Talk politics.

The saying goes that just because you are paranoid does not mean nobody is out to get you. This came to mind in the aftermath of last week's mass murder incident in Washington. A military contract employee with a security clearance went on a rampage of brutal assassination targeting military personnel. The killer died in a firefight with MPs leaving us with the question of "Why?"

As friends, family, and arrest records were probed by journalists to seek an understanding, a picture of an emotionally unstable man emerged. He had been interrogated by police and complained of antagonists using an energy weapon. There is also a story of an incident when he shot out the tires of a construction worker he felt taunted him. We get the impression that he played fast and loose with a gun and that his antagonisms may have been all in his head.

The former impression has some foundation in the man's previous over-the-top use of fire power. The latter impression may be mere assumption. As an African American, Aaron Alexis may have experienced genuine emotional abuse. His statement to police about his hotel experience should not be taken lightly. It is possible that military personnel conducted a hazing campaign against him using neural wave machinery.

When we discussed the issue with some of our military associates we were somewhat surprised by their attitude toward the incident. One of them remarked that Alexis was a "bad man." When asked whether that justified a hazing operation the officer demurred. Another officer claimed that the hazing was the result of a technical glitch and a third chalked it up to pilot error. It was not an act of belligerence: it was a mistake. We have yet another example of the traditional military "support our oops" line of dismissal.

The people responsible for pushing Alexis over the edge into the abyss of mass murder will not hold themselves responsible for the consequences of their actions. The "bad man" takes the fall as they continue to use advanced technology in a cavalier fashion. Given the tendency of the military to paper over abuses, I am confident that nothing will be done to discipline those who participated in the hazing operation.

Do you have faith that American militarists are capable of policing themselves? Would you advocate a UN program to inspect the Pentagon for weapons of mass deception?

Links: Richard Serrano, et al, with some details on the shooting. CBS News more details on the hotel incident.

There is a law in the US that bars the federal government from employing cruel and unusual forms of criminal penalties. This restriction does not prohibit cruel and usual penalties. Just because a penalty is cruel does not disqualify its use under this restriction. Cruelty is evidently taken as a modifier on the unusual penalties. Cruelty itself is okay as long as it is usual.

At the time of Caesar the most cruel penalties involved some form of torture. Flogging and scourging were usually employed. The symbol of the fasces depicts an actual object consisting of wooden dowels that were employed by lictors to inflict painful injuries on unruly offenders. A brutal beating was emblematic of political power. It was feared that the absence of such exemplary forms of "justice" would end in the chaotic dissolution of state authority altogether.



Washington with his hand on the fasces.

There are people today who continue to advocate this despotic paradigm of political economy. There is no need to ask them directly whether they support such cruelty. One need only inquire about their philosophy toward child rearing. If they espouse the cruel treatment of wayward children, they are likely to espouse similar measures with disobedient adults. Parents who flog their own children are apt to support similar penalties on the part of political agents. Such actions are cruel, but hardly unusual.

Do you consider life behind bars to be more or less cruel than the death penalty? Do you consider addiction to brain damaging sedatives to be cruel or kind? What other ways do governments treat people in a cruel and usual manner? Do you think of the fasces as a symbol of republican government?

Links: Anthony Marshall on the significance of the fasces. Martin Hengel on the most famous Roman penalty.

There are two schools of thought on public health policy. One school is open to dialog and debate. The other school cannot tolerate views outside of its narrow perspective. Members of the second school use heavy handed tactics to keep dissenting opinions off of the table of public discussion. They reserve public health issues to an elite priesthood of specialists who are supposed to know what is right for the rest of society. Anything that questions the validity of the expert opinion falls outside of the realm of public health policy debate and must therefore be removed from the table of discussion.

What do you think of people who practice the barbaric craft of censorship?

Back in the day when orthodoxy was a minority sect of corrupt and despotic bishops, a heretical military commander was urged by orthodox advisers to practice corporal punishment on his own children. His response varies depending on who reported it. He refused to adopt the orthodox approach to child rearing because he felt it would have a deleterious effect on his children. An aphorism could be derived from this story along the lines of, "Employ the rod, ruin the child."

I witnessed the limited efficacy of corporal punishment as a wee lass. One of our family cats had a habit of walking around on the dining room table. In an attempt to break her of this habit we squirted water on her whenever she climbed up on the table. We soon discovered that it did not stop her from walking on the table when we were not around to hit her with the squirt gun. Rather than learning not to climb on the table, the cat learned not to be observed climbing on the table.

We can see a similar process at work with the effort to expand federal immigration enforcement into local law enforcement. When an immigrant community is hit with deportations they become alienated from the governing entity that does the hitting. This causes them to distrust the people responsible for the hitting. Local law enforcers become an enemy gang rather than a source of security. This enhances the power and prestige of ethnic protection organizations which prey on the vulnerability of insecure immigrants. It is ironic that proponents of the DHS Secure Communities program point to the Bologna case to justify a policy that enhances the power of the organization whose member was hired for the hit.

Here in San Francisco there is an effort under way to attempt to teach the Feds some manners by resisting the immigration law enforcers. City Supervisor John Avalos has proposed legislation that would bar city law enforcement from cooperating in the Secure Communities program. San Francisco is not alone in this boycott of federal big brotherism. Other municipalities with significant immigrant populations have already taken steps to resist the program.

Could there be a connection between the brutal policies of the US government and the orthodox mindset favoring corporal punishment as a disciplinary technique?

Links: Joshua Sabatini on Supervisor Avalos' efforts to isolate ICE. Resources on the Secure Communities program.

One of the key transitions in the history of ancient Rome occurred when a uniform standard was forced upon the subordinate martial companies throughout the empire. Each ethnic group was denied its traditional military insignia and required to adopt the flag of Jupiter, father of the gods. The Roman mascot can be seen wherever martial prowess is valued over human intellect. This is especially the case in the US and in other Romes away from Rome.



During my time working in Europe I had numerous opportunities to observe other American visitors to that war torn territory. There were a number of occasions when I was quite embarrassed by the conduct of my fellow visiting country folk. It was an ugliness I had heard about from European immigrants to the US but had not yet seen up close and in person. The worst of the bunch were GIs stationed in Germany with tourist retirees coming in a close second. I will never forget a busload of elderly Americans trooping through the cathedral of Notre Dame waving small US flags and paying no attention to their surroundings.

America ugliness manifests a phenomenon that is similar to the gondola kitten experiment were kittens reared in the confines of a gondola develop more poorly than kittens allowed to wander freely. This tendency can be followed back in history to the Roman ambition to make the rest of the world conform to its uniform standard. American visitors want to bring back tokens of an alien culture, but they do so without leaving their own culture at home. American military service people eke out most of their time overseas within a bubble of Americana in a hermetically sealed base environment. When they sally out for encounters with the local culture they bring enough of America along in order to feel comfortable. This includes such American institutions as gang fights over prostitutes.



The gondola kitten mentality extends into the political domain with the export of American political institutions to places and peoples where it does not belong. Woodrow Wilson sought to extend constitutional protection to American citizens who assisted the British in their efforts to subdue the Kaiser. George Bush engaged America in a crusade to bring American political hegemony to Afghanistan and Mesopotamia. Now there is a movement to bring Syria, Iran, and North Korea into Washington's bankrupt orbit.

What experience do you have with the American cultural gondola and its pesky gondola kittens?

Links: Alexander Cooley on American military bases (2005). Bradford Plumer's observations on Cooley's article and on the US military base situation. Daniel Aldrich reviews Alexader Cooley's book Base Politics.

One of the most cliche expressions in English speaks of people living in a house made of glass. This expression came to mind during a discussion of Obama's Fathers' Day interview with Charlie Rose. The smooth operator denied any connection between US government actions and the escalation of violence in Syria. This is like denying any connection between US policy in Afghanistan and the rise of al-Qaeda. It reminds me of the scene in Stevie Wonder's song "Living For the City" where a naive country kid takes the fall by running across the street.

Official US policy on Syria has been to encourage regional governments to arm anti-Assad fanatics. Obama denies this policy because he is guilty of signing off on it. He even made an allusion to the policy in previous remarks. The Saudis are especially adept at secretly interfacing with fanatical militants. That is exactly how the House of Saud achieved its political status to begin with. Let us not forget that the Saudis are the chief financiers of Wahhabi training facilities. (Those guys make the Westboro Baptists look progressive.) The US government has a long history of giving a nod and a wink to this medieval vector of theft, murder and destruction as long as it serves Washington's narrow minded purposes. Here is Obama denying reality in order to establish a fraudulent moral superiority.

During the interview Obama mentioned that the fanatics are more militarily effective than the moderates. This was exactly the rationale that was used by the CIA in supporting the more fanatical Mujaheddin in Afghanistan back in the Reagan era. Moderates are less militarily effective because they have reason on their side. If Obama listened to reason rather than knee-jerk policy advisers, he would realize that a military solution cannot be a moderate solution. The most moderate people will not take up arms because they know that violence only begets more violence.

In the interview Obama claimed that he was only reacting to the use of violence by Assad's government against unarmed protesters. He claimed to be sensitive to the loss of civilian life. Promoting armed resistance has the inevitable consequence of escalating the level of violence, as we have seen in Syria and elsewhere. If Obama was serious about reducing the level of violence against civilians he would not even consider arming the opposition, whether fanatical or moderate.

Finally, he spoke of promoting a representative government. This is an area where the glass house syndrome seriously applies. Nobody who knows anything about the American political system considers it to be representative. It cannot even guarantee equal treatment to its own citizens when it comes to marital rights. It should be the last government to make a case in favor of representation. (It also brings to mind Kennedy's policy of destabilizing the Vietnamese government in order to promote greater representation.)

What other aspects of the interview with Charlie Rose strike you as problematic? Do you trust the CIA when it comes to picking who to arm in Syria?

Links: The full interview with Charlie Rose. Bob Dreyfuss on US policy in Syria. Music by Stevie Wonder.

A religious bigot rejected my personal spin on the political trials and tribulations of Arius the Alexandrian during the fourth century of the common era. His beef was not whether my take on the events had merit but that a student of orthodox theology would disagree with me. I was reminded of the arguments against Galileo's observations on Sun spots. Galileo must be mistaken because Aristotle said that the Sun was without blemish. Galileo retorted that Aristotle would agree with him if he were around to confirm the observations. To the naked eye the Sun appears to be perfect.

The orthodox theologian views his deity with just such an eye. He fails to see the blemishes in his deity because he fails to analyze it with objectivity. The orthodox deity is perfect because Caesar says it is perfect just as Aristotle said that the Sun is perfect. If Constantine Caesar were around today to see what orthodox theologians had done with his precious deity, he would side with the heretics.

The religious bigot gives us the key to understanding the political nature of orthodox theology. He cannot even entertain alternative perspectives on historical political events because such perspectives would offend the tender sensitivities of orthodox scholars. The bigot not only kowtows to the material Creator but also to a group of religious fanatics who have been out of touch with reality for nearly two thousand years.

Buddhist theology has been around much longer than has orthodox theology. Many people prefer it to orthodoxy for a variety of reasons. There are others who are put off by Buddhism because it reminds them of orthodoxy. On a purely surface level they share a great deal in common. The differences become obvious either when their practitioners come in contact with one another or when an outsider to both takes a look at the esoteric aspects of each.

Recent history presents us with an example of political conflict between Buddhism and orthodoxy during the war in Vietnam. Thich Giac Duc described his work as a Buddhist priest in Vietnam teaching the way of compassion to peasants who had been seduced into orthodoxy. He used the example of aerial bombardment of civilians as evidence of the lack of compassion in the orthodox heart. (He failed to see the need to destroy the village in order to save it from the hell of Communism.)

Can you think of other examples of the use of explosives in the interest of religious orthodoxy?

Links: David Chanoff and Van Toai Doan on the experience of Thich Giac Duc. Christopher Haas on the Arians of Alexandria.

During an interview with a young revolutionary I asked why the proletarian class would make good leaders. She gave me food for thought when she described a nineteenth century manufacturing environment. She seemed to be unaware that manufacturing techniques had advanced in the past hundred years. She also recommended Lenin's rationale in favor of revolution. I did not attempt to burst her bubble by pointing out that Lenin had a different audience in mind. What was clear to me was the parallel with that of the religious zealot who claims that his Jesus can save me as he takes the Bible completely out of context. Revolutionary zeal is religious zeal by another name.

Unlike the zealous Leninist I took something quite different away from my study of the life and works of Lenin. He did not strike me as a sincere proponent of positive development. I got the impression that his rant against czarism harbored a latent ambition to be the czar. Like Alexander Hamilton Lenin's efforts could be seen more as counter-revolutionary than revolutionary. Lenin was the new boss who was pretty much the same as the old boss.

One of our students came up with the proposal that Communism is actually a more sinister from of anti-communism. Rather than promoting a revolutionary advancement in human development it offered only a more sophisticated form of oppression. This explains why the most feared and hunted enemies of Communist revolutions were themselves communist revolutionaries. Add to this the fact that the heroes of the Proletariat were scions of affluent families rather than the fabled nobles of the nineteenth century factory floor. Furthermore, the drudgery under the Revolution was far more oppressive than that under the money lender.

In The Vietnamese Gulag Doan Van Toai made an observation that rational revolutionaries went along with the inhumane actions of dogmatic revolutionaries out of a fear of becoming victims themselves. A similar process can be seen in the establishment of Christian orthodoxy over heretical rationalism in the propagation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The rationalists went along with the persecution of their own kind out of a fear of being burned to death themselves. This fiendish despotism dated back to the incident reported in the book of Acts when a couple died after it was revealed that they did not strictly conform to the policy of turning in all their money to the apostolic treasury. It could be said that Lenin is to Marx as Peter is to Jesus as Hamilton is to Franklin.

Can you think of any other examples of the devil inside?

Links: Lenin on revolution. Doan Van Toai on Vietnam.

Slavery is an institution of inescapable logic. It cannot allow mental freedom because that would result in corporal freedom. A mental prison is an essential aspect of each of the infamous dehumanizing institutions of slavery. An example of this kind of prison marched through my neighborhood this past Saturday leaving very little debris behind. Unlike the massive refuse left in the wake of the Giants' victory parade, the amount of trash left behind by the mental prisoners was minuscule. Take that for what it is worth.

A rally prior to the clean parade at our Civic Center presented an orgy of effigy burning. Obama was stoned metaphorically in abstentia for his rational, humane policies. He was savagely attacked for the sin of failing to kowtow to the despot in the sky or to the slaveholder in Rome. People in the audience carried balloons marking themselves with the sign of beastly life. Others carried placards of relative high production value courtesy of the Knight of Caesar Columbus. Although not all of the folks there professed an allegiance to the Roman Pontifex Maximus, the majority fell into that category of subjugation.

Two thousand years ago it made sense for Caesar to outlaw the trade in prophylactic herbs. Given the high rates of infant mortality and other causes of death, women had to give birth to an average of five infants per person per lifetime in order to maintain the imperial population. (It also made sense from the imperative to enslave people by limiting their ability to control themselves.) Given the state of modern medical technology, such a birth rate would result in a population that exceeds the carrying capacity of the Earth. The only rational explanation for someone supporting such a policy is that she is not using her head. These people are clearly trapped in a prison of primitive precepts. If Jesus were alive today, he would role over in his sepulcher.

Do you see any hope for the liberation of these people from their blind obedience to Rome?

Links: Lifers show their balloons. The event in Washington DC.

One morning, while purchasing coffee at a local watering hole, I heard a fundamentalist say something about man's law vs. God's law. At the time I marveled how people come up with such sharp distinctions. Freedom of religion deserves no respect because it is something that human beings came up with. Stoning sinners, on the other hand, is a duty required of the devout by their material Creator. It is a law that must be considered with the utmost respect. One of my favorite of such "divine" commandments is the one about not suffering a witch to live. The most fascinating aspect of the commandment is that recognition of witchcraft is itself a form of witchcraft. Of course the witch who recognizes the the other witch would not identify himself as a witch except through the process of accusing the other of witchcraft.

The issue of different types of laws came up when some of our students were discussing a platonic dialog on the issue of social justice. The libertarian character in the dialog supported his position with an appeal to "natural" law over artificial law. He contended that it is natural for stronger people to deny weaker people a proportional share in the common wealth. Their natural ability to dominate confers a natural right to hoard stuff and keep weaker people in desperation and dependency. This special status applies to those who are smart enough to make subtly exploitative labor contracts and other business deals. Unfortunately the dialog resorts to a machina ex deus argument to persuade its audience that distributive social injustice hurts the perpetrator more than the victim. It depends on postmortem suffering in an imaginary domain of torment. A more effective argument might be to appeal to natural law to point out that it would only be natural for the weak victims to sneak in and slit the throats of the strong in their sleep. The Sword of Damocles is a classic illustration of the strong fearing retaliation at the hands of the weak.

One of the big social justice issues of the current day is whether the strong have the right to deny marriage rights to the weak. An advocate of the bad boyz in Rome recently tried to tar the marriage equality issue with the red brush of utopian materialism. This could easily backfire since the Soviet Communists were as rabid in their anti-homosexuality as the Catholic hierarchy. The American Republican Party is divided between those who see support for marriage equality as important to the Party's future and those who do not. Illinois is poised to become the first heartland state to legislate marriage equality outside of court action. Catholics in Rhode Island fear that their state may no longer be the last New England state to deny marriage equality to homosexuals.

It is difficult to make a natural/artificial law distinction when it comes to marriage since the institution is innately artificial. What it comes down to is whether it is natural or artificial to make a distinction between homosexuals and heterosexuals when it comes to recognition as human beings. Is it natural to view homosexuals as fractionally human to the point that they do not deserve the same rights as everyone else? Or is that an artificial condition that has been programmed into the popular imagination (and the imagination of Roman power players)?

Links: A pro-Vatican pundit compares marriage equality to Communism. Differences in the GOP over the issue of marriage equality. Difficulties faced by marriage equality in the Illinois legislature. A Rhode Island bishop calls for maintaining marriage inequality.