everyone. Half the people here do hard drugs and look where they are. Down and going down further."

"Drugs are a major problem for girls like me. The busts, all the dangers of something going wrong. And most of all the pain, and sometimes even death. Street drugs kill more people like me than AIDS. My best friend died of drugs. Valerie was really into the drug scene. All kinds of drugs. Helped her cope."

"She went to a party with people she didn't know because there would be drugs. The next morning she was dead. They laced her cocaine with strychnine. Rat poison. Twenty minutes later she went into convulsions. First her head and neck, then everywhere. She finally suffocated because she became exhausted from the convulsions and her body literally froze up. The most horrible way to die. They murdered her because she was different."

"I've dealt drugs small time, because people like me always need the extra income because everything's so expensive. But I'm one of the few who deal but don't use, and I only deal rarely anymore, as a special favor for a few close friends I really trust."

"Dealing has gotten so dangerous. In the old days, selling was friendly, a sharing among friends. Now it's dangerous. There's always the threat of being robbed or raped or slashed or killed, sometimes just for the fun of it. The gangs have taken over the business and they're vicious animals with no morals or humanity at all. One of the problems with our War on Drugs. The penalties are so severe that only the most cold-blooded animals are willing to deal."

"Anyway, I graduated from college. ASU. With honors. In English and Drama. I'm smart enough to realize drugs are bad and dangerous."

"Although the drama part didn't work out so well. I always wanted to play the female roles. But I learned English and a lot about life."

"Anyway, I don't need to deal. I'm halfway, caught in between, like you say. Right now I'm sort of a freak, part male and part female. Jobs for people like me are hard to find, but I have a good job. I'm a waitress at Dominique's, a little south of here over on Central. It's a high-class gay-lesbian restaurant and I make really good tips. So thank God I don't have to live the horrors of trying to deal drugs to make a living."

"Which is great because the hormones are so expensive. Plus visits to the doctor to check my liver and the psychologist for emotional problems that always develop. So I have to really watch my money, but I'm able to make it."

Then Stephanie changed subjects.

"You said the younger brother of your wife. How is it going with your wife?"

Stephanie had noticed the wedding ring Malcolm simply couldn't bear to stop wearing. That would be an act of betrayal. He couldn't bring himself to commit such an act of utter betrayal against Marilyn.

"She's dead."

Malcolm told the story again. "We lived near Strawberry, about 100 miles north of here, a tiny village up in the mountains. We had a little cabin we designed and built ourselves way back in the forest. Once a month we'd escape to civilization for a week-end."

"We were walking along Jefferson Street west of downtown on a Saturday afternoon in January a year ago. We were junking as she called it. Looking in shops for weird curios and relics she absolutely couldn't live without, as she used to say. We were going to a junk shop she thought looked interesting when gunfire broke out. A shoot-out between two competing drug gangs."

"They shot her down like an animal because she was in the way. She suffered horribly for six months and then she died."

"They got away of course. No one was ever arrested."

"So now she's gone. And I'm determined to be a good citizen and do my part in the War on Drugs."

"I’m going to conduct my own private War on Drugs. Without the law and the police and the courts and the feds that refuse to do anything."

"I'm getting together a small team. Six people. We're going to do battle against the drug lords and rid the city of the menace. Do our civic duty and make Phoenix a safer and better place to live."

"I have a plan. It will take one year."

"And there will be enough money for all of us to do whatever we want. And a retirement program. At the end of the year we'll all have money and solid long-term investments. More than enough money for you to fully transition."

A code phrase for multiple surgeries. Insufficient funds is the norm with transsexuals. The second reason Malcolm opted for a transsexual to be the team's chameleon. The money aspects were cautiously discussed at length. Malcolm understood Stephanie's situation and needs. She was against the drugs and appreciated their evils but she would appreciate the money even more. Women in transition need a great deal of money. As she said, the doctors and medicines and surgeries are all very expensive. Many thousands of dollars that Stephanie doesn't have and is unable to earn waiting tables at a high-scale gay-lesbian restaurant.

"I'm looking for another member of the team."

"Someone like you."

Stephanie nodded. Not an agreement to enlist, but an acknowledgement she was listening and hearing, loud and clear. Malcolm watched her eyes momentarily glaze over, shaded by the dollar signs she had seen float by.

"I'd like you to think about it and come to a meeting. Two weeks from today. All the team members will be there and we'll talk about my plan. We'll talk about the morality of the plan, which I think it is, and about the legality, which I know it isn't. And of course we'll talk about the money. There will be a great deal of money, for all of us."

Stephanie listened carefully to the sparse details that followed and cautiously accepted Malcolm's invitation. She'll be there on Saturday March 19th.

Chapter 12

2008-02-19T12:18:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon March 10, Malcolm returned to the tiny computer repair shop, braced for his second lesson on the history of Vietnam. They'd made good progress in the first lesson but the worst was yet to come. The Johnson and Nixon years, to the bitter end. The departure of the last American combat troops on August 23rd, 1972, the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27th, 1973 and President Minh’s broadcast of unconditional surrender on April 30th, 1975 as North Vietnamese troops and tanks poured into downtown Saigon.

Malcolm was one of the few who had studied the war and its history and truths and lies. Malcolm would listen and help Al understand that the war had been a disaster for America also. A few Americans have thoroughly studied the war and the government's lies and understand Al's feelings and share them. Malcolm is one of those few Americans.

Al was almost friendly today and ready to start immediately, as if Malcolm had been away three minutes rather than one week. Malcolm beat him to the punch with explanations learned during a quarter-century of research.

President Eisenhower had been a five-star general in charge of all Allied World War II forces in Europe. Eisenhower understood war and its costs and dangers and horrors and refused to provide military support to France. Instead, the CIA covertly sabotaged the peace treaty process. While the Peace Accords were being signed in Paris, CIA agent Edward Lansdale and his cohorts were bringing freedom and democracy to Hanoi by pouring sugar in the fuel tanks of dilapidated municipal buses. To the south, other CIA agents furthered America's democratic principles by teaching English to the mistresses of high-ranking and high-living Saigon politicians.

But Eisenhower kept America out of a shooting war. At the end of 1960, less than 2,000 American military personnel were in Vietnam, all serving as advisors. Only five Americans had been killed.

That changed when John Kennedy took office in 1961. The results were tragic.

Like Iraq today, a tragedy of errors occurred because incompetent, arrogant politicians controlled military decision-making. The Secretary of State, the Ambassador to Vietnam, the Secretary of Defense, the President's chief military advisor and the American military commander in Vietnam all were incompetent and dishonest.

The Secretary of State should have been seeking political solutions for a nationalist revolution to unite the country as called for by the 1954 Geneva treaty. Instead, Dean Rusk viewed Vietnam as a military issue of preventing communist expansion, stood aside and supported war over negotiation.

Fredrick Nolting Jr. became ambassador to Vietnam in 1961. He had never been an ambassador and had never been to Asia. He thought the political aspects were mere distractions to winning the war.

Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, was a statistician and systems analyst with mechanical and mathematical solutions to all societal and political problems. A World War II "Whiz Kid" who was partially responsible for the Edsel, the most unsuccessful product in the history of the world. He served as president of Ford Motor Company for five weeks before being asked to become Secretary of Defense.

McNamara knew nothing of and had no interest in Asia, poverty, people or politics and arrogantly dismissed the knowledge and opinions of everyone who did. Brilliant but not wise, he knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. A statistician who used the wrong statistics. A glorified bean counter who relied solely on numerical quantifications to measure military progress in a political revolution.

McNamara made many inspection trips to Vietnam and was dutifully given the lies he demanded he be told. He refused to look beyond the charades of false statistics called military briefings that were staged for his benefit. Being duly briefed, he would return to Washington and lie or misrepresent or hedge, for the good of the cause, in his opinion to better serve the President.

His superficial book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam was published in 1995. In the preface, he wrote:

"We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

Many years too late, McNamara acknowledged our American troops served with extraordinary bravery and skill and they deserved to know about what they had been asked and forced to do.

Which McNamara's book failed to mention. With a stunning display of selective memory, McNamara claimed the war was lost because people in Washington were ignorant of the ways of the Vietnamese people. He neglected to mention that he was the most ignorant of all, because he arrogantly refused to listen to his advisors. Astoundingly, his analysis of the war contained no information whatsoever about the political and war policies and objectives of the North. McNamara never considered them relevant.

McNamara claimed the war was lost because the South Vietnamese were deficient. But the war never was about North against South. Like Iraq today, the war was about native people driving out a corrupt, uncaring leader and foreign occupying army. McNamara never realized that Vietnam won the war by forcing the world's strongest military power out of their backward little country.

General Maxwell Taylor was Kennedy's military advisor. He muzzled and by-passed the Joint Chiefs of Staff before being named its Chairman in 1962. Taylor was a three-star ass-kisser and apple-polisher who required his subordinates to lie and say the war was being won when it was being lost, to please McNamara.

Lieutenant General Paul Harkins was Commander of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. A staff man who had never led men in combat. A mediocre general with no knowledge of either guerilla warfare or Asia. He felt the war could be won with additional manpower and equipment in a World War I-style battle of attrition and never tried to understand the basics of guerilla warfare.

Following the lead of McNamara, Harkins was only interested in quantitative measurements of success. He focused on the number of aircraft sorties flown and the tonnage of bombs dropped. Harkins particularly concentrated on body counts as a measure of effectiveness to show that America was winning the war.

Whether the bodies were Vietcong soldiers or innocent women and children was never considered important. Policy filtered down to the troops on the ground as MGR, short for the "Mere Gook Rule". If it's dead and it's not an American, it's obviously a Vietcong. Women and children included.

As a result, thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Tragically, the killing of civilians was viewed as indicating the war and the hearts and minds of the people were being won.

Truthful bad news was buried and replaced by false good news. False reports were issued to make failing policies look successful. Dissenting subordinates who expressed alternative views were punished and their reports were buried.

Throughout 1962 Harkins reported to Washington that the war was being won. His reports were the lies General Taylor wanted to hear and send up to McNamara. The false reports enabled McNamara to declare the Vietcong would be defeated by 1964 or no later than 1965.

McNamara's declaration was wrong. At the end of 1965 America had 185,000 troops in Vietnam and was losing the war.

Reports to the American people were lies. Initially they were repetitions of lies American military leaders told themselves. In the end, the deceivers came to believe themselves and be deceived by their own lies. Journalists on the ground were the only ones giving honest reports on what was really happening. Their reports were met with ridicule and anger in Washington and were arrogantly dismissed.

Eventually, optimistic military reports were deliberately used to influence American public opinion. Realities no longer mattered. Only appearances mattered. Manipulation of public opinion to create the belief that America was winning the war was much easier than actually winning the war. Just like with Iraq.

Loyalty at the highest levels of the American military was not given to the President or to America and its shining principles or to the American soldiers who were being killed or even to the noble concepts of truth and integrity. Loyalty was given exclusively to the Pentagon, to gain its favor and win promotion. Just like with Iraq.

By 1963, Kennedy knew he was being lied to. On October 2, Kennedy told McNamara to announce a schedule for total withdrawal from Vietnam. One thousand troops would be home by Christmas and all would be home within another year. Kennedy personally announced that intention during a press conference on October 31st.

Then the war turned toward total disaster. One day after Kennedy's announcement, with American encouragement, Diem and his brother were assassinated during a military coup. All possibilities of disengagement ended.

Three weeks later President Kennedy was assassinated. At that time, about 16,900 American soldiers were in Vietnam, all serving as advisors. Less than 120 American soldiers had been killed.

To his great credit, unlike America's current president, Kennedy possessed sufficient personal courage to meet face-to-face and alone with bereaved next of kin, without a script. The family of every soldier killed in Vietnam under his watch received condolence letters personally handwritten by President Kennedy. All families who acknowledged receiving those letters were invited to meet with the President in the Oval Office or Rose Garden. All who accepted the invitation were impressed by Kennedy's heartfelt expressions of regret and his sincerity in forthrightly conveying condolences and sorrow for the family's loss. All viewed the trip as an uplifting experience. None afterward described Kennedy, a wounded veteran of World War II, with terms like false, liar, insincere, flippant, AWOL, draft dodger, uncaring, immoral, cowardly, cowboy or chickenhawk.

Two days after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson quietly rescinded the order to begin withdrawing troops. Four days after the assassination, on the day after Kennedy's funeral, President Johnson signed National Security Memorandum 273 and publicly declared his intention to escalate the war.

Chapter 13

2008-02-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

President Johnson continually and intentionally lied about the war in Vietnam. Lied to everyone; the public, the press, the Congress, even to his own staff.

In the summer of 1964 Johnson secretly rejected new North Vietnamese overtures for peace and publicly announced that American military involvement would increase because the enemy was refusing to negotiate. But throughout the Presidential campaign, while calling his opponent Barry Goldwater a dangerous warmonger, Johnson repeatedly promised the American public:

"I will never send American boys to fight a land war in Asia."

American involvement peaked five years later in April 1969, with 543,500 American boys fighting and losing a land war in Southeast Asia.

That summer the North Vietnamese determined American ships were supporting covert coastal raids. In response, their torpedo boats attacked the US destroyer Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf on August 2nd. The Maddox returned fire, sank one, damaged two and retreated to international waters.

On August 4th after another coastal raid, the Maddox captain reported his ship was under attack and then reported uncertainty. There were no sightings of attacking ships and the Maddox suffered no damage.

At 11:36 that night Johnson went on national television and declared that repeated acts of violence must be responded to. As he spoke, American planes were in the air. Minutes later, North Vietnam was bombed.

On August 6th McNamara went before Congress, claimed to have unequivocal proof of an unprovoked attack and denied US Navy operations in the gulf. Three years later McNamara admitted to Congress that US ships had been supporting coastal attacks by the South Vietnamese.

Several weeks after the alleged attack, McNamara expressed doubts to the President that the attack occurred. That information was made public in 2001. In 1965, President Johnson was more forthright:

"For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

A National Security Agency report concluded the attack didn't occur at all and admitted NSA deliberately distorted the evidence. That report was released in 2005.

No one ever admitted the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had been prepared 3 months before and was lying in the President's Oval Office desk, awaiting a suitable excuse for declaration of an emergency.

Largely as a result of McNamara's testimony, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution within hours, without hearings or debate. That resolution authorized the President to:

...take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against US forces and to prevent further aggression.

Johnson eagerly interpreted this resolution as a formal declaration of war. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that, unless the United States is attacked or about to be attacked, the President must have the assent of Congress to make war. The Constitution makes no provision for declaration of war based on flimsy or falsified evidence.

In passing the resolution Congress gave carte blanche to Johnson, ceding one of its most important Constitutional prerogatives, the sole right to declare war, to a President who manipulated Congress and lied to the people. Just like in Iraq.

No hard questions were ever asked by the press. Johnson's approval ratings soared from 42 to 72 percent. Three months later he was elected in a landslide. Johnson's lies, told to manipulate public opinion, fraudulently won him election and he took the country to war. Everyone who can spell I-R-A-Q can understand how this program works.

Three months after his 1964 election Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder, using B-52s to carpet-bomb the North. That program continued for 3 years and dropped 2 million tons of bombs on North Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1973, America dropped almost 8 million tons of bombs on North and South Vietnam, almost three times the weight dropped by all combatants in Europe and the Pacific during all of World War II. About 60 percent of the 15,000 hamlets in the country were destroyed by bombing. Vietnam, a country roughly the size of California, has over 20 million bomb craters, eternal reminders of America's efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people.

The tiny backward nation of North Vietnam did not cower in the face of Johnson's version of shock and awe. They became more resolute and began direct attacks on American air bases. The military reacted by landing 3,500 combat Marines to protect the Air Force base at Da Nang on March 8th. That was sold to the public as a short-term measure. The war was on. Based on nothing but French lies told to Americans in 1950 and American lies told to the public during the next 15 years.

The opinions of Colonel David Hackworth, author of The Vietnam Primer, the leading book on guerilla warfare tactics in Vietnam, are based on and validated by five years of boots-on-the-ground combat experience in the country. His status is attested to by his 78 combat awards, including two Distinguished Service Crosses, ten Silver Stars, eight Bronze Stars for valor, eight Purple Hearts and three nominations for the Congressional Medal of Honor. And his constant support of the troops.

In 1966 Colonel Hackworth became convinced the Vietcong would win because the Pentagon simply didn't understand the nature of the war. As to the Pentagon's leadership:

"The United States has failed to repair the damage it caused, hold war criminals responsible, provide compensation to victims, and make a commitment to human rights and international law to prevent the recurrence of the atrocities..."

For his honesty, Colonel Hackworth was forced to resign from the Army under threat of court martial by maddened Pentagon officials. Colonel Hackworth died in 2005 of bladder cancer, a common result of exposure to Agent Blue.

Vietnam was a war of military atrocities, including use of 7,856,000 tons of bombs, 3,777,000 landmines and 338,000 tons of napalm, some on villages inhabited only by women and children, and declarations of free fire zones that resulted in total destruction of entire villages of innocent civilians. One result was an estimated 880,000 orphans and 180,000 disabled people.

Villages like My Lai, that were "pacified" by Lieutenant Calley's troops. And Ben Tre, capital of Kien Hoa Province in the Mekong Delta, 40 miles south of Saigon. As an Army Major told ABC war correspondent Peter Arnett in February 1968:

"It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it."

After being firebombed, villages where families had lived for 300 years were destroyed forever by killing the water buffalo and throwing the carcasses into the community wells, poisoning the groundwater in perpetuity. These atrocities were committed to "win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people".

And the herbicides, identified by the color of 4-inch bands painted around their 55-gallon drums. Agent Blue contained cacodylic acid, an arsenic compound. Over 9 years, at the behest of a South Vietnamese president who thought poisoning his own people was a good thing because they were his enemies, 1.2 million gallons of Agent Blue were sprayed on rice paddies, to starve South Vietnamese civilians.

During 9 years of Operation Ranch Hand, 19.4 million gallons of Agents Blue, Orange, White, Pink and Purple were sprayed on slightly over 30,000 square miles, about 24 percent of South Vietnam. The total includes 11.7 million gallons of Agent Orange, a 50-50 mix of the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Because of time and money-saving shortcuts involving insufficient heating during manufacture, the 2,4,5-T was contaminated with 2,3,7,9-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, or simply dioxin, the most toxic man-made chemical then in existence.

The dangers of Agent Orange were known in 1952, when Monsanto Chemical warned the Army 2,4,5-T was "contaminated by a toxic substance". This was confirmed in 1965 through a study of involuntarily exposed and uninformed inmates at Holmesburg state prison in Philadelphia. The progress of their resulting cancers was monitored and studied but no treatment was offered or provided. The report was hidden and thousands of American soldiers were exposed. As in the 1991 Gulf War, Pentagon brass used chemical weapons of mass destruction, prevented all independent efforts to study their impacts and refused to acknowledge overwhelming evidence of ill effects. For over 50 years the Pentagon has evaded the truth and deceived the public by claiming Agent Orange was harmless.

A quarter-million American soldiers were exposed to Agent Orange.

In 1991, Congress authorized financial assistance to these wounded veterans. The Pentagon and the Veterans Administration responded by calling the link between Agent Orange and health problems "presumptive" and refused to pay legitimate claims. Only 1,800, or 0.72 percent, have received compensation for its adverse effects. To this day the American government is financially able but morally unwilling to fairly and honestly accept responsibility and compensate and support its patriotic wounded and disabled veterans for the damage the Pentagon knowingly and willfully caused.

Agent Orange is only one small part of a much larger public policy issue that Congress resolutely refuses to address or even acknowledge. America is the world's only major country that ignores and abandons its wounded and disabled veterans. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, literally throws its wounded and disabled war veterans away as if they were so many reeking bags of putrid trash.

In the villages of the nations of Native Americans, often described with terms such as primitive, heartless, utterly ruthless, cold-blooded, illiterate brutal bloodthirsty savages, a single hungry and homeless disabled war veteran would be an unthinkable tragedy, even if the vet were a total stranger of different nationality who wandered into the village by mistake. Within 20 minutes the tragedy would be rectified by offers of food and shelter made without question or reservation by every last village family owning a tepee, wigwam, longhouse or oversized sleeping bag or blanket, regardless of size, condition or resulting inconvenience, without exception. The idea of demanding, requiring, politely requesting or subtly hinting of payment would never occur to either host or honored guest. Both offer and acceptance of any form of payment would be viewed as unconscionably rude insults.

America, the rich and powerful nation that unceasingly sermonizes to the world of its inherent moral superiority, now has about 400,000 homeless veterans, including an estimated 8,000 females. The American government that reacts by scheming to further deprive them of the benefits promised them by Congress under the G. I. Bill of Rights in June 1944, based on artificially contrived arguments of undeserved welfare and affordability.

Chapter 14

2008-02-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

This attitude has gotten worse as to treatment of Iraq war veterans. About 35 percent of returning soldiers have sought medical help from VA. In 2003, almost 250,000 Iraq war vets waited six months or more for a first appointment or initial follow-up. The government's response has been to close VA hospitals and clinics, cut back or terminate VA healthcare programs, dishonestly and unethically refuse to diagnose injuries and require vets to wait months and sometimes years for treatment. This year, about 600,000 vets will be denied treatment or placed on intolerably long waiting lists to receive needed medical care.

The most shameful method used is false diagnosis of preexisting conditions as an excuse to discharge soldiers with injuries and disabilities while denying them medical and disability benefits. In the last six years, this has been done to 22,500 soldiers. Many were wounded in Iraq, including Jon Town of Findlay, Ohio. In October 2004 a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet over Jon's head as he stood in a doorway in Ramadi, Iraq. His ears were leaking blood from a concussion. Shrapnel was removed from his neck. Jon now suffers significant hearing loss and memory failure. He was diagnosed with prior personality disorder, ordered to repay his $15,000 reenlistment bonus and discharged. This from a government that orders unquestioning support of the troops while cutting funds for mental health of vets by 30 percent.

Jonathan Schulze stands tall as another shameful example. A Marine who was awarded two purple hearts for wounds suffered in Iraq. Thirty-five Marines in Jonathan's unit were killed there, 17 in a 2-day period. Upon return to Minnesota, Jonathan suffered nightmares while asleep and flashbacks while awake. On December 16th he went to the Minneapolis VA center seeking help, met with a psychiatrist and was told he couldn't be admitted for 4 months. On January 11th he went to the VA hospital in St. Cloud seeking help and advised he was suicidal. VA refused admission and turned Jonathan away. On January 12th Jonathan called VA, again advised he was suicidal and was told he was number 26 on the waiting list. On January 16th, Jonathan was found dead, hanging from an electrical cord. Another victim of Iraq excluded from Washington's official count of volunteer soldiers who died for their countrymen and their callous government in another war that is based on lies.

VA healthcare is now based on artificial budget constraints rather than need and obligation. The White House, while urging all citizens to patriotically support their troops regardless, demands that VA healthcare need forecasts and resulting budgets be cut, that vitally needed medical services be denied because of cost and that all healthcare for veterans of World War II and Korea be terminated.

As a result, the number of vets seeking treatment in the first three months of this year will be about 25 percent more than the total number budgeted for during the entire year. Budget limitations imposed for purely partisan political reasons have forced America's war veterans to literally become beggars for the health care they were promised and are legally and morally entitled to.

Healthcare for wounded or disabled veterans is now being derided as a form of parasitic welfare to be stamped out. To protect the budget for corporate predators, the White House has required that vets pay "insurance premiums" for VA healthcare. Now, a vet with a wife, two children and a monthly income of $2,500 is classified as "affluent" and therefore not eligible for non-war related VA medical services. Affluent is not an appropriate term to use when family health insurance premiums are over $1,000 per month and pre-existing health problems are automatically excluded from coverage. Under this dictate, about 2 million vets are being denied the VA medical services they were promised.

Similarly unfair approaches are taken as to claims for disability. The VA currently has a backlog of almost a half-million disability claims filed by veterans. Denials are almost automatic and the appeal process often takes years. Almost half of America's 2.7 million disabled vets who persevered through the application and appeal process receive $337 or less per month in benefits.

In Vietnam, the Pentagon trained our finest young men to be warriors, used them as sitting duck targets for lack of a better strategy and then ordered them to kill women and children and commit atrocities against an enemy the Pentagon couldn't even identify, let alone understand or engage effectively. And then refused to humanely provide for the injuries its troops suffered as a result of its arrogance and incompetence.

Mental injuries as well as physical injuries. The Pentagon hides the shameful fact that, as of 1990, the number of American soldiers killed in combat in Vietnam was exceeded by the number of vets who have died by suicide. The end result of training our soldiers to be noble warriors and then ordering them to be common killers of everyone who might associate with an enemy the Pentagon was never able to even identify. Ordering them to be compassionate to small children suddenly rendered orphans because their unarmed and defenseless mother had been gunned down moments earlier under the Mere Gook Rule.

The Vietnamese people resisted Chinese domination for 1,000 years, French colonization and enslavement for almost 100 years and what they call the American War for 10 years. During that American War, 4,000 out of 5,788 communities in North Vietnam were bombed, from the safety of a 6-mile altitude. Every last industrial zone was devastated. Every power plant in the country was seriously damaged. Every bridge, seaport, riverport and warehouse and 350 hospitals in North Vietnam were bombed. Three thousand schools and 1,600 irrigation works were destroyed.

After the end of the war in 1975, the North Vietnamese people pulled together and rebuilt. The American government called this an evil communist society. The Vietnamese didn't concern themselves with labels and called this a demonstration of solidarity, with everyone unselfishly helping everybody else.

A unified Vietnam transitioned with a communist-style government for 11 years. The transition was painful, partly because in 1975 America vindictively imposed a Cuban-style economic boycott as punishment. American efforts concentrated on oppression and continuation of suffering. One example: India attempted to provide 100 water buffalo, to replace a small part of the buffalo population killed during the war. America objected and threatened to cancel Food for Peace aid.

Vietnam overcame all of America's efforts to subvert or destroy their country in the name of communist containment. Left to their own devices without American interference, Vietnam freely chose to move to a western-style free-market economy in 1986. America responded in 1991 by overriding strong objections from Japan and European countries and renewing the trade embargo and sanctions.

The trade embargo was finally ended in 1994. Diplomatic relations were established in 1995. A bilateral trade agreement was signed in 2000.

Since 1986, while the American economy has remained stagnant for all but the richest, the Vietnamese economy has grown dramatically. They've recorded 20 percent annual growth rates for the export of goods produced by local companies listed on the booming Vietnam National Stock Exchange.

Just like America. Just like Ho Chi Minh always wanted.

Today, companies like VISA and American Express sponsor floats in the annual parade celebrating victory over American forces in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City. That parade passes down Hong Thap Tu, past the site of the former American Embassy, which was razed about ten years ago.

Vietnamese capitalists own stocks of businesses in one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Americans own a tearful monument dug into the National Mall with the names of 58,249 of their finest, starkly chiseled into highly polished black granite panels.

"Xin loi."

Al paused, startled by Malcolm's unexpected simple apology. Al, who lost almost all of his family in the war, was a lot more than sorry. And then Al reciprocated.

"I'm sorry too."

"Enough of tragic history which we both understand all too well. Let's agree on the solution to my problem."

"I need someone like you who can do some really high-tech work."

"Like?"

"I need for justice to be done. Justice for my dead wife. And the government is crooked and incompetent and won't do anything. So I'll do it myself. I and a small team."

"Yes?"

"I need two things. Number one, I need a good hacker who can get me information from a number of confidential government and private databases without leaving any tracks."

"Number two, I need someone who can make false identifications for me. Ironclad, foolproof false identifications. Very good identifications that will never be doubted or questioned."

"Huh."

"Is that all?"

"That's easy."

A shocked pause ensued. Finally, Malcolm recovered and continued. "Actually, I need several sets. I'm building a team. Six people in all. We'll all need false identifications. Other things too, but mostly false identifications."

"That is still easy. How many no matter."

"False identifications."

"I thought you needed something difficult, the way you talk."

"False identifications. Driver's licenses. Immigration cards, green cards you used to call them. I do all that. A lot. That's a booming business for me. Because you Americans refuse to secure your national border, like a real nation would do."

"False identifications. That's easy. Pays good too."

"Are the other people on your team like you? I might like to join too. I like open-minded industrious Americans."

"Most of all I like illegal and against your government. I like to fuck with your government"

"You come back tomorrow morning. Tell me what you want. I give you demonstration. I will make it or do it or find it for you. To show you I am good fancy tricks hacker."

"Then maybe I join your team and do lots more computer whiz fancy hacker tricks for you."

"I join team and fuck with your government. Most of all I like to fuck with your government."

Chapter 15

2008-02-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

After 2 weeks of effort, Malcolm had 3 recruits, Roy and Steve and Al. Malcolm needed two more. One must be a jack-of-all-trades who can make special things. A machinist or skilled mechanic who can creatively improvise.

Al came to the rescue when Malcolm returned to the computer shop the next morning, as they'd agreed.

"Like we talked about yesterday, I need some confidential info. I'm hoping you'll give a demonstration of your special abilities. I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin. And I'll be more than glad to pay."

For Al, repairs and upgrades are boring. Hacking is fun. And the money is fun too. Al responded with a wide grin, his first in three sessions. He would be more than glad to demonstrate his "special abilities".

"I need a printout of entrance interviews of men who became Joe's guests for some reason other than DUI or simple possession and who've checked out of the protected zone within the past three months."

Malcolm was referring to Joe Awingo, nicknamed Joe Away-They-Go, Sheriff of Maricopa County. A genuinely humane sheriff, as he's always quick to point out during his twice-weekly press conferences, which invariably focus on how truly fortunate Maricopa County citizens are to have Joe unselfishly serve as their Sheriff while extolling the numerous efficiencies that result from his numerous virtues.

Joe is constantly on guard against future brutality lawsuits, partially because past brutality lawsuits have cost truly fortunate Maricopa County taxpayers untold millions of dollars. One way Joe attempts to protect himself is by requiring that his staff give special attention to every new guest at his lodging facility. Commonly called the Maricopa Marriott by his guests and commonly called the Maricopa County Lockup by everyone else. Staff interviews of new inmates elicit all sorts of personal information. Work history, current occupation if any, medical problems and unusual limitations.

"Ah. No problem."

"You come back in six hours. I have interviews for you."

Malcolm returned at 4:00 Friday afternoon. On the front counter was a high stack of paper, probably close to four hundred sheets. That tall stack of white paper was moved to one side and replaced with a much shorter stack of green paper. Hundred-dollar bills.

Al beamed, another wide smile. Malcolm beamed in return, expressed his appreciation and exchanged cordial good-byes. Malcolm would see Al one week from tomorrow, to meet the other recruits and discuss Malcolm’s plan.

Malcolm spent Friday evening in his suite with coke and pizza, reviewing Al's stack of paper. In 4 hours Malcolm reduced 61 recently released inmates from the protected zone to 3 possibles with the necessary background. That short list was studied carefully for unique circumstances that could provide a compelling reason to become involved with Malcolm, his team and his plan.

Within another hour, Malcolm had his prime candidate. Edward Ellington, former jet engine mechanic for Southwest Air. Unemployed at the time of release after serving 91 days of a six-month sentence for assault and battery, the result of a tavern brawl.

An inmate who'd been assigned to the protected zone, away from the general population, because of his personal history.

Ed's latest difficulty resulted from stopping at an unfamiliar tavern for a cold one at the end of a normal workday. He was sucked into an escalating argument with an obviously intoxicated knuckle-dragging Neanderthal about the basic competence of Donald Rumsfeld. The bully used a string of obscenities before accusing Ed of being a "motherfucking pansyass queer cocksucker". Then he made the decisive accusation.

"I bet you're a child molester."

The results were immediate and explosive. Ed, normally calm and quiet almost to the point of timidity, came off his barstool swinging. Ed not only got the shit beat out of him, he got arrested too. At trial, the bully testified that Ed suddenly unexpectedly threw a punch while the bully was politely explaining Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality. Ed's six-month sentence roughly corresponded to 10 days for each and every patron who didn't see or hear a thing to the contrary.

Per the Sheriff's report, Ed was released almost two months ago and may have returned to his old apartment on Broadway near South 40th Street.

Saturday morning Malcolm tried the directory listing for Edward Ellington. A thoroughly bored phone company voice robot advised the number had been disconnected. The number of an aunt in Peoria, listed on the Sheriff's information sheet as next of kin, was promptly answered.

Wilma Jackson, the sister of Ed's mother, was happy to hear from anyone interested in hiring Ed or helping him out. Ed's had a difficult life, with what seems like one problem right after another. Wilma's glad there are a few good people who want to help Ed. He surely needs someone on his side.

Ed lives in a different unit in the same apartment complex. The manager is Ed's friend and stored Ed's things while he was gone. Even kept Ed's little dog, and rented Ed another apartment when he got out. Ed doesn't have a phone yet. The three months set him back financially.

Malcolm inquired in detail about previous employers. Names and locations and the type of work Ed did. An auto repair shop, a machine shop, a large precision machine shop and Southwest Air's engine maintenance facility. Then Malcolm gently steered conversation toward Ed's past, seeking information that doesn't appear on or between the lines of the Sheriff's report.

Life had been bad for Ed's mother. She'd hinted of terrible secrets but made no secret about her husband being a despicable animal. She died suddenly thirty years ago, when Ed was five.

Very suddenly. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. The police had suspicions and investigated Ed's father but no arrest was made.

Ed's life got worse after his mother was murdered. Two years later Ed's father was arrested for exposing himself while trying to grab a third-grade boy walking home from school. When father was sentenced to ten years in the Florence prison, Ed moved to Peoria with Wilma and her husband.

Ed seemed to do better, some of the time. But Wilma's husband used drugs, drank too much too often and couldn't keep his zipper closed while within 70 feet of anyone of either gender younger than 70.

One night Ed's crying woke Wilma. She found her husband on his knees, naked on Ed's bed, pinning him down while steering his penis into Ed's mouth. Wilma's marriage ended abruptly but the additional damage couldn't be undone. Ed became withdrawn, dropped out of high school at age 16 and went to night school for a GED while working in a small garage rebuilding car engines.

With Malcolm's careful encouragement, Wilma talked about things a concerned aunt would talk about if she didn't understand the complicated underlying psychological issues.

Tragically, child sexual abuse is often multi-generational. The overwhelming majority of men who molest their children were themselves molested as children. And women who are molested as children sometimes marry men who are molesters.

Malcolm recalled a tragic tale told by an attorney friend in Indiana who represented Debbie Douglas, fighting to prevent having her children taken away by Child Protective Services, which was seeking a court declaration that she was an unfit mother. A pleasant and attractive woman who married young and had two children.

Some years later Debbie discovered her husband was molesting both the boy and the girl. She immediately filed for and was granted a divorce, sole custody and a permanent restraining order. Debbie eventually remarried. Two years later, she discovered to her horror that her second husband was molesting both her children.

As children, both her husbands had been molested by their fathers. And the real shocker. As a child, Debbie had been molested by her father.

The pattern continues generation after generation. Debbie is again divorced and raising her two children alone. One is at risk of marrying a child molester and the other is at risk of becoming one.

From Wilma's explanations, the pattern was clear to Malcolm. Ed had an abusive maternal grandfather who molested his two daughters, Ed's mother and her sister Wilma. Both daughters grew up to marry molesters. Not intentionally of course. That is the one characteristic they consciously seek to avoid at all costs, because they know firsthand the pain and suffering and cruelty. But subconsciously they're magnetically attracted in some strange and unknowing way to molesters.

Ed is a two-time victim of that mysterious magnetic attraction. He was molested by his father and then shipped off to live with his aunt and his uncle, who molested him.

Many respected psychologists claim rape is the worst crime, with solid justification. Rape is a form of murder in which the victim is physically left alive but emotionally killed. A murder of the spirit, with the victim permanently numbed, living only in a physical sense.

Only the crime of sexually abusing a child can possibly be worse than rape. The crime that kills the spirit before it ever has a chance to blossom. In some ways the victim is a dead person walking, like the victim of rape, but in other ways is naive and unaware. Similar to the person who cannot recognize and experience the joys and wonders and beauties of life because he was born without the gift of sight.

The victim of childhood sexual abuse walks but stands condemned to a life of misfortune and misery. Misery exemplified by a lifelong series of bad choices. Choices that were never really choices at all but rather were mandated. Mandated by fears and guilt and shame and lack of self-esteem, all direct and permanent results of childhood sexual abuse.

Chapter 16

2008-02-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Those tragic results are severe and pervasive. They cover a wide range, including low self esteem and feelings of worthlessness, depression exemplified by perpetual feelings of hopelessness, guilt and shame, irrational fears and unfocused anxiety, sometimes with panic attacks, and tendencies to withdraw from society. In some cases the victims display tendencies toward self-abusive behavior, including drug and alcohol abuse, self-mutilation, sometimes called cutting, and even suicide.

Very young children are taught and quickly learn that some things they do are wrong, but they assume adults are always perfect. A young child cannot comprehend the concept that mother or father might do something wrong. But sooner or later, the child victim understands or somehow senses that the abuse was wrong. Because the father is perfect, the child concludes the abuse was somehow his or her fault. The result is a pervasive sense of guilt and lack of self-worth for causing the abuse to occur. These feelings often progress to chronic depression, which is anger toward the self. The result is a life filled with expressions of self-hatred.

The victim's emotional problems are sometimes unintentionally worsened by unknowledgeable people who "want to help somehow". All too often they try to help by asking irresponsible questions, including the worst of all:

"Why didn't you do something?"

That question automatically places the blame squarely and solely upon the victim rather than the abuser. No one in their right mind would ever ask that question of an adult woman who had been beaten and then raped at gunpoint. But people do ask that question of victims of childhood abuse.

Based on the unspoken and unconsidered assumption that a young child actually has power over adults who are determined in their ways. The question assumes the children have the physical strength, wisdom, knowledge and experience of the abusing adult. But they don't. Children rely upon and look up to the adults in their lives and look to them for guidance and explanations and help. Most of all, they look up to their parents.

Which is what makes the results of parental childhood sexual abuse so devastating. The child who is violated by his or her father is violated by one of the two people in the entire world the child should be able to trust absolutely, without any question or concern or reservation whatsoever. Violation of that trust is a violent shattering of the child's entire world, like that of Humpty Dumpty the egg. A shattered world that can never be completely put back together again.

One important trait shattered is the ability to trust. A nebulous value that sometimes cannot be clearly grasped or defined.

Trust can never be taken. In contrast, true power can never be granted or ceded. True power can only be taken, away from someone else through use of some form of overpowering force. Traits like trust are just the opposite. Trust can never be taken. Like love, trust can only be freely given and graciously accepted, with all attendant obligations of fairness and absolute honesty.

Malcolm had all too much personal experience with parental childhood abuse, albeit emotional and physical rather than sexual. As a result, he has a deep understanding and strong affinity for other victims of childhood abuse. Malcolm somehow senses the presence of kindred spirits and has an innate understanding of hurts that cannot be described and wounds that cannot be healed.

Those affinities typically are most profound with people who were abused before the age of 2 or even 1, before the child learns to speak. Those children are most likely to have a well-developed sixth sense.

Only recently, we have learned that fetuses actually sense the emotions of their mother. In a few instances the unborn child can somehow sense it is unwanted by the mother. As a result the fetus sometimes loses the will to live before birth.

Marilyn was one case, an infant who suffered from what is called "failure to thrive" syndrome. Born underweight, as an infant she was lethargic and lost weight until she was returned to the hospital, where loving nurses, all mothers themselves, held her, cared for her, cooed softly and expressed unconditional love. In the hospital Marilyn blossomed to life, without any form of medical treatment.

Perhaps that was the root cause of the mysterious magnetic attraction between Marilyn and Malcolm. He also had suffered that mysterious syndrome called failure to thrive.

For whatever unexplainable reason, they had been mysteriously drawn to each other. An example of an ability that cannot be quantified, explained or even fully identified, but which nevertheless clearly exists. Allow two black people to enter opposite ends of a large room hosting 200 people, all white, all blindfolded and all mute. Within 20 minutes the two blacks will somehow magically find each other. When all the blindfolds are removed, those two will be seen standing together, side by side or facing each other.

And so it is with victims of abuse. Somehow they magically recognize kindred spirits in ways others can never understand.

And so it was with Ed and Malcolm. Two kindred spirits with unspoken mutual recognition. With understanding and careful handling, Ed would respond like a springtime tulip given an early morning drink of water. Ed would develop trust. And he would follow Malcolm to the ends of the earth.

The manager directed Malcolm to Unit 62. Malcolm's knock was greeted with high-pitched yips and yaps and an opened door.

Malcolm introduced himself to Ed and made friends with the cute little gold cocker spaniel. Lunch followed. Malcolm's treat, in a semi-private booth at Coco's on 40th Street near the airport.

General conversation about backgrounds and work experience. Malcolm mentioned that Ed came highly recommended by the people at Gateway Precision Machine Shop on Magnolia Street.

Ed perked up noticeably. He's working nights at a recycling company, sorting glass and plastic and metal on a conveyor belt. Hard, dirty work for minimum wage by the hour without benefits. He'd love to find something in his field, machinery and repair and making things.

Conversation progressed, casually and delicately, through the horrors of abuse, childhood abuse and childhood sexual abuse. And the many similarities between childhood sexual abuse and physical and emotional abuse, like Malcolm had endured, beginning at the ripe old age of 2 weeks. The discussion of how the victims are always wonderful people inside lasted almost two hours.

Talk eventually moved to more familiar ground. The evils of illegal drugs and how something drastic needs to be done.

Ed had come close himself but has avoided drugs, thank God. His father had been controlled by drugs. Then an uncle and sort of stepfather and more drugs. The only two men in his childhood were abusers of drugs, alcohol and children.

Around 3:00, talk adjourned to another private booth, for a Saturday afternoon beer or three in a small bar on Broadway. More talk about good employment. A long-term investment and retirement program. Interesting work that will pay extremely well. More than enough money for long-term counseling, Ed's only chance to live a relatively normal and peaceful life.

Most important of all, a golden opportunity to help innocent future victims and their families while developing self esteem. A calling, something to make life worthwhile. An achievement to be looked back upon with lasting pride. An opportunity to make a real difference and help prevent more people from being hurt like Ed had been hurt.

Malcolm has a plan. He's putting together a small team, six people. They need a machinist. Someone who can make special things and adapt ordinary things to special uses.

The work will be unorthodox and sophisticated. They need someone with superior talents.

Someone like Ed.

Talk of morality and then increasingly direct hints of massive illegality. Ed had no qualms. The law with all of its legalities provided absolutely no help for Ed over the years when he needed help. Ed feels absolutely no compunction to help the law. One thing Ed painfully learned over the years is that the law is always there to fuck you over but never there to help.

Ed truly doesn't give a feathered flying fuck about a bunch of legality. Government should deliver the mail, protect the shores and stay the fuck out of Ed's life. Having failed miserably at the last two, government should concentrate on learning how to deliver the mail, preferably without reading it first. Should concentrate so hard that Ed falls off their radar screen.

But Ed does care about the money and about doing something positive and constructive. Ed's more than definitely interested. Ed's ready to start as soon as possible. Anytime this evening would be fine.

As soon as possible will be Saturday March 19th, one week from today. At Malcolm's suite, for talk and getting to know the other team members. They're all really good people, kind and supportive. Just the kind of folks Ed should be with. People he'll like, people who'll like him.

Suddenly, Ed's life changed. Suddenly he has something positive to look forward to and perhaps a worthwhile purpose in life. Of course Ed will be there. Ed can't wait to start.

Chapter 17

2008-02-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

Malcolm has four solid potential members. Roy and Steve and Al and Ed. He needs one more. Someone who interacts well and innocently with strangers and can handle money, manage the properties and innocently deal with strangers who will unwittingly be involved. Plus one special and vital characteristic. Malcolm needs someone with an understanding and hatred of illegal drugs.

Identification of the other members was a classic demonstration of how many different ways exist to skin the proverbial cat. Recruitment could be tedious, with cunning procedures and complex schemes and a thousand little traps. The overwhelming majority would eventually present a deal-breaker negative and result in failure. Dead ends, with wasted time and effort.

Alternatively, recruitment could be simple and straightforward. A matter of relying on others to do preliminary screening, in the process eliminating 99 percent of possible candidates.

Malcolm logically chose the simple and straightforward approach. He logically relied upon others. The staff of the Arizona Republic.

After almost two weeks of daily review of obituaries, a likely candidate appeared in the Wednesday March 9th paper. Natasha Mosley, age 19. Services were pending at Olive Avenue Baptist Church in the northwestern inner city. Her mother Maria Mosley and two uncles were listed as next of kin.

Page 3 of the Local News section contained a coldly impersonal summary of tragic events. Two black males age 19 and 20 were arrested for illegal possession of a firearm and armed assault following a brief gunfight in a dilapidated vacant house on West Osborne Street, 7 blocks from the girl's house. Preliminary police reports indicate shooting broke out when a gathering was interrupted by two brothers of the victim's mother. The investigation is continuing and the prosecutor expects to file additional charges.

Shortly after 1 o'clock Monday afternoon Natasha walked east on Ontario Street from her home to the bus stop at North 7th Avenue, on her way downtown to an afternoon accounting class. Natasha never reached the bus stop, one block from her modest home.

Her mother and both uncles had been on her front porch, discussing a transportation service for elderly members of their Church. They saw the abduction by two young black males in a chartreuse low-rider pick-up truck with shining spinner hubcaps. The two brothers engaged in hot pursuit, one on foot and the other in his truck.

Natasha was taken under the erroneous impression she was Woman Number 1 in the life of a competing drug distributor and gang leader and must be "taught a lesson". Her only sins had been similarities of build, complexion and hairstyle. For that, she was brutally abused and murdered.

One of the brothers was treated for a non-life threatening gunshot wound at a local hospital and released to his waiting brother. They and Maria remained at the emergency room of St. Luke's, waiting for the bitter end for her only child.

At the crime scene four other young men were facing possession and other criminal charges. All four sang like an Easter Morning Tabernacle choir, anxious to distance themselves from the gang-leader shooters while justifying their innocent presence. All had been drinking and smoking marihuana and crack. All had partaken in the pleasures of gang-bang sex, some three or four times, which they claimed was purely consensual.

Natasha died at 2:35 the next morning. The official cause of death was listed as a combination of multiple blunt trauma and internal bleeding, compounded by a drug overdose. They had held a rag over her mouth and stuffed Mexican black tar heroin up her nostrils to "get her in the mood to fuck". She'd been raped countless times, then beaten with the porcelain lid of the toilet tank.

Malcolm waited the shortest possible interval. Six days. On Tuesday March 15 he drove to the Olive Avenue Baptist Church and saw the name on the menu sign in front. At the very bottom, in modestly smaller letters, Pastor Ron Howard.

Per the phone book in the Jag, Pastor Howard lived next door in a small white stucco house. A dented 30 year-old full-sized Oldsmobile was parked in the drive.

An older black man answered Malcolm's knock. Age 60 or more, with wiry salt-and-pepper hair, a quick wide smile, brilliant white teeth and an aura in the eyes, a radiation of goodness at its most basic level. A genuinely good man. A man of God, obvious even at first glance to any and all who knew how to look.

Malcolm quietly introduced himself. A white man who cared and wanted to help however he could because he has something in common with Maria. Pastor Howard invited him into the small kitchen with its modest Formica-top table and well-worn chairs.

Malcolm spoke of his own painful experience and how similar it was to that of Ms. Mosely. Then they spoke of the church. Malcolm became more open, talking about his years in Indiana when he owned his consulting firm. Of all the work he'd done in all the years, the seven best jobs were the ones he'd done for inner city black churches. They gave by far the lowest pay and by far the highest personal satisfaction.

Malcolm described a call from the building committee chairman of Primrose Street Baptist Church. They wanted to build another addition to expand the pre-school childcare area and shelter the main entrance from the weather. Another opportunity to apply one of Malcolm's basic rules of life. Take what you need and give back what you can.

Malcolm's plans were very detailed because he knew without asking how this addition would be built. He met with the committee on a Saturday morning. Eight black men doing the best they could for themselves and their church.

The drawings were examined at length and judgment was rendered. The chairman had worked in construction all of his life. He knew construction and he knew plans and these were really good, really detailed. He could build this.

Another man spoke up. He'd laid blocks before. He would lay up the block walls. Then a third man. He'd done framing before. He would help with the framing. And a fourth. He'd never done any construction but he'd help too. He would mix mortar and mule lumber and help the ones with experience. Each spoke in their turn. All with the same message. What they would do to help.

This addition would be built like all the others. By the church members, during long hot summer evenings after work and on Saturdays. They'd save money. The members did everything they could but there was never enough money.

Money was scarce for those people but they found a way to expand their church so it could better serve their people. They didn't have money so they gave something else, far more valuable; they gave themselves, their time and effort and sweat.

The plans were free, of course. There was no charge except the cost of making prints. About $60, a way for them to retain dignity and not take cash handouts from someone who had already helped. He was honored, Malcolm told them. It was an honor to be given the opportunity to help.

The last of the seven churches, completed only a year or so before, had been totally destroyed by a freak tornado the day before Thanksgiving. Malcolm drove to the site, found the Pastor in a daze walking through the debris and quietly said:

"I'll help you rebuild your church. Whatever it takes"

Of all the jobs Malcolm had done over the years, those seven inner-city black churches were the ones he still remembered. The satisfaction of being able to help and give back to those in need.

Pastor Howard responded a number of times with nods and warm smiles. He understood, for he too was a giver. He had lived his entire life giving everything he had to give.

Somehow people are always able to recognize their own kind. Pastor Howard recognized that here in front of him at his kitchen table sat another good man.

The discussion eventually turned to Ms. Mosley. She'd taken it very badly. She's active in the Church and is treasurer. She'd called Pastor Howard from the hospital. He'd been with her when Natasha died.

Maria is back at work, in an inner-city counseling service sponsored by the Baptist Church northwest of downtown. Pastor Howard would call and tell her Malcolm would like to come over and talk.

The counseling office was a storefront operation, low-key and low-budget. Maria was in her cramped office with a battered gray metal desk and two equally battered blue chairs in front. An office that doubled as a counseling room when the bigger front room was in use.

Maria was wary at first. Some total stranger white man coming in off the street to talk about Natasha and senseless death and violence and suffering and illegal drugs. But Pastor Howard had said he had gone through a similar ordeal. And that Malcolm seemed to be a genuinely good man; there was something about him.

She started out cool and then she warmed. First to the subject of personal loss and then to Malcolm. He'd suffered too, horribly. Over a year now, and he's still suffering. His wonderful wife, who would never have gotten within two hundred feet of any kind of drugs. Gunned down like an animal on a Saturday afternoon on the sidewalk along a busy street.

He remembered there was so much blood everywhere. All over her and him and there was a huge pool of her blood on the sidewalk. He'd been hit too, just as he pushed her down. He'd tried to lie on top of her and shelter her from the guns. His wound wasn't serious. The right thigh. He hadn't even realized it until a medic told him. She had been shot in the hip and lung and stomach.

He'd held her tight and pushed on her, as if that might somehow stop all her blood from gushing out. He hugged her and held her and kissed her forehead and told her how much he loved her and to hang on. The medics were coming. They would help her and she'd be all right.

The medics came but she wasn't all right. She lived in terrible pain and agony for six months and then she died.

The drugs. It was always the drugs. Maria saw the results every day in her counseling. She'd experienced personal tragedy too, with Natasha. And before that with her husband. A good man who lost his personal wars against discrimination and alcohol and then crack cocaine.

Maria knew all too well and she was adamant, almost defiant. Something needed to be done. It was all so terrible. So many lives destroyed or snuffed out. And all the wives and children who were hurt so badly.

She knew something had to be done. It's too late for Natasha, but it isn't too late for the next victims.

Malcolm would like to meet again and talk more about how they can help. He has a plan to stop the drugs and their horrible results and help people who suffer. They will work together and make a real difference.

A small group, six people. As a team they'll do things the police and courts and churches and counselors can't do. He'd like her to be a member of the team and fight the drugs and help people and make a positive difference.

The team will be private. No government. No police, restricted by their bureaucracy and bulging books full of rules and proper procedures. No lenient courts whose hands are completely tied by stare decisis, which requires that prior rulings of higher courts be followed regardless of logic or consequences or lack of common sense.

The legislatures and courts are largely responsible, with their protection of the guilty at the expense of victims. That emphasis works like a cancer, constantly growing and eating away at civilized society. Defendants have lots of rights. Victims have no rights at all. That's why we call them victims.

And that's why the same offenders are able to do the same thing, over and over. Some of them have been arrested a dozen times and they're still out on the streets hustling drugs. The courts are not the answer. The courts are part of the problem.

And the prisons, for offenders who are convicted and sentenced. Prisons don't rehabilitate, they only teach how to not get caught next time. Prisons are nothing more than vocational schools to educate prisoners in the ways of crime. Upon release, almost all the dealers are immediately back on the streets, committing more crimes and hustling more drugs.

A radically different approach is required. Malcolm's team will follow that different path and remove drug lords from the streets.

The important issue is how to prevent their being more victims, not how to help the people after they become victims. Counseling is a great help but it comes too late. The answer is in stopping drug lords before they create more victims and ruin more lives.

The methods of the team will be unorthodox. They will not be constrained like the police and courts and man's laws. Some of their acts will be illegal. By man's laws, the ones that don't work.

But maybe not illegal by God's laws. Perhaps what God really intends. A solution to the drug problems and a way to help others. And Maria could be a member of the team and help.

For Maria, morality will be the paramount issue. She absolutely believes in the word of God and the Commandments. She will need to resolve her personal conflicts and feel it's the right thing for her to do, in conformance with God's will.

Malcolm invited her to discuss the morality of his plan. All the other team members will be there. She'll meet them all and they'll talk as long as they want. Then she can decide if she wants to be a member.

More discussion, and then it was settled. Maria will come to the meeting at Malcolm's suite next Saturday with an open heart and an open mind. They'll spend the entire day discussing the morality of Malcolm's plan.

And Malcolm knew. Above all else, Maria has an overwhelming need to help other people. In the end, she will seize the opportunity to help make Phoenix a safer and better place to live.

Chapter 18

2008-02-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

Saturday, March 19th. Almost 4 weeks since Malcolm hiked out of the Havasaupi Reservation and set out on his mission. The afternoon began with a series of knocks on Malcolm's door. At five- minute intervals, to avoid arousing curiosity at the front desk. In the interim, Malcolm's guests politely examined several stacks of books on the floor of the small living room.

Malcolm made informal introductions, first names only. Roy, a homebuilder who for a time tried to bury his grief in cocaine after watching his wife die. Al, a Vietnamese computer expert. The only member who hasn't experienced firsthand the downside of illegal drugs. Steve, a former drama student who's seen the harsh effects of drugs all around, including the death of his closest friend. Ed, a creative mechanic and victim of sick crimes that drug users commit. Maria, who deals with the effects of drugs daily as a counselor and who's been kicked twice by drugs. First by an addicted husband and then by the death of her daughter. Marilyn, present in the photograph on top the unused television. A master teacher who would never have considered using drugs but had been killed by them.

A few details of Malcolm's life. Engineering school, a Masters degree in business, a law degree and over thirty years consulting, dealing with commercial real estate across the country.

A brief explanation. Six months have passed. It's time to get on with life and do something positive. Help future victims by doing what government refuses to do in its so-called War on Drugs. And help people like Marilyn and Roy's wife who are forced to suffer terrible pain because of mean-spirited, self-righteous hypocrites in responsible positions in government.

Over the past few months Malcolm developed a plan. How the team will stop the drugs. They will perform a civic duty by making Phoenix a safer and better place to live. And protect future victims. And help people in pain. Extracting revenge wisely wasn't mentioned.

The six of them will become a tightly knit team. Together they will fight illegal drugs and people in high places who publicly decry the evils of drugs while privately condoning, facilitating and encouraging their use.

The team will act privately. The police cannot do the job. Their hands are tied and they cannot be effective. Just one result of forty years of senseless judicial rulings, from the Supreme Court on down. Rulings that protect drug dealers, spit on the victims and deny justice to all. As an old lawyer friend once explained:

"A court of law should never be confused with a hall of justice, for those are two totally different things altogether."

"Today we'll look at three aspects. Social acceptance, legality and morality."

"But first the extremely important issue of sufficient knowledge. In far too many cases we don't have adequate information to make an intelligent decision about what we should do. This leads to one of the most basic guiding principles of life:

We must always have information sufficient to assure we are about to do the right thing.

"The problem is, we always have some information but seldom know the information we have is not sufficient. We don't know the unknown. So the unknown must be learned, in order for us to make rational and morally correct decisions. A variant of the problem inherent in proving a negative. Trying to prove that something does not exist. Lack of evidence of existence by itself does not support a definitive conclusion of non-existence."

"Here's a good example of drawing incorrect conclusions because of insufficient knowledge. Henry owned a two-story building built in 1886 near downtown Indianapolis. The second floor was originally a workingman's hotel with about 10 tiny sleeping rooms on each side of a central hall with common bathrooms at each end. The sleeping rooms had unreliable steam heat, no insulation, no plumbing, no air conditioning and limited electric service. Henry rented the rooms by the month, only to elderly women whose income consisted only of minimum social security payments."

"A few years ago Henry, knowing full well that his elderly tenants had very little money and nowhere else to go, increased the rent by a whopping 33 percent. Now the question. Was Henry a slumlord who took advantage of the elderly women? We would immediately say yes."

"Now one more fact. That 33 percent increase followed a big increase in social security payments. Henry pled his case and apologized while explaining he had no choice because everything was getting so expensive."

"Henry raised the rent by 33 percent. To eight dollars. The rent had been six dollars a month and he raised it by two dollars. He charged eight dollars for housing that anywhere else would have cost at least $150 a month, assuming other housing was available at all. His way of giving back to his community and helping those in need. Henry increased the rent by two dollars to eliminate guilt feelings some of the women had about taking advantage of him."

"The question remains the same but our answer changes. Henry wasn't taking advantage of those elderly women. He was helping them while preserving their dignity. A great example of the problems of making judgments based upon incomplete information. Especially moral judgments."

"Let's start with societal issues, because this is the easiest part. Violent deaths of violent drug lords would be widely supported by a majority of civilians and would receive applause and wholehearted support from an overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers. And to some extent would conform with stated objectives of government leaders. For example William J. Bennett, the Drug Czar and top federal drug law enforcement officer under Bush, publicly declared that no trial should be required before killing citizens suspected of dealing drugs. Suspected, as in without need for proof. The next day Bennett said drug dealers "deserve to die".

"In 1990, former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates told the U.S. Senate the casual drug user should be taken out and shot. Because cooler and saner heads prevailed, the lives of 2 million Los Angeles residents were mercifully spared.

Gates later emphasized that he was not being facetious and declared marijuana users to be guilty of treason. Gates was the founder and designer of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program called DARE, a program repeatedly proven to be ineffective that spends $212 million annually educating students about drugs in 75 percent of America's schools.

"In the field of medicine, assume a person falls ill. Tests reveal cancer. Surgery is done and a portion of the body is removed. I submit the evils of drugs are a cancer upon our society and must be removed. Surgically exorcised from the body of society."

"A similar solution applies in animal control. A child is attacked by a frenzied dog that's frothing at the mouth. The dog is tested and found to be rabid. The child is treated and the dog is killed. I submit drug dealers are a form of rabies that infects our society and must be dealt with in the same way. Eliminated, before they infect other innocent people."

"Let's move to the field of law and two ugly examples of how our legal system makes things worse instead of better, by rewarding the guilty while punishing the innocent. First case. In the hall during class break, a high school football player grabbed the head of a female student and pulled her toward his crotch. According to reports, the two often flirted and both were laughing at the time. The incident was reported to school officials, who immediately investigated."

"They also reported the incident to police as a case of sexual harassment. The County Attorney, on the basis of police reports prepared after more thorough investigation, decided the incident was more serious. He filed charges against two school officials for failing to report the incident to police as child abuse. The abuser received a three-day suspension. The athletic director and assistant principal who honestly tried to do the right thing face felony charges, dismissal, registration as sex offenders and total destruction of their professional careers."

"A classic example of the legal system at its worst. A system that punishes the innocent while excusing the guilty."

"Even worse are cases where the law actually kills the innocent. Like Mr. Hamblin. He was shot in the neck and killed while vacuuming the family sedan in a self-service car wash after being robbed of all his money. Three dollars and change."

"The day after her husband's funeral, the widow obtained a copy of the killer's police record. That record was 49 pages long. The killer was out on the streets despite repeated crimes and repeated probation violations that by the state's own rules should have landed him back in jail."

"The widow filed suit against the state for failure to properly supervise and administer the killer's probation. The state offered a settlement of $1,000 to compensate her for any 'unfortunate inconvenience she may have encountered', specifically the death of her husband. The state later upped its offer to $100,000 and then to $150,000. The amounts the state estimated it would spend on legal fees at trial defending against her claim."

"Examples of how the criminal justice system actually works. A system that punishes the innocent while doing nothing to protect them."

"But in theory, the law supports my position, through long-established rules regarding self-defense."

"Let's start with the Law of Necessity or Lesser Evils Defense. A codification of the moral concept of greater and lesser evils. This defense to criminal charges is based on the principle that society will excuse or even justify personal conduct that otherwise would be illegal, if that conduct was necessary to avoid a greater evil. A reflection of society's understanding that sometimes forces beyond a person's control can create a situation where the person must choose between breaking the law or allowing a greater evil to occur. In these situations violation of the law is legally excused and the person is held innocent of criminal charges."

"Let's use landlord Henry as an example. Henry is out walking and sees an unattended small child drowning in a backyard swimming pool. The pool is behind a fence which has a 'No Trespassing' sign posted."

"Henry's alternatives are to obey the law against trespassing and allow the child to drown or violate the trespassing law and save the child's life. Violation of the law by trespassing is clearly the lesser evil compared to allowing the child to drown. So Henry's breaking the trespassing law by climbing over the fence to save the child's life is legally excused."

"Under federal law a defendant must establish four elements to be protected by the Necessity or Lesser Evils defense. The defendant must establish:"

That he was faced with a choice of evils and chose the lesser evil:

That he acted in order to prevent imminent harm:

That he reasonably anticipated a causal relation between his conduct and the harm to be avoided, and:

That no other legal alternatives were available other than breaking the law.

"I suggest removal of drug lords from Phoenix streets satisfies all four legal requirements. One, elimination of a drug lord is a lesser evil as compared to allowing him to continue destroying lives, including bystanders like Marilyn and wives and children of people who otherwise would become addicted."

"Two, this harm to innocent people is imminent, based on past results and continuing conduct of the drug lord."

"Three, the causal relationship between elimination of the drug lord and saving innocent people is clearly understood."

"Finally, given the continuing failure of law enforcement at all levels to remove drug lords from the streets after over 30 years of the so-called 'War on Drugs', no viable legal alternatives are available."

"Lets get into the issue of self-defense. The law recognizes self-defense as a legitimate defense to criminal charges, even murder. A modern codification of an ancient rule carried over from England and included in America's Constitution. A man's home is his castle. If someone breaks into your home or even comes into your home uninvited through an unlocked door you are legally entitled to use necessary physical force to expel him. If you reasonably feel sufficiently threatened you are legally entitled to use deadly force. The intruder came into your home, he appeared threatening, he had a gun, so you pulled out your gun and shot and killed him. A finding of justifiable homicide is issued by a grand jury and no charges are filed. An example of the legitimacy of self-defense."

"The basic concept also applies to places other than the home. On a public street, if someone uses force against you or if you feel sufficiently threatened that he'll immediately use force, you're legally entitled to resist, with force as necessary, including lethal force if necessary."

"The rule also applies to threats to others. For example, you see a man wearing a ski mask pointing a gun at a woman. You are entitled to use force to protect her even though she may be a perfect stranger. The criminal has a gun so you're entitled to use your gun. If you feel the woman is in imminent danger you are entitled to shoot first. Again, you are legally entitled to use force, including lethal force."

"But the law fails society with its 'imminent' requirement. The situation our laws do not condone is the threat of force at some unknown time in the future. That situation is too nebulous or speculative for the law. Citizens are not legally allowed to use force against a criminal, even though it is certain he will again act in a violent manner at some future time. Even though the criminal has a long history of violence and even though every shred of common sense dictates that he will do so again and again."

"The law doesn't even allow you to take the initiative and use physical force against someone who threatens to kill you. Mere threats are not sufficient. The law requires you wait until the aggressor makes some physical move to carry out his plan before you act to defend yourself. And then it may well be too late. You behave like a 100 percent law-abiding citizen. You obey the law 100 percent. And you wind up lying in a casket in a funeral home, 100 percent dead."

Chapter 19

2008-02-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

Between countries, the law of self-defense is different. International law holds that treaties between nations are not suicide pacts. One customary right of long standing is the right of anticipatory self-defense. Simply stated, every nation is entitled to strike first when the danger posed is instant and overwhelming and leaves no choice of means and no moment for deliberation. Malcolm's explanations overlooked recent unilateral expansion of that doctrine, which provides that America but only America can strike first if some undefined danger might possibly be posed at some undefined time in the future, as indicated by deliberately falsified intelligence.

An example of legitimate application of the doctrine. Iraq’s nuclear program began with an IRT-5000 research reactor purchased from Russia in 1963. The reactor began operating in 1969 for power generation. A much more ambitious program began in 1976 with purchase of a French materials testing reactor named Osiraq, a combination of Osiris, the Egyptian God of the Dead, and Iraq. Osiraq would have allowed extraction of weapons-grade plutonium. By the middle of 1981 construction at the al-Tuweitha facility in Salman Bak, about 11 miles southeast of Baghdad, was substantially complete and the reactor was ready for loading of fuel rods.

With help from photos taken by America's National Reconnaissance Office spy satellites, Israel intelligence confirmed Iraq’s intent to produce nuclear weapons at Osiraq. In view of Saddam Hussein's numerous pronouncements that a state of war existed with the country, Israel exercised its right of anticipatory self-defense. On the afternoon of Sunday June 7th, six F-16 Eagle fighter escorts for eight F-15 Falcon fighter-bombers, each carrying two 1000-kilogram bombs, left Etzion Air Force Base in the southern part of Israel, flew at low altitudes over Jordan and Saudi Arabia and bombed Osiraq with surgical precision. The plant was demolished, with no reported civilian casualties. Although, as too often happens, the strike was both a tactical success and strategic failure. A $400 million program run by 400 scientists was destroyed and replaced with a $10 billion underground program run by 7,000 scientists.

Until recently, the international law of anticipatory self-defense did not apply to national leaders. Publicly, tacit agreements held that political leaders, no matter how evil, were exempt from assassination.

The rule against assassinating leaders was imposed by the leaders of the most powerful countries. A variant of the golden rule. He who has the gold gets to make up the rule. In this case he who has prestige and the power of political control, but the principle is the same. A law of self-protection imposed by the powerful against the weak.

That prohibition never applied to some fourth-rate tin-pot third-world dictators, notably Fidel Castro. According to the retired head of the Cuban Secret Service, there have been 678 attempts to assassinate Castro, most sponsored by the CIA. They included a mysterious beard-removing powder, exploding fake mollusks, exploding cigars, poisoned cigars, milkshakes, handkerchiefs, tea and coffee, various poison pills, a fungus-infected wet suit and several shooters, one of whom got within several feet of Castro with a clear line of sight with a gun hidden inside his camera. Castro survived all 678 and has been in office 46 years, through the administrations of 10 American presidents.

Privately, America has not honored the rule prohibiting assassination or overthrow of national leaders. And always, the wrong leaders have been targeted for removal for the wrong reasons. The CIA, on behalf of the country that champions freedom and democracy around the globe, has targeted a number of democratically elected leaders who placed paramount importance on serving the best interests of their people. They were assassinated or overthrown because, in the process of making life better for their citizens, they threatened the financial interests of American corporations. The CIA always takes the side of the rich in fighting against the poor. Ho Chi Minh and the tragedy of Vietnam was not an aberration, but rather one in a long series.

Malcolm offered a number of examples. In 1953, the CIA converted Iran from a developing democracy to a dictatorship. Muhammad Mussadegh genuinely cared about the well being of his country's people. He peacefully fought for independence from Britain and personal freedom, social justice and democracy for his people. In the process, Mussadegh stood against British and American imperialism by demanding fair compensation for his country's oil, which literally bubbled up out of the ground with a production cost of about $0.25 per barrel. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, was forced to appoint Mussadegh Prime Minister in 1951 after he convinced Parliament to nationalize the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

In response, British intelligence and the CIA labeled Mussadegh a communist and fomented a political crisis and coup. Through Operation AJAX, Mussadegh was overthrown, tried for treason and imprisoned. The Shah returned to power and returned control of Iran's oil fields to Britain.

In Guatemala, a harsh dictatorship was overthrown in 1944 in a coup led by two young military officers, Jacobo Arbenz and Francisco Javier Arana. They stepped aside and allowed the election of a civilian president in 1945. Legalization of free speech, political parties and labor unions followed. Arbenz was elected president in a landslide election in 1951 and continued progressive social change, concentrating on land reform.

In 1945 only 2.2 percent of the population controlled 70 percent of arable land, of which only 12 percent was being used. Rockefeller-controlled United Fruit Company was the country's biggest landholder and controlled the country's only railroad, power generation plant, telegraph company and Atlantic port. United Fruit held the entire country in its fist and squeezed the native population, who were virtual slaves to Rockefeller financial interests. In 1953 and 1954 Guatemala initiated a land reform program modeled after the American Homestead Act of 1862.

The government expropriated 400,000 acres of uncultivated United Fruit land and distributed it to 100,000 landless peasants. Guatemala offered to pay $525,000, the value United Fruit had publicly declared for tax purposes. United demanded payment of $15.8 million and lobbied the American government for action.

In 1954 the CIA undertook Operation SUCCESS, using psychological, diplomatic, economic and paramilitary efforts. In June 1954 Arbenz was overthrown and replaced by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. The new military dictator declared an emergency, suspended civil liberties, shut down the free press and cancelled elections. He was hailed as "Liberator" of the Guatemalan people by the CIA.

Vice-President Nixon visited Guatemala in 1955 and declared:

"This is the first instance in history where a Communist government has been replaced by a free one."

Land reform stopped, United Fruit was given back its land, 75 percent of voters were disenfranchised and unions, political parties, peasant organizations and opposition newspapers were outlawed. Armas was inept, corrupt and murdered by his presidential guard 3 years later. About 200,000 civilians died during armed insurrections against a long series of right-wing military governments. The military was responsible for about 93 percent of those deaths. A peace accord was signed in 1996.

In 1885 the King of Belgium claimed the Congo as his personal property and used natives as slave labor to loot the country of gold, diamonds and minerals. All rural natives not slaving in the King's mines were forced to grow rubber. The few who refused were forced to watch the King's goons use machetes to amputate the hands and feet of their children.

The Congolese National Movement rebelled and won independence in July 1960 under the leadership of Patrice Lumumba, who was elected Prime Minister. He fought for economic and political independence and social justice and was one of the most honest and dedicated public figures in Africa. His uncompromising fight against colonialism and dedication to building a nation in opposition to imperialist intervention served as a model for nationalists around the world.

This attitude threatened established financial interests. Belgium destabilized the country with help from the CIA, which made Lumumba's removal a prime and urgent objective, by coup if necessary. Then President Eisenhower ordered Lumumba's assassination, which was carried out by military firing squad.

After 5 years of turmoil the brutal and corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko staged a coup, with American support. He renamed the country Zaire and ruled over his impoverished and starving people. Mobutu was America's closest ally in Africa for 32 years before fleeing to Europe in 1997 with $5 billion in personal assets he stole from his country.

In the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo stole the 1930 election and ruled with an iron thumb for 30 years, with enthusiastic American support. He amassed a huge fortune and eventually controlled 60 percent of the national economy, which threatened American business interests. He was assassinated in 1961.

Juan Bosch was elected in 1962. He was pro-business and anti-Communist but supported land reform, civil liberties, education and health care. These leanings threatened American business interests. The CIA engineered his overthrow 7 months later and installed a repressive right-wing junta.

After four military coups in 3 years, a 1965 rebellion sought to return Bosch to power. That was crushed when President Johnson sent 23,000 Marines in to restore order. Under a series of right-wing governments the rich got richer while poverty and police brutality soared.

Indonesia declared independence at the end of World War II after 350 years of Dutch colonial rule and 3 years of Japanese occupation. Sukarno, who believed in western ideals of democracy, led the independence movement and became the first president.

American support of Indonesian rebels in 1958 pushed Sukarno closer to Red China. America spent the next 7 years trying to depose him because he declared neutrality in the Cold War. Sukarno was replaced during a military coup in 1965 by General Haji Mohammad Suharto, who had defected to the Japanese and fought against his own people during World War II. As a direct result of Suharto taking power, 250,000 citizens were killed.

With American support, Suharto privatized natural resources, sold state-owned companies and encouraged western investment. He also eliminated unions and the free press and massacred at least a half-million of his people. When forced to resign in 1998, he was the world's most corrupt leader and the world's sixth richest person, with a $16 billion fortune.

In Greece in 1967, the CIA backed a military coup days before presidential elections in which a liberal candidate who refused to vigorously support American interests was heavily favored. The King was sent into exile. A military junta immediately suspended elections and the constitution, dissolved political parties, labor unions and rights to demonstrate and imposed martial law and censorship. In the first month, 8,000 political opponents were murdered or tortured, to "save the country from a communist takeover".

American muscle has consistently been used to overthrow populist movements that advocate humanitarian principles rather than maximization of profits for American corporations. This policy was clearly expressed by President Johnson shortly after the 1967 coup, when he summoned the Greek ambassador to the White House and, having mustered every last available ounce of diplomacy, tactfully suggested:

"Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution."

"We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long."

Chapter 20

2008-02-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

Under President Reagan, plausible denial became less plausible, although he declared himself in compliance with his Executive Order 12333, which banned assassinations of world leaders. In 1986 Reagan pointed to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, declared self-defense to be not only a right but also a duty, and authorized Operation El Dorado Canyon against Libya because intelligence established that Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi was sponsoring terrorism.

On the evening of April 14th, 28 refueling tankers, 4 airborne command and control planes and 17 electronic countermeasure aircraft supported 24 F-111Fs from the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing at Lakenheath, England and 14 A-6 strike aircraft from the carriers Coral Sea and America. Their mission was to bomb five sites in Libya.

Five of the F-111s hit the el-Azziziya barracks with sixteen 2,000-pound Paveway laser-guided smart bombs. The barracks outside Tripoli included Qadhafi's private retreat, Splendid Gate.

In accordance with established American policy, Qadhafi was not killed. But only because he was sleeping in a Bedouin-style tent in the courtyard. Sixteen civilians were killed, including his 15-month old adopted daughter Hana. Qadhafi's wife and eight of his other children were injured and hospitalized because they were sleeping inside the barracks.

Qadhafi became paranoid, suffered a mental breakdown and has never been able to fully function since. For the last 19 years Qadhafi has never slept inside a building. He sleeps outside, in a different location every night, so he will see and hear the American planes coming.

This operation was the longest bomber run ever flown in combat. Partially because permission to fly over France was denied. During the course of the mission, the French Embassy in Tripoli and several nearby residential buildings were "inadvertently" bombed.

America became more brazen under President Bush the elder with his cynically named OPERATION JUST CAUSE, the military invasion of Panama. General Omar Torrijos, who became president of Panama in 1968, was the first national leader to represent the interests of all citizens. He opened schools, instituted economic and social reforms, created job opportunities for the less fortunate, redistributed land to the poor and prosecuted the country's powerful and wealthy families.

In 1981, President Torrijos rebelled against demands of the new Reagan administration and threatened to destroy the Panama Canal if America invaded his country.

The uncooperative president of Panama died when his plane mysteriously exploded in mid-air on July 31, 1981, three months after the uncooperative president of nearby Ecuador died when his plane mysteriously exploded in mid-air.

Arnulfo Arias, whose political party harbored "dangerous elements of ultra-nationalism", would have won the presidential election in 1984 but, through widespread fraud and violence, the election was stolen by General Manuel Noriega. American Secretary Of State George Shultz visited Panama soon after and praised Noriega's unique style of democracy.

General Noriega was a dictator who literally was created by the CIA. He had been recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959 as a teenage military cadet. He was added to the CIA payroll in 1966. He became a valued CIA asset in 1968 following a coup when he took control of Panama's intelligence service and secret police.

The CIA learned he was dealing drugs in 1972. In 1976, then-CIA Director George Bush increased Noriega's salary to $100,000 annually.

In the 1980s his account at the Panama City branch of the corrupt BCCI bank swelled to $33 million. Partially because he supported America's Contra fighters in Nicaragua and partially because in 1982 he had licensed Pablo Escobar of Colombia to ship cocaine through Panama, at $100,000 per load.

Knowledge that Noriega was up to his eyeballs in the illegal drug trade was overlooked in 1986 when the Director of DEA praised Noriega for his "vigorous anti-drug trafficking policy". In 1987 Attorney General Meese intervened to stop a Justice Department investigation of Noriega's involvement with drugs.

Then the American government learned Noriega was double-dealing, by providing intelligence to Cuba and the Sandinistas, the political party being fought by American-supported Contras in Nicaragua. In 1988 Noriega was indicted in Miami for illegal drug activities prior to 1984, when he was owned by the CIA.

Shortly after taking office in 1989, President Bush signed a top-secret "finding" authorizing the CIA to spend $10 million to overthrow Noriega. Those efforts were unsuccessful. More drastic action was required and promptly undertaken. Panama was invaded on December 20, 1989. Between 3,000 and 5,000 civilians were killed and about 25,000 were left homeless as a result of the largest urban airborne attack since World War II.

Noriega was arrested by a DEA agent who was later imprisoned for stealing laundered drug money. Noriega was kidnapped, flown to Miami, tried on drug charges and sentenced to 40 years. At the time, he was the only person in America officially classified as a prisoner of war.

After the invasion, Panama became a major cocaine trans-shipment point, tax haven and drug money laundering center. As of 2005 Panama, with a population slightly over 3 million, was host to 39 local and 34 international banks and 350,000 offshore-registered corporations. More than any country except Hong Kong and the Virgin Islands.

Under international pressure, Panama criminalized money laundering in 2000. In the following 5 years, one conviction was obtained.

The CIA was created by Congress in 1947. In December, they were given a mandate to manage America's efforts in the Cold War, by instructions to prevent a Communist victory in the 1948 Italian elections. Methods were not specified or restricted. The only limitation imposed was "don't get caught". Through unspecified methods, the CIA was successful.

In June 1948, the covert action arm of the CIA was formally established, with the innocent-sounding name Office of Policy Coordination. OPC became a private army totally devoid of oversight with authority to engage in sabotage and overthrow governments, so long as plausible deniability was maintained.

The CIA availed themselves of this authority with relish and zeal. In mid-1949 the CIA had about 300 employees and 7 field stations overseas. Three years later the CIA had 4,000 employees and 47 overseas field stations. During that period the covert actions budget grew from $4.7 million to $82 million.

By 1953 the CIA had 7,200 employees and major covert action programs underway in 48 countries. OPC accounted for 74 percent of the CIA budget. The CIA sponsored one coup per year in Laos, installed "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti, overthrew both Jose Velasco and Arosemena in Ecuador, overthrew the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart in Brazil, overthrew Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia, overthrew Juan Torres in Bolivia and overthrew and assassinated Salvador Allende in Chile. Between 1945 and 2003, the CIA attempted to overthrow over 40 foreign governments, destroy over 30 major populist movements and assassinate 35 foreign heads of state or major political leaders. In the process, 25 countries were bombed.

In every one of those countries, the CIA sought to replace democracy with dictatorship. Tentative declarations of desire for economic independence or attempts to bring about social progress were labeled communism and destroyed. Publicly, America was deterring communism. In practice, America was deterring participative democracy and economic progress. In every one of those 48 countries, the CIA worked to replace democracy with dictatorships that would support American financial interests at the expense of the native population.

Venezuela is today's prime example. Washington warnings of the grave threat to world oil prices and regional stability posed by Hugo Chavez should be recognized as unadulterated government propaganda.

Chavez, who was raised in a thatched palm leaf house, was elected in 1998. He initiated a program of participative government he called democratic socialism, to benefit all citizens, based on solidarity, dignity and respect for human rights, including economic rights. Opportunities rather than welfare and oppression were provided. Predatory forms of capitalism that exploit the citizens were to be contained. Chavez believes government should enable poor as well as rich citizens and should support rather than crush their aspirations. That government has some responsibility for the well-being of its people. In America, this concept is labeled communism

His 1999 constitution was approved and he was reelected in 2000. His popularity and early successes horrified and terrified the rich, who opposed all efforts to help the poor gain self-sufficiency. In April 2002 he was ousted in a military coup. After two days of massive demonstrations he was restored to office.

In 1980 about 18 percent of Venezuelans lived in poverty. After years of Reagan-Bush foreign policies, that number reached 65 percent in 1995, when poverty was defined as an income of less than $2 per day. The poverty level was 62 percent when Chavez took office. Since 1998 in America, real incomes have shrunk and more Americans have sunk into poverty every year. In Venezuela under seven years of Chavez leadership, employment expanded and the poverty rate decreased from 62 percent to 19.

This reflects astounding progress. Public awareness that poverty can be decreased by an effective, unselfish government interested primarily in helping all of its people rather than only the richest is the only threat Chavez poses to regional stability.

The risk to Washington and America's elite, that Americans will catch on and demand similarly fair and supportive treatment from their government, is dire.

American jobs are being exported or otherwise eliminated by the millions. Venezuela has created a number of low-overhead worker-managed factories and co-ops, manned by energetic workers who enthusiastically pull together for their common good. They expect to drive foreign enterprises out of business through free and fair competition. Yet another threat to Washington.

America's public schools are failing. The illiteracy rate is 21 percent nationally and 36 percent in Washington. College has become unaffordable. Among United Nations members, America ranks 49th in literacy. About 40 percent of Americans read at or below the fifth grade level. Roughly 60 percent of Americans have never read an entire book. Only 6 percent read one or more books per year.

Under Chavez, Venezuela deployed the military to construct over three thousand schools in rural areas and urban slums, staffed with volunteer teachers. All student fees were abolished and the right to education was included in the new Constitution. In three years, school attendance increased by 25 percent. Last year, 1.2 million adults learned to read and write. Venezuela has achieved almost 100 percent literacy. Yet another threat to an American government that seeks to keep its citizens ignorant and uninformed.

In America, hundreds of safety nets are being eliminated, ostensibly to pay for war. In Venezuela, health care was made available for the first time to about 10 million people. In America, several oil giant oil companies were asked to provide humane aid for low-income American families Washington had abandoned to freeze to death. Exxon-Mobil, with sales totaling almost three times Venezuela's GNP, and all other oil companies, refused to help.

Through government-owned CITCO, Venezuela provides low-cost heating oil to over 400,000 low-income American families and donates heating oil to 163 American Indian tribes the American government has fraudulently impoverished. Some American oil companies actually lobbied Congress to pass a law making CITCO's assistance illegal.

Americans overwhelmingly live from one paycheck to the next, in a nation where the richest one percent own 50 percent of the nation's wealth and control most of the rest. Instead of blinding and faithfully believing everything their government tells them while sneering, yelling communist and rooting for Venezuelan failure, Americans should study Venezuela. And understand that, without basic economic justice and security, the hollowed phrase "with liberty and justice for all" is a hollow and meaningless mockery. Further, Americans must quickly learn that Washington leaders intentionally and unfairly deprive ordinary citizens of economic justice and security and then laugh behind their backs because Americans are such gullible dupes.

Chapter 21

2008-02-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

In recent years Israel has taken a more honest approach to the issue of anticipatory self-defense and now even publicly declares its intent to kill rebellious Palestinian leaders, as a form of determent. Earlier, they remained quiet. For example, they offered no comment following the 1996 death of Hamas field commander Yehya Ayyash, known as "The Engineer" because of his expertise in making bombs. Ayyash was responsible for a string of suicide bombings that killed over 100 Israeli civilians over a 2-year period. His career, skull and brains all terminated suddenly when his cell phone exploded when he answered an incoming call from a Mossad agent.

In June 2003 Israeli announced that Sheik Ahmed Yassin was "not immune" to assassination under its policy of "targeted interception". Yassin was a 66 year-old, 75 pound quadriplegic, fully paralyzed and partially blind and deaf.
Three months after that announcement Yassin was wounded when an Israeli Air Force F-16 dropped a bomb on his headquarters in Gaza City.

In March 2004 an Israeli helicopter suddenly appeared and fired three Hellfire missiles as his wheelchair was being pushed from a Mosque. Yassin, his two keepers and 7 assistants were killed instantly and 15 others were wounded.

Yassin's history explains why this assassination wasn't nearly as inhumane as it sounds. He was arrested in 1983 for possession of weapons and forming an underground organization but released in 1985 as part of a prisoner swap. He was arrested again in 1989 for inciting violence and ordering the killing of an Israeli soldier but released in 1997 in a trade for the release of Mossad agents imprisoned in Jordan.

Between prison terms, Yassin co-founded the Palestinian Wing of the Muslin Brotherhood, later called Hamas, and was their spiritual leader. This was in 1987, at the onset of the first Intifadeh, which sought to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation. After his 1997 prison release Yassin again became involved in terrorist operations through Hamas, the Arab acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement.

Sheik Ahmed Yassin was the godfather of suicide bombers in Israel, including young women and children. He once ordered a bomb strapped to the chest of an 11 year-old girl and had her sent out into a crowd of Israeli civilians, killing several. Hamas, under his guidance, has been responsible for more than 70 suicide attacks. Since his release from prison in 1997, Hamas terrorists staged 425 attacks, almost all bombings of innocent civilians. Those attacks killed 377 people and wounded 2,076. So Yassin was killed by the government of Israel, along with his two medical aides and seven bodyguards.

Given his personal history, Yassin's assassination was a justifiable application of anticipatory self defense, taken to protect innocent Israeli women and children. A choice of the lesser of two evils.

The assassination of Yassin was one battle in a larger war against Hamas. Five of its nine top leaders had been killed earlier. Yassin was replaced by Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi as Hamas leader in March 2004. Aziz was assassinated one month later.

In ancient Rome, the term homo sacer described a man no longer included in society or afforded its most basic protections. He could legally be killed by anyone. On the open seas beyond national boundaries, pirates can legally be hanged by the first persons to capture them. By modern international law, terrorists are classified as hostes humani generis, or common enemies of mankind, and can be captured and tried by any nation.

Because the Palestinians are unwilling or unable to arrest and prosecute these terrorists, no alternative legal remedies are available except assassination. That solution is the only way to provide justice to past victims and protect future ones. To Malcolm, the same logic applies to drug lords. They are enemies of mankind. Since America offers no effective legal remedies, private action is justified, appropriate, necessary and imperative.

Justified appropriate private action. A Malcolm code phrase for assassination.

"All these excellent attempts at legal justification may impress the naive or uninitiated. But they're really nothing more than excellent examples of hypothetical, theoretical, Harvard-quality classroom bullshit. There is no question my plan, which I call the Geronimo Option, is illegal as all hell."

Malcolm’s tempo slowed dramatically as he made intense eye contact with each of his guests. This point needed to be made very clear at the onset.

"Extremely illegal."

No one dashed for the door, heaved their cookies, blanched, fidgeted or even blinked funny, so Malcolm continued.
"But the crucial underlying issue is the personal issue of morality for each of us. Whether the plan, given the expected results, will conform to our personal value system and code of what is just and right. Whether we will be breaking God's laws or instead bringing about what God would hope for."
"Just as a court of law is not the same as a hall of justice, neither is legal the same as moral."

"Let's look at two simple examples that demonstrate the difference between legality and morality, which are similar to our examples of the lesser evils legal defense."

"One. A destitute elderly lady in Detroit is evicted in January because she doesn't have money to pay the rent. She is put out on the streets and promptly freezes to death."

"Her eviction may have been legal but it wasn't moral. Her eviction in effect placed a high value upon a relatively small sum of money and a low value upon the life of a human being."

"Now lets change the facts slightly. Our totally destitute lady goes to a market and shoplifts a package of lunch meat and a loaf of bread."

"She's committed a crime because the theft was illegal, but it wasn't immoral. Stealing enough food to survive when you have no money to pay is illegal but isn't immoral."

"Again, arresting her would in effect have placed a high value upon a very small sum of money and a low value upon the freedom of a human being."

"In both cases, the life and freedom of a human being, even a destitute and homeless elderly woman, should be of higher value than money for rent or food. So you see, legality and morality can be totally different and in some cases can be in direct opposition to each other."

"In both cases, the non-legal, humane and moral alternative would have been to overlook the legal violations and get her the help she desperately needs."

"These examples bring us to another extremely important question in life. Whether the results justify the means. In other words, if the end result is moral, are we justified in using illegal methods."

"In both these simple examples, the answer is clearly yes. Laws and societal rules morally can, should and must be broken when the result, like saving the woman's life, is morally just."

"I maintain that that the answer is yes as a general rule and specifically as applied to carrying out the Geronimo Option. The use of illegal methods will be morally justified because the end result will be moral, a clear positive for our society."

"Now we have reached the issue of the drug lords. They've used violence in the past, as standard operating procedure. The drug lords rule through the use of force. Their control is based on general knowledge that they will not hesitate to use force in the future, even deadly force, whenever necessary or even merely convenient. In the process, they ruin the lives of countless numbers of people through use of the drugs they sell, and the lives of countless innocent family members as well."

"So elimination of those drug lords will eliminate the source of violence and will also benefit the future victims and their innocent family members."

"As to surgical strikes that remove drug lords from our streets and society, the results clearly are moral, so I believe the means are morally justified, even though they are clearly illegal. Especially given that government refuses to act and we have no effective legal alternatives available to us."

"As to assurance that our Geronimo Option is an appropriate response, we need look no further than the office of the Vice President. Dick Cheney unilaterally explained his personal, modern version of the law of imminent harm when he spoke of the possibility of terrorist attacks under a worst case scenario:"

"If there is even a one percent chance that some state or group might do serious harm to the United States, then America must respond as if that threat were a certainty - with full force, preemptively."

"It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our power."

"Cheney included within the list of available options the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, based on unproven threats. Bottom line, per the National Security Strategy Report issued in September 2002, Bush and Cheney have granted unto themselves the exclusive right to bomb and kill anyone who is evil, per their fluctuating definition of evil, or anyone who potentially poses some type of undefined threat at some indefinite time in the future, based on little more than planted false evidence or unsubstantiated rumors."

"Cheney has declared national policy to be one of anticipatory self-defense based on nothing more than nebulous possibilities. This is eerily similar to the justification the Japanese invented for their 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor."

"I take the position that drug lords are terrorists with much more than a one percent chance of doing imminent harm to our society. So our Geronimo Option will conform with national policy, as established at the highest levels of government."

"But the problem runs much deeper than simply removing drug lords from the streets. The drug lords are only the tail of the dragon. If we want to truly slay the dragon, we must cut off its head, not just its tail. That means we must also wage war against their sponsors, enablers and facilitators."

"The question of how to deal with those groups again raises the issue of whether it is moral to eliminate an immorality. To me, clearly, the answer is yes. If the sponsors, enablers and facilitators are acting immorally, then we are acting morally to eliminate them as well."

"Our conclusion that elimination of a major source of immorality is moral and that moral results justify the use of illegal means, in combination with the need to cut off the head of the dragon in order for our plan to be effective, forces us to look closely at the morality of America's War on Drugs."

Chapter 22

2008-02-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Malcolm described America's War on Drugs in some detail. That war began under Richard Nixon as a relatively small-scale effort. In 1971 his new Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had only 1,500 agents and a budget of only $43 million.

But his war was lethal, in that it cast in concrete a marijuana policy based almost solely on his hateful bigotry, profound ignorance and unconscionable prejudices. They have blindly controlled national policy on marijuana ever since.

In 1969 the Supreme Court ruled the Marijuana Tax Act, the 1937 law that made marijuana illegal, was unconstitutional. In 1970, Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, a law then-Congressman George Bush the elder supported. That bill eliminated federal mandatory sentencing requirements and reduced federal charges of possession of small quantities of marijuana and cocaine to misdemeanors.

This did not sit well with Nixon, who the following year for political purposes declared that heroin use was an epidemic destroying the country.

Congress had lingering concerns about the dangers and medical benefits of marijuana. To resolve those concerns, Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse early in 1971, with nine of the 13 members appointed by Nixon.

Because Nixon was personally opposed to drugs, he stuffed the commission with hardliners. The chair was Raymond Shafer, a former prosecutor and Republican governor of Pennsylvania, well known for his tough law and order approach to drugs. At the time Shafer coveted, actively sought and was being seriously considered for lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

The commission sponsored over 50 research projects, conducted numerous opinion polls and held many hearings, at which it took thousands of pages of testimony. To this day, the commission's work stands as the most thorough, unbiased study of marijuana ever conducted by the federal government.

Recently released tapes of 1971-1972 Oval Office conversations concerning Shafer and his commission reveal that Nixon, in his uniquely homey style, provided staff with extraordinarily lucid explanations for a number of societal issues that have long perplexed learned scholars. One of his more startling revelations explained the cause of decline of ancient Greek civilization:

"You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates."

Per Nixon, a similar fate befell the mighty Roman Empire:

"Do you know what happened to the Romes, Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags... The last six. Nero had a public wedding to a boy."

And the Roman Catholic Church as well:

"You know what happened to the Popes? Its all right that, po-po Popes were laying the nuns, that's been going on for years, centuries, but, when the Popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual..."

Britain and France suffered the same terrible affliction:

"Now that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France."

Russia escaped this moral plague, only to be engulfed by another:

"Why the hell are those Communists so hard on drugs? Well why they're so hard on drugs is because, uh, they love to booze. I mean, the Russians, they drink pretty good."

Nixon offered an eminently reasonable explanation for why booze is beneficial to society while marijuana is not.

Nixon, who was known to drunkenly stagger through the halls of the White house while having incoherent one-sided conversations with portraits of presidential predecessors, piously explained:

"People use marijuana to get high."

"People use alcohol to have fun."

"Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish."

Anti-war protestors represented the disastrous results of America's lenient drug policy:

"These uh, more radical demonstrators that were here the last, oh, two weeks ago. They're all on drugs. Oh yeah, horrible..."

The commission took almost 12 months to complete its work. On a number of occasions during that time, Nixon prematurely proclaimed the commission's conclusions and recommendations. His comments to his staff and to Shafer, made at various times in equally coherent terms, included:

"I think that's what you want to do, take a strong line."

"Now, this is one thing I want. I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, uh, Domestic Council?"

"I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them."

"We are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss, I want to find a way of putting more on that."

"I want to hit it, against legalizing and all that sort of thing."

The day before the Commission released its final report, Nixon said:

"We need, and I use the word 'all out war', on all fronts... We have to attack on all fronts."

Knowledgeable government professionals were not allowed to interfere. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare wasn't to be consulted:

"Don't go to HEW. Well, we might, we might have big problems with HEW too."

Input by the National Institutes of Health was forbidden:

"Did you see this statement by Brown... this morning? Uh, he should be out. I mean, today, today. If he's a presidential appointee all I do is fire the son- of-a-bitch, and I mean today."

No wonder Barry Goldwater was quoted as saying:

"I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone."

In March of 1972, to his great credit, Shafer bucked the President and delivered an honest report, with conclusions based on all the evidence.

The commission concluded that marijuana's relative potential for causing harm does not justify punishment for users and recommended decriminalization of possession and use of small quantities of marijuana.

A Zogby poll taken shortly after found that 61 percent of voters nationwide agreed with Shafer Commission conclusions that marijuana users should not be arrested or jailed. Only 33 percent supported treating marijuana users as criminals.

Nixon refused to read the report before denouncing its findings. Raymond Shafer was dropped from the list of those being considered for appointment as federal judges.

Echoing the words spoken the day before the final report was issued, Nixon declared the nation to be engaged in a "War on Drugs".

Other problems pressed upon the Ford administration. Drugs faded away from public view. In his 1976 campaign, Jimmy Carter proposed federal decriminalization of possession of small quantities of marijuana for personal use, following the lead of several states. In his 1978 statement to Congress on drug policy, he advocated decriminalizing the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana, saying "penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself".

This proposal was ambushed by his drug czar, who declared drugs to be a social problem. The czar decreed that all drugs are bad, without differentiating between marijuana and "hard" drugs like heroin and cocaine.

The War on Drugs drastically escalated under President Reagan and Vice President Bush, long-time agent and former director of the CIA. Reagan's appointed a "Drug Czar" who believed smoking marijuana resulted in anti-authority and anti-business feelings. He was forced to resign after saying marijuana caused homosexuality and AIDS.

In January 1982 the South Florida Drug Task Force was formed, under the direction and control of Vice President Bush. Later, Bush was appointed chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction System. Both groups were intended to stem the flow of drugs into the country.

With Bush firmly in control, the volume of cocaine smuggled into America tripled.

In October 1986 Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which increased sentences and imposed mandatory prison sentences and appropriated $1.7 billion to fight the "drug crisis". Interdiction of supplies was stressed. The primary result would have been to keep prices high for users and profits high for suppliers.

However, interdiction efforts, undertaken at a cost of about $10 billion, were unsuccessful. Only about 10 percent of the cocaine entering America was confiscated. America was flooded with cocaine. Wholesale prices dropped from $50,000 to $60,000 per kilo in 1980 to about $10,000 in 1988.

The Omnibus Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 replaced the term "recreational use" with the word "abuse", strengthened abilities to confiscate property and reinstated the death penalty for some traffickers. The law also created the Office of National Drug Control Policy under a "Drug Czar", controlled by the White House, and authorized conviction for conspiracy. Under this provision, people with no active participation in a drug offense are convicted for aiding and abetting simply because they have knowledge and fail to report that knowledge to authorities. In some cases actual knowledge isn't required. Conviction is possible simply because the person "should have known". Victims of this law are primarily wives and girlfriends, some of whom have been convicted because they tried to talk their husbands and boyfriends out of using drugs.

After Bush was elected in 1988, public opinion polls showed the American public viewed the federal budget deficit as the biggest problem facing the country. Illegal drugs were far down the list of concerns. Only 3 percent of respondents listed drugs as the number one problem.

A program defined as "manufacture of public consent" by the esteemed journalist Walter Lippmann was undertaken. A steady stream of alarming headlines resulted. Horror stories resulting from drug use made television news shows almost daily. In new polls, the number increased from 3 to about 40 to 45 percent.

In September 1989, in response to the wishes of the vast number of citizens who suddenly viewed illegal drugs as the number one problem facing the country, Bush further escalated the war on drugs. During his first nationally televised speech, a fear-inducing tirade against a multitude of unspeakable horrors caused by illegal drugs, Bush asked Congress for $7.2 billion to fight his War on Drugs.

In support, Bush displayed a baggie of cocaine purchased in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Reporters later learned an undercover DEA agent had lured a small-time dealer to the park so Bush could truthfully make that claim.

Bush appointed William J. Bennett as national "Drug Czar". Bennett claimed drug users are immoral rather than sick. He declared that American citizens should be killed without trial for suspicion of dealing drugs and suggested abolishing habeas corpus rights for drug dealers. On the Larry King Live show in June 1989, Bennett called "morally plausible" a viewer's proposal to behead drug dealers, saying "Morally, I don't have any problem with that at all". The next day he issued a written statement declaring:

"Drug dealers deserve to die."

During this time, Bennett's concerns were limited to small-time street-corner dealers and individual users. Bennett did nothing to restrict export to Latin America of chemicals essential for processing cocaine being shipped to America, even after being criticized by Congress for his continuing inaction.

After retiring from virtuous government service, Bennett compiled and edited The Book of Virtues, which lectured its readers on what their personal values should be and how they should virtuously live their lives. Bennett's book was published in 1993, before the self-righteous hypocrite was publicly outed as a "preferred customer" compulsive gambler who, over at least 10 years, dropped more than $8 million on the tables of Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos.

Chapter 23

2008-02-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Under Reagan and Bush, efforts focused on punishment rather than treatment. Treatment centers opened under Nixon that decreased crime, as he promised during his campaigns, were closed. Money was diverted to construction of federal prisons.

In 1980, about 500,000 Americans were incarcerated. The federal government imprisoned only a few thousand people per year on drug charges. In the next 10 years, that number increased ten-fold. Between 1986 and 1991, the average sentence for drug violations almost tripled, increasing from 27 to 78 months. Almost 80 percent of those drug violation inmates had no history of criminal violence.

The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act and Reagan's 1986 bill included mandatory minimum sentences. As a result, the federal prison population quadrupled over the next 20 years. From 1986 to 1996, 85 percent of the increase in the population of federal prisons was due to drug related convictions. Since 1995, that number has decreased to "only" 49 percent.

California exemplifies state trends. In 1977, California had less than 20,000 prisoners. Today, California has over 160,000, an 8-fold increase in less than 30 years. America took 200 years to imprison the first million citizens. The second million were imprisoned in only 10 years. America, with 4.6 percent of the world's population, now has 22.5 percent of the world's prisoners. America has about 2.2 million people in state and federal prisons and 4.8 million more on parole or probation.

Today, over 1.8 million are arrested annually for nonviolent drug offenses. This number includes 700,000 for possession of marijuana. In all, nearly 18 million Americans have been arrested for possession or use of marijuana, violations admitted to by one President and 112 million citizens. One in every 32 adults is now locked up or on probation or parole, despite a government study concluding that stiff sentences and three strikes laws have no impact on reducing crime.

The War on Drugs has converted America into a nation of criminals. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, except for Rwanda. The European Union, with roughly 50 percent more people than America, has one-sixth as many people in prison.

This national policy of criminalization applies to children. Only two members of the United Nations have refused to ratify its 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other country is Somalia. Over 99 percent of the world's children sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole live in America.

Most depressing of all, studies show that having a father in prison is the single most important predictor that his son will eventually be sent to prison. And our government, which incessantly preaches of the sanctity of family values, has made orphans of almost 2.5 million children who have a parent in prison.

With mandatory sentences, to avoid overcrowding, some felons who committed violent crimes are released early, to make room for the latest crop of non-violent drug offenders with mandatory sentences. As a result, some non-violent first-time drug offenders spend far more time in prison than rapists and people who commit manslaughter. The average sentence is 24.6 months for first-time burglary, 26.8 months for manslaughter, 33.4 months for assault and 82.4 months for drug offenses.

Judges exercising humane sentencing practices were neutralized. For example in Florida in 1985 a watermelon farmer was convicted under state law of growing marijuana and sentenced to five years probation. Five years later he was prosecuted for the same crime under federal law and sentenced to life without parole.

Some state sentencing requirements are even more inhumane. The case of Melinda George is a stark example. As a first-time drug offender, she was convicted of selling one-tenth of a gram of cocaine - enough for a single line, a miniscule supply for a serious user who will snort as many as 50 lines a day. Melinda resides in Texas, where she is serving her 99-year sentence.

Racism in the War on Drugs began with Nixon, who was recorded telling his chief of staff:

"You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."

Mandatory sentencing has distinct racial overtones. In particular, the 1986 law required a 5 year sentence for possession or sale of as little as 5 grams of crack cocaine, about the amount in a pack of sugar. On average, white people who snorted cocaine were sentenced to 3 months, while black people who smoked cocaine were sentenced to 3 years. Congress and 14 states passed laws making penalties for crack cocaine up to 100 times as severe as penalties for powder cocaine.

Between 1985 and 1988, prosecution of white juvenile drug offenders decreased by 15 percent while increasing by 88 percent for blacks. On a per-capita basis, the percentage of black men arrested on drug charges is 7 times the percentage of whites.

As a result, blacks comprise 12 percent of the population of the nation, 46 percent of the population of state prisons and 40 percent of federal prisons.

Disparities in mandatory sentences aren't limited to crack. GHB, a general anesthetic and date-rape drug sold at rave parties attended primarily by white college students, is also illegal. By federal statute, the penalty for sale of one gallon, enough to make 100,000 doses, is 15 to 21 months.

Racial overtones were particularly glaring in 1999 drug raids in Tulia, Texas, during which over 10 percent of the town's black population was arrested, along with one cohabitating white woman.

At trial, the only evidence presented was testimony of one admittedly racist white undercover officer who worked alone. No audio or video surveillance tapes or eyewitnesses were presented to substantiate his testimony. The officer later fled town to avoid prosecution on theft charges. All but two of the defendants are serving sentences of 25 years to life.

The War on Drugs has extracted huge financial as well as human costs. Nixon's 1971 budget of $43 million escalated to $1.65 billion in 1982. During 8 years, Reagan spent over 13 times that much, $22.6 billion. Bush spent almost twice as much as Reagan, $42.5 billion, in half the time.

Clinton continued the upward spiral, spending $17.9 billion in 2002. Under Bush Junior, the budget further increased, to $18.8 billion. Between 1982 and 1990, total annual American law enforcement costs increased from over $3 billion to over $41.5 billion.

Today, the feds spend about $20 billion per year in the War on Drugs. Over $800 million of that is spent by the Pentagon, in a nation that supposedly maintains an army only for defensive purposes, to protect against foreign invaders. State and local governments spend about $30 billion more on drug law enforcement. Much more money is spent on building and operating prisons. The federal prisons budget ballooned from $220 million in 1986 to $3.19 billion in 1997 and $4.3 billion in 2001. Total national prison costs increased from $36 billion in 1982 to $185 billion in 2003.

The federal government now spends fives times as much on prisons as it does on higher education, when providing a four-year private college education complete with tuition, fees, room and board, books and supplies is cheaper than providing 4 years of imprisonment.

California obtains even worse results, by spending $35,000 annually per prisoner, $7,000 per school student and $4,500 per college student. Since 1984, California has built one new college and 21 new prisons. By 1999 in California, spending for construction of new prisons was 19 times higher than spending for new college facilities. Thousands of California teachers have been laid off because of lack of funding. The salaries of college-educated teachers who are still working are less than the salaries of high-school dropouts who work as prison guards.

Since its inception, the War on Drugs has cost the taxpayers over half a trillion dollars, with no resulting value for either society or the prisoners.

As with Prohibition, illegal drugs have resulted in far too many cases of police corruption, which now is at an all-time high. As with prohibition, public respect for law enforcement has declined proportionately.

Like in the days of Prohibition, law officers realize that non-enforcement is a valuable service they can provide, although not for free. In some cases this service is provided by claiming to superiors that a dealer is a "highly valued confidential informant" that must be protected, meaning left on the streets to deal drugs. In New York City, corrupt officers are paid up to 40 percent of the price of drugs sold for this valuable service.

The FBI reports that almost half the cop corruption cases they investigate are drug related. The experience of Miami in the 1980s is all too indicative. Over 10 percent of the city's police force was either jailed, fired or disciplined for robbing and sometimes killing dealers and reselling the stolen drugs.

A 1998 General Accounting Office study found that cops conduct unconstitutional searches and seizures, steal money and drugs from drug dealers, sell stolen drugs, protect favored dealers, provide false testimony in court and submit false crime reports.

Among honest cops, 95 percent think America is losing the War on Drugs and 98 percent think drug abuse is not primarily a police problem. Over 90 percent think increased prevention and treatment could control drugs more effectively. Over 30 percent think legalization or decriminalization would decrease or at least not increase drug use.

Chiefs feel the same. Privately, 90 percent of America's police chiefs do not support the federal war on drugs. The 10 percent who do think treatment, education and prevention are more useful than arrests and prison sentences.

This war has been fought for a long time. As of this spring, American forces have been battling in Iraq for only 2 years and Americans are already tiring. Imagine fighting a war continuously from the time of America's entry into World War I until five years after the end of World War II. The War on Drugs has been fought, on American soil, for 33 years.
Unsuccessfully. The astronomical costs of this war have purchased only failure, with horrendous results.

In 1960, only 4 million Americans had ever experimented with drugs. Today, that number is over 112 million. Today America, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, consumes two-thirds of the world's illegal drugs.

DEA's own research shows that today, drugs are cheaper, purer and more readily available than ever. The average retail price per gram for cocaine decreased from $433 in 1982 to $184 in 1999, while average purity increased from 36 to 64 percent. During that period the average retail price per gram of heroin dropped from $3,285 to $1,929 while purity increased from 5 to 27 percent.

In 1999, more than half our country's high school graduates used marijuana while in high school. That year, marijuana was felt to be easy to obtain by 88.9 percent of high school seniors. Today, after over 30 years of war, a joint is about as easily obtainable by a high school senior as a six-pack of beer.

Chapter 24

2008-02-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Foreign countries increasingly are rejecting America's "make war on everything" approach to life and are adopting saner attitudes toward drugs, particularly marijuana. Most European countries have adopted the Frankfort Accord, which provides for decriminalization as the primary approach for dealing with drugs. Of all the world's industrialized countries, America is the only one that fights drugs through a war.

Canada and several European countries have adopted the "reduction of harm" approach to the use of soft drugs. Years ago they concluded the war approach to marijuana does more harm than good and decriminalized or officially decided to overlook the use or possession of small quantities of marijuana for personal consumption.

Holland has been at the forefront of these governmental displays of humanity. Holland treats drug use as a health rather than a criminal issue and distinguishes between the "soft" drug marijuana and "hard" drugs such as heroin.

In 1976, after study by two national commissions, Holland in effect decriminalized possession and use of small quantities of marijuana. Holland adopted a national policy that police will look the other way and tolerate these marijuana infractions. Use and possession are still illegal, primarily because of international treaties forced on the country by America, but the laws are seldom enforced.

The tolerance approach allowed police to concentrate on hard drugs, which cause the most harm and trigger the most crime. Holland had recently experienced major increases in heroin addiction. The number of addicts increased from 800 in 1970 to 10,000 in 1976, at least partially because of dismantlement of what was commonly called the "French Connection", in combination with the CIA's increased involvement in Southeast Asia.

Holland's new policies were successful. The number of hard drug addicts in Holland dropped by one-third after the new policy was adopted. On a per-capita basis, America, after 30 over years of war, now has six times as many hard-drug addicts.

Zurich experienced similarly positive results. From 1975 through 1990, the number of new heroin users increased more than ten-fold, from 80 to 850 annually. In 1991 Zurich introduced a more liberal policy, with needle exchange programs and provision of alternative narcotics. Heroin addiction was treated as a medical problem and came to be viewed as a medical problem, by both the public and by heroin users. Heroin came to be viewed as a "loser drug" by young people. Heroin users were quickly transformed from daring rebels against vanilla society into people suffering an illness. By 2002, the number of new heroin users had decreased from 850 per year to 150.

Results experienced in Holland support the findings of ignored or suppressed American research as to addiction. For example, a 1980 article in the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine reported that, of 11,882 patients treated with painkillers, only four became addicted. A 1982 survey of 10,000 burn victims receiving narcotics found that none of them became addicted. Of 2,000 headache patients treated with narcotics, fewer than 1 percent became addicted.

In 1971, according to the Nixon White House, 34 percent of American soldiers in Vietnam were heroin addicts. The number of American heroin addicts in Vietnam exceeded the number of American heroin addicts in America. Through collection and testing of many hundreds of gallons of urine under the aptly named Operation GOLDEN FLOW, the Army belatedly discovered that 250,000 troops returning from Vietnam had used heroin and 80,000 were addicts, due to the marketing efforts of high-ranking members of the government of South Vietnam. About 93 percent of the addicts voluntarily withdrew from heroin use without intervention or medical assistance. Later studies found that less than 6 percent of the addicts used heroin within 2 years after discharge.

Holland spends far less on drug-related issues than America on a per-capita basis, has far fewer felons, in prison or out, and reaps the benefit of having a police force with remarkably low levels of corruption when compared with America.

After the new policy for marijuana was adopted in Holland, usage rates increased as young people experimented. But usage leveled off by 1996 and has remained steady since, while usage rates in America have climbed steadily since 1992.

Americans only hear of decadent coffeehouses in Holland where small quantities of marijuana can be purchased and consumed. Americans don't appreciate that many of the coffeehouse patrons are foreign tourists, from other European countries and from America. In 2001, only 17.0 percent of Hollanders had tried marijuana during their lifetime. In America, that number was over twice as high, 36.9 percent, and has since increased to 40.6 percent, while use in Holland has remained stable.

In the past year, only 3 percent of Hollanders have used marijuana, contrasted to 8.6 percent in America. After over 30 years of war on marijuana, on a per capita basis, America has nearly three times as many active marijuana users as Holland, which does not enforce it's marijuana laws.

America has 9.7 million people in need of alcohol treatment and 4.1 million in need of drug treatment. Fruitful hunting grounds for treaters, and a multitude of studies have proven that numerous benefits would result from treatment.

One state study found that, after one year, welfare payment dependency by drug users in their program decreased by 10.7 percent while employment increased by 18.7 percent.

Crime would be reduced significantly. A Rand Corporation study found that a dollar spent on treatment reduces about ten times as many serious crimes as a dollar spent on conventional law enforcement and fifteen times as many as a dollar spent on mandatory minimum sentences. The New York Times reported 50 percent of America's bank robberies are committed by drug users.

Federal Health and Human Services studies found that, with a treatment program, drug sales decreased by 78 percent, shoplifting decreased by 82 percent and the number of people who supported themselves through crime decreased by 48 percent. The number of people reporting "beating someone up" decreased by 78 percent and arrests decreased by 64 percent.

The scourge of AIDS would be reduced. Fifty percent of new HIV infections in America result from sharing infected needles. Top federal drug officials respond to this opportunity to dramatically reduce the number of new HIV cases by blocking needle exchange programs.

Costs would be reduced. A California study found that every dollar spent on treatment saves seven dollars in costs.

The experiences of some states prove that a humane approach will not result in increased use of drugs. In states that have legalized use of marijuana for medical purposes, use among teens has decreased, apparently because teens don't view smoking grandma's cancer pain medicine or grandpa's glaucoma medicine as being sufficiently cool.

In 1996 an Arizona public initiative mandated treatment instead of jail for all non-violent drug offenders. At the end of the first year, 77.5 percent of possession offenders on probation following treatment tested clean.

The minimization of harm approach to illegal drugs is clearly far superior to the criminalization approach. Treatment could be combined with registration of addicts, required treatment for offenders and state regulation of sale, with strict control of purity, labeling and pricing, as is now done for alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals. Government could be granted monopolies, as is now done for alcoholic beverages in 18 states. If marijuana were priced low enough a black market wouldn't be worthwhile and wouldn't develop. As a result, crime would be reduced because the profit motive would be eliminated.

For example, in 1971 pharmacies paid about 4 cents per grain for heroin. The street price of that grain of heroin was $30 to $90. In 1981 a one-ounce bottle of pharmaceutical cocaine legitimately sold by Merck to hospitals cost $50. On the streets, that same bottle sold for $3,200. Drugs bought for $500 in a foreign country sell for $100,000 on American street corners. These types of profit levels should not be granted to lawless gangs on the streets by default. Clearly, given the dangers of unregulated drug sale and use, local governmental control of sale, price and quality would be far superior to leaving control and obscene profits to criminal gangs on the streets.

The benefits would make much more sense to and would be particularly valuable for our increasingly cynical younger citizens, who are hypocritically inundated with commercials urging them to seek prescription drugs to help them feel and screw better and that it's both legal and acceptable to drink once they reach age 21.

Yet, in the face of overwhelming evidence of the total, destructive failure of America's War on Drugs, anyone and everyone who dare hint at the possibility of decriminalization and treatment for marijuana offenses are immediately labeled as heretics, pinko commies, punks, totally out of their mind or dope-smoking free-sex hippie fiends. Sane voices in the wilderness are stridently shouted down. No informed, rational discussion is allowed.

Worse, DEA covertly spends millions of dollars annually to actively oppose state initiatives to decriminalize soft drugs and pursue the treatment option. In the process, they ride roughshod over the will of the people. A 2001 national survey found that up to 52 percent of adults prefer the treatment option. That year in Ohio, the favorable response number was 74 percent.

DEA refuses to read these studies or acknowledge the benefits of treatment and instead blindly continues what it calls a "War on Drugs". Fighting with battleground tactics that display a level of bureaucratic incompetence seldom seen beyond the edges of Three Stooges movie screens.

An example is provided by DEA's Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, which searches for and "eradicates" hemp plants. Since 1984, DEA has seized or destroyed 4.7 billion wild hemp plants. That stunning total amounts to about 16 hemp plants for every citizen in the country.

DEA admits that over 98 percent of the plants it destroys are wild hemp, called ditchweed, descendents of hemp plants grown during World War II at the government's urging.
Ditchweed contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, and has no value in the underground marijuana market.

The effectiveness of this DEA program is demonstrated by results obtained in South Dakota in 2001, where 37.6 million hemp plants were "eradicated", presumably using giant farm combines. Of this astounding number, only 255 were cultivated marijuana plants with a detectable THC content.

The elimination of one worthwhile marijuana plant in South Dakota by DEA was made possible only through the senseless destruction of over 147,000 worthless weeds.

America's capitalist economic system dictates that a farmer who plants 23 acres of corn only to harvest a single ear will soon be out of business. DEA, with similarly sterling results, prospers, at taxpayer expense.

Government preaches capitalism but isn't required to follow its dictates, so the eradication program lives on. Partially because the weeds are pulled up by their roots in late summer. Seeds are scattered in the process, assuring the necessity of an identical pull-up-the-weeds program next summer.

This imbecilic eradication procedure explains why the program has continued for 20 years. Over those 20 years, DEA spent $175 million to pull up worthless weeds. This year, DEA will pull up an estimated 223 million weeds, almost all of them children of weeds pulled up last year.

Hemp is the most widely used fiber in the world, for production of over 25,000 products. Per acre per year, hemp produces 4 times as much paper pulp as trees. Because cultivation of THC-free hemp is illegal in America, retailers and manufacturers are forced to import 1.9 million pounds of hemp fiber and 450,000 pounds of hemp seeds annually. These imports, primarily from Canada, supply a $270 million industry that manufactures clothing and a wide variety of other useful products. Imports are available because hemp is a legal and profitable crop in all industrialized nations except America.

Despite DEA's fanatical eradication efforts, domestic production of marijuana over the past quarter-century increased tenfold, to almost 22 million pounds last year. Marijuana has become America's largest cash crop, bigger than wheat and corn combined. Last year, American marijuana production was conservatively estimated at $35.8 billion.

This level of DEA buffoonery adversely affects all levels of society, through mandated compliance with imbecilic regulations that seemingly propagate like sex-crazed wild bunnies on hot and horny Saturday nights. Examples abound in the federally mandated "zero tolerance for drugs" policies forced upon America's schools.

In Washington, a 10 year-old girl who often suffered migraine headaches was repeatedly sent home because only school nurses can administer doses of aspirin and her school had no nurse.

In Colorado a 6-year-old was suspended from school for bringing "drugs" to school. The school administrator said the suspension was consistent with the school's DEA-dictated policy, which "assumes" that all unfamiliar products are illegal controlled substances. The child's offense, which spurred an emergency run by a fire truck and ambulance, consisted of sharing lemon drop candy with a classmate during recess.