Memorial Day

Support our troops by keeping them engaged in miserable futility. Don't bring them home and give them meaningful work. It's much more supportive instead to have them kill people and break things where they don't belong - just as the American people would like done to us by some foreign army bringing us freedom from ourselves!

Let's hear from Vietnam veteran Mike Hastie, if any of these "patriots" are willing to tolerate truth from the troops they supposedly support.

Every year Americans honor their veterans on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Everyone is a hero...Great speeches...Jets flying over...Flags and more flags...21 gun salute...Taps...Thank you for your service...The only problem with this tradition is that the American people don’t want to know a god damn thing about what really happens in war. 18 American veterans commit suicide everyday. I can’t tell you how many Vietnam veterans I have met in my life who would have one simple message to the American people: Go Fuck Yourself! Don’t trust a veteran who isn’t angry...

Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
Memorial Day 2011
Contact at: (hastiemike@earthlink.net) T)

One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.

Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
December 13, 2004

Support these guys, yes, but stop up your ears and turn your eyes away if they tell you the truth. But do you feel supported when people "support" you that way?

Thank a veteran for fighting for our freedom by depriving others of theirs, as though the measure we measure will not be measured back to us. So shout the American "patriots" who regard the advice of the founders of the republic they supposedly cherish with complete contempt - all of whom warned that war and the military don't preserve our freedoms. That's how we lose them, they all said. Let's hear it from James Madison, in case any of these "patriots" can stand to listen to him - or do they even have any idea who he was?

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and ... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare....

— James Madison, Political Observations [April 20, 1795]

Maybe, you patriots, you figure this old dead guy isn't proud enough of the troops, not patriotic enough, as you are. Didn't realize the importance of being afraid of terrorists, or Muslims, or your own shadow, as our torturing, kidnapping, lying, peeping, and defrauding protectors keep reminding us. But there is the detail that what he said is proving true in every way. Read it again!

Why Are Hondas Good Cars?

If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don't particularly like.

Soichiro Honda

I noticed a lot here. It doesn't just apply to car manufacturing or business. We see here why people don't hire God, who is somebody we don't understand, which is why we miss out on having somebody in our lives that is better than we are. Religious people, like everyone else, are looking to feel better about themselves, and having people around us that are better than we are doesn't make us feel like we're the best there is. Not right away. But if we let such truth into our lives, we'll get to really be better people, and then we'll have real things to feel better about.

Richard McKee, Open Government Maven

Rich McKee, who co-founded Californians Aware, died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago. Many of us will miss him. His daughter Kelly helps us out with public records things, and she helped me force the Special Ed Director's resume out of Chino Valley Unified School District - which showed that that spedhead had about as much background in special education as I do in the fashion industry. This little victory prompted a determined but unsuccessful campaign of retaliation, which faded away with the dismissal of the Human Resources guy who helped coordinate it, as well as her transfer elsewhere in the district. Chino Valley has a long way to go, but I think they've come quite a way. Through his daughter, I'm in debt to Rich for this, indirectly. There are probably lots of cases like this that nobody knows, besides Rich's publicly known succeses.

A tough defeat for Rich was being beaten in an action against the Orange Unified School District in 2009 and being made to pay $80,000 in legal fees. But this, too, ended in an important success. The anti-SLAPP law was amended to forbid the award of fees to winning government defendants unless the action is frivolous.

Don't forget. You don't always lose just because you lose.

The End of Osama bin Laden?

Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan at the hands of the American military was announced yesterday, and few will mourn his passing. There was glee in many American cities, as though something great was accomplished.

There is no question that bin Laden's great accomplishment was to provoke the United States to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, just as he intended, and indeed as was his stated purpose, in the hope of bleeding the American empire to death as he had - with American help - bled the Soviet empire. You don't have to like the guy to recognize that he was a brilliant strategist with a deep understanding of his opponent, knowing how to turn his opponent's power to his ruin, while using his own weakness to maximum effect.

Even his death will serve to weaken the American empire's position in the lands it has invaded, while evidently encouraging it to remain there until national bankruptcy. He will be reviled for his criminality, which is uncontestable, although certainly no worse than that of the imperial managers that have used him as a pretext for greater crimes than his.

His worst injury to the United States was undoubtedly his success in provoking the American people to throw their own liberties away with both hands, becoming a vile, thuggish rogue state that disappears people, locks people away forever precisely because they have done no crimes, wantonly tortures thousands and often with sadistic sexual perversion, and which has already murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people to no purpose. Working with his co-conspirators, the Bush-Obama administration and its unprincipled supporters, Osama bin Laden has participated as a junior partner in the most serious destruction of the US Constitution and its republican liberties in the history of the republic. The American republic is most unlikely now to recover, and that is probably the worst thing he has done to us - far worse than killing 3000 people, which we do to ourselves on the highways in a month. That too was his intention, knowing that provoking Americans to express the most vile aspects of our national character would further destroy American authority and power in the world.

But was it bin Laden's responsibility to preserve the American republic and to keep Americans from turning to their own crooked ways (Psalm 125:5)? No, he bears blame for appealing to our basest instincts to ruin us, but keeping ourselves from our own crooked ways is our own responsibility, not his.

It's worth reflecting in this day of bin Laden's death that not many men so completely accomplish in life what they set out to do. In bin Laden's case, he had the active help of American rulers that were delighted with his success because it gave them their chance to establish police state institutions, with the eager agreement of the American people who despised their own liberties along with those of others - being thrilled at the excuse to express their own violence. He could never have done it without us. Osama bin Laden's work is not over. His enemies will see to that, as they have all along.