The journal of Harvey WendtTable of Contents:
25 September 2006Since I am already writing a journal for a class I'm taking, Cognitive Intervention, I've decided to begin this one by sharing some of those entries and some of the course answers I've written. Hence the back-dating of the following entries: 10 October 2006What am I? Human "nature" actually begins as simple hedonistic reactive, and remains such until the infant at some level has accumulated sufficient data to realize that it is not alone-and not in control. During the process of discovery that it is not alone, the infant adds an element of hedonistic domination whenever possible. During discovery that it is not in control, it adds an element of hedonistic manipulation. Both these additions are made soon after birth. Note the hedonistic component of each additional element of development of the infant's nature. Throughout life, as the human nature develops, there is always a hedonistic component in every new addition to the "nature" repertoire. The overriding hedonistic component of human nature (indeed the nature of all known life forms) is often mistaken for "evil." It is not. It is merely the basic programming hard-wired for survival. It can be, and usually is, trained and conditioned toward good. Without training and conditioning, human nature is neither good nor evil-merely hedonistic. Hostility and aggressiveness are to the same degree a result of training and conditioning as are gentleness and empathy. My relationship with other humans is prescribed by established principles universal to this earth, but I judge my behavior not against what is convenient, pleasant, or practical, but by its degree of conformity to what is ultimately and eternally right and good. I stake my life on belief in an existence that goes beyond my earthly days, beyond my physical body. I believe it is better to fight for a lost cause than to stand aside because of indecision. I believe in getting along with those whose lives are intimately bound up with my own. Life and human welfare-my life and my welfare-depend to a great extent on mutual give and take. Compromise and adjustment are not signs of weakness; they are the mark of an intelligent and responsible human being. I often find discretion the better part of valor. I say, "Live and let live, and let common sense prevail." I am exposed to and infected by the joy and pain, the hope and despair, the courage and sorrow, and yes, the cowardice, the grasping, desperate humanness of people. All people are my brothers and sisters, the locus of my concern. I may be a dropout or a saint, a celebrity or a garden-variety human being. I may feel like going along with the crowd, or I may be a minority of one. Either way it doesn't matter so long as I remain true to the deepest and most fundamental sense of myself. I am what I am. I am what I do. To others I may appear improbable, irrational, absurd. Nevertheless, I am I, and the I that I am is an I that I like and what I must be and express-all else notwithstanding. 11 October 2006What kind of "justice" exists in a system that establishes mandatory requirements a prisoner must meet before he may be allowed to parole, and then establishes requirements and conditions to make it impossible for the prisoner to meet such mandatory requirements? The Texas criminal system requires that before a prisoner can be paroled (s)he must first make his/her own arrangements to be accepted into a halfway house if no private home is available or approved. Then the system makes a requirement that only halfway houses that are pre-approved by the system qualify. Then the system refuses to approve any halfway house that does not try to shove the Christian religion down the parolee's throat, thus blatantly violating the U.S. and Texas constitutions. Then the system refuses to approve any halfway house willing to accept a parolee who has any type of sex related offense on his record, thus making a bit over 50% of prisoners in Texas ineligible. Then the system refuses to provide the prisoner a list of "approved" halfway houses to contact, but instead provides only a short list of out-of-date contacts, half of which do not even exist. 12 October 2006Robert A. Heinlein said: "What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything as long as it isn't the whole population. ... Laws to sweep back the tide never do work. ... Obvious symptoms: Violence, muggings, sniping, arson, bombing, terrorism of any sort. Riots... Conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial... ... A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness, bad manners, lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a Was Heinlein examining historical events from past ages-or America today? 16 October 2006I'm no longer indifferent about this class. It is beginning to look like it may be, unlike most TDCJ programs, actually worth something. 17 October 2006List people you resent and why. I resent the cop, the two judges, the two prosecutors, the twocourt appointed lawyers, the appellate court judges, and the habeas corpus judges who all participated in collusion in my case. Why I resent them: Two reasons: 1. They conspired together to both convict me with no evidence and maintain the illegal conviction though they knew from the outset that I did not commit the crime they convicted me for, and 2. They uncaringly destroyed the mind of a sweet and innocent child to do it. 20 October 2006After his lying speech in class yesterday telling everyone how considerate and how perfect he is, and how he hates people who cut in front of him in lines, this morning on the way to work inmate B--- ran around more than 20 men waiting in line, and shoved his way into the front to be first through the door. 23 October 2006What feelings surface when you risk being honest in your communication with other people? Fear. The one thing humans in general hate worse than anything else is the truth, and when they hear it they are apt to become extremely violent. 24 October 2006List examples of your behavior that indicate you have the courage to change the things you can. One never knows for sure if (s)he can change things until (s)he tries. The only thing you can know for sure before you try is that you're not going to change anything if you don't try. Through most of my life I have been a good bit stronger than I looked, without doing anything to make myself stronger. As a result, I have been very conscious of how I interact with others due to fear that I might unintentionally hurt them. Fortunately, now that I'm getting so ancient ??I have lost much of that excess strength, so I no longer have to be quite so cautious. I never had that problem with my mouth, though, and often am quite outspoken when people get too out of line. Though I know I can't change them, I let them know there is a problem. Another example is the newsletter I started when I got out last time, though in that case I was not able to change the situation. A third example was years ago on Wynne unit when Lt. L----- got on me for not calling him sir. I very deliberately told him I wasn't going to do it, though I expected I would probably go to solitary for it. He had a bad reputation for abusiveness. That time I did make a change, and we had a mutually respectful relationship while I was there. When I get in an argument, then discover I was wrong, which I do too often, I apologize for my error to restore friendly relations, even though it is embarrassing. 25 October 2006Give examples of how and why you isolate yourself from others. I don't look at them, I don't answer when they speak. I don't leave my assigned area except when I have to. I keep all my time occupied with reading and writing. I do my job conscientiously (which keeps most away). The thing that annoys me most about a majority of people is that they have no consideration for anybody. The second worst offense is deliberate stupidity (as opposed to natural stupidity). Therefore, to avoid trouble, I isolate myself from people who demonstrate those two characteristics. 26 October 2006Are you willing to ask for help when you need it? Why or why not? Almost never. Only as a last resort. When others ask me for help I give it freely. But almost every time I have to ask for help, either no one will give it, or they set a price higher than their help proves worth. 1 November 2006The currents that determine our dreams and shape our likes, flow from the attitude we nurture every day. Explain what this means to you and how does it apply to what you have learned in cognitive intervention. My "dreams," and I assume the dreams of others, are of having a life free from pain and unpleasantness, in which I can seek maximum pleasure for myself and for my friends, though I understand it is not always to be found, without having others try to force me to provide for their wants. The attitudes that I try hard to nurture every day are to treat other people in exactly the manner in which I hope they will treat me, and to avoid at any cost doing anything that will harm someone, except when necessary either to defend myself against them, or to keep them from suffering greater harm. I firmly believe in doing it, not just saying it. From that attitude, as it interacts with those around me, result the events that shape my life and impact on my dreams. I have not yet seen anything in cognitive intervention that indicated I should change my attitudes. 2 November 2006I'm still fuming because my "4th place" story, Reluctant Knight, was better writing than the first 3 place winners. If they really want to break criminal thinking patterns, why do they reward writing crime stories? Next year I'll write crime stories to give them what they want. 3 November 2006The Girl Scouts Visit Prison video we saw discusses the masks we put on to conceal our true-self from others (a process that seldom works as well as we believe it does), but doesn't mention the more insidious masks we use to conceal our true-self from our own conscience and consciousness. The moms in the movie try to tell the girls "Do as I say, not as I did." The circumstances help to show the girls why, but I feel the moms should have more carefully explained specifically. I have always believed that adults should be 100% truthful with children, even when they don't believe the child yet has a sufficient knowledge base or sufficient maturity to understand. When they do achieve the knowledge and maturity, they won't be able to understand what has not been truthfully explained. Adults who shield and "protect" the children from the real world around them are in reality abusing them because when they reach the currently arbitrarily set age of adulthood, they are suddenly cast out into a world they have never seen, know nothing about, and are totally unprepared to deal with. 13 November 2006Today at work a man got mad at me for entering his conversation, and though he constantly does the same himself to others, that did not excuse my doing it. 15 November 2006A ship in the harbor is safe...but that is not what ships were made for! Or Our life is what our thoughts make it. Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have. I disagree with both statements. Try telling the tea ships in Boston harbor they were safe from the Colonists dressed as Indians, or the ships in Florida's harbor in that hurricane.
While we can do the best we can, where we are, and with what we have, and I always try to, we still do not exist alone and in a vacuum, therefore our life is what our thoughts make it only to the extent that others allow us to make it so. 16 November 2006"The great problem confronting us today is that we have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. We have allowed our civilization to outrun our culture, and so we are in the danger now of ending up with guided missiles in the hands of misguided men" M.L. King, Jr. Mr. King was being more generous to our so-called "civilization" than I generally am in my writing, and he has been proven correct, even through our own particular involvement to date (9-11) was clearly done by our own operatives, probably under direct orders of our president, to create an excuse to invade Iraq. Our two worst problems are greed, and a demented desire to control everybody else. 26 November 2006That brings the interesting parts of my class journal up to date. Now here are some interesting tid-bits from class assignments: 1. By the way Ms. H----, you are mistaken. One can live on minimum wages, and without owning any property. I have done it on much less. You must abandon most luxuries, but it can be done, legally. 2. (Excerpt from homework assignment-my thoughts): When I was a child there was still room on this planet and in this country for people to feel freedom. Between that time and now, the population of the U.S. has tripled, there is no longer any room for freedom. In the 1940's Hitler was seen as a radical "conservative." On today's political scene, most of Hitler's policies and beliefs (but not all) are considered to be "liberal." A "conservative" is defined by the legal dictionary as one who wants laws and constitution interpreted to mean what the authorities in power want them to mean, while a "liberal" is defined as one who wants laws and constitution interpreted to mean what they say. In non-legal common thought, a "conservative" is one who wants everything put back the way it was before the American Revolution, and never to change again, while a "liberal" is one who wants to keep what is considered good and change what is considered bad. Since the 1940's America has shifted so far right that it is almost indistinguishable from Hitler's Germany. 3. While watching a video by John Bradshaw we were told to write a question we would ask Bradshaw. My question follows: Since "morality" is a function of religious beliefs, and there are thousands of different religions with different moral beliefs, how is it decided which group may dictate its own morality to everyone else? For example: One group believes girls are adult and marriageable at age 12, and boys at age 14, while another believes they should be 17, another believes they should be 21, and you believe they should be 35, how is it decided which group is going to be the dictator? 4. Comment made to Bradshaw's talk on the compulsive family: Bradshaw said, "Sexual addiction is almost as prominent as alcohol addiction." I disagree. At least in America, sexual addiction is far, far more prominent than addictions to alcohol, drugs, and tobacco combined. It has been made into an ever expanding spiral, just as I predicted it would be in the early 1970's. This is all a direct consequence of people who cannot control themselves but are determined to control everyone else! 5. Another homework assignment-people, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs. Most dangerous people, and why they are dangerous to me: Police, because they falsify charges and evidence; prosecutors, because in violation of the law they demand conviction even when they know the accused is not guilty; Judges, because they are utterly corrupt, the average judge violating more laws in one year than the average "street criminal" violates in an entire career; Lawyers, because they either don't know how to, or don't do their jobs; Juries, because they neither know nor do their duty, but convict despite no legal evidence for one or more of four reasons: 1. They know the prosecutor wants them to, 2. They know the judge wants them to, 3. By innuendo and illegal presentations the prosecutor has appealed to their agitated emotions for them to ignore the evidence, or 4. They don't like the accused; Children, because it is so easy to manipulate them while the accused is denied access to them and judges, police, and prosecutors frequently do so to use them as weapons, often not caring about the harm they do to the child in the process. Most dangerous feelings and why they are dangerous: Belief in the rights listed in the Constitution, belief in the honesty and integrity of another adult, and belief in the functionality of the criminal system. These feelings are extremely dangerous because they narcotize awareness of what is clearly, visibly happening, making it incredibly easy for a citizen to be entrapped. Most Dangerous beliefs: The most dangerous belief is that someone can be trusted to do what is morally right. The second most dangerous is that someone else is honest or truthful. The third most dangerous is that some (any) person in a position of power of authority in the U.S. will obey the law or the Constitution in a given circumstance. These beliefs are dangerous because they fool a citizen into acting like a human being should, instead of like a hunted animal. Only by acting like a hunted animal does one have a chance to remain alive and free. 27 January 20071. Have I slept through a monumental session of the legislature? Have they passed a new constitutional amendment, or a new capital felony law making it illegal for Americans to think?
I find myself wondering how much the medical doctors and pharmaceutical executives paid the advertising agency conducting the current campaign being presented as if it were news. Very clearly the ad campaign is designed and intended to persuade people to stop all efforts to provide for their own health and well being and return to paying the prices so high that no one can afford them anymore, to get prescriptions from a doctor and to buy exorbitantly overpriced medications. I refer to the smear campaign they have launched to make everyone believe that herbal supplements are utterly worthless, if not critically dangerous to our health. They do not want us to understand that herbal supplements, just like prescribed medications, are dangerous only when improperly used. And why is it that in their campaign they are so studiously avoiding mention of the well known fact that the greatest majority of today's most effective prescribed medications are directly extracted from or otherwise derived from the very same herbs they are telling us are useless and dangerous? Wake up and smell the roses. It may save you some needlessly spent money 2. Another item currently in the news that makes me wonder if it has become illegal to think. The two boys, one missing from home only a few weeks, and the other for over four years. They didn't give any real information about the one temporarily missing, so we can't think about him intelligently. The one missing over four years is an entirely different story. Now he has recently been transformed from the image he presented when first "rescued," into what they picture as a clean-cut all American kid, and is now saying on tv that he cried every night and was scared to leave. But, shouldn't we be thinking about that and about the facts presented earlier that we are no longer being shown? First, we should wonder why the authorities kept him isolated so long without being allowed to talk to anyone but police and prosecutors? Then we should wonder why during that four years he spent so much time alone, at the house and on the streets, with his own cell phone and internet access, yet never sought help. To the contrary, several times police who didn't know him accosted him, and he never even told them his real name. Further, several times on the internet he contacted his own family's web site without telling them anything, but asked them how long they were going to keep looking for him. How can anyone avoid asking the two questions: 1. did he stay four years where he was because that is where he wanted to be? 2. Did the authorities hold him incommunicado so long so that they could implant the stories they wanted him to tell? 2 February 2007A few days ago while on my way to class a lieutenant Warden stopped me in the hall, the first time that I had seen him or that he had seen me. The first words out of his mouth were, "I got on your ass yesterday about wearing that trash!" He pointed to my ID card holder in which there was a piece of paper with the Wiccan holy symbol on it, and the law of Wicca which says: " An you harm none, do as you will." I told him, "I've never seen you before in m life, and you have never spoken to me before." He said, " Yes I did! What is that anyway?" Had he spoken to me before he would have known what it was. I told him that it was the symbol and the law of my religion. He said, "You can't show that in here. Get it out of there and don't ever let me see it again!" When I asked what about all these Christians that were running around here wearing their holy symbols and writings he same way? He yelled, "The Christians can do whatever they want to! I'm ordering you to not wear that!" So what do we have here? This is a high ranking officer who is supposed to be a role model, in an institution that is supposed to be rehabilitating prisoners and teaching them how to act in society. By his actions he is violating more than a half dozen state federal laws; some of which are felony violations; hundreds of state and federal court orders; and the constitution of both Texas and the United States. Will he be punished for his crimes? Never a chance! There is no rule of law, and no citizen is safe where those responsible for making and for enforcing the law are its worst violators. Friday, he wrote: "What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group; a racial group, or a religion, or a language, anything as long as it isn't the whole population. Before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts. High taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency. Everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way- even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation. Obvious symptoms: Violence, muggings, sniping, arson, bombing, terrorism of any sort, riots... conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial... A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness, bad manners and lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot." Does that scare you? Look around you-it should! March 4th, 2007I've just read a most amazing book: First published in 1974 and in its 69th printing in the issue I read, it is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig. At the very beginning Mr. Pirsig makes clear that "The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'" On the cover he states that it is "an inquiry into values." From the blurbs printed at the front of the book, it is not clear that the reviewers all actually knew what the book was about. In elegant simplicity, the one by the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle says it best: "A sort of book of life, a book about feeling and caring, about what we are and the quality of our lives. It offers glimpses of what living really means..." It is not a book of entertainment for shallow or non-thought. It does present and indictment against humanity for the abandonment of both a full half of the basis for understanding what reality is and of the foundation from which spring the two halves of reality which we have ripped as under in the name of understanding. Don't even pick this book up unless you are willing to invest some deep thought and to suspend preconceived judgments and faulty perceptions of reality. This should be mandatory reading for all people in positions of power over other people, but unfortunately most of hose would fail to understand it, and the few who could understand would condemn it because it doesn't fit their wants. March 5th, 2007I have finally finished the class in cognitive intervention that was eating so heavily into my time, so now I'm beginning to catch up on other interests I had to set aside in order to do what was made mandatory. Among those interests is reading, and in the process of catching up I have discovered a magazine, new to me, though if I have correctly calculated from issue numbers, in publication about 6 " years now. The magazine is called "The Week" and is a member of several prestigious news agencies. Many people might not like "the Week" because it is not over laden with minute details. I, on the other hand, find it excellent because it provides capsules of news from around the globe which are adequate to keep me informed of the broad picture of what's happening in the world and allows me to make fairly accurate broadband predictions of how the world is going to move. There are areas in its interpretations of the news with which I strongly concur, and other areas where I think its contributors are missing the point. But then, if I agreed with it at every point, it would soon get boring, wouldn't it? At any rate, I would like to think-out-loud about several things I've found in the 3 issues currently available to me. For example, in the February 16 issue: "Living in a Virtual World" is basically about a website called Second Life, but amazingly it does not give a web address by which to find it. In part of the article people worry themselves over people doing in the virtual world thinks they can't or won't do in the real world, and want to ban it. They should instead be celebrating it because it is potential safety value allowing relief of pressures into a fantasy world that would otherwise explode into similar but real behaviors in the real world, a natural consequence of the ever increasing insane practices of the few trying to dominate and control the many. Another part talks about psychologists worries that the online personas could spill over into the real world (though the reality is that real world personas are being set free on line), but then most psychological thinking today is based upon fundamental fallacies from before fraud (excuse my slip ?), and continued by the very process of psychological research advancement which prohibits any new thought which does not agree with all past accepted errors. They should celebrate this virtual reality for the opportunity it provides then to examine and discover what human thought and life are really about. I agree with Mitch Kapor, CEO of Linden Lab that Second Life has a great potential to "accelerate the social evolution of humanity," and it could well help to eliminate some of the insanity that is driving the human race toward self-extinction. In Wit and Wisdom (in the same issue) Robert Frost is quoted as saying: "Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." If Robert Frost actually said that, then shame on Robert Frost, and shame on those who quote him! That is not love and has nothing to do with love! It is straight-up lust! In Only in America, we read about a New Jersey high school that has banned students from tape recording their classes - because a teacher was caught on tape in acts of abusing his students, violating the constitutions of the United States and New Jersey, and teaching as absolute fact a theory that has never been either proved or disproved. Say What?! Because the teacher is a criminal the students must be punished for catching him in the act? You're! Only in America. And look at the lame excuse they give for punishing the students. The taping violates the criminal's privacy and the privacy of the students? What privacy? This was a public school classroom, not a bedroom in someone's home. Any person who was present in that classroom has a right to report anything they saw or heard there, and what better way can be found to be sure the report is accurate then to record it as it happens? The truth is that in that school as in courtrooms, jails, prisons, and other conflict areas, the people in power don't want their victims to be able to prove their violations. March 6th, 2007Continuing with "The Week" magazine, in the February 23 issue, Eric Effron tells us of New York State Senator Carl Krueger who wants to make yet another law making a facet of human stupidity a crime, as if the jails and prisons weren't already bursting at the seems with warehoused slaves! Come one, people - think for a change! One of the major problems in the world today is that we have way the hell too many laws! And when the masses ignore one law those in power make two more to add to the confusion. This will not solve the massive over-population. Humans invented government in the first place for one purpose only: government is to provide a means for the protection of citizens who cannot protect themselves against abuses by other people. It was not meant to protect them against their own stupidity, and it is impossible to create intelligence by making stupidity a crime. As Mr. Krueger should plainly be able to see from his "ipod oblivion" situation, if he simply leaves that stupidity alone it will eventually eliminate itself. First, government went wrong by being taken over by the very abusers it was created to protect us from, and now, with the world already packed with 30 times as many people as it can safely support, Mr. Krueger wants to make more laws trying to force survival of the stupid ones. The end result, of course, can only be a drastic reduction in the intelligence level of the survivors. But, since that would undoubtedly make them better slaves, I suppose that's what today's government wants. Speaking of high levels of human stupidity; get a glimpse of the first paragraph in "Only in America" on page 6 of that issue. Over the years many words have been coined and accepted for use by society as label for the female sexual organ. Then, after several years of use, suddenly the stupid element has take control and declared that to be a "bad word," forcing the more intelligent people to invent a new word for the same thing in order to hold intelligible discourse. Then after a few more years of acceptance, again the stupid element steps in and says that is a "bad word." And here we go again. Of course, the word for the female sexual organ is only one of thousands of words that we allow the stupid element to repeatedly change, for no reason other than their desire to control and dominate other people and force them into their own insane thought patterns. There is no such thing as a "bad word!" There are words that refer to bad acts (that is, acts of harming other people), but it is the act that is bad, not the word. And as for parts of the human body, labeling any such part as bad is a straight forward act of Satanism. The human body, with every one of its parts, was created by God, and according to Christian doctrine, God didn't make everything bad. Consequently, those who think a vagina, or a penis, is something bad are worshipping Satan. If you are offended by what God has made, you are offended by God. If you are offended by God, shouldn't God be offended by you? Page 14: "What Porn is doing to our kids," Get real, people! When are we going to grow up? Porn is not, and can not do anything to anybody, kid or otherwise, who has been properly taught from early childhood respect for their fellow human beings, respect for themselves and their own bodies, and respect for what God has created and instituted. What is harming our kids is not porn, which exists solely because of the lack of any such teaching, but parents and other adults who make sex into something dirty and refuse to properly teach the children-especially when they ask. By the time the child is 10years old, it is often too late to teach what they need to know. If the adults don't know how to teach their kids properly, they should admit it to their kids and find someone who can teach them. Haven't we been insane about sex long enough now? Page 28; An article about the Dixie Chicks. It's strange that I can't think of a single song I've ever heard by the Dixie Chicks. I did, however, hear about them making some anti-Bush comment, and about the astounding reaction against them for it. I also heard that despite the reaction against their comment about a person who is likely to go down as the worst president in the U.S. history-forever-they stuck to their guns. Dixie Chicks - I salute you! You are the true Americans, standing up for the Constitution and your rights while everyone else is putting you down. If there is life after death, I believe every American who fought in the revolution must have ruptured their throats cheering for you. March 7th, 2007I only picked one article out of the March 2 issue to discuss, by William Falk. He tells us that it seems absurd that the U.S. and Britain are the worst places for children to grow up in the Western world according to a UNICEF survey of 21 developed nations. I cannot imagine why he thinks that conclusion is absurd. I cannot imagine any different conclusion coming from such a survey in view of the attitudes and conceptions of the U.S. and Britain. There is not another one of those nations which goes to the extremes of Britain and the U.S. for worshipping the acquisition of money for its own sake, or that devotes less time to the actual loving caretaking their children need, or that so totally is swamped in a quagmire of insane attitudes toward sex and sexuality, or that is so totally dedicated to an attitude of "I want what I want, when I want it, the way I want it, and I don't give a damn about you!" And, with such a majority of U.S. and British adults dragging themselves to oblivion with narcotics and alcohol, how can they expect their children to act any differently from what they are shown? Stable and supportive family and social relationships are indeed far more important to kids' well-being than the expensive junk people pile on top of them to keep them out of sight and out of mind. But let a parent or other adult give a child the care and attention they need and beg for, and our insane society will call it sexual abuse and send the adult to prison. Or, let the adult provide the discipline and direction the child needs, and asks for, and we will call it either physical abuse or neglect, and send the adult to prison. Until we back up and start learning what is or is not abuse, we are going to continue having our unfortunate children raising each other, and since we have clearly forgotten how to raise them, how can we expect them to do well at raising each other? No wonder they are terrified, and teaching each other violence. 12 March 2007There are a couple of short articles in the March 2007 issue of The Atlantic magazine I would mention. One, "Baby Bust," a study by three 'population experts' shows that Europe's falling birthrates have dropped below replacement level in many countries and states that current United Nations projections estimate that birthrates will level off at around 1.85 children per woman in most countries. With the world currently buried by about 30 times as many people as it can reasonably support with equality, that is such wonderful news that everybody in the world should take a full day to celebrate. Instead, the 'population experts' bemoan the declining birthrate and create "only a hypothesis" that reducing the world's population to a reasonable level has to be a disaster and urge that government policies should reverse the trend (force people to have more babies) and once again drive the birthrate to an insane incline. This is the same "more is better" mentality as that of slave owners who determine that if they can't get fine slaves to do what free man could do alone, then they should get more slaves on the job (without providing more food, clothing, etc.), and when the slaves die, kick them aside and keep adding more until the job is done. It is the same mentality as that of the greedy 10 percent of the world's population which has amassed itself 90 percent of the world's money and resources and continues to rake in more and more, not caring what that greed is doing to everyone else. The other short article, "Revolving Cell Door," is about a study which shows that harsher prison conditions make criminals measurably more likely to offend again. The study, by one professor from Yale University and another from the University of Chicago, addresses the question: "Does Prison Harden Inmates?" There's no telling how many thousands of taxpayers' dollars were spent to conduct that study. They could have saved it all had they merely asked a prisoner. Any one of us could and would have answered that question for free. Incidentally, professors, we are no longer called inmates. Those in power determined that "inmate" is not a sufficiently derogatory and abusive term, so now we are called "offenders" in effort to make us seem worse than our keepers. We "offenders," both those who are actually guilty and those who were innocent but convicted anyway, can easily tell you that the more abusive (they call that "harsh") the prison conditions are, and the longer the time we are compelled to endure them, the angrier we become, and the more inclined to seek vengeance when and where we can. Conversely, the less abusive the system is, and the more effort it expends toward preparing prisoners to get a place to live and a job to earn their way, the less likely the prisoner is to commit crime after release. But such treatment would not promote job security for prison guards, police, lawyers, and judges. 13 March 2007Wow! I have just read the most amazing magazine I've ever read! It was given to me by a man who calls himself "Christian." He knows that my religion is WICCA, and though I have never said anything disparaging to him about "Christianity," he likes to denigrate my religion, and one of the articles contains disinformation about and condemnation of my religion. Apparently he didn't read the rest of the magazine. I have previously read other issues of this magazine, The Good News, and found that except for much disinformation, it is basically a good magazine. But I must admit that this March-April 2007 issue is the best I've seen from them. If you get a chance, check it out at www.gnmagazine.org. Start by reading "The Jesus So Few Know" (page 23). It is sub-titled: "Why is the Christianity people see so different from the Jesus Christ of the Bible? Could it be that many have a fundamental misunderstanding of his teaching?" It is by Dan Taylor. Quoting specifically potent points; "[A]n observer comparing the modern-day beliefs and conduct of the average Christian with those of Jesus and his disciples might very well conclude that much of so-called Christianity has lost its way." "In reality, the public relations problems with modern-day Christianity aren't confined to those in the ministry. Most who call themselves Christian just don't seem to be living up to the example of Jesus Christ." "John's advice for dealing with Gnosticism, and heresy in general, was to have nothing to do with it or its proponents (2 John 7-10)." Contrast that with the new "Christian" practice of attempting to destroy all who do not agree with what they say. "But if you claim to be a Christian, as a follower of Jesus you need to understand more than just who Jesus said he was. You need to understand what He did and what He commanded His followers to do." Most of today's "Christians" don't understand and don't want to. They are content keeping Jesus as their personal servant. "Many Christian apologists would argue that any shortcomings on a Christian's part are merely because he or she is 'saved' but not yet perfect." Thereby they are free to violate Jesus' teachings over and over again. "Many claim to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, yet the moment that the Jesus revealed in the Bible becomes meddlesome by calling on them to make changes in how they live, their religious life becomes neatly compartmentalized in a convenient corner." "Today many extol the slogan 'What Would Jesus Do?'...But far too many don't know the answer to that question because they don't know what He did." "Jesus Christ expects obedience to the same commandments he obeyed." "If we look at the Christianity so many disdain, what is missing? From all we have seen, the missing ingredient is the example of Jesus Christ Himself. Once you have carefully read that article, read the rest of the magazine. Then go back and read that article again. You can never understand real Christianity unless you carefully study the history of Christianity. Through such study you can learn that the Hebrew God, Jehovah claimed as the father of Jesus, was originally five pagan gods: Jod (the father), He (the mother), Vou (the son), He (the daughter), and Jehovah (the patriarch), whose name was spelled by the first letters of the names of the others (the Hebrew tetragramaton)! In Hebrew tradition it was those gods who said, "Let us create man in our image." At about the time the human macho emerged, the Hebrews rolled those five pagan gods into the God, with the patriarch's name, and dismissed the two females, leaving only the three males as the original trinity, later changed to mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Years later along came God as the son of man. As the original Hebrew God chose the Hebrews to be His chosen people, and later called non-Hebrews to join the ranks of the chosen, so Jesus chose the people who were to be His followers (Christians), and later chose others to join the ranks. It is important to remember that it was not the people who chose Jehovah, but Jehovah, who chose his people, and not the people who chose Jesus, but Jesus who chose His Christians. No matter how hard you try you cannot force Jehovah or Jesus to choose someone to be a follower. It is God's choice, not yours. Nor is there any instance in the Bible where Jesus told his chosen to try to compel those not chosen to adopt Christianity, nor did He make any such effort Himself. Instead, according to the Bible, He commanded them only to make knowledge of Him available to everyone. That done, the Christian's job is finished respecting non-Christians. There is no further duty-or-right-to compel any choosing, nor does the Christian have any right to condemn anyone. The law is Judge not! And, wasn't it Jesus who said: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" There is another article in the magazine, by Mario Seiglie, "The Spirit World's Dangerous Dark Side." I'm not sure if M. Seiglie is merely misinformed, or if he is deliberately lying. Either way, he should read Mr. Taylor's article. I have not studied Santeria or voodoo (and I doubt M. Seiglie has either), but I know that he knows nothing about WICCA. Calling Buffy, Angel, and Charmed examples of WICCA isn't even a good joke. Note also that he calls the Wiccan's symbol a "satanic pentagram." That is exactly the same as calling the Christian's symbol a "satanic cross." If fact, the Satanists took both symbols and turned them upside down to use as satanic symbols The pentagram shown is a Wiccan pentagram which symbolizes life and the man-figure of the Universal Man. The satanic pentagram, not shown, has two points on top and one at the bottom, symbolizing the goat head of Satan. The Christian cross symbolizes murder by torture. The upside down cross of Satan symbolizes murder by torture. Further, Wiccans do not believe in the existence of Satan, a false god created to give members of certain other religions excuse to disobey the laws of their asserted God. M. Seiglie further claims that Wicca is from an Old English word meaning "witch." The truth is that wicca is an Old English word meaning "wise one," and was used in England in about the fifteenth century as the name of a group of "wise ones" who gave advice to the king. It was also used to describe the wise men and women who studied herbal healing and served in the place of non-existing doctors and as community advisorsÑand were falsely declared to be witches and persecuted as such by "Christians" violating the laws of Christ while trying to take control of all the known world. Non est disputandum contra principia negantum1. The Christians have 12 laws and a "golden rule." Wiccans of the right hand path have but a single law which in modern English is: "So long as you harm no one, do as you will." The "Christians" can't seem to comprehend the part about "harm no one." Comnant quod non intelligunt. Another article that deserves attention is 'Christians Who Don't Celebrate Easter: What Do They Know?" Mostly accurate, the article errs in naming Easter after the goddess Ishtar or Astarte, or Ashtareth, rather than the goddess Esther, goddess of Spring, called Eostre in Germany, whose fertility symbols were rabbits and colored eggs. It is true that the celebration of Eostre was stolen from the pagans (country people) by "Christians," as were many other pagan rites, rituals, modes of dress for worship, etc. (Thou shalt not steal). They made those thefts in ongoing effort to force pagans, against the commands and examples of Christ, to turn to Christianity. (As a young child I even participated in dancing around a May pole at "Christian" church. Wait 'till you learn what that is about!) In fact, they stole a great many pagan gods and goddesses, calling them 'saints' to get pagans physically into the "Christian" churches to worship them. Actually, almost everything today called "Christian" was directly stolen from the pagan religions, including the vestments worn in church, the ranks of Pope, Cardinal, priest, deacon, et al.; Even December 25 as the birthdate of Christ. Shepherds watched their flocks in the fields at bight during the summer, not during the frigid winter when the few animals not slaughtered were kept in caves to protect them from the bitter cold. The sun god, Mirtha, whose magician priest tried to buy the secret of the laying on the hands miracles from the apostles, died, was buried for three days, then was born again on December 25, now a "born again Christian." The giving of gifts at Christmas was stolen from the pagan Saturnalia, a wild, drunken, orgiastic festivity lasting a week and ending on December 25. Now, go back and read Mister Taylor's article again. It makes even more sense now, doesn't it? 14 March 2007When I let the man who gave me the magazine read what I wrote about it, he had two interesting reactions in succession. First, he said that the part of the Wiccan's law about not harming anyone is okay, but he can't agree with the 'do as you will' part. When I asked what problem he had with that, he said; "Well people would just do things to please themselves instead of pleasing everybody else like you're supposed to." I didn't ask where he got the idea we are supposed to only please everybody else (an impossible task), but asked instead if he meant that we are supposed to spend our lives being miserable because we are not allowed to please ourselves. After a few moments of stammering inability to answer, he changed the subject by saying, "Anyway, I hope you'll keep growing spiritually so someday you'll be all right." I asked, "By that do you mean that I must develop my religious beliefs to where I believe the way you say you believe?" "Well," he said, "you've got to accept Jesus or you won't be saved." I said, "But I'm not one of those Jesus chose." "But you just have to accept Him," he said. "In other words, I must do what YOU want me to do, even though that's not what Jesus commanded. Well good luck to you," I said, walking away. Clearly he had learned nothing either from the magazine or from my commentary. But that is not a problem only of "Christians" or of those who profess other religions. The fact is that there are a few who actually believe in and try to practice the religionsÑvery few. The vast majority claim various religions not because they honestly believe in them, but because they serve as a weapon by which the professed believer hopes to obtain and maintain control over everybody else (since they have not figured out how to control themselves). It's business as usual for the human race. 15 March 2007I got excited today when I read an article in the March/April 2007 Psychology Today, by Robert Epstein. The article, "Trashy Teens," refers to his book, The Case Against Adolescence. On the article's front page, Epstein says: "Teens are far more competent than we assume, and most of their problems stem from restrictions placed on them." This article, and probably the book, finally admits to facts I have been stating, and derided from stating, for more than 40 years. The first paragraph states some obvious facts from which an intelligent thinker should be able to reason and conclude the rest. "In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring 'children' well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20's. The age at which most Americans reach adulthood is increasingÑ30 is the new 20Ñand most Americans now believe a person isn't an adult until age 26." Though the article correctly shows that this insane artificial extension of childhood has only been happening for about 100 years, it fails to point out that before then, the human race managed to thrive without such manipulation for more than 4,000,000 years! So, how did we suddenly become so incompetent in the last 100 years? Another well known fact that people refuse to acknowledge or consider while establishing ever higher ages of childhood, is that for the greatest part of that 4 million years, human life span seldom exceeded a maximum of 40 years. Over that long span, if they had compelled extension of childhood as long as it now is, the human race would have promptly perished from the face of the earth. Ultimately, our artificial extension of childhood has nothing to do with ability, competence, or any of the myriad of other excuses given for it. Like every other facet of human society, it is merely one more symptom of our greatest evilÑthe desire to dominate and control everybody else. This article, and probably the book, should be compulsory reading for everyone. See? Even I am trying to control everyone else. 19 March 2007Today the Powledge Unit went on a one week lock-down to conduct the twice-a-year major shakedown. These shakedowns are justified by claiming that they are searching for weapons and drugs. Of course, since they never find any weapons or drugs in these shakedowns, we all know that's not true. We have spotted several real reasons. One is that it provides inducement for packrats (all of us) to do a housecleaning and throw away a lot of trash we never use. Another is that it gives employees the opportunity to browse through all the prisoners' property and take anything they find that they want for themselves, but don't want to pay for. Of course, they don't stick it in their pockets until after the inmate they take it from is out of sight. The rest of us watching don't matter because we're not allowed to complain about anything they do to someone else. While checking my own collection, I reviewed some of the editorials I had published in a newsletter that is no longer being published. For example, here's part of one from the winter 1998 issue: "FloridaÑ'Armed with pencils and clipboards, 100 marines began invading Jacksonville today to study the city's buildings and bridges as part of an urban warfare exercise. The exercise, which doesn't involve any weapons, aircraft, or military vehicles, is part of an experiment called "Urban Warrior" that focuses on fighting inside cities.' [quoted from USA today]." "Why is our military training to conduct warfare against our own major cities and citizens? If they are really planning to attack someone else's cities, then who is the enemy? And why aren't they collecting information about those cities? Why plan attacks on American cities, unless that's where they plan to attack?" Of course, 9-11 answered that question. Now I keep wondering how many more buildings they seeded with demolition charges during those exercises, and each time I hear of a new terrorist threat alert, I wonder, are they fixing to set of another one? 21 March 2007Today I received "legal mail," a letter from a lawyer. It is mandatory under court orders that legal mail must be delivered to the prisoner within three days maximum after it arrives on the unit. I noted that this legal mail was sent February 15, from Houston, which is one day away by mail. Did you know there are only four days between February 15 and March 21? The lawyer who sent it provides information to some prisoners that is hard for us to get any other way, because he wants to persuade us to hire him as a parole lawyer. There were two items of interest in this latest letter. The first was a long paragraph discussing the current interchange of arguments between prison authorities, Texas legislature, the Texas governor, and lt. governor, and the news media about whether they should take another half billion dollars now, and $72,000,000 per year to build and staff new prison units, or half that, split between new prison units and programs to rehabilitate prisoners. The lt. governor says he doesn't want dangerous people on the streets, so we should have another massive prison building program. I wonder, has he considered the probability that he is one of the most dangerous people on the streets today? Another question I have: If they take that initial $500,000,000 plus that $72,000,000 per year, can't they just outright give every current Texas prisoner enough money to live reasonably for the rest of their lives, eliminating their need to commit crime, and still have enough left over to rework the school system so that it teaches the citizens the skills they must learn to get jobs to live adequately on? Oh! I forgot. That would not provide job security for all the leeches (police, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, prison guards, lawmakers, etc.) who thrive on the current system. After all, this is not about the needs of society, but the wants of those with power. The other interesting item in the letter is a combination of a section that is not there, with a paragraph about a parole procedure change. His letters before have always had a section listing a breakdown of granted paroles according to type of crime. I followed those statistics for a couple of years before finally writing to him and asking why the statistics show that the greatest majority of prisoners being paroled are those who were convicted of crimes of violence, crimes using weapons, and crimes committed in the process of other crimes, while the lowest rate of paroles was for non-violent offenses, without weapons, without physical harm, and not while committing any other crimes (specifically, indecent exposure and touching a child without doing harm)? The lawyer wrote back a very irate letter saying that the parole board does not have to explain to anyone why it makes the decisions it makes. This new letter does not have the parole break down in it, though the news media recently pointed out that most of the paroled prisoners were convicted of violent crimes, but it does have a paragraph about a new parole procedure. It states that past procedure has required approval by only two board members for all but three types of crime which required approval by five of the seven board members. Those three crimes were: aggravated murder, aggravated sexual assault (two of the most violent crimes), and indecency with a child by touching. Of course, that doesn't mean that they will stop letting out so many violent offenders, or start letting out any of the non-violent ones. 26 March 2007The Week magazine for March 30 has on page 6 a capsule about corruption in the federal "justice" department, and the Bushite's firing of prosecutors because they decided not to frame up Democrats Bush didn't like. And now they've discovered that Attorney General Gonzalez is as criminal as everybody else in power. Ho-hum. If the media is going to use sensationalism to sell copies, shouldn't they use something sensational? Corruption in our so-called justice system is not sensational anymore. It's been corrupt since the early 1800's. We all know the whole system is corrupt from top to bottomÑand clearly is what Americans want because we keep those criminals in power. I realize they can't write a sensational story about an honest politician, or an honest judge, or an honest prosecutor or other lawyer, or an honest cop, or whatever power position comes to mindÑbecause such a story would not be newsÑit would be fantasy. Some of my best story ideas for my fantasy come from the corruption in the system. Fantasy without the corruption won't sell. It gets boring though, being told about these criminals over and over again, and keeping them in power instead of bringing them to justice. Get over it. What you have, you get because you keep on doing what it takes to keep it. Harvey Wendt 11 April 2007Today was announced the dismissal of all charges against the three La cross players from Duke accused of rape, with admission by the attorney general that the case should never have been prosecuted in the first placeÑan action he should have taken long ago when DNA tests showed they had no part in such a rape and the woman began changing her story. He mentioned possibility of bringing criminal charges against the persecutor, who is still publicly saying they are guilty despite all the contrary evidence. Of course, that will never be done in the criminal "good-old-boy" justice systemÑbut it needs to be. Laws should be enacted across the country to make mandatory prosecutions against jury members who convict without legally sufficient evidence, persecutors who prosecute cases despite such lack of evidence, and judges who permit convictions when evidence is not legally sufficient. The so-called "justice" system in America has been heavily weighed in favor of conviction, without proper evidence, that an accused person has no chance at all for justice unless he has millions of dollars to throw into the mill and massive national publicity to overcome the illegal and immoral practices used to convict. People on juries have abandoned their only duty which, by law, is to acquit unless the legally presented evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the specific crime alleged in the indictment was actually committed and that the accused was the person who did it. The accusation itself is not evidence, even when stated in the witness stand. Evidence is what proves that the accusation is true. Yet more than half of the convictions in American courts today result from the accusation alone, either with no supporting evidence at all, as in my case, or without sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The law does not allow a hung jury. If even one juror has not found proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the law requires a 'not guilty' verdict, no matter how strongly they believe the accused is guilty. The persecutors have abandoned their mandated duty, not to convict, but to see that justice is done. Instead, they seek conviction no matter what, for publicity, sensationalism, and votes. The judges have abandoned their mandated duty to enforce and uphold the law and insure a fair trial, in favor of riding the coattails of the persecutors on the summit of the media waves of sensation Lawyers care only about filling their pockets and know little-to-nothing about the law, nor do they care. Far worse are the Supreme Court judges who, since the 1960's, have engaged in war-to-the-death against the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. They have succeeded in utterly destroying it, except for their own personal protection. It is time for Americans to begin paying attention to the number of convictions that have recently been overturned by DNA evidence (26 already in Texas alone and 354 currently being examined in Dallas county alone). In the face of that, citizens should think about the hundreds of thousands of such convictions for which there is no DNA evidence. If all the illegally convicted prisoners were released, it would take many years to fill the prisons already built. 12 April 2007In The Week magazine for April 13, 07 there are related articles, one on page 5 by William Falk and one on page 16 by Christopher Hayes, that merit more than a cursory glance. They are about child sex abuse. The Hayes article points out that child sex abuse has declined 40 percent in recent years and says: "The media is now in the thrall of a 'child-sex-abuse-panic,' led by NBC's popular To Catch a Predator series." I don't intend to diminish the problem by saying that child-sex-abuse has been with us since the first child was born, but only to point out that it is not a new situation. When Hayes mentioned the 40 percent reduction, he forgot to mention that such a statistic is meaningless. But he certainly said a mouthful with the line I quoted above. About 1969 or 1970 when the news media suddenly began sensationalizing child-sex-abuse in order to sell papers, I told my friends to watch, because that media campaign was going to cause instances of child-sex-abuse to rise like rocket and would eventually result in many of these children, many of whom had previously only been fondled, to be killed. Of course I didn't know what I was talking about. My friends began to develop amnesia, forgetting my predictions, in the mid 1970's. By that time the instances of child-sex-abuse had already risen so high that the recent 40 percent decrease doesn't even get halfway back to it, and look at how many victims had already been killed by then. There were not many more actual pedophiles in 1975 than in 1970, and are not many more now. What is driving the mania of child-sex-abuse and murder is not any increase in pedophiles. It is the media and entertainment industry sensationalism. If the problem stopped being sensationalized, within a few years it would return to the pre-1970 level, or even lower. You can take that to the bank and profit from it. I found another interesting article on page 24, titled, "The First Semi-Identical Twins." In 1994, I wrote a science fiction novel, In Small Packages, in which two of the key characters were a set of identical Siamese twinsÑone of whom was a boy and the other a girl, joined at the wrist. I provided pseudo-scientific justification by giving them both genes in an XYX configuration, as opposed to the XXY that sometimes develops but never survives past birth. I also allowed them the ability to switch sexual appearance, but not function. In so doing, I figured I had something science would not render blasŽ before I could get it published. Don't look for it, it's not published yet. Now, in this article I see a set of twins, born alive and near identical, one of whom is a boy and the other hermaphroditic (boy and girl), with the same set up of genes in each. The main difference between my twins and these, is that mine have all XYX genes , while these have XX and XY in the same body (just as rare). Alas, science has once again made cutting-edge fiction obsolete, even before it could be published. April 17th, 2007In the February 2007 issue of Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine, I read the article: "Hi, I'm Senator Coburn, and I don't want your vote," by Wil S. Hylton. I believe I've said before that, by today's political terminology, I am a "liberal," which would more-or-less make me a Democrat politically. Under the definitions in the law dictionary, a "liberal" is a person who believes the law (including the U.S. Constitution) should be adhered to precisely as written (diverting only in the direction of compassion/mercy in special circumstances), while a "conservative" is one who believes the law should be interpreted on a case-by-case basis to make it mean whatever the person in power wants it to mean. Such "conservative" viewpoint makes provisions for voting to change laws we don't like empty pasturing, and further renders all law a mockery from the outset. One outspoken "conservative" officer where I work said we never should have had the American Revolution and we should do away with the concept of democracy altogether and go back to being ruled by a King! That said, you may see that I seldom agree with any of the radical viewpoints of so-called conservatives. However - I had to read the article when I saw the blurb at the top quoting Senator Coburn as saying, "But I do want you to know that the new Democratic leadership is just as corrupt and irresponsible as the Republicans, and together they are trying to destroy our country." You can see and excellent example of the central theme of his article in the recent passage of Senate and House bills allegedly to require deadlines for troop withdrawal from Iraq, but in reality nothing more than the usual "pork barrel" theft of money form tax payers. I disagree with the senator's belief that the American public will want a change if they take notice of what's going on in American government. The American people have for many years already been aware of what's going on, and keep voting the trash back into power, so they obviously want to be raped and pillaged. I may disagree with Mr. Coburn on his other "conservative" beliefs, but I would vote for him, whither or not he wants me to, over the issues of this article. April 18th, 2007I don't often watch TV here, partly because the volume is so low I can usually pick out no more than a word out of ten, and partly because I have no choice over what channel it shows. I also don't often watch Dr. Phill, though it is on almost everyday, because most of the time I consider him to be a money grubbing, sensationalist, bully actor rather than a legitimate psychologist. But today I watched with interest because he had as his guest a judge who uses what he calls "creative sentencing" instead of prison sentences for relatively minor offenses. That process uses punishments that include embarrassment and humiliation. It was noted that none of the persons he used "creative sentencing" on had been back in his court room or, as far as he knew, back in trouble, while those put through conventional sentencing had. Dr. Phill then introduced a woman, whose qualifications I was not able to hear, who ranted about the judge's methods, saying he should not be using such procedures. Excuse me for saying what you force me to say, madam, but you are STUPID! One of several reasons for the crime rate being as high as it is and the criminal justice system being so screwed up, is that it has too many stupid people running it. I may not have a degree in psychology (for what ever that is worth) but I do have many college semester hours credit in psychology major's courses, I have observed life on the streets in this country for 42years, plus another 24 years in prison, convicted of crimes I didn't commit, in much-too-close association with other prisoners, many of whom did commit the crimes. That should be at least as reliable qualification as that of someone who has read a few books but has never seen the system from the inside. There are two major reasons why the judge's methods are far superior to standard procedures (other than that they work). First, people don't like to be humiliated, so they are likely to go out of their way to avoid a repeat of such punishment, rather than going to jail or prison, which has become a status symbol in the street culture. Second, and most important, when a person completes that "creative" sentence, he can than return to society and straighten up his life to become a productive and accepted member of society. While he might not take that option to become a "good" citizen, at least that option is available to him. It is not available to a person who has been sent to prison in this country. Once you have been branded with that prison number, you are classified (in violation of the Constitution) as "criminal" for the rest of your life, ostracized and rejected everywhere, and repeatedly blamed for every crime that happens in your area. It is almost impossible for a person with that prison number to get a decent job or line a decent life in this country. THAT is why this country is drowning in crime. Once convicted you are not permitted any option but to be a criminal the rest of your life. April 19th, 2007The Week magazine for April 20-27 has a short article on page 18 about a revival of the equal rights amendment, supposed to provide equal rights for woman in America. The ERA is a loser's proposition. Don't get me wrong; I firmly believe that woman should have equal rights with men, and so agree with the principle behind the movement. It is not the principle that is for losers, but the very idea that a constitutional amendment can have any change whatever toward granting any rights to anyone. The old argument, of course, is that we already have in our Constitution provisions granting equal rights to all people in America without regard to sex, age, race, or whatever. That argument per se is valid, yet meaningless. As Bush said, the Constitution is just a piece of paper. No matter how many provisions are written into the Constitution or law granting or pretending to grant rights, they all will continue to be meaningless so long as continue suffering the rapine plunder of a Supreme Court that is committed to destroy the constitutional rights of citizens at no matter what cost, and to maintain absolute control over the country by the plutocratic fascist oligarchy that first created the Supreme Court for that purpose when the citizens refused to ratify the Constitution without a Bill of Rights. Women do, in fact, have rights now equal to the rights of man, in that neither man nor woman have any rights at all, but merely privileges if they have sufficient money to buy them, or if as a whole they become sufficiently enraged to cause the oligarchy to temporarily back off. Rather than woman fighting men for a useless and redundant ERA, we should all be fighting for an amendment for force the Supreme Court to uphold the Bill of Rights - or to be sent to prison and replaced by a court that will. The American congress once passed a law (42 U.S.C. 1983) to make everyone who violates a citizen's rights subject to lawsuit, in effort to stop the court's rape of the Bill of Rights. The ink wasn't even dry on that law before the Supreme Court "interpreted" it out of existence by saying the law does not mean everyone, as it says, but everyone except judges. Then other members of the system screamed for the same exception the judges illegally carved for themselves. By the time the Supreme Court got through carving up that law, we ended up not being allowed to sue even some of the violators we were able to sue before the law was passed. If you want rights, don't keep passing one law after another to give yourself rights the law already says you have. Instead, force those in power to obey the law as it is, or send them to prison. If they won't obey the law because it is the law, maybe they will obey it to stay free. They just will not learn will they? Ever. The shooting in Virginia was a tragedy that needed to be reported, then set aside. Instead, the media has sensationalized it, and it continuing to sensationalize it, to the point of making the perpetrator a martyr and a hero to thousands of warped minds. The result is inevitable. Keep your eyes and ears open, and walk in fear, especially if you are in school. This action by the media will produce copy-cats across the country, and if it continues as it has been going, will soon produce those who believe they can, and will attempt to, out-do this created hero. This insanity is contagious and all who have seen it happen before should know what is bound to follow. April 24th, 2007What could be worse than the president of the United Sates announcing to the world that getting a naïve young girl to "give head" is not "having sex," resulting in phenomena of children across the country engaging in oral sex in and out of the classrooms? Could it be, as I heard on the news today, that his wife who apparently considers such marital faithlessness perfectly acceptable, now want to make him "America's Ambassador to the World" if she is elected president? And what does that say to all the Americans languishing in American prisons for having engaged in exactly the same conduct? I've often wondered whether he also got his daughter to give him head, since that's not having sex? April 25th, 2007Congratulations George Bush, you've shown me another answer to the questions I asked yesterday. Today I read an article in an old issue of the Christian Science Monitor (3-23-07 page 1) about a young women from China who has been sold into sex slavery (called "Arranged Marriage") who came to the U.S. seeking asylum. The first court said she should be shipped back to China into a live of slavery and abuse (sexual and violent), but the appeal court said no, she is entitled to asylum because such slavery is sanctioned by the Chinese Government. However, George Bush has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to send her back into slavery and abuse. Americans voted this into the presidency? TWICE?!?! Well, why not? Slavery and abuse are clearly practiced and accepted as normal in the U.S., and particularly in Bush's Texas. May 1st, 2007"The Myth of the Teen Brain" by Robert Epstein in the April/May 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind, page 57, is a must READ! I'm very glad some professionals are finally beginning to discover facts that I have been urging upon the wooden-headed human race for more than half a century now. Especially the mere calling of a person "infant" because (s)he has not yet reached the age 21 (or whatever is the currently set age of adulthood arbitrarily set by the dictators) does not render him or her incapable of thinking. May 3rd, 2007If you have never read an issue of The Texas Observer (307 West 7th Street, Austin, TX 78701 - E-mail observer@texasobserver.org), I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know the truth about what's happening in Texas politics. It would not surprise me if there are similar excellent publications in the other states - all showing just how seriously in trouble we are in this country. If you read the April 20, 2007 issue cover-to-cover it should scare you half to death. My attention was particularly attracted to the article "What Are They Smoking?" by an unnamed editor about state Rep Anderson's House Bill 2347 by which he wants to criminalize a weed called salvia divinoran, (common name: Diviner's Sage) to such an extent that possession of 1gram would draw the same punishment as possession of 50 pounds of marijuana! If that bill passes, everybody in Texas can be sent to prison. This weed, related to common sage used in food seasoning, grows wild all across the southern half of the United States, down through Mexico and into South America. Why everyone should pay $20 in a head shop is a mystery to me when it can be plucked free from nearby weed lot, maybe even your own yard. I'm also a bit surprise by the suggested use by smoking, since that's not the proper way to use it in the first place. Anyway, as Tracey Hayes, of the ACLU, said smoking Salvia "can be about as much fun as smoking clothesline." So, why this push to make its possession such a horrendous felony offense? Like most everything out law makers have been doing for the past 40 years and more, it has nothing to do with safety or anything else to benefit the citizens. It's all about power! Domination! Control! And creating excuses to send people to prison who embarrass the few in power. Most everybody who lives in Texas probably possesses this drug without even knowing it. May 10th, 2007The following is a letter I wrote to the Warden here this morning. I'll try to keep you informed of how the situation develops. It should give you an idea of what passes for normal here: I'm writing this letter in regard to a serious threat to the security and safety of staff and inmates on the Powledge Unit. The most immediate facts are as follows: 1) On 5-10-07 at 5:29AM Officer Taylor came onto 14 dorm while a large number of inmates were getting ready for work in the laundry, using their night lights in accord with unit policy IOC dated October 1, 2003, signed by Warden Blevins and posted on the dorm bulletin board. 2) This unit policy, Section II. E.states: "Offenders with personal and/or state issued night-lights may keep them on, at their bunks to read, write letters, etc. until rack time. The only exception is when offenders are preparing to go to work or school, they may use the night lights while getting to ready for the activity before 7:00am. 3) In violation of this posted unit policy, Officer Taylor yelled for everybody to turn off their night lights, then asked, "Why are all these night lights on?" 4) I responded by stating: "We're all fixing to go to work." 5) Officer Taylor turned and ran back to my bunk and yelled: "You're not going to work today! Turn off that light!" 6) As I was unplugging my light I said: "The unit policy, signed by, the warded, is on the board and says we can use our night lights." 7) Officer Taylor ordered me to go out into the hall. Once in the hall, he ordered me to go to the corner out of sight of the dorm and to press the corner with my back. 8) Once I was in the corner, Officer Taylor stepped up against me and put his face against mine, yelling and spraying my face with spit, threatening me with his fists, and telling me I was going to do what he said, when he said. The two female took hold of his arms, one on each side trying to pull him away from me. 9) I asked him, "What are you going to do, beat me up in the middle of the hall?" 10) At that point Officer Taylor saw other officers running down the hall from the searcher's desk in response to his yelling. He stepped back and said, "No I'm not going to beat you up. Get your ass back in the dorm, old man!" 11) I returned to my bunk and turned on my night light so I could see to write down Officer Taylor's name and the time. 12) Officer Taylor grabbed the dorm keys and came storming to my cubical and said: "I told you to turn that light off! Pointing at it with the dorm key. 13) I said, "I had to turn it on to write down your name." 14) He jerked out the plug and violently jerked out the light and stormed out of the dorm. 15) A short time later Officer Taylor returned, still carrying the dorm key, to order me to sign a confiscation paper. 16) When I read the paper I saw that he had lied on it both as to the time and the reason for confiscation, giving "Altered" as the reason. 17) I stated that the warden's unit policy is right there on the board. 18) One of the officers said, "There's not such policy. I never read it." 19) I said, "It's right here on the board. Let me show you." 20) Lt. Johnson said, "You're not showing anybody anything! Get your ass back on your bunk and stay there!" Since the incident I have been besieged by other inmates wanting to be called as witnesses, both as to his violation of unit policy and his violation of safety procedure by bringing the keys on the dorm. Further, I have learned that prior to coming on 14 dorm he had written up 2 other inmates and sent one to lock-up for using their night lights in accord with unit policy. I was also informed of his assaults on several inmates, including one in court right now in which he blinded the inmate in one eye. The excuse he used to confiscate the night light is not valid. The rule, as published, clearly says that altered property may be confiscated as contraband only if altered in such a way as to be a threat to security or safety of staff and other inmates. That night light has been through 6 major shakedowns on this unit, and not one of the officers who examined it found it to be such a threat. Clearly, however, Officer Taylor is a threat to the safety and security of officers and inmates on this unit. I respectfully request that you investigate this situation and take suitable action, including the return of my night light and squashing the case that Lt. Johnson authorized Officer Taylor to write. May 15th, 2007The Week magazine for May 11, 2007 has on page 6, "Only in America" an article about Judge Roy Pearson in Washington, D.C. He is suing a local dry cleaner for $65 million - for losing a pair of his pants. If such suit had been filed by a prisoner in any jail or prison in America, it would have been promptly dismissed as malicious and frivolous. The prisoner would have been fined, prohibited from ever filing another suit, and otherwise punished. If a common free citizen had filed such a suit, it would drag through the courts until the courts and lawyers had taken everything the person filing it owned, and then be dismissed. Since it was filed by a judge, one of the self-made most powerful people in the country, he will likely take everything that dry cleaner's owner has, and get a judgment against his future earnings as well. Page 14, same issue: "Giving felons the right to vote" by Emily Bazelon, discusses laws being enacted across the country which have the potential of giving 5 million former prisoners back the right to vote [which under the Constitution would not have been taken from them]. That could be the best thing happening for common American citizens in the last 50 years. A very large percentage of those 5 million either were not guilty in the first place, or were convicted illegally through violations of law and constitution by prosecutors, police, lawyers, judges, jurors, and by perjury. They are likely to vote for changes to restore the now defunct rights of citizens and rule-by-law, rather than the now-practiced lip-service only. May 16th, 2007The Week, May 18, 2007, on page 12 has an article: "Kindness to animals can become cruel" by Jon Katz. It concludes: "I'm afraid their efforts [to some a sick lamb's life] have more to do with 'their own emotional gratification' than what's truly in the best interests of the lamb." That's very true, Jon, But haven't you noticed that is the underlying motive driving the actions of every human on Earth? Call it the "I'm holier than you" syndrome, the basis of humanities greatest evils. Then there is the article: "Why Christians feel unwelcome on campus" by David French. It points out that a survey of 1200 professors found 53 percent had "unfavorable" feelings toward evangelical Christians, but positive feelings toward Jews and Catholics. He concludes from this study: "But now we have 'concrete evidence of sheer bigotry.' Our colleges clearly have a religion problem 'and faithful students and professors are paying the price.'" Your conclusion is badly mistaken, Mr. French. What we now have is concrete evidence that people do not like it when others try to shove a religion down their throats, especially when the shove's show by their daily actions that they don't truly believe in the religion they are professing. When they obey the commands given by the one they call their god, and follow his examples, the alleged "bigotry" will vanish like magic. 28 May 2007It isn't often that I see on TV something I consider truly disgusting as I did tonight, though what I usually see simply isn't worth watching. Tonight I saw many thousands of Americans of all ages who, after paying fortunes for admission tickets, screamed and cheered themselves hoarse to welcome back to America a known homosexual molester of young boy children, who fled the country to avoid legal follow-up after paying millions of dollars, including bribes, to a victim and his family to avoid conviction. The same court system he bought his way out of routinely convicts many Americans every day of similar crimes, though knowing beforehand that many of them are innocent, and sentences them to prison terms that the rest of the world would consider excessively severe even for a crime of murder. And the same Americans who paid to cheer this known molester back into the country continue heaping abuses upon the innocent who have been convicted and refusing to consider their innocence. Oh, I forgot. This is a good Christian country. That's what Christ told them to do. 30 May 2007The Week magazine, June 1, 2007. In "The World at a Glance..." page 8, is an article about Romanian president Traian Basecu calling a reporter "stinky Gypsy." Subsequently the Gypsies who previously preferred being known as "Roma" began embracing the slur and proudly calling themselves "stinky Gypsy," showing that they are not goaded into acting like their uncouth detractors by such abuses. Now you can see why after thousands of years of even worse abuse, Pagans (especially Wiccans) are calling themselves "witches." 1 June 2007In Scientific American, June 2007, "The Traveler's Dilemma," on page 90, the author describes a game played by 2 people in which they are travelers, each of whom has bought an identical antique which subsequently is broken by the airline on the flight home. The airline messenger, thinking they will lie about the price, schemes to have each secretly write the price as any dollar integer between $2 and $100. If both write the same price, that is what he will pay each. If they write different numbers, he will take the lower number as being correct. He will then reward the writer of the lower number for honesty by paying that player $2 more than the lower amount, and punish the other player by paying that one $2 less than the lower amount. The author then goes through a convoluted process to claim that both game theory and rational thought would result in both players writing $2 as the best option. Say what? I don't know anything about game theory, but that conclusion clearly is not a result of rational thought. The author claims it is rational to pick $2 because everybody is greedy and wants to get more than the other person, hence by picking $2, they can assure that they will get $4 and the other player will get nothing because of picking a higher price. That is not rational or logical no matter how greedy anybody is. That is purely vindictive, with no wish at all for personal gain. The only rational, logical answer is to state the highest amount you are allowed to state. If your opponent states anything less, then your payment depends strictly upon the act of a fool, so by bidding the highest allowed amount you maximize your chances. That maximization of chance is the best that rational logic can accomplish under the circumstances. The author writes of his astonishment that in actual play of the game, "most people pick 100 or a number close to 100." He calls such choice a marked deviation from the rational choice, and "not adhering to reason." I would not want to be trapped in a dark alley with this author. 2 June 2007On the front page of The Christian Science Monitor, May 30, 2007 an article title asks: "What do states owe the exonerated?" by Amanda Paulson. Mentioning only a few of the thousand exoneration cases that have surfaced in the past few years, she points out that results of those exonerations have ranged all the way from nothing but a sneer to payments as high as $12.2 million. Of course, the article doe not mention the many thousands of innocent American prisoners who will never be exonerated because no DNA evidence is involved (they only examine DNA cases) even when, as in my case, the evidence in the trial record proves my innocence. The article goes on to mention compensation measures a few states are beginning to establish now that they have been caught in the act. I speak with the personal knowledge of a man who has already had 23 of the what should have been the bets years of his life taken, and who will continue a victim of the system until I die, in saying that there is no among of money and no other possible way of compensation that can ever make up for what the innocent have suffered at the hands of the state and federal criminal systems of injustice in America. convicted innocent and reduce the risk of repeating such illegal convictions. And make no mistake--such convictions are illegal criminal acts. Restitution cannot, however, be made merely by giving the victim some amount of money and an insincere apology. From the money standpoint, I would agree that payment of $500 per day for every day of false imprisonment would be fair. but only if the other provisions are also made. The other provisions should include the following at a minimum: 1. The judge and prosecutor who engineered the false conviction should be imprisoned for a time equaling that served by the victim. They are both guilty of violating the laws enacted specifically to prevent such false convictions. 2. Where the victim has complained of inadequate performance by the defense lawyer, that performance should be examined by a panel of exonerated victims and, if found unreasonably lacking, the lawyer should be fined at a rate to be determined by the panel. 3. The persons who served on the convicting jury should be publicly censured for their criminal dereliction of duty and forced to attend classes to learn the primary duty of a jury, which is to acquit no matter what they feel or believe, unless the prosecutor proves with actual evidence (not slander or emotion) that the accused is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. They must also be taught that the testimony of the accuser is not evidence but is only an accusation. There is a well known ancient fact of law that an accusation does not prove itself. This fact of law is given lip service but is otherwise ignored by every court in America. There are thousands of innocent people in prison for no other reason than they were accused. Enforcing just these three provisions could come near eliminating such false convictions in the future. June 6th, 2007The Texas prison system publishes its propaganda newspaper, The Echo, which sometimes has something in it worth looking at. In the June issue they printed a "Death Penalty Questionnaire" which I filled in and returned, though they will most likely throw my response away. To the question, does the death penalty act as a deterrent? I answered No. (proven by many studies). To the question should the death penalty be an option in some cases? I answered No. TO the question, should life without parole be utilized in place of the death penalty, I answered No, and in the why now? Section I said: "This presupposes that people are not capable of change. It is a disservice to the person and community to prohibit reintegration after change. Invited to further comment, I stated: "The death penalty, when properly obtained in a case involving the death of a victim may be appropriate when sufficient evidence shows that the perpetrator is never likely to change. The key words are: 'properly obtained,' and 'sufficient evidence.' During my imprisonment I have helped several hundred men, myself included, attempting to obtain a just resolution of criminal convictions. Out of all those cases I have encountered one, and only one, case in which the record showed that the judge, prosecutor, and defense lawyer did their jobs properly, the evidence was factually sufficient to prove guilt of the murderer beyond a reasonable doubt, and by the prisoner's admission the trial record was correct and accurate. In every single one of the other cases I have worked on, one of two situations was blatantly obvious from the trial records: 1) The admissible evidence was not factually sufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; and/or, 2) Through the evidence maybe have been sufficient, the conviction was not obtained by presentation of the evidence, but rather by misconduct and/or criminal acts of one or more of: judge, prosecutor, police, defense lawyer, court reporter, witnesses, jury members, and the accused himself. In some cases the criminal misconduct of said parties has been so extensive that from the record it is utterly impossible to even make a rational educated guess at what actually happened. In other cases it is blatantly clear from the record, even as illegally falsified, that the convicted person is simply not guilty. So long as the current condition continues to exist, the criminal so-called 'justice' system is so hopelessly unreliable that neither the death penalty nor a life sentence can be honestly justified, and neither serves as a deterrent for the simple reason that the system is not reliable. The exonerations over the past few years prove the point, especially since they are only in cases with DNA evidence (an extremely tiny minority of all the cases). In Scientific American, May 2007, on page 38 is a rational article by Michael Shermer: "Bush's Mistake and Kennedy's Error." In it Shermer points out: "Wrongly convicting people and sentencing them to death is a supreme source of cognitive dissonance. Since 1992 the Innocence Project has exonerated 192 people total, 14 from death row. 'If we reviewed prison sentences with the same level of care that we devote to death sentences,' says University of Michigan law professor Samuel R. Gross, 'there would have been over 28,500 non-death-row exonerations in the past 15 years...' [emphasis in original]. What is the self-justification for reducing this form of dissonance? 'You get in the system, and you become very cynical, 'explains Northwestern University legal journalist Rob Warden. 'People are lying to you all over the place. Then you develop a theory of the crime, and it leads to what we call tunnel vision. Years later overwhelming evidence comes out that the guy was innocent. And y If there is a God, may he save the world from the "Good guys!" According to the Associated Press, Lewis Libby was given a 2.5 year pat-on-the-wrist prison term for a crime that could have cost the lives of CIA agents dedicated to protecting American citizens from terrorist activity. [There are people in prison in Texas and California now with much longer sentences for stealing a loaf of bread or less to feed their starving children]. The White House [meaning "Tough-on-crime" George Bush] "was still supportive." So now we know that Bush is anti-crime only if the crime is committed by people not in his elite clique. Government business as usual. Paris Hilton? Criminal justice as usual. June 9th, 2007Dear Editor: Concerning the article "Babies in the Woods" by Caitlin Flanagan in the july/August 2007 The Atlantic Monthly, if I had the author's address I would send this directly to her, but I don't, so I would ask you to share it with her. Allow me the unusual procedure of first addressing your concluding remark: "But what do you think I am - some kind of creep?" Ms. Flanagan, you could be arrested and convicted for stalking based upon your published confession. However, no, I don't think you are a creep, but I believe you are missing some important knowledge. I am imprisoned, having been convicted of fondling young girls. Whether you believe when I say I am innocent of the charges made is mostly irrelevant except that if you don't believe me it may lend more authority to what I say on the subject. You mention things about men taught by parents: "be wary of those I did not know, polite to those I did, and tough as nails with those who were disrespectful or in any way threatening." That is good advice, but I noted it is missing the most important thing: carry and be ready to use a loud noisemaker whenever you are alone or unprotected. You spoke of your undeveloped ability to distinguish a well-intentioned approach from one that was threatening, as if it were due to your youth. That is not a function of youth, and it you think you can tell the difference now, you are not safe. You were in error on all points when you said, "The child of a 17th century weaker would have been raised and educated at home ...protected from strangers who meant him harm." Perhaps you should study factual accounts of life in that century. Children then were actually safer then, than now from predators, but not for the reasons you seem to believe. This goes along with your statement, "All that parents can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst." They can and should do much more than that. In the rest of the article you show knowledge of some important elements, but you don't seem to have put them together yet. Maybe I can help you connect the dots. You discuss the NBC show, "To Catch a Predator" as if it were a great boom, using a created-teen decoy to lure predators into a trap leading to arrest. About the trapped predators you say, "Calling this sad-sack collection of wankers and flashers 'predators' accords them a level of evil genius they haven't earned; most of them look like they couldn't track down the towel department in a Wal-Mart." Then you say that the show involves both informing viewers and scaring the bejesus out of them. In fact you are right about the mentality of those caught by the show, but wrong about them being predators. And yes, the show does scare people who don't have a clue about life going on around them - but it doesn't scare any real predators. They won't be caught by it. Those caught are nothing but stupid thrill seekers who have been lured by excessive news media coverage into becoming wanna-be predators. Real predators will watch the show and laugh about the stupidity. You report, "The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children maintains that one out of five kids who use the Internet has been propositioned for sex," and say, "I couldn't imagine one out of five of those kids being propositioned by a strange and not telling their parents." I can't speak about such statistics on the Internet because when I got locked up there was no Internet, but I would bet the ratio is much higher. Here's a true story from my own experience: My wife invited a bunch of neighborhood girls to have a slumber party at our home. The evening of the party my wife did not come home from work, or call, or leave a note. I went to all the neighbors whose girls had been invited and told them my wife had not come home and I didn't know if she was going to. Without exception the parents said it was okay since I would be there and their girls could still attend. There were about 15 girls ranging in age from 9 to 14. During the evening they started talking about sex and one of the older girls asked, "Who all has not had sex yet?" The only ones to raise hands were one of the 9 year olds and a 13 year old. They spent the next hour relating their first experiences. I would propose that off-the-Internet sexual propositions with kids (some of them doing the propositioning) and adults are much higher than on-the-Internet. In fact there was one time when, in a church function at a Baptist church, a 14 year old girl propositioned me, and when I declined, asked me not to tell on her. You say, "That sexual unfolding of a young girl is such a fraught process emotionally as well as physically that she needs to be carefully sheltered from the myriad forces that would seek to exploit or coarsen her as she reconciles the girl that she was with her biological destiny." Of course, boys face the same problem and, unfortunately, the same erroneous conclusion. You say, "While Johnny's upstairs happily sneaking hard-core pornography past his Internet filter, poor Judy is next door weeping into her pillow because everyone in the eighth grade now knows that she still uses pads, not tampons." Are you beginning to see the key yet? Let's look further. You speak of your discovery with your children of Club Penguin and say, "But I never let them play again, because something about it scared me..." Yet you admit, "Chatting is monitored by paid professionals and a citizen's army of tellers," and "Just how dangerous is the unsupervised use of the Internet by adolescents," and "It's certainly the safest way for unsupervised children to talk to potentially malevolent strangers," then conclude by asking, "but why would you want them to do that in the first place?" Perhaps I can explain to you precisely why that is what you should want them to do. In your own words, "The primary engine of My Space's stupendous growth isn't the Internet of the additional opportunities for cattiness it provides, but the fathomless narcissism of the young," and "The Internet makes it possible to combine these two opposed desires: to be alone trying something out and to be exposed in public for everyone to see." I contend that narcissism is too strong is to describe the facts. It is true that girls are mostly exhibitionists, but they are unconsciously trained to be so from infancy by adults lavishing attention upon them when their panties show or when they disrobe. But the plain truth is that adults in general act as though they believe children should be seen and not heard, and seen only when called for. Children, however, are human beings, and being young has an even greater need than adults to have their existence acknowledged and to be made to feel that they are important - at least to somebody for some purpose. They also know they have a desperate need for knowledge. If their adult caretakers cannot, or won't, meet those two most fundamental needs, the children will go elsewhere for them. Therein lies the serious and harmful fallacy in your statement I mentioned earlier that the child needs to be carefully sheltered. There are two main reasons children of the 17th century were less susceptible to predators, one being the fact that they were not sheltered. Such sheltering is a recently developed phenomenon. The other main reason is that children then were guided through their development by parents, relatives, and even unrelated neighbors. About today, you say, "Set your children loose, as you someday must, and there will be all kinds of people waiting for them." That is very true, as it always has been, but doesn't acknowledge the fact that because they have been sheltered and because they have not had the necessary guidance, when you set them free they go out defenseless and bewildered. The young lady you called Jenna should have been guided by her parents or other adults in what to withhold from the Internet. Since she was not, it is a miracle she has not been victimized. The problem is, it is nearly impossible for parents to provide the guidance their children need, because, as you lamented, their children won't talk to them about these sensitive matters. The reason, if you look, is obvious. You said it speaking of Candice Kelsey: "She's the kind of super-pretty, nonjudgmental young adult kids adore..." The key words are nonjudgmental and adult; kids will always flock around a Candice Kelsey as they always flocked around me because they know she is safe, knowledgeable, and will talk with them about anything rationally and non-judgmentally. If they can't find an adult with all three qualities, then they will abandon the safe feature and go to a predator because they must have the nonjudgmental knowledge. I have, over the years, worked on legal cases for hundreds of "predators," real, wanna-be, and innocent. All the real predators agree that though they might locate prey through the Internet they are not likely to pursue them on the Internet, especially since they need only to go to a place where children pass by and sit quietly, ignoring the children. The children will soon swarm around them and they can safely take their pick. The key to child safety, then, is don't shelter them but guide them, and hope to find a Candice type to help. By all means encourage them to visit Club Penguin or other demonstrably safe sites so they can learn about what they face in the real world and learn how to deal with it in "the safest way for unsupervised children to talk to potentially malevolent strangers." Don't endanger them with sheltering. Empower them with knowledge and safe experience. June 20th, 2007In Time magazine, June 18, 2007, Sarah Hrdy with Mary Batten wrote "Daddy Dearest," page 60. I'm still trying to figure out whether it was written simply in naïve absence of comprehension of the facts of life in America, or as a subtle attack by man haters. If the latter, it is not worthy of response; if the former, then a rational response will not be welcomed. The article dates whether dads as a group deserve the honor of having father's day, and justifies the doubt with statistics. For example: by the end of 10 years after divorce as many as 2/3 of fathers "have drifted out of their children's lives." The author says that even fathers in intact families in the U.S. average spending less than an hour a day with their kids, then say, "Anthropologists are trying to figure out why." Ladies, please! Working anthropologists surely can't be that stupid. If they are alive and cognitive of the world around them, then they know why, even if it may be harmful for them to publish it. The authors assert, "Among foraging humans, children need 19 years [to mature]." It's not clear what point they want to make - or - prove? - with this false statistic. People in allegedly modern society are not "foraging" humans, and it's been thoroughly established that physically the human brain doesn't reach full maturity until age 22 or even later - a fact being used by the controllers in their never-ending push to raise the age of legal adulthood ever higher and higher. There still remain on earth a few true foraging human, but in their societies, as in foraging human societies since long before the dawn of recorded history, humans are and were considered sufficiently mature to be classified as adults when the reached puberty - much younger than 19 years. Further, among such societies were classified as "middle aged," or as "old maids" if female and unmarried. Knowledge of such facts is demonstrated by the authors' statements' statement: "Today we take children survival for granted, but in traditional societies, 40% of offspring might die before age 5. To keep infants safe, it made sense for them to be held at all times." The authors point out that human males are known to have high levels of prolactin (a hormone usually associated with lactating mothers) toward the end of a partner's pregnancy. For some reason, they fail to recognize how many women in their "foraging" societies died during child birth, thus the biological need for their husbands to be made ready to assume the emergency task of infant feeding, a function not utilized over the past 3000 years. Touching upon the ancient, recently abandoned practice of a societies children being raised and nurtured not merely by mother and father, but by family and neighbors, the authors state the fact, usually left unacknowledged today, that "even having one full-time dad might not be. The author concludes with the statement, "Given the right combination of chemistry and culture, good fathering is a varied and highly sustainable resource - one that's just waiting to be tapped." Ladies, the key word in your conclusion is "culture." In today's American culture, a man who appears to like children is considered an evil pariah. Given the insane state of the culture, America (and increasingly the rest of the world) is suffering under today; that resource will never again be tapped. I present a few other items from that issue of Time along with a few from The Week magazine, June 22, 2007, and comments. Consider these and the fact that such are inundating our society in all forms of communications, and see if you can figure out why real father is a dead body from the past. Time, page 10, "Inbox" has a letter from Marina Krefft about the fact that Time's four cover images about the diversity of students included no boys - only pretty little girls. Apparently Marina has never noticed what advertising people have known and used for years - to sell something nobody needs or wants, include a pretty little girl in the ad. If there's no way to use a pretty little girl, then use a pretty little boy. If you can't use either, then make-do with a beautiful woman. In each case use the least possible amount of clothing, if any. You can sell excrement to a priest that way, even while he's publicly condemning you for it. Time, page 18, Larry Flynt, published of Hustler Magazine offers up to $1 Million for anyone providing proof of having sex with an elected official. Careful, Mr. Flynt! If the elected officials don't contract a hit on your life, you'll end up dead broke, with more responses than you can ever hope to publish - even using only those involving under-aged children. The Week, page 12, "Gossip" has a story about former congressman Mark Foley, who resigned when several teenagers revealed he had sent them suggestive e-mails and instant messages. The bottom line? "He's not a bad guy." The Week, page 9, "Atlanta" says a judge threw out the 10 year prison sentence of a man convicted of having consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl when he was 17. Critics, including former President Jimmy Carter called this sentence "wildly disproportionate to the offense." The judge called the sentence "Cruel and Unusual." The only thing unusual about the sentence is how short it is. There are men in prison all over America with sentences of 40 years and more for the offense of merely "touching", a fully clothed female under the age of 18, and many of them didn't even do that. The Week, page 8, "Freudians" is an article about a 30 foot tall penis erected at a public amusement park in Changchun, China as a tribute to "our ancestors' pursuit of happiness and prosperity." How many of you are gasping in shock and outrage about that erection (pun intended)? Next question - Why? American and increasingly other societies have gone/are going insane over sexual taboo, originated by early tribal chiefs and witch doctors as a means of control and domination over ignorant tribal members. The more forbidden the fruit, the greater grows the desire to have it - a well known fact. At the same time the taboo makes it imperative to publicly deny the overwhelming desire and to publicly condemn anyone found to be doing what you desire but are too afraid to do. The harsher penalties become, the stronger the desires grows, and the greater the condemnation of those who don't remain fully shackled by the taboo. Have you figured out yet why in America there can never again be a traditional fatherhood? Why children are suffering from lack of much needed affection and father's love? Why men in growing numbers avoid any contact with children as if the children were the worst plague in human history? If you don't figure it out soon, you can look for human life on Earth to follow the way of the dinosaurs. June 25th, 2007Even in prison sometimes there is a refreshing break of humor. Time magazine, June 25: look at the top left picture on page 12. I had to laugh when I saw those people wading through flood water up to their armpits - holding up umbrellas. (Don't burst my bubble. I know they were hiding from the sun, but let me laugh about something). In the same issue on page 11 is "Justice Defied. How we punish reveals what - and whom - we value." It is nice to see that a few writers such as Nancy Gibbs are beginning to speak out, however gently, about the abysmal, deliberate failure of what passes for our criminal justice system, despite a Constitution which should have made such failure impossible. We have a supreme court totally subservient to and worshipful of the super-wealthy to thank for shredding and flushing the protections supposedly granted by the constitution. Ms. Gibbs is absolutely correct in saying: "every prisoner has a story, and most will never be told." Our Constitution tried to establish a system "blind to privilege but open for mercy." But you are mistaken, Ms. Gibbs - we are nowhere near being halfway there. At least on page 18, "Milestones" we have something to be thankful for. Sheriff Jim Clark is dead. Now if we could only have some relief from the multiple thousands of vicious cops with his mentality across the nation, maybe the few good cops could begin to live up the image TV is trying to sell the unsuspecting public, inundating them with shows of honest cops conscientiously trying to be good citizens. Such hard-sell tactics wouldn't be needed if there were half as many real such heroes as there are Jim Clarks. I have stated before that Americans desperately need to learn what is, and what is not "abuse." The Week magazine, June 29, 2007 has three articles people should study. On page 5, "Duke rape prosecutor is disbarred" touches on criminal misconduct by the North Carolina district attorney who maliciously continued prosecuting the Duke University lacrosse players even after it became obvious the accusations were false - and still claiming he did nothing wrong. What he did was a prisonable crime under both state and federal laws. I stated earlier that he would not be punished, but because of massive publicity I turned out to be wrong. It is refreshing both to see that his criminal has been disbarred (though the punishment is far short of what he should have), and that the News and Observer editor had enough moral character to denounce the system, and especially where the New York Daily News stated: "We should feel sorriest for the next real victim of sexual assault." Due mostly to a combination of false evidence deliberately presented by police and prosecutors, and jurors who find it too much trouble to do their duty, accusations of sexual abuse, especially committed upon children, result in more than a 90% conviction rate, even in the many where the actual evidence proves the accusations false. As a result, police and prosecutors use such charges to deliberate convict persons they know are innocent. The harsh reality is stated in this article: "Whenever a woman who really has been raped steps forward as an accuser and bravely asks for justice, thanks to Nifong, she's going to find it that much harder to have her story believed." Indeed, "the 'moral dry rot' this case exposed goes far beyond the justice system." It used to be that inside prison a person convicted of child abuse (sexual or other) was in constant danger, because prisoners also have children. That is almost not thought of today, because there are so many men in prison falsely convicted of such charges who have proof the accusations are false, that they find it harder and harder to believe the accusations they see in the media. "Wolf" has been cried far too often. On page 8 of the same issue is the story "Child-abuse" ring busted" about undercover police from Britain, The U.S., Canada, and Australia who busted 700 viewers and perpetrators of a ring violently abusing children, to the customer's order, victims ranging from 18 months to early teens. That is "abuse." Those 700 animals are due to all the punishment law can give them, and the officers deserve a "well done." There can be no part definition for abuse that satisfies every case because circumstances vary. But in general if a person does something to another, especially if it produces pain, against that other's will or without that other's consent, it is abuse. Mere touching, when consent is freely given, is not abuse. In the same The Week issue on page 24, "Author of the week" Kaylin reports that experts now suggest it's important for children to have a strong relationship with an adult other than his or her parent. "All the better is that adult is not worrying about whether the child is on an Ivy League track at age 4." As Ms. Kaylin's children's nanny says, the ideal other adult "just wants them to have a nice afternoon." There, parents, is the answer to the question I have been asked so many time: "why do my kids love you so much?" July 4th, 2007An editorial in the 7-2-2007 New York Times points out that the US now has more than 2 million people behind bars, "a number that has been rising steadily for decades." How many people is that imprisoned in the land of the free? It is more than the entire population combined of the countries: Cape Verde, Comoros, and Mauritias. Or it is more than the entire combined populations of the countries: Andora, Antigua, Bermuda, The Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, and Brunei. Or it is more than the entire combined populations of the countries: Djibouti, Dominica, Grenada, Iceland, Kiribat, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, The Moldinas, The Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, St. Kitts, Neuis, San Marina, and Seychelles. Or closer to home, it is more than the entire population of the state of Nebraska, or New Mexico. Or it is twice the population of Phoenix, Arizona or Hawaii, or Idaho. Or, it is seventy times the entire population of Ithaca, NY. The Editor is speaking in favor of the, "Second Chance Act," proposed legislation that is (perhaps fatally) long past due, to introduce a small amount of reality into the empty rhetoric about prevention of crime and recidivism, and rehabilitation. The only place I am aware of where the editor's presentation clearly and obviously erred is his assertion that Texas has "made important strides" in the programs that are so badly needed. The only strides being taken in Texas are to run like hell in the opposite direction. Texas, like its hero Bush, is still obsessed with it long standing policy; Lock everybody up, guilty or not, unless they're part of us good ol' boys in power. I just got through reading about a man tried, convicted and sentences to 20 years in prison, for an alleged 6-year-earlier child molestation, in which there was not the tiniest iota or evidence indicating guilt. This conviction, totally violating law and constitution, is and has long been standard operating procedure in the criminal Texas Justice System, and probably will remain so until it produces the final destruction of Texas as a pretender of democracy. The Second Chance Act is a great idea, but even if passed by the legislature, and even in the unlikely event that Bush's inevitable veto gets over ridden, the measure will fail. It will fail like all the plethora of laws and constitutional protections made in the past in effort to establish a true lawful democracy, it will be ignored and interpreted out of existence by those whose dictatorial powers it encroaches upon. We wouldn't need any new laws if they would only obey the laws we already have. But they never will. July 21st, 2007The Scientific American for August 2007 has an article by Michael Shermar on page 34, "Bad Apples and Bad Barrels." He discusses the frequently tested and well known condition in which people designated as prison guards promptly transform into people who are cruel, sadistic, and evil, regardless how "good" they may previously have been. At the same time, those who are designated as prisoners promptly into beaten, "emotionally shattered," broken individuals. I don't know why sociologists think they have to test over and over again for this result. They find the same result every time the test. It doesn't only apply to prisoners and prison guards, but to every situation where some individuals are classified as being authorities and other are placed under their power. It's where the old expression comes from: "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Instead of spending millions to keep doing those studies over and over, why don't they just ask a prisoner is it's still true? Then they could use that wasted money to feed starving children. July 24th, 2007If one desires a clear picture of the state of humanity in today's world, one can see it all in the July 27, 2007 issue of The Week magazine. It's not a pretty story. For example, on page 11 is the article "Harry Potter's Magical Touch." In it British novelist A.S. Byalt condemns author Rowling's work as "written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons." In doing so, of course, he also condemns millions of people who read the Potter books and watch the movies. Yale literature professor Harold Bloom complains that her prose style is heavy on cliché and makes no demands upon her readers. First, gentlemen, using the term very generously, if her writing is so lousy and yours is so much better, why is it that she has sold do many more books than both of you combined? Such criticism of good writing by envious people with no writing talent is typical of the great portion of humans on this planet. Sour grapes. As for her writing makes no demands upon her readers, sir, that is one reason her writing is so much better than yours. My own books and stories make no demands upon the readers, yet everyone who has read the unpublished manuscripts pushes about how good they are. Why? Because they make no demands upon the reader. The Potter stories are written to provide pleasure, not more pressure. On page 12 in the article "Potter's success isn't helping other authors," Ron Charles claims the Potter books are not inspiring a return to the riches of fiction. Excuse me? He goes on to say that today's school kids never read for pleasure [emphasis his]. He says his favorite book is about an orphan who survives the 1847 Irish potato famine. WHO CARES? If that's all the kids have to choose from how can they be blamed for not wanting to read for pleasure? That book, which he thinks is the best, has sold 8,367 copies. The potter books, not counting the new release, have sold more than 32,500,000 copies. But Charles says, those millions of copies "haven't affected out society's declining interest in books one bit." Get a life. It is typical of lazy, no talent humans to try to tear down people with talent instead of trying to learn from them. On page 3 in the article, "The Week" by Thomas Vinciguerra we learn about the married senator Dave Vitter, who used the services of a well known "D.C. Madam" (prostitution services, that is) and is going through the process of a phony public confession/remorse, but spoiling it by condemning the publisher of a magazine for exposing his actions to the public. He is a "Public Servant." His actions are supposed to be public while he's in office. The article also points out that when President Clinton was caught cheating on his wife and violating the law having sex with Monica, he made his pretense of remorse/repentance, and is the most popular Democrat in America. See more on page 16. Also on page 13 is the article "A record settlement in priest scandal." The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $660 million to silence 508 people claiming sexual abuse by local priests. "The Catholic Church in the US has now paid out more than $2 billion to victims of sexual abuse." The first question I have about these events is how many of those claiming abuse were actually abused? And how many are just jumping on the wagon to collect the money? My next question is, where did all that money come from? Didn't Christ command his followers to use the money to feed, cloth, house, and care for the poor? On page 17, in the article "Religion: Is it morally dependant on God?" The Author asks if humanity en masse has stopped believing in God, "What would be the effect on human morality?" and states that altruism and morality appear to be hard-wired into out species. But, he says, it's also out nature to be cruel, selfish, and violent. Then he asks: "How are we supposed to choose between good and evil?" Christopher Hitchens replies that the biggest blow in the religionists argument is the assumption that religion makes its adherents choose good behavior over bad. He says if that were true, the world "which is full of believers" would be a far better place. He correctly points out that in God's name human beings have slaughtered infidels, enslaved women and children, burned witches, persecuted gays and Jews, and mutilated the genitalia of defenseless infants. In fact, those who claim to believe in God/Jesus have done all that and worse - repeatedly. Actually, Mr. Hitchens is wrong, though. The world is not full of believers. The world is full of people who, for their own personal reasons, claim to be believers, which is a whole different matter. If there were even a single real believer found, [s]he would immediately be murdered by the pretenders. It is also not true that altruism, morality, cruelty, and violence are hard-wired into human nature. All those traits are acquired by training from early in fancy. The only thing hard-wired into human nature is an undeveloped hedonism - necessary for survival - which is usually trained to become selfishness. The non-believer religionists are clearly shown on page 4 in "Only in America" where "Christian activists" disrupted the prayer by a non-Christian priest to open a morning session in the U.S. Senate, shouting, "This is an abomination!" and other mouthings. They claimed the priest was "placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the one true god, Jesus Christ." They also said: "This would never have been allowed by our founding fathers." Well, they are partly correct, because out founding fathers wrote in our constitution a provision separating church and state to prevent praying in government functions so that such disruptions could not happen, one of many provisions our corrupt Supreme Court has voided. However, they are wrong in trying to force the god Jesus, in whom they pretend to believe, to condemn other religions and gods. There is no such condemnation by Jesus to be found anywhere in the Bible. Nor is there anywhere in the Bible a claim by Jesus or God that other gods are false gods, though a few specific gods are called powerless. To the contrary, the existence of other is acknowledged and it is stated that the places are prepared in Heaven for their believers. Therefore, these men were right in that what they did is an abomination. If you believe in Jesus, you will do as he commanded and follow his examples. If you claim to believe in Jesus, but refuse to follow him, then you are demon of Satan. Jesus told his followers they could tell what god a person worships by what the person does, not what he says. Under the same page 4 heading of "Only in America" is the story of a New York lawyer who filed suit about the constitutionality of bars/night clubs having "Lady's Nights" practices of offering free or cheap drinks to bring in more female customers. The principle has long been recognized by the Supreme Court that Constitutional provisions against sexual discriminatory practices apply to operations with governmental connections, not private citizens or non-government businesses. The courts have no business considering the complaint of a man who apparently doesn't believe his penis is large enough to compete. On page 5, "Atlanta," Troy Davis gets 90 days reprieve after 7 of the 9 witnesses against him recanted their testimonies, admitting that the police had pressured them into implicating him in the murder of a police officer. Just one more example in a long and growing list of proofs that the system doesn't give a damn about justice, but just wants to hurt someone. The dead officer's wife said the reprieve signals "all criminals that it is perfectly fine to kill a cop and get away with it." No, lady. What it signals is that 7 people out of millions finally had to courage to admit they lied. Seven out of millions. Doesn't speak well for the state of humanity. The article on page 36, "The Rise of 'Torture Porn'" gives the final accounting of what humans are all about, and why even now Mother Nature is working out a plan to eliminate them from the face of the Earth. The author said, "I don't know what makes someone enjoy watching prolonged torture scenes, but it is becoming increas The good side of humanity is far easier to find in this issue of The Week than in life. On page 2, "It wasn't all bad" tells of an anonymous person leaving envelopes with 10,000 yen (about $82) in public toilets across Japan with notes saying, "Please make use of this money for you self enrichment" and "One per person." Perhaps the religions believers could come closer to their claimed god by following this example? July 25th, 2007In USA Today for July 23 there is a noteworthy article on page 3A by Donna Leinwood: "Ex-cons' sentences don't always end with release." It carries a subtitle "Criminal record can limit aid, opportunities after prison." It is long past time for the critically serious problems she discusses to be placed in the light and corrected. This sort of outlawry and disenfranchisement was rampant in England and Europe when the US came into being; hence a provision was made in out constitution prohibiting it. But, like all the other constitutional protections written for common citizens it has been ignored and/or interpreted out of existence by those in power it was meant to protect us against. Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. I applaud the author's effort to present this issue and to persuade American citizens to correct it. However, she must not upset the higher powers because she earns a living working for them. As a result she has to sugar coat the problem, making it look less egregious and dangerous then it is. I am not under such constraint because they have already convicted me if crimes they know I didn't commit and sentenced me to what amounts to life in prison. There's nothing more they can do to me but kill me to silence me, and in the wake of this journal someone might ask questions about that. So, I can leave off the sugar and tell it the way it really is. At the outset, the headline should not have said sentences "don't always end," it should have said: "Ex-con's sentences NEVER END!" And that is not only true of those convicted. It also frequently applies to people who have been indicted but by some miracle escaped conviction. It is the professed purpose of the system to punish wrongdoers and rehabilitate them so they become productive members of society. In reality, the system punishes everyone it gets its hands on, guilty or not, then takes extreme measures trying to make it utterly impossible for the ex-con to survive except by resorting to a life of crime. Of course, a legitimate system would expand its greatest resources in effort to make crime unnecessary, for example, by providing adequate job skill training to that everyone could be gainfully employed, providing adequate food, clothing, housing, and transportation, and providing appropriate counseling. Here's an exercise for you: Compare the social services in the Netherlands with those in the USA, then compare the crime rates of the two countries. The fact in America, and especially such states as Texas, is that a criminal record doesn't merely limit aid and opportunities, it eliminates them altogether. Years ago, when a prisoner was released he was given enough money to sustain him a couple of weeks, and if he was lucky, in that time he might get a job digging ditches. Today he is lucky is he can get through his first day on the "gate money" and nobody will hire him - for any job. Now there are more than 2 million people in prison in America, and a great many of them will soon be released. As soon as they are released, their prison space will be occupied by new convicts already waiting to get in. But, those getting out are not allowed to rent a place to live and not allowed to get a job. The only option America allows them is to commit crimes. Somehow, that just doesn't seem like a very suitable policy. And in a nation that is now so violently pretending to be Christian, the pretenders must be hard pressed to explain why they have set policy in direct opposition to the examples and commands of the Christ they call their god. July 27th, 2007The New York Times Magazine, July 22, 2007. For the comments I'm about to make regarding the cover story, "The care of the Juvenile Sex Offender," by Maggie Jones, I am certain to be branded as an evil bastard who doesn't know what he is talking about, But what does it matter? I've already been convicted, imprisoned, and had my life destroyed for criminal acts the authorities knew I didn't commit. What more can be done to me? I'm not good enough to get the treatment they gave Jesus, So here goes. For any hope to understand what is really happening one must first understand one of the most fundamental truths about humans: Humans hate the truth about things they consider sensitive worse than anything else they can conceive of. The article opens with the assertion that "youths are not just little adults," and asks "so what does the law tend to treat them that way?" Taken together with the opening assertion, that question would require a building full of books to answer correctly. The article is about young people committing what are called sex crimes, and struggles desperately trying to make a way to say that the acts under consideration are properly classified as crimes when done by persons above some arbitrarily set age limit. There is not, and cannot be, any logical justification for the arbitrary age, whatever it may be set to. And it is true that youths are not little adults. Adults are children who, over the years, have grown massive increases to their bodies while suffering correspondingly massive reductions to their ability to think. This is demonstrated by the well known fact that the limiting factor of a child's intelligence is the child's lack of knowledge and experience. So, what is the excuse for adults who have gained the knowledge and experience? It has been well known for hundreds of thousands of years (millions?) that children learn the most and the most effectively, by experiment and testing partly because adults utterly refuse to tell them the truth about anything. They have always learned what they had to learn about sex by experiment, because they know the little tid-bits the adults spouted about birds and bees was crap. The article states: "It wasn't long ago that therapists and victim advocates had to fight to get the justice system to take sex abuse by adults, much less by juveniles, seriously." That is true, and the reasons are legion. But among the most important reasons are the facts that businesses relied heavily upon sexuality (both adults and child) to sell products and services; people responsible for enforcement of sexual abuse laws were among the worst violators (and still are); people with a great deal of money were (and still are) among the worst violators; political, church, and educational authorities were (and still are) among the worst violators; and though last, by no means least, more than 90 percent of humans alive over about 4 years of age does, or at the least wants to, try it. Then, in the 1970's the news media changed the apathetic attitudes about sex abuse when they ran out of anything sensational to sell copy, so decided to begin sensationalizing child sex abuse. As soon as they began that practice I told my friends they are going to create a nightmare of child sex abuse if they don't stop sensationalizing it. My friends said I didn't know what I was talking about. If it were a laughing matter, I would now be having the last laugh, wouldn't I? As one of many evil results of that media sensationalism, more and more laws began popping up criminalizing more and more acts that throughout past human history have been considered normal. It was inevitable that ultimately the true foundation of human knowledge, childhood experimentation, would be ground under by the unopposible juggernaut unleashed by media sensationalism and fueled by the insane masses who believe that everyone who thinks the same way they secretly think, should be severely punished - except themselves that is. Somewhere within the ongoing aftermath, people have abandoned reality, and completely lost track of what is, and what is not abuse. Ms Jones, you haven't seen anything yet. It's going to get a whole lot worse. July 30th, 2007The August 2007 issue of Discover has an article on page 80, "20 Things You Didn't Know about Mosquitoes." Number 20 says that HIV virus sucked up by a mosquito is destroyed by its digestive system. I have also heard a lot of HIV information publications saying that you can't catch it by kissing because saliva kills it. If either of those statements is true, why don't we have a cure for HIV? August 4th, 2007I left high school 50 years ago in 1957. The last time I took a college class was 17 years ago. I made it through high school with a C average, but I had a philosophy that it was better to learn something than to get good grades. I just finished taking 2 ACT practice tests in a row, based on what's being taught in high schools today. In both tests I scored at the 80th percentile. I can't help wondering how many people who graduated from high school 50 years ago with B or A averages could score that well today? August 15th, 2007The Week, Aug. 17, 2007, page 9, " Riyadh, Saudi Arabia" A Nigerian has been convicted to being alone with a woman not of his family- because he helped an elderly female neighbor by taking her to the hospital when he found her ill. I thought only Americans were that insane. August 19th, 2007New York Times Magazine has on page 36 an article by Alan Berlow that everyone should read. "What Happened in Norfolk?" is about 4 men threatened and coerced by police and persecutors into pleading guilty to a serious crime. After their convictions, based upon their confessions which did not match the facts of the crime, and with no DNA evidence match, another man convicted of a different crime, bragged of committing the crime they were convicted for, his statements matched the facts of the case, and his DNA was a match. When he was convicted, the first 4 men changed their story, saying their confessions had been coerced, and got reversals. Instead of releasing them (the logical and legal thing to do), the persecutor managed to get another benighted jury to convict them again by concocting an irrational theory of the crime by which it might be possible for them to be "guilty" anyway. Far from being an unusual horror story, this has become standard operating procedure in America's criminal systems of injustive. I have seen far worse among hundreds of cases I have written appeal and habeas corpus pleadings for. No system will work in which those responsible for making it work are routinely more criminal than those they persecute into conviction. August 21st, 2007I have just read a most excellent book. It is: In Search of Paul by John D. Coossan and Jonathan L. Reed. If you would like to discover what a REAL Christian is, study the Apostle Paul. The difference between a real Christian and those who today call themselves Christians could not be more obviously shown. August 27th, 2007Psychology Today, October 2007, page 54, "Shocked by Sex." The writer asks the doctor (?) if her sex life must end because her 14 year old daughter, snooping, discovered sex books hidden in mom's room and that mom and dad were having sex, following which discoveries the daughter called her a disgusting whore and threatened to suicide if the mom didn't stop having sex with dad. I don't know whether the doctors entirely unsatisfactory response was because she didn't want to anger the writer, or because she didn't want to be sued over free advice, or simply because she's not very good at her job. It's quite clear that there are more than a few serious problems in that family and no simple answer is going to help. First, it's obvious that the 14 year old's ideas about sex stem from total lack of proper sex education her parents should have started providing her before she turned 6. The fact that mom and dad thought they needed sex books indicated their own lack of proper sex education - a common symptom in America with it's backward expressed prudishness that makes Victorian attitudes appear grossly licentious, while each secretly harbors a belief that (s)he alone should be permitted any and all sexual liberties. On top of such sexual dysfunction, the girl is obviously intensely jealous of her moth's sexual relationship with her dad, which in turn may indicate that she is herself involved in such a relationship with him, or wants to be. The doctor's surmise that the sex books may have been "frightening" to the teen shows that the doctor doesn't know anything about American teens. Remember, doctor, that this is the country where President Clinton officially declared that certain oral practices are not "having sex," and immediately teens and (pre-teens) all across the country began practicing oral sex in their classrooms, even while the teachers watched helplessly. I don't understand why the prisons are still packed with people convicted of having oral sex after the president made that declaration. Maybe the doctor can answer that question? Page 81, "Unusual Suspects" by Pamela Weintraub, is about "Munchausen Mothers" who allegedly deliberately sicken their children to gain attention from doctors. There is evidence that a few mothers may have done such stupid things. In attempted fairness the author also points out that there is as much or more evidence that the majority of such accusations are false, made for personal agenda furtherance. In 2003 in great Britain where the Munchausen events began, a woman sentenced to life in prison won her appeal and was exonerated, resulting in the Britons' being awakened to the system's abuses of process to falsely convict. That will never happen in America. Regardless how much evidence proves the majority of such cases to be false, we psychotic Americans will bring this on as our latest witch-hunt now that a few are beginning finally to realize that the majority of cases of other forms of child abuse are false. The article, even though it presents the facts and issues fairly, will call America's attention to this new sensationalism which will escalate to typical witch-hunt magnitude, sending thousands of innocent mothers to prison and destroying thousands of families producing a multitude of real abusers who would never have don't it but for the drive of the sensationalist reportage. It is the nature of the human beast to refuse to ever learn from our mistakes. August 29th, 2007I once made a study comparing the Old Testament of the Bible, as a book of history, with a large collection of books written as histories. I was compelled to the conclusion that despite a good many obvious errors, including disagreements between sections of the Bible, the Old Testament is, by far, the most accurate recording of ancient history available. It is unfortunate that the same cannot be said for the accuracy of the New Testament, which has been both accidentally and deliberately altered with every copy and translation to the point that it bears little or no resemblance to the original - or to historical fact. Bart Ehrman has written a good book to help show that process of alteration - misquoting Jesus. As an example, on page 133 he discusses Mark 1:41, deliberately altered over the years to suit a copyist's idea that Jesus shouldn't be allowed to be angry. Ehrman questions whether it should be that Jesus "feeling compassion," or "becoming angry" reached out his hand and healed the leper. Ehrman ignores his own admonition to consider the translation in context, though he selects correctly for other reasons. Reading in context it is easy to see why Jesus would feel angry - because he knew that the ungrateful leper (just like people who today call themselves "Christian") would ignore what Jesus told him to do, and instead would cause him much trouble by doing exactly what Jesus told him not to do. On page 188 Ehrman points out that in the days the New Testament books were being written, pagans claimed that Christians engaged in ritual incest, infanticide, and cannibalism, and says, "These charges may seem incredible today, but in a society that respected decency and openness, they were widely accepted." On 195-196 Ehrman had already pointed out that the pagans who made those charges constituted 90 to 93 percent of the population of the empire. Over the years, the "Christians" have turned history on its head in a mostly successful effort to persuade that it was the pagans rather than themselves who did such things. The biggest lies are usually found surrounding a kernal of the truth. There were, in fact, in those days a few pagan cults with such practices. One of the worst was the Roman warrior cult of the Mithra (sun god) worshipers whose magician/priest siman tried to buy from the apostles the secret of healing by laying on of hands. When the apostles rebuked him his Mithracult of warriors murdered all the real Christians and took over the title of Christianity, but retained the dress, form, and practices of the Mithra cult to found the Roman Catholic Church. Subsequently, they removed a large number of the original books from the New Testament because what those books said condemned the neo-Christian cult. August 30th, 2007I have been noticing on TV advertisements for an upcoming new "reality" show, "Kid Nation," which advertises: "40 kids, one town, no adults. Trying to form a society. What will they do? Will they succeed?" Until today I had been interested in seeing at least a part of the series. Today I saw that the media had discovered the truth about the contract signed by the participating kids and their parents. Unbelievable! From the start, the kids are being paid almost nothing for their participation, which violates child labor laws anyway. On top of that, the contract requires that if the kids or parents reveal the terms of the contract less than 3 years after the last episode of the last season, the contract is void and the producers don't even have to give them their little token payment. So, already, their pay contract is void. When complaint was made for the kid's safety due to the "No adults" provision, the producers told the parents they were under adult supervision at all times, and had to do exactly what the adults told them to, which would make the producers guilty of false advertising. But that is all fluff compared to the rest of the contract. The rest of the contract is a basic parental-consent, which absolves the producers of any and all responsibility for anything that happens to the kids - specifically invluding injury, death, contraction of sexually transmitted disease, rape or sexual activity by any person (child or adult), and pregnancy. Basically, this is a contract placing the kids into the control of the producers for the express purpose of sex slavery. I cannot imagine any parent signing such a contract! This show should be boycotted even if the corrupt attorney's general won't do anything about it. August 31st, 2007The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2007, page 18, "The Ethicist" by Randy Cohen; L.T. from Ohio writes saying she works processing book orders for prisoners, stating her belief that prisoners in for burglary or assault are all right, but she wants those in for sex offenses, especially involving children, to rot in their cells, and wants to know if she may refuse to process their book orders. I applaud Mr. Cohen for telling her she may not, but he didn't go nearly far enough in castigating the evil Satanic thinking of this writer, L.T. Want to take any bets on whether L.T. claims to be a Christian? How about bets on whether L.T. ran and hid when Christ said let him who is without sin cast the first stone? Before you go to condemning prisoners, L.T. (judge not lest you be judged), maybe you should learn a little about the corrupt system that put them in prison and keeps them there. First, though, whether they are there for burglary, assault, sex offenses, or what- a crime is a crime! There is no such thing as a good crime, a bad crime, or an all right crime. Second, the only difference between people in prison and yourself is that you have not yet been convicted of a crime, though you commit more than one crime every day of your life. Condemn yourself first before you condemn those in prison. And, yes, there are a lot of people in prison who are actually guilty of the crimes they were convicted for. But, thanks to the corruption of the system, there are almost as many in prison who did not commit the crime they were convicted for- and that includes those convicted for sex crimes. The system has grown so corrupt that even if you sit through every minute of a trial, in most cases, it is still impossible to really know if the convicted actually committed the crime. You see only what the system allows you to see. And if you do sit through the trial, and afterward read the official transcript of the trial, you are likely to see it so falsified that you may not recognize it as the trial you sat through. And what gets most people convicted of sex crimes these days is not evidence of guilt. There often is no such evidence. What convicts them is people on juries like you who hear the words sex crime and automatically condemn without ever knowing or caring about the real facts. In a prior incarnation, did you drive the nail through Christ's feet, or was it one of his hands? You will surely take a gun to him if you see him on the street today! September 1st, 2007The New York Times National, August 27, 2007, page A12, "Using Muscle to Improve Health Care for Prisoners" by Solomon Moore describes efforts being made by a federal court appointed receiver to bring health care in California's slave plantations up to standards acceptable to federal courts. Keep in mind that those standards are not comparable to standards acceptable to "free world" health care, but are merely sufficient to not be classified as "cruel and unusual punishment" or in more easily understood language, treatment that is not classified as torture. If Mr. Sillen and the federal judge who appointed him get away with their lives they will be lucky. America's prison slave industry, euphemistically called a justice system, has more power than all the other forms of organized crime in America combined ever hoped to gain, and it will not long tolerate anyone, federal judge or otherwise, who seeks to compel it to obey its own laws. Standard practice is when prison authorities tell a federal judge to jump he doesn't take time to ask how high until he is already in the air. Those who back that system don't often last very long. The Austin American-Statesman had an article July 24, 2006 (check it out at http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/07/24prison.html) by Mike Ward, "Texas prison health care system on critical list." It asserts, among other things, that Texas prisoner's health care is constitutional- but barely- and sinking fast. Health care? I didn't know we had any. How can I get some of it? On my unit we don't have a doctor at all, the P.A. is available only by email, and the nurses, who can't hold a job in the free world, provide all treatment, such as it is, including prescribing medications under the license of the non-resident P.A., who cannot legally prescribe except under supervision of a doctor-which we don't have. And we are classified by TDCJ as a medical unit. September 10th, 2007Today I sent the following letter to Mr. Paul Weite in care of the magazine editor: I read your letter in the New York Times Magazine , 9-2-07, in which you confess that you were a member of the jury that convicted one of 4 men from Norfolk. You admit: "I and my fellow jurors were puzzled by the fact that things didn't add up properly. Lots of unanswered questions." That being the case, why did you convict? The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It and its explanatory laws prohibit conviction unless the persecutor proves guilt by legal evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt. You have confessed the jurors' reasonable doubt, so you and your fellow jurors have committed the federal felony offense of False Imprisonment, putting 4 men into slavery. How does it feel to be a free criminal while the innocent do your time in prison? You shouldn't feel lonely. There are millions of jurors in American just like you, convicting innocent people to prison just because the judge and persecutor are trying to build reputations for themselves. September 14th, 2007We have been locked down all week for our twice a year major "shake-down" in which officers supposedly search for tattoo equipment, erotica, weapons, and anything that is hazardous to the safety of officers. Our dorm was shook down yesterday. I really hit the jackpot getting the officer I got to shake me down. Of course, everybody knows that whichever prisoners have the type of contraband they are supposed to look for has it well hidden before the shakedown. So instead, many of the officers go through the property solely to jumble it up and confiscate innocuous bits merely for annoyance. The one who shook me down examined every single piece of paper in my property. I have about 80 pounds of papers! A combination of legal papers, religious papers, school papers, stories and books I wrote, and my art practice drawings. Where most officers were taking no more than 5 minutes to shake down each prisoner, this man took an hour shaking me down. At one point he latched onto a sketch I made copying a famous female waist-up nude bust from a book in the library. "Ah-heh!" he said. This is contraband! I'm taking this!" When I asked if he wanted toe title of the library book I copied it from so he could take that too, he frantically called a sergeant to look at the sketch and asked if he should take it. The sergeant looked once and said, "Man, that ain't nothing. Let it go!" After that, he called the sergeant back every few minutes to look at another sketch, all of which the sergeant told him were nothing to be concerned about. Finally, the last time he called, the sergeant just waved him off and wouldn't even come look. 15 minutes after all the other prisoners were finished, this officer was still going through my papers, 1 piece at a time. A lieutenant walked over and asked, "What is taking you so long shaking this man down?" The officer said, "I'm being very careful and meticulous." After staring at him a few seconds the Lt. sarcastically said, "Well good for you." Then the Lt. picked up a couple of packs of my papers, flexed them once, tossed them onto the pile of things I was allowed to keep, and walked away. Later, when the mail was delivered, I read my neighbor's July/August 2007 issue of Psychology Today, where I found on page 90 an interesting article. The authors, Dr. Alan Miller and Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, speaking of results of extensive studies, stated among other things confirmation that men like b women (big boobs, big butts, blond hair, and blue eyes). Now I know why everyone thinks I'm odd! I much prefer dark hair, brown eyes, small breasts, and am completely turned off by butts of any size. The only point of agreement I found with the authors was that men like younger women-but not for the reasons they gave. I prefer younger women for their sweet dispositions, innocence, naiveté, and anxiousness to be cuddled. Though I like children, I am not concerned about how many of them my mate can make for me, as the authors believe. September 19th, 2007About The Week magazine, 9-21-07: On page 12, I'm glad to learn that Jerry Lewis is not prejudiced against "illiterate faggot(s)." Apparently he has been hassled because he made a joke about one who is fictional. It would seem to me a better response if all the illiterate faggots would learn to read and write, instead of complaining for one who doesn't exist. Page 17, "United Kingdom," by Madeleine Bunting, makes me glad to see that somebody other than myself is finally beginning to understand that one of the greatest dangers to the world we live in is the simple fact that it has too damn many people infesting it! Amazingly, on the same page is an article, "How they see us," pointing specifically at America's second and third worst dangers which, in order of threat to our continuing existence are "Americans hunting for other people's moral lapses" (in other words each American trying to force upon every other person the morality(s) he only pretends to actually believe in), and "America's strange puritanical streak" which in this "fundamentalist nation" is expressed by the individuals' strenuous efforts to enforce upon everyone else sexual morality that they only pretend to believe in to start with. Page 20, "Noted" says more than 100 state and local New Jersey officials have been convicted over the past 5 years. Wonderful! Now, when is America going to do something about the other hundreds of thousands of them across the country? On the same page, "saggy pants" asks the question: "but why would anyone want to walk around in pants "belted under one's butt?'" Obviously, in our capitalistic society, they do it advertising what they have for sale or rent. We have no business trying to legislate against this practice. If they are adults, they have a right to advertise their sexual desires, and if not, then their parents should whip what they have exposed and send them to bed without supper. Oh! I forgot. These days, any attempt to discipline a child will get you sent to prison. |