Archives for category: religion

Beware the Perception

A cautionary tale of the developmental psychology or first 70 years of the USA and resultant contemporary social psychology of the Americans; for my friends in Russia (Western reader short attention span warning, 7,000 words)

In my observations of Russia, I’ve noticed a consistent misapprehension of reality concerning the West. The West, particularly the USA, is a social phenomenon that largely defies self-understanding, let alone understanding from without, even by the titan observer Solzhenitsyn, who lived a number of years in Vermont.

To begin this analysis, we’ll note the USA’s ‘enlightenment’ founders were Deists, and James Madison’s animus to Christianity was not an animus towards a deity per se, but an animus towards political Christianity and the history of the several incarnations of western church meddling in the affairs of men and nations, pointing to a particular arrogance:

“Experience witnesses that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and virtue of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution” -James Madison

This thinking among our brighter founding minds is perhaps best personified in the philosopher of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine:

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence? There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found in any other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them. But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes. It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him.”

Other than Madison, the author of our constitution, and Paine, another great American ‘enlightenment’ Deist was Benjamin Franklin, considered the greatest scientist of the age in Europe during his own lifetime; and notable in his uppermost thoughts concerning the founding of America’s so-called ‘liberal democracy’ at the time of our Constitutional Convention, were his doubts… when the crowd shouted to him when emerging from the final meeting of the states delegates: “Mr Franklin, Mr Franklin, what form of government have you given us?” Franklin replied “A republic, if you can keep it.” We couldn’t.

To equate secularism with atheism, per the intentions of those American ‘enlightenment’ founders (not all of our founders were enlightenment inspired thinkers, notably John Adams), is a patent mistake; moreover our ‘enlightened’ founders were of an educated class that seriously doubted whether the social experiment would work. And it did not work, largely because of foreseen dangers, whether a lack of social maturity or, alternatively stated, the lower human nature.

When I see the term ‘Cultural Marxism’ trained on the USA’s subsequent-resultant social circumstance in wake of the failed American revolution’s founding ideas and charter, it puts the hair up on this dogs back; as it too often appears a simplistic jingoism little different to liberals assigning a broad neo-nazi paintbrush to the term ‘Alt-Right.’ This is not necessarily a matter of ‘the truth is somewhere in between’, but more a matter of intertwined mosaic of social allergies where several antigens are not stimulating a proper immune response, almost certainly because from this republic’s inception, there was papered over a multiple fracture rather than a coalescence. There is blame aplenty can be assigned to multiple parties in the ensuing history.

I will wander afield here for a moment, for the benefit of my Russian friends, and by way of suggestion; consider the wide gulf of experiential difference between your own experience, that of a more or less consistent or singular Christian experience, that is Orthodoxy, and that of the USA; an un-amalgamated 1,500 or so Christian faith groups that can be sorted by meta-group, wing, denomination, theology, and/or family. Your experience of emancipation from feudalism versus our experience of rapidly subjugating a continent for as many motives as there had been multiple actors; whether Calvinists so intolerant Europe would not tolerate them, too many mercantilists desiring a Baron’s station and privilege to count, tens upon tens of thousands of Europe’s undesirables, whether petty criminals & the mildly retarded or insane, reflected in Europe’s vacated prisons, the inevitable Catholic proselytizing, White slavery euphemistically called ‘indentured servitude’, and finally, Black slavery. This is not a comprehensive list.

As a social psychologist, with an understanding that biographical history underlies socialization, I would not presume an intimate understanding of the Russian mind reflected in that great nation’s national psychology; nor would I expect a Russian should presume an intimate understanding of the many social tensions integral to the multiple personalities of the USA.

Back on topic of the USA and the underpinning of how we became a dissolute, aggressive and sociopathic national POLITIC (not as a people in some comprehensive sense), firstly we must toss out the idea the USA is a ‘liberal democracy’ in the sense of a “godless anti-Christian “humanism”” on account of its Enlightenment founders. Rather the negative American qualities stemming from the lower nature of man markedly & substantially come from the Christian community as much as or more so than anywhere else in American society. At this point I’ll ask my more open-minded conservative friends to swallow hard and keep reading. My liberal friends would not necessarily like what will be coming either.

Recalling Thomas Paine’s “It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him” we should understand a close similarity to Solzhenitsyn’s A return to God, voluntary self-restraint and self-restriction of humankind, emphasizing duties instead of ever-expanding “rights”, prioritizing inner freedom, and rejecting the sacrifice of national life not only to totalitarian utopia but also to the orgy of freedom.” What is that similarity, one might ask?

To begin, the USA’s secular demand mandated in our founding charter was never about shunting God aside in our national life but was a practical recognition of the impossibility of reconciling the numerous competing beliefs in what amounted to a multicultural society with a deep antipathy to central authority; based in political persecutions that cannot be separated from a history of church-state relations in Europe. By the time of the USA’s founding, it was recognized if John Calvin, Marten Luther or The Pope’s adherents were to gain an upper hand in governance of these United States, the presumed result would be antithetical to the long term social maturity and stability of the newly founded nation.

Rather the expectation would be the unique and new secularism of the United States should see sectarianism set aside towards pursuit of the greater good for the whole. It is in this demand we see an implicit but clear parallel to Solzhenitsyn’s “voluntary self-restraint and self-restriction of humankind” that never demanded God be set aside but sectarian self-centeredness set aside instead. This would require a self restraint that was an intended goal but proved an impossible demand; as ‘freedom’ became a practical ‘taking liberties’ or ‘god helps those who help themselves’ in a sense of gross opportunism. Let us not forget where this had evolved to in several short decades with “a sucker is born every minute” ostensibly attributed to circus magnate PT Barnum, but no matter falsely, this had become an indelible folk wisdom equating the by now established legal principle of Caveat Emptor or ‘let the buyer beware.’ Christian principles, that is if Christian principles are embodied in larger concepts or notions like ‘charity’, had been easily cast aside in these largely ‘Christian’ United States, and any principled stance of self restraint stepped on. It is the lower instinct, greed particularly, flourished.

Backing up a bit, it must be noted the United States founding charter had been fatally flawed from inception; where the charter’s underlying ‘bedrock’ or Declaration of Independence stating “All men are created equal” had been discarded in reality when wealthy ‘special interests’ demanded this maxim did not pertain to negroes. Already the pirate culture of America’s eastern seaboard demonstrated a superior model were one to be honest; where Blacks had a vote electing a captain and share in the spoils of those ships taken by crews made up of White and Black escaped slaves. In our charter, White slavery was abolished but Black slavery was not.

This slavery was justified by ‘Christians’ employing biblical references per these examples: Noah’s “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren”, “By this decisive, explicit, irrefragable authority of the written work of God, it is evident that servants… are commanded under the Mosaic law to be bought; and that when so bought of alien sojourners, that they and their issue become inheritable property”, and “Like patriarchs of old, at the head of their children and grandchildren, their flocks and their herds, their bondmen and bond maids [are] to be an inheritance for their children after them to be their bond men forever” [pdf]

If one were to wonder where an individual’s ‘Christian’ conscience might play in the preceding, there needed be none; as Scots Presbyterians, English Baptists and Dutch ‘Reform’ Protestants had introduced what became a peculiar ‘Christian’ sociopathy that became widespread, that is John Calvin’s “predestination” where it is held the individual is born on this Earth preordained to either Heaven or Hell. It followed, whether one owned slaves was of no consequence in any sense of morality or personal ethics. This practical sociopathy, via inter-generational socialization, adequately explains how ‘devout’ American Christians of the 21st Century can feel no compunction whatsoever in relation to the destruction of entire societies; and were one to use the example of inter-generational violence, it should come as no surprise even ‘devout American Christians’ who are Black now can be seen in this mold, example given, fervent Evangelical Christian Condoleezza Rice. This phenomenon is not precisely new, it can be noted, American Black slaves repatriated to Africa set themselves up as ‘masters’ of their now culturally distant cousins in Liberia, and it could also be noted certain Jewish State actors, allied to today’s sociopathic Christianity of the West, somewhat resemble the perpetrators of kristallnacht, only now in relation to their own expansionist ambitions.

But I digress. Once again back to our founding era, there was a certain schizophrenia papered over at our nation’s constitutional convention, reflected in the so-called Federalists and anti-Federalists, shortly described as those American founders who favored a strong central authority, or mercantilist financiers like Alexander Hamilton and his ilk, and those opposed to the same, represented in Thomas Jefferson. The federalists insisted the purpose of the convention was to produce a governing document, maintaining there was no authority in the convention’s mandate to create a bill of rights, whereas the anti-federalists would not sign off on a constitution without this check on central authority over the common citizenry. The compromise reached was the federalists agreed a separate “Bill of Rights” would be drawn up and submitted to the several States for adoption, following the USA’s founding charter coming into force. However upon the ‘first ten amendments’ or ‘Bill of Rights’ having been adopted, future federalist jurists appointed to the United States Supreme Court had, in ensuing decades, set out to undermine the same. These rank political animals ‘interpreting’ our charters first ten amendments decided, despite plain language indicating otherwise, these amendments did not apply except as the court would tightly control via a contrived theory they called ‘incorporation doctrine’ or that is to say a judiciary constituting political appointments would take it upon themselves to tightly control or to decide when, how, and even whether, any of these ‘enumerated’ (spelled out) rights of the citizens should be applied. Nowhere is this more clear than example of roughly 225 years old language of the Seventh Amendment never having been “incorporated” or become binding on the several states…

“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law”

…despite the Constitutions Article Six or ‘supremacy clause’ language:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding”

This has left the door open to judiciary tampering with jury awards of compensation & damages or, in other words, shielding the wealth of the criminal & corrupt, example given a judge deciding a jury award had been ‘excessive.’

Anticipating this subversion of the American foundational law was the early case in legal controversy where a contractor from South Carolina was owed a war debt by the State of Georgia, which didn’t wish to pay up. The Supreme Court had ruled there was no such thing as State sovereign immunity from suit, in the case of Chisholm v Georgia. Nearly all of the states balked at the prospect of having to pay their war debts and the 11th Amendment to our founding charter was passed, stating:

“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State”

And just like that, certain remarkable things happened; with the passing of the 11th Amendment by the several states legislators, all of the lawsuits pending in federal court per state war debts had been erased with citizens forced into the jurisprudence of states that did not wish to pay, and half the language of Article One, Section Nine, of the Constitution had been tossed into the ash bin: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Thomas Jefferson indicated this language had been meant to cover both criminal and civil circumstance of law, and the constitutional language supports this assertion by Jefferson; ‘Bill of Attainder’ should refer to criminal, and ‘ex post facto’ should refer to civil liabilities. In other words, the USA should not have been allowed to make law, criminalizing or creating liability, or excusing crime or liability, after the fact, to get the outcome it wants. The 11th Amendment neither mentions nor lifts this other constitutional provision. But now, civil ex post facto law happens frequently, such as a 21st Century Congress ‘forgiving’ the telecom companies illegally spying on Americans, erasing liability and robbing citizens of their day in court.

Although the 11th Amendment is specific and narrow, and doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, the legendary English Common Law expert William Blackstone’s Sovereign Immunity doctrine had been reinstated in the former colonies:

“The King moreover is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.”

Only now, suddenly it is no longer the ‘King’ can act with impunity, but the institutions of government in the United States per a case as late as 1991, Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, where the Supreme Court wrote:

“we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact, that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the “plan of the convention”

And there you have it, from the early days of the Supreme Court saying Sovereign Immunity from suit is a non existent thing in immediate post colonial USA law, to the several states’ legislatures passing the 11th Amendment, amending the federal charter, an amendment which doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, to escape war debt, to the modern Supreme Court stating the language of our constitution’s 11th Amendment doesn’t mean what it actually says, but instead means what they want it to say, essentially stating ‘we’ll extend ‘the King’s prerogative‘ as far as we please, and we’ll use the 11th Amendment to absurdly assert what amounts to a claim the King’s Sovereign Immunity (impunity) was never a point of the American Revolution.’

Subsequently, the United States federal government adopted sovereign immunity as its own, usurping ‘the people are sovereign’, and has used this doctrine to cancel out the core of the first ten amendments:

The fourth amendment’s “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

The fifth amendments Amendment’s “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

And the 6th Amendment’s “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence”

These preceding rights have been nullified by the United States claiming sovereign immunity relevant to ‘state secrets’ when citizens have attempted to petition for redress of grievances due to central authority over-reach under the pretext of ‘terror’, as well as the central authority having established a secret court where the accused has no access nor advocate. This ‘coup de grâce’ over the rule of law in the USA had been finally made complete by “National Security Act of 1947” creating the lawless Central Intelligence Agency, and is law which opened the door to FISA secret court. This act enabled the rule of law to be converted to “color of law” or simple pretense of constitutional integrity at the pinnacle of the USA’s institutions of government. But I am getting ahead of myself, let us back up once more.

It does well to recall each of the preceding steps of imperative dishonesty described, in a process of the rule of law’s erosion, had been initiated and largely sustained by so-called ‘Christians.’ If Deism were ostensibly protected in this system, little differently to Islam, Judaism or sundry flavors of heathen belief, these were of little consequence where the overwhelming numbers of the USA’s populace were Christian of the Western stripe. Darwin had not yet arrived with his hypothesis, atheism had yet to discover its ‘manhood’ & elope with science, and it would two hundred and more years in the making before the Western conservative Christianity would finally co-opt Deism’s ‘intelligent design’ and pervert it with an inculcated ignorance resulting in a 21st Century Vice President of the United States’ belief Man had walked the Earth together with dinosaurs. I expect the term ‘believer’, closely examined on both parties part, might be one of vastly different connotation between Western Christianity and the Orthodoxy of Russia.

If, in the Western canon, the most lied about intentions of any individual were the grossly misrepresented thoughts of Jesus, in particular due to the perversion of Christianity by John Calvin, the most lied about intentions of any group of men would be the American founders. When the contemporary American religious fascist claims the USA had been founded as a Christian, not secular, nation, they must ignore history and the USA’s first treaty with Libya…

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries”

…noting the preceding language had been drafted by the American republic’s executive and unanimously ratified by the Senate in the early years of our foundational law. When the subsequent American conservative Christian subversion of our charter had been reinforced by religious propaganda via imagined fantasies surrounding America’s founders, those fantasies had been consequently encapsulated by a honest historian with the cynical epithet “Liars for Jesus.” By contrast it should be explained our present national schizophrenia’s ‘liberal’ element had done no better. At last, we shall move forward from the era of our founding.

Recalling the Western liberal poet Oscar Wilde’s “Truth is seldom pure and never simple”, we now shortly examine the fact of the United States tearing itself apart a scant seventy years since its founding. Pertinent to this violence, American sociopathy introduced by Calvinism did not confine itself to the conservative religious community in much the same sense of earlier example, where repatriated American Black slaves became ‘master’ over their African subjects. Restated in a perfect cynicism of American shallowness of character: ‘if one can do so, so can two, never-mind do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” would be perhaps the best description of today’s liberal ‘humanitarian violence’ rooted in a co-opted Calvinist sociopathy; where one could scarcely find a difference between the justifications of a Hillary Clinton’s rape of Libya or a Nikki Haley’s rape of Syria. These indistinguishable political lies are ‘protected free speech’ of necessity; for if the American sociopath is without empathy, conscience or soul, these pretenders to humanity are not altogether without fear of facing accountability. They are similar to the children who’ve become compulsive liars when caught in proximity to result of a miscreant behavior, perhaps they will be able to lie their way out of punishment as opposed to the idea if they are do not conceal their complicity in certain delinquencies, they must face consequences

It follows, the American ‘free press’ promised to the people as a means to unmask corrupted power has become conflated with ‘free speech’ and turned on its head; where media has become almost wholly owned by a 3rd party that is neither the People nor the State but greed personified in the non-living legal entity of the corporation. It is this press which no longer unmasks the corrupt rather via the corporate veil buys and protects the corrupted politician and a ‘free press’ is become purveyor of political lies construed to be ‘free speech.’ We see this process already well underway in the decades preceding America’s civil war, with the self-justifying (Paine’s aptly described ‘mental lying’) press giving cover to politicians who could never come clean and admit what became the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States via conquest of the western territories was little more than a series of violent robberies. In the process of this virulently criminal expansion, the folk wisdom ‘treaties were made to be broken’ entered into the American lexicon, approximating the actuality; where early example had been the ‘civilized tribes’ sued the United States over the Executive branch of the Federal government’s Indian tribes removal policy and won, whereupon President Andrew Jackson stated “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has stated what the law is, now let him enforce it” and the tribes were pushed out of their ancestral lands across the Mississippi River into an alien wilderness regardless of the rule of law. Or, in the case of stealing the lands of Mexico, what amounted to the prototype ‘color revolution’ was staged by a group of Americans in California. Inasmuch as bringing ‘Christianity’ and ‘civilization’ to the heathen natives was the stated rationale, this could not hold up in the case of the noted ‘civilized tribes’, in actuality it was a violation of Moses ‘thou shall not covet.’ In the case of taking half or more of Mexico, it mattered not one bit Mexico was a Christian nation, only a differing method of lie or sleight of hand recalling color revolution needed applied. Relevant to this immediate preceding, it should be noted although existing populations in the conquered territories were not Black, neither was the majority populace ‘White’, recalling certain justifications for slavery but in this case ‘God’s will’ providing cover via the American press for a class of political suborner’s lies justifying theft of properties belonging those considered lesser to themselves. In this light, it should be known today’s “American Exceptionalism” had come into the lexicon as a synonym to “Manifest Destiny.”

However in the northeast of the United States there were some disgruntled noises made over the barbaric treatment afforded the Native tribes, in what were growing ‘liberal’ circles, from the relative safety of ‘civilized’ New England, this should not be construed to be some societal conviction of conscience; as New England states have been happy to deny its own Native tribes surviving tracts of wilderness, as recently as the late 20th Century, due to treaty violations by the USA having been, in the words of the court, ‘crushed by the burden of history.’ It should be noted the preceding indicates any sincerity of the Northern abolitionist societies agitating for an end to slavery, per the USA’s civil war, might well have been pecuniary as relates to social jealousy. In America, if there is an abundance of anything, it would be hypocrisy.

What became known as “Manifest Destiny” was the core cause which led to civil war, as competing visions of a future for those territories being conquered had raised the ghosts of the USA’s federalist versus anti-federalist divisions, however disingenuously. The North was pointed to an industrial, centralized future, the south was clinging to, and guarding, an agrarian, pastoral lifestyle and resented the north’s coveting the resources of the south. Black slavery was the undoing of the south, not because a majority of the north were unwilling to tolerate this, but because it provided cover for the industrialists (one could these days say oligarchs) of the north to bend the south to its will. With the inevitable loss to the industrialized north, it is noteworthy that great field marshal, Robert E. Lee, had made at least one cynical political maneuver, when he encouraged Christian ‘revivalism’ in the southern armies; as a means of boosting troop morale in the face of what he had to have known were overwhelming odds. ‘God’ were never so abused as in the American tradition; pointing towards a certain faux patriotism of the present day.

Finally, it was the south self-justifying its stance, particularly noting slavery, on the ninth and tenth Amendments or the final two clauses of the so-called ‘Bill of Rights’, handed long term political victory to the Federalists, those longtime sublime liars who’d never contemplated Thomas Paine’s American revolutionary concept of “Common Sense” should be fulfilled, their hypocritical condemnation of slavery not withstanding, for all men should become slaves to mercantilism run amok and the following constitutional language ultimately bowed to central authority:

Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”, the laws of individual states notwithstanding”

Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”

In the Calvinist South, Blacks, of course, weren’t ‘people’ but were property. But let us note this attitude was not geographically limited in some black & white sense (or more cynically, there was no geographic limitation of this attitude in a very Black & White sense!) for it had been a mere seventy years previous, the North had allowed for Black slavery to become integrated to the United States at their formation; where our charter determined enslaved Blacks were to be counted in the federal census as “three fifths of a man.” It required no ‘stretch of the imagination’ to claim the ‘States Sovereignty’ referred to could presume a self-determined future that was decidedly anti-mercantilist, and in its stead a pastoral one, but this could not stand up to the North’s faux morality exploiting the slavery issue, slavery which had been stupendously-stupidly clung to by the South as a ‘State’s Right.’ Here it should be noted not only had one of Abraham Lincoln’s political mentors burned a political treatise authored by Lincoln, defending Thomas Paine’s Deism, to spare Lincoln’s political career from the wrath of the North’s own intolerant ‘Christian’ mob, as well there is likely no political corruption in today’s Russia can come close to matching Abraham Lincoln’s first nomination to run for president of the United States, at Chicago, in 1860.

Concluding this immediate preceding section, it must be noted the mercantilist ‘liberal’ North’s politicians, including Lincoln, were perfectly willing to abide a continuation of slavery where it was already established in the South, were the South to surrender any claim to take its own political vision forward in the conquered western territories. This willingness to ‘compromise’ the freedom of Blacks in America only died with the North’s achieving some military victories, relevant to Abraham Lincoln stated political position:

“If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union…. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free”

Lincoln’s burned apologetic of Paine’s Deism notwithstanding, in this context we see a man perfectly recalling Paine’s maxim…

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime”

…which cannot come as any surprise where Lincoln had achieved his presidency via as corrupt a process as had ever been witnessed in this leading Western and henceforth ‘liberal’ democracy.

If these ostensibly ‘Christian’ political lies (Calvin’s sociopathy) were not great enough on both parties part, we must further note a liberal-left promotion of a revisionist history undermining what had remained of our core civil liberties, with a smear attacking the conservative historical revisionism with its own historical revisionism. Today’s liberal urban legend claims the anti-federalist philosophy is rooted in setting out to protect slavery by weakening the provisions for an American central government. This argument on the liberal-left is as distorted as the American conservative political revisionism it attacks; the patently false idea The United States was founded as a Christian Nation per se.

Because of confusion of ‘state’ as a larger nation with ‘state’ as a state, in these United States, in the American English dialect, ‘nation’ had come to replace ‘state’ in a sense of federal or national. However this was not yet the case at the time of our founding law being written; and the founding context of the language of the USA charter’s Second Amendment is a singular ‘people’ and refers to a ‘state’ in the sense of the United States as a nation, people of all the states inclusive. Any attempt to conflate the greater ‘state’ in the Second Amendment with the individual ‘states’ comprising our nation is patently dishonest:

Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”

None of our first through eighth amendments protection of the rights of individual citizens had anything to do with Blacks of the founding era, as they were not enfranchised citizens as a class, and the facts are at odds with liberal-left’s popular myth (urban legend) that somehow the anti-federalists got their way with undermining a federalist inspired central government in order to protect slavery.

Simple common sense demands the anti-federalist authored fourth amendment concerning privacy in one’s papers cannot have anything to do with propping up slavery, a given example of motivation in the anti-federalists’ actual intentions. Or other rights, for instance prohibition of a bill of attainder. Or the right to confront your accuser. To name but a few provisions of the first through eighth amendments authored by the anti-federalists.

If our “Bill of Rights” had been insisted upon by anti-federalists, and it most certainly was, the entire world, it would be implied by this specious and twisted revisionism coming from the liberal left, is indebted to American slaveholders for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights inspired by the American Bill of Rights and certain of its provisions.

Anti-federalism was by no means an exclusive southern phenomena related to a minority of slave owners but was a general angst of the new republic’s citizenry from Georgia to New Hampshire. This angst primarily concerned historic abuses of power by central governments traced in the American tradition to the Magna Charta particularly and the European powers’ abuses of citizenry generally. The right of the ‘people’ (all inclusive) to bear arms was deemed necessary as a check of last resort on a central government. This anti-federalist authored ‘Bill of Rights” specifies core civil liberties of citizens our anti-federalist founders meant to secure us from the tyranny of a police state.

This liberal dishonesty plays into the following circumstance, a practical extending of superior privilege to our returning soldiers, consolidating the central authorities’ gains; when building a symbiotic relationship between the USA’s military and the USA’s police forces where the altogether wrong sort of meme involved with creating a collective mentality, germinated in the American military, is being infused into the American ‘civilian’ police.

When ‘veterans preference’ law creates a privileged class, in violation of our Constitution’s 14th Amendment or “Equal Protection” clause, is imposed on police hiring as a matter of law, and a society such as ours is one recently put through some considerable stresses, economic and social, resulting in both heightened paranoia and less opportunities at well paying jobs, the civilian police forces have become packed with ‘war on terror’ military veterans. These combined phenomena will translate into many veterans who’ve developed an ‘us versus the enemy’ mentality integrated into America’s police forces in relation to community, and this is particularly dangerous when ‘community’ is demographically dissimilar to one’s own, and we see this mindset manifest when Black communities are policed by White officers. The result is Blacks being shot down by White officers with impunity.

Now, we stir into the mix some more unpleasant facts; in today’s America, conservatism has become altogether poisoned by an extreme religious movement, Christian Domionism, asserting ‘God’s Law’ (their own interpretations of scripture) supersedes civil law. A volunteer military is historically attractive to conservative mentality, more so than other outlooks, and this is what will be fed into the police hiring rosters in by far out of proportion (to larger society) numbers. The American religious right is primarily White and we have seen has undeniable racist roots in a large segment or subculture. But there is more than a significant, underlying elements of racism, at issue here.

The soldiers advocate-civil rights group Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has determined that one third (1/3) of the United States military is presently “Christian Dominionist” or that is to say very much on the far right of the conservative right, one could say ‘Christian Taliban.’ These people do not respect the original intention of our secular democracy, they do not respect people holding different viewpoint or opinion, and they most certainly do not respect a civil rights movement traditionally rooted in the left of the political spectrum.

A simple rule of social psychology would be, with an extreme ‘strict father’ model of conservatism’s upbringing, extreme even by traditional conservative standards, the religious extremist desiring to exercise ‘authority’ is the prototype personality that will gravitate to police employ via ‘veterans preference’ … strengthening the hand of those corrupt fascist forces rapidly gaining practical control over every facet of American society as a whole. Christian Dominion sympathetic personalities have already gained control over Congress and the Pentagon and by extension, NATO, and now these patently reactionary, militant forces are taking practical control of America’s streets, the Posse Comitatus Act prohibition of America’s military policing our citizenry notwithstanding.

As a matter of consequence, our rapidly militarizing police have integrated, and continue to integrate, those personalities most inclined to view the public they were intended to serve as an opposing or threatening force .. as ‘the enemy’ .. with all of the attending impunity they experienced in a hyper-religious military environment; whether attitude a woman’s rape ‘must’ve been God’s will’ with little motivation to pursue and solve cases or punish perpetrators (except in case of a Black on White rape, that must be prosecuted in any White supremacist ruled society.) Society is now policed by men whose military background had been poisoned by theological interpretations on the far right of the right; by officers who shoved religious motivation down soldiers throats (officers who believe Muslims are ‘the children of Satan’ as taught by the Assemblies of God, example given.) These soldiers are now moved on to bashing in the heads of civil dissidents because any American refusing to conform to their corrupt religious fascism must be liberal, left, and deviant. This transitions to White officers policing Black neighborhoods seeing themselves in circumstance little different to occupying a hostile neighborhood in a war zone; where everyone, including children, are not only a threat, but are in no uncertain terms viewed as ‘the enemy.’

At the end of the day, ’veterans preference’, favoring tens of thousands of “Christian Dominion” personalities whose primary motive is towards an America to be ruled by those ‘chosen by God’ (their own kind, exclusively, who just happen to be mostly White), in patent violation of our constitution, with attending attitude of our citizens civil rights be damned, is one more large step on the road to societal disintegration; ultimately inviting a severity of control along the lines of Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile or even so extreme as Nazi Germany. In this latter case, let us not forget the USA’s anti-communist religious fascists had rescued and rehabilitated many of Nazi Germany’s worst war criminals, particularly those intimates of the Nazi intelligence structure experienced in matters of the WWII Eastern front and Soviet affairs, epitomized in Reinhard Gehlen.

A postscript would be, the USA’s constitutional prohibition of any prerequisite ‘religious test’ to serve in government, would appear to have been turned on its head in present circumstance; whereas any applicant for police work in any American force, includes nearly all police in the USA, includes federal police, the several states police, even the police of local communities, could not be questioned or evaluated per an extreme fascist religious belief devoted to the undermining and ultimate overthrow of the secular democratic principle, opening a most unpleasant panorama.

Conclusion

Today’s shameless self indulgences attributed to “Cultural Marxism” in the West are a misapprehension of the reality. Whether a conservative self indulgence of ‘prosperity gospel’ where it matters not what suffering had been inflicted on others in attaining one’s fortune, you are rich because ‘God is blessing you’, or a liberal self indulgence of imposing ‘humanitarian violence’ on other societies to make those societies into a narcissistic image of self because ‘we know better what is good for you’, or an atheist self-indulgence in the idea ‘science cannot prove there exists a god’, or the hedonist self indulgence in sole self-gratification without care or cultivation of that self in sense of possessing a soul and sincere care for another, what we are seeing is the sociopathy of John Calvin; whether that sociopathy had perverted the religious vehicle or had abandoned religion altogether. If the intentions of Jesus had struggled mightily enough trying to survive the neo-Platonic church at Rome, these ideas could never survive John Calvin.

What Johannes Gutenberg had enabled became the spread of ideas that are not necessarily healthy. John Calvin’s ‘predestination’, and resultant spread of a religion sourced sociopathy across the West, freeing Western capitalism from a sense of personal accountability, should be held up as example prima facie of how irresponsible man might confer irreparable damage on mankind. It follows, today’s ‘free press’ of the liberal democracies are little more than purveyor of shameless political lies rooted in the sociopathy of Calvinism. This meme now racing at light speed via fiber optic in the age of internet reminds one of the race of chemotherapy; where the modern medicine can kill the patient more quickly than it kills the cancer. It does seem true there is something missing in the West; a missing culture of natural antibodies in the maintenance of humanity’s spiritual health, things like practical morality and principled ethics, increasingly are becoming memories of a distant past. Recalling Jesus had said “you cannot serve god and money” and today looking only to find “In God We Trust” embossed on every denomination of American currency, I think we know who America’s practical ‘god’ is.

But to make the accusation ‘secular’ democracy in the USA is somehow tied to intention of rejecting God is to miss the mark; the point of the secular demand of the USA’s founding charter had been to provide opportunity to rise above sectarianism. In the end, man proved incapable to achieve this; the lower instincts pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth proved too great.

Lastly, I had read every work of Solzhenitsyn’s I could lay my hands on, Ivan Denisovich, Candle in the Wind, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward, Gulag Archipelago, and finally, some years later, August 1914. There is no question in my mind the man is one of the great observers of our age but I would offer a caveat to Solzhenitsyn’s Russian adherents; do not make the mistake of misapprehension or a belief Solzhenitsyn’s tremendous capacity for understanding Russia and Russians can be somehow translated to a deep understanding of the West or related to American conservatism. It can’t. There is no authentic comparison. The several conservative denominations of Calvinism imported to America birthed the sociopathy we see across the spectrum of American politics and produced conservative and liberal psychopath alike. America’s degeneracy is not a state of ‘Cultural Marxism.’ It is John Calvin. It is not a rational State, rather it is a nuclear armed, collective psychopath’s criminality that has burned its bridges behind, come what may.

This piece is a rebuttal to ‘Alexander Solzhenitsyn – A Russian Prophet’ by Egor Kholmogorov with introduction by Fluctuarius Argenteus & Anatoly Karlin @ http://www.unz.com/akarlin/prophet-solzhenitsyn/

Updated 22 May 2018

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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s educational background is primarily developmental & social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire –

Sputnik_Pompeo - 1

In the upside down world of spy versus spy, has Sputnik’s ‘Loud & Clear’ been duped into becoming the Central Intelligence Agency’s extreme fundamentalist Christian leadership’s limited hangout? Or is this a case of John Kiriakou’s inadvertent professional suicide? If I were the Russians, my face would be beet red and Loud & Clear host John Kiriakou would be fired on the spot. Either way, there’s no way ‘former’ CIA officer Kiriakou shouldn’t have known the facts concerning what  follows:

Loud & Clear:

“CIA director and nominee for secretary of state Mike Pompeo may not be the worst potential leader of US State Department when it comes to the well-being of its diplomatic corps as they struggle amid pressure from Donald Trump’s White House, which seems bent on destroying the department by cutting its budget and leaving key posts unfilled”

vs

Slate:

“…his [Pompeo’s] apocalyptic religiosity and Manichaean worldview. Amid the fire hose of lunacy that is the Trump transition, however, Pompeo’s extremism has been overlooked. It’s worth pausing to appreciate … a man who appears to view American foreign policy as a vehicle for holy war”

Loud & Clear:

“”Should he be confirmed as secretary of state, I would hope that he would be a person that would try to build back up the capabilities of the State Department, which we are definitely going to need on the issue of North Korea, the pending issue on whether the Trump administration is going to deep-six the Iran nuclear deal,” anti-war activist Ann Wright, a retired colonel from the US Army, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear program on Monday”

vs

The Young Turks:

“Weinstein told TYT his group has received complaints from CIA personnel about Pompeo’s introduction of overtly religious behavior into the workplace, including Rapture references. “He is intolerant of anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist Christian,” Weinstein said. “The people that worked under him at the CIA that came to us were never confused—they never had time to be confused. They were shocked and then they were scared shitless””

Loud & Clear:

“If you ask CIA people, which I have, they say that, politics aside, he’s actually been a good manager, in that he has done all he can to back his people up and to argue their case before the oversight committees,” said Loud & Clear host John Kiriakou, a veteran intelligence professional”

vs

VOX:

“Pompeo’s specific brand of evangelical Christianity, with its insistence on seeing Muslim-Christian relations as an apocalyptic holy war, makes him an unnerving choice for such a senior foreign policy position

Then, consider all those surrounding Trump who’ve failed to raise their voice … and then think about people close to Trump who can be identified as sympathetic to the views of the CIA’s Pompeo. These would include (but would not be limited to) ‘First Lady’ Melania who has invited dozens of religious figures into the White House to perform exorcisms and lay hands on ‘The Donald’, Vice President Pence whose longtime spiritual guru, Doug Coe, has compared Jesus to Hitler in a positive light, Chief of Staff Kelly, Defense Secretary Mattis, and Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dunford, all of whom have refused to clean up forced proselytizing of the military’s rank and file by Christian extremists in command structures, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats who has described journalist Jeff Sharlet, when investigating this mess, as an “Enemy of Jesus”, and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which represents “hundreds of clients belonging to the USA’s intelligence community”, and “most of those clients are CIA”, further states:

“In the intelligence community, we see supervisors wanting to hold Bible studies during duty hours”

Right, Loud & Clear’s Kiriakou, just what a badly damaged Department of State needs to rebuild its morale and become effective at diplomacy, extreme Christian fundamentalism shoved down the throats of its staff.

Now, to the satirical element: Is what follows what we’ll see moved over to the Department of State? It is actually widely known Mike Pompeo has an aversion to negroes, towel-heads, queers and ‘wimmin.’ In fact, Pompeo has instructed that he never be scheduled to attend or speak at a CIA ‘diversity’ event; as people inside the CIA have been watching that organization rapidly morph into a religiously ignorant, ‘good ol’ boys’ network (as opposed to the ivy league fascism of yore), a ‘Catholicized’ White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant criminal leadership model somewhat resembling a severely dumbed-down Allan Dulles era.

The problem with this is, example given, when you need a Black-lesbian spy, ideal to penetrate an ongoing hostile operation in Liberia, Africa, and you don’t have one, making up the CIA Director’s favorite sex-object-secretary, in blackface, just isn’t going to get the job done.

Or because, when you need a guy in Tehran and you don’t have anyone that didn’t go to Pat Robertson’s Regent University and doesn’t break out in a cold sweat in the presence of Muslims, you’re screwed.

These days, it would seem, marching in circles around Jericho, blowing horns, is what’s actually underlying the CIA’s geopolitical model:

^ a (very short) future Department of State planning session?

Except for Syria’s ‘walls’ didn’t ‘come a-tumbling down.’ Small wonder we’re screwed, every direction one looks, one discovers a wrecked circumstance, that is everywhere the CIA has been in action.

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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background is primarily social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire –

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At Ft Russ, there is an erudite Russian gentleman writes level, common sense. Far from the overweening personality typical of the western pundit, Mr Eduard Popov is level, honest, one could even say humble, when presenting carefully considered insights well worth taking in.

This (yours truly) polymorph, for most part inclined to multiple manifestations in form of cynic, satirist, on rare occasion the playful jester, but often persona of crude assassin/social critic via lampoon, should tread carefully when correcting one so worthy as Mr Popov.

I would hope it might be said of today’s result “Ronald does, time to time, show his better side.” I suppose I could have simply said ‘I hope I can accomplish this with respect.’

In Mr Popov’s otherwise excellent article “If the U.S. Wants War in Syria, It Will Get War in Ukraine”, where clear case is laid out NATO in Europe would be rolled over as he says ‘like a knife through butter’ there is the one small paragraph or conclusion this analyst takes exception to:

“The main point is that Russia has been and remains the only state capable of destroying the United States if things ever reach the point of a nuclear conflict. It is unlikely that the American establishment would take such a suicidal step no matter how great the temptation might be to commit to a nuclear strike on Russia”

Concerning this presumption of rationality on the American leadership’s part, Friday the 13th seems an auspicious date to point out rationality is not this western liberal democracy’s strong suite. Follows, is the not-so-small matter in which I am compelled to correct Mr Popov, relating to the present state of NATO in its pursuit of demonizing Russia; in what amounts to a western media demagoguery or rousing speech to incite ignorant crowd to lynch innocents.

Prior to laying out the gist of the USA’s psychology in this regard, let me be clear this not so small misapprehension of reality by Eduard Popov is perfectly understandable; as it does seem in the USA itself there is large inability, among otherwise intelligent Americans, to grasp a peculiar darkness where a foremost world authority on a radical religious cult overtaken the American security structures, that is the founder and director of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, can as matter of fact answer the question posed by Cenk Uygur:

“You’re telling me 28 to 34 percent of our military want 7 billion people to die” [believe in literal Armageddon]

“The simple answer is affirmative”

This simple but startling fact is made only worse because the overall percentage doesn’t reflect the percentage actually appears to be higher, very much higher, in the USA military officer corps, and a bit less in the rank and file.

Backing up, to reconstruct or condense a bit of national biography, what our friends in Russia cannot have experienced, and consequently cannot know, is effect of history where the jails & lunatic asylums of Western Europe had been emptied into what was to become the USA, all to become hybridized with Europe’s banished religious extremists of the USA’s pre-founding era; never-mind my nation’s founders were giants of enlightenment thinking, because it is the excesses of Calvinism, only worse, a criminally insane, socially inverted ‘morality’, that has come to rule us. This is the simple reality.

What we have today is ‘prosperity gospel’ overtaken the western corporate boards of the USA’s military-industrial complex where, no matter certain outcome of egregious death were delivered to entire societies, if these outcomes make you personally mega-wealthy, ‘it is because God is blessing you.’ Erstwhile Chevron board director, Bush National Security Advisor & one time Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice is example par excellence.

From this necrotic phenomenon come the lateral relationships between corporate boards’ most powerful personalities, evinced in manifestation of ‘deep state’ minions; where marionette personalities like Rice, and more recently, Tillerson, point to a relationship of oil stocks, example given, to American corporate neocolonialism in what amounts to a planet-wide Manifest Destiny 2.0. The original Manifest Destiny, that is the conquest and rule over America’s indigenous nations, it should be remembered, was attended with rationale of evangelism; that is bringing ‘Christian’ civilization to the heathen. But today’s adversary, Russia, you might argue in the present context, is a Christian nation. Well, the argument of these fantastic hypocrites would be ‘Orthodoxy’ is ‘not Christian enough’ or is ‘the wrong kind of Christian.’ The underlying argument with Russia continues to be a theological one; from the past argument with ‘godless’ Marx, to the present argument with ‘deceived’ Orthodoxy. If your Christianity is not one of violent greed, en route to literal apocalypse (with a required alignment along the way to the western corporate evangelism), it counts for nothing with these people.

Is the preceding statement too strong? Here is the evidence I would offer: Eduard Popov has, without a doubt, read Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. The Americans I am speaking of have little interest in this quality of literature, in fact our great writer, Washington Irving, other than some surviving in print trite tales of colonial Dutch ghosts, is a forgotten literary figure and was no giant of ethics, rather a honest and entertaining chronicler of American life. No, truth be known, they’d not read this man nor would they be fans of Mark Twain, for if the Americans could produce a great writer, he’d be a satirist of our culture and Twain was exactly that. Beyond this, I doubt so much as 1% of the right-wing evangelicals are so much as aware of the existence of Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of The United States’ where the public schools had been castrated and deprived of right to teach controversial material, whether left, right or center. What do these extreme American neocolonialists of the present day read? A multiple New York Times best selling list extreme Christian fantasy series:

The formula combines Tom Clancy-like suspense with touches of romance, high-tech flash and Biblical references.” […] “an exciting, stay-up-late-into-the-night, page turner story” […]  “the most successful Christian Fiction series ever” […] “…blend of B-movie science fantasy and horror

An Orthodox view of the preceding?

“David Carlson, a Professor of Religious Studies and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, wrote that the theology underpinning the Left Behind series promotes a “skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere–all in the name of Christ“” [bold mine RTW]

Yes sir, Mr Popov, this is the mindset of the Pentagon, Vice President of the United States of America Mike Pence, CIA Director & Secretary of State hopeful Mike Pompeo, American National Security Advisor John Bolton, American Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and not least, Melania Trump. To name a few of the many American self-anointed or ‘chosen.’ Whether Donald Trump is a ‘true believer’ is unknown. But the influences surrounding him should be realistically noted.

Lastly, in regards to the preceding, it should not be missed the USA’s flamboyant overthrow of the rule of International Law is a follow-on to the cavalier discarding of its own Constitutional order; where the self-justifying-self-excusing comes down to a narcissistic interpretation where ‘God’s Law’ is held superior to any institution of man’s law. In this criminal act of usurping all institutions of national and international order, raising the stakes rather than facing accountability, is the preferred model of criminals who’ve burnt their bridges behind them; no matter consequence for the rest of us. When it comes to choice of facing a noose for the individual’s crimes or marching armies towards initiating Armageddon for us all, their instinct will be to Armageddon. That Russian military would slice NATO to pieces in Europe means nothing to these people, they would disingenuously cite the 300 Spartans of Thermopylae and wash their hands of responsibility.

If the preceding is in the model of a cloistered, insulated community of thought springing from a George Orwell inspired science fiction religious fantasy morphing into reality, what of the Americans who should have been putting the brakes on this necrotic turn of events for the world? They’re preoccupied in a Huxley-esque ‘it’s all about me’ dissolute embrace of propagandized consumerism. They’re so caught up in the ‘Hillary was cheated’ (related to feminism) propaganda lie, where the women are competing not to be equal to the men, as much as to be like the men, in a social rule of artificial political correctness to point of grotesque, they don’t even have a spiritual wherewithal or dimension to question what has actually happened. This other side of the American schizophrenic order couldn’t even begin to comprehend they are every bit as susceptible to the economic collapse that would come with an American arms production & sales cessation. Pain that comes with self-sacrifice are altogether alien concept to these ‘other’ Americans who couldn’t understand they also are living far beyond their means, via corporate neocolonialism’s exploitation of this small planet at point of arms, if they actually tried.

Closing, I will quote an ethnic Russian of expatriate family from Soviet times, a man who has attempted to study and understand both sides, today’s rising Russia and, its dissolute but dangerous adversary:

“The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified” — The Saker

I hate to say it, but he’s almost right. The missing element to make the entirety of the perception whole would be ‘irrational’ added thrice.

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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background is primarily in social psychology.

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In the matter of Ostensible Roman Soldier versus Member of the Crowd, with 3rd party intervenors, Ostensible Jesus and Ostensible Judas.

The Court to the jury:

“All of the parties have stipulated and agree the film of the incident is accepted into evidence; the only controversies entertained before this court are matters of interpretation.

“The defendant, that is Member of the Crowd, holds because he is an illiterate Amazon tribesman, recently proselytized & converted by CIA under cover of Protestant missionaries, he cannot be held liable for retroactively correcting the course of history; with pre-empting necessity of Ostensible Jesus having to follow the line ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

“The plaintiff, that is Ostensible Roman Soldier, argues this matter constitutes vigilante justice, no matter how sincere or a naïf in his belief defendant was saving Ostensible Jesus’ life, and no matter any sincere noble intent, a theologically wrong, Protestant inspired assault, even when stemming from deep misapprehension of reality, cannot be excused against a Roman Catholic actor.

“Over all parties objections, Ostensible Judas cause is joined by this court to the cause of Ostensible Jesus, both must be aligned with the plaintiff, that is if ‘collateral’ 3rd party damage inflicted on job security is found, were Ostensible Jesus to be rescued, rather than suffer ostensible mortal wound inflicted by Ostensible Roman Soldier. Ostensible Judas’ claim of irreparable harm to his reputation, if his betrayal of Ostensible Jesus were for naught, cannot be separated from Ostensible Jesus claim of future job security harm, as a compensated actor.

“We have heard considerable conflicting expert testimony on whether Ostensible Jesus’ position of harm to future taxable wages, when joined to the cause of Ostensible Judas, is consistent with the historical role.

“Consequently, this court instructs if you find for Ostensible Jesus, in all future productions, Ostensible Judas having been paid 30 pieces of silver cannot be portrayed as a bribe related to betrayal; but must be declared actor’s union wage, no different to taxable wages paid to the actors Ostensible Jesus and Ostensible Roman Soldier.

“A special note of instruction is, despite Ostensible Jesus’ words cannot ever be questioned, this does not automatically confer a decision in his favor and may not prejudice any award; it is your duty to fairly resolve on all parties part. This may or may not, wholly or in part, be to Ostensible Jesus’ favor. Anything Ostensible Jesus has ever said must be objectively contextualized to the circumstance, to be considered in your decision.

“This court orders members of the jury sequestered. You will now begin deliberations”

Jury note to the judge: “Juror seven insists to know, Ostensible Roman Soldier, having been prevented from delivering ostensible mortal wound, can mere ‘malicious intent’ negate compensation?”

Judge’s note to jury: “As a soldier of empire, the question of law is whether Ostensible Roman Soldier is entitled to Sovereign Immunity, also known as state impunity. Because the state is not a party to this suit, you may consider malicious intent.” [the CIA cum missionaries in the gallery put on a sour look]

Jury note to the judge: “Juror two insists to know, were Amazon Indian proselytized with the Protestant King James version? If so, would use of ‘hath, doth, thou and thee’, and the like, be mitigating factor or favor inability to grasp reality?” [the judge grimaces]

Judge’s note to the jury: “It is written ‘I am the same yesterday, today and forever.’ Thou must not make haste to excuse the Indian’s ignorance in thy understanding.”

Ostensible Jesus: “Uh, that was a bit harsh. Are you a closet Calvinist?” [judge turns beet red]

Judge to Ostensible Jesus: “Forgive me, I’ll be deferring to you in the hereafter.”

Jury note to the judge: Juror five insists to know, if Ostensible Jesus associated with tax-gatherers, how are they substantively different from the money-lenders?”

Judge to Ostensible Jesus: “How do I answer that?”

Ostensible Jesus: [looking embarrassed] “Well, I don’t know. Ostensible Magdalene always took care of the tax-gathers for me, but the money-lenders were gay, and wouldn’t resolve with her offering of ‘in kind’ contribution. That REALLY made me angry.” [the judge senses a migraine onset]

Judge’s note to jury: “There is no distinction, the planets didn’t align for Ostensible Jesus on the one occasion, that’s all.”

Jury note to judge: “Juror twelve insists to know whether 30 pieces of silver should be adjusted for inflation, 32 AD to present, and if so, what would that amount be today at the COMEX?” [with the side of his head pounding, the judge passes a note to his clerk instructing an Oxycontin tablet and glass of water brought to the bench]

Judge’s note to the jury: “Juror twelve is replaced by alternate juror one, who shall hereafter be identified as juror thirteen.”

Jury’s note to judge: “Juror thirteen insists to know [at these words, the judge sees floating sparks of advancing migraine] can St Augustine’s ‘just war’ theory be squared with Ostensible Jesus turning the other cheek? Moreover, juror four insists to know, is the ‘just’ in ‘just war’ an adverb rather than the widely assumed adjective?” [the judge looks at Ostensible Jesus with a helpless expression]

Ostensible Jesus: “Well, I’m ostensibly Jewish, I’ve always been ostensibly Jewish and I have no idea what the Christians went on to write in their Meforshim or whatever it is they call it.”

Judge to Ostensible Jesus: “I have a migraine and can’t think. With your ostensible infallibility, will you hazard a guess?”

Ostensible Jesus: “Well, it should be easy enough, if Augustine is a Roman, it can only be the adverb.”

Judge’s note to the jury: “It’s ‘just’ the adverb.”

Jury note to the judge: “Juror three insists to know, when Ostensible Jesus said “Give to Sid Caesar what is Sid Caesar’s”, would that be considered taxable income?”

Judge to Ostensible Jesus: “You said that?”

Ostensible Jesus: “It was a joke. Anyway, I said it backstage, but there was an open mic.” [Judge puts his face in his hands]

Judge to Ostensible Jesus: “Well, you said it. Now, whose image was on the coin?”

Ostensible Jesus: “It was 5¢ impressed on a wooden nickel. Look, it had to do with a conversation around political correctness in Hollywood and #Me Too jokes. We’re ostensible Jews and Sid, bless his memory, would have fallen over laughing.”

Judge’s note to the jury: “Anything ‘given’ to Sid Caesar, must be considered solely an undeclared, carnal tax.”

Jury foreman’s (Juror eight) note to Judge: “We have a hung jury: This foreman and jurors six, nine, ten & eleven insist on reducing Ostensible Judas award by half, because he changed his story of remorse, the other seven jurors want to deny him compensation altogether; on account of in one version he hangs himself, in the other version he leaps from a cliff and is disemboweled on the rocks”

Judge to Ostensible Judas: “You changed your story?”

Ostensible Judas: “It wasn’t me, it was the script writers, mid-production. They thought hanging wasn’t bloody enough.”

[at this point the Judge’s migraine required court medics administering the ‘nuclear option’ of a Demerol injection, direct to the brain]

Recovered from migraine, the judge: [with a great sense of relief and very high, in fact ‘almighty’ high] “Order! Bailiff! Clear the gallery, triple security and call in the jury!

The Judge: “Per Rule 56 (f)(3) Federal Rules of Procedure, this court may exercise summary judgment of its own discretion after identifying for the parties material facts that are beyond dispute.

“Per the aforementioned rule, and having read all the jury’s notes of inquiry, this court enters into the record the indisputable fact all of the jurors in this case are absolute, total and complete idiots. If they went with the argument of the plaintiff, they’d do it as morons. If they found for the argument of the defendant, they’d do it as morons. If they compensated the 3rd party intervenors, they’d do it as morons. [the judge looks at the bailiff]

“Hang them all.”

Bailiff: “Dismissed juror twelve?”

The Judge: [over his shoulder, on his way to chambers] “Consider him Ostensible Barrabas.”

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 The egregious violations of constitutional rights by the USA in nearly all (probably all, actually) departments, points to the general contempt for the rule of law by my nation. As Christian nationalism grows at the Pentagon, denying the Enlightenment roots of the American secular republic, we see the spreading fruit of the National Security Act of 1947 having upended our constitution and supplanted rule of law with color of law. Were the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution to mean anything, with its provision for “equal protection of the law” applied in the present circumstance, transgender people would have every right to both; be themselves and to perform their military duties without exception. The following op-ed points to the patent meaninglessness of our leaders oath to uphold the constitution, or worse, the inability to grasp the point and meaning of that very oath. Following article reposted with permission of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
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Statement by Transgender Client of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) on the Reissued Ban on Transgender People in the Military:

Friday the Trump Administration reissued its ban on Transgender people in the military.  The exceptions are persons who have been “stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex prior to accession [and] service members who do not require a change of gender.”  While it’s unclear how the Administration defines the term biological sex, “those requiring medications and surgery” are out.  Clearly, Trump has an unwarranted bias against Transgender people who need to physically transition.

This time they have gone past the trite and debunked arguments of unit cohesiveness, medical costs, and deployability to a broad claim that Transgender people “present considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.” As a retired military officer, defense worker and a Transgender person who still works on a military installation, I find this accusation deplorable.  It desecrates my 40 years of sacrifice, dedication, and public service to the nation. To insinuate that I have been and am a risk to national defense is ludicrous and demeans the medals, promotions and great things I accomplished while serving in the name of national security.

The truth is, there are and have been Transgender military members serving with honor and distinction for centuries.  I am just one of many.  We were forced to keep out of sight.  But isn’t that the Administration’s objective?  This move is simply a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy for Transgender people: Out of sight, out of mind.  The Administration wants to force Transgender members out, keep Transgender applicants out, and scare those left into hiding; demand they be someone they are not and compromise their personal integrity.

The Administration and those egging them on, want to first erase us from the military, that’s the easy one. Then erase us from the rest of society.  Last month the Kansas Republican Party approved a resolution that opposes “all efforts to validate Transgender identity,”

What do these people use as the rationale for their Transphobia? They cite “God’s design for gender”.  It has nothing to do with the ability to perform the tasks required of a military member.  It’s really all about forming a rigid society void of diversity by exploiting the hypnotic power of religion to rid the society of individuals who don’t strictly adhere to their model.

To achieve this goal within the constitutional confines of the U.S. they must secure religious exemptions by manipulating political power (i.e. the Trump Administration).  These exemptions are special rights to unleash their discriminatory and oppressive bigotry in violation of civil rights protections and equality standards. Within the military, this is what really undermines unit cohesion and places national security at risk.

As a client and supporter of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), I am incensed.  The tenets of our Constitution, the ones I swore to uphold, and the standards of integrity we expect of our soldiers, sailors and airmen, are being undermined by a hypocritical cult who is weaponizing the Christian religion and is bent on creating a military that mirrors their myopic societal view to further their dominionist aims.

We Transgender people are contributing members of society. We deserve the same rights and respect afforded all citizens including serving in the U.S. military; no more, no less.  The Transgender community, who adds a chromatic spectrum to the human experience, is the low hanging fruit for these theocratic ideologues and the canary in the coal mine for true freedom-loving Americans.

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime”Thomas Paine

“I don’t think history has witnessed this level of deceit before or perhaps it is that with changing times and trends the ‘works of deceit’ have been made more sophisticated”Zara Ali

Throughout the short history of ronaldthomaswest.com, there has been a concern on my part that I would not be judged kindly. Allow me to explain. It was never my intent to take the road in life this website reflects. It covers subject matter I’d never any predisposition to delve into, a world of grotesque lies and contorted pseudo realities so profane, one should as a matter of fact presume to have a dirtied soul as matter of consequence. However I would suppose, but not with superior confidence, there might be someone or two great personalities could penetrate the manifold layers of deceit and never be dirtied, that is not me. I don’t enjoy the dirt and yet discover a visceral laugh, time to time, in myself that seems evil, reveling in injuring evil. I should suppose there is a special place in Hell for persons who become addicted to the geopolitical contest to point of living this aspect for entertainment sake. Gratefully, I can also say this is not me. Even at my most profane, what I attempt to do, and hopefully I am not deceiving myself, is reflect what I see, and what the reader should see is a reflection which does not necessarily implicate myself, but is a filtered refraction that works to remove the mirage and gain better insights to the nature and structures of the evil we are confronted with.

But even when working to make people laugh with my satire, a means to break the grip of, and dis-empower that evil over our lives, one should never lose sight of the fact there is an ugliness taken over our world that is unprecedented in history; with the power to cross nearly every frontier unchecked. Wicked gossip, for all of the problems it had created throughout human history, were never so profane and evil as the intelligence operations seen in today’s world, especially the information operations in our western world or, one could say empire mass media of the digital age.

Not being of the western civilization, culturally speaking, one might suppose I could sit back and enjoy watching Christendom tearing itself apart like a pack of dogs turned on itself. But when was it ever different to this? Europe has been attacking itself throughout modern history, and even before that. Western civilization, to the times preceding Homer, are a story of the sword. Now, in the era of nuclear weapons, this historical, and one could consequently argue, innate aggression, signals a collective suicide is inevitable. How is it this culture can, in the meanwhile, view itself as humanitarian and altruistic, is beyond the pale of sane reason, it is a peculiar insanity in and of itself.

But it is the culture, especially today’s Christian culture sprung from Europe, it is not some biological factor, that threatens to end us all in the present moment. Other cultures, particularly those the Christian culture had extirpated, were never pointed to the threat we see today.

In the ‘half-civilized’ European based culture called American, where the jails and asylums of Europe had been emptied, and religious fanatics banished to, all stirred into a hybrid vigor, now a superstitious Slovenian villager, Melania Trump, has scores of pastors and priests trouping through the White House, exorcising the premises and pouring oil on and hopefully blessing ‘the donald’ as that moron flails hopelessly in the custody of generals whose real loyalties are difficult to pin down; in a mishmash comprised of corporate board future promise related to wealth, present self-important strut-mincing for geopolitical posturing sake, and not least, rabid fundamentalism so extreme as to be labeled Christian Taliban, a point of ‘faith’ they share with commander-in-chief-in-waiting Mike Pence, an American Himmler if ever there were such a creature determined to be unleashed upon us by the fates.

This preceding is nuclear armed cocktail creating its own ‘raison d’ être.’

Relevant to this, for over a year this blog has made the case there was never a ‘Russian DNC hack’ that was actually an insider leak by the assassinated Seth Rich, and now a former admiral has published at the Washington Times what amounts to identical argument made here; the entire ‘Russians did it’ business is being sustained with corrupt process by criminals at the FBI and above. Interestingly, the admiral suggests Mike Pence’s fraternal brother, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is not up to the job when he concludes:

“The Trump administration must take charge and get a competent attorney general to pursue these crimes”

He’s right. But what he may not realize is, the traitors surrounding Trump include (but are not limited to) John Kelly, ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, H.R. McMaster, that is the generals, not only Mike Pence and Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions being the Attorney General who has NOT called out ‘the Russians did it’ caper for what it is, a CIA initiated information operation spurring appointment of Special Counsel to take down Trump.

None of these preceding are standing in the way of Trump being taken down by corrupt process, lies as it were, it was John Kelley denied Trump opportunity to meet with Dana Rohrabacher and break the facts of the DNC leak into the open. Why would a recently retired Marine Corps general, who happens to be White House Chief of Staff, sabotage reporting of fact to the President of the United States, facts that should defuse tensions with Russia by removing false accusations, but instead shields criminal culpability engineering aggression? They’re playing for time, to give Robert Mueller opportunity to bring charges altogether unrelated to the purported Russia caper, a failed CIA endeavor, instead holding out for indicting Trump on his historic mafia ties, going back to the days of Roy Cohn. The dirt is there. But Trump is a petty criminal by comparison to Department of Justice players in the game at this point merely to save their own asses. The game has been flipped on the unwitting CIA assets at DoJ who are in turn being gamed by the generals.

Mike Pence is the generals’ deep state player of choice and Pentagon insurance policy from the time of Trump’s nomination and choice of running mate. In the internecine war between the neoliberal deep state players embedded at CIA versus the Pentagon, vying for the upper hand at the White House, it is the generals who’re winning (to now.)

Vladimir ‘The Innocent’ (in this circumstance) had recently laid out a very reasonable case for how the USA has, over two decades, positioned itself to militarily confront Russia, broken their promise not to move NATO east, aborted the ABM treaty, used subterfuge, refused cooperation, and more, all pointed to underhandedly seeking dominance over Russia’s area of strategic interests. The result had finally been Russia unmasking new strategic weapons the USA is ill prepared to counter. Having announced the new systems, President Putin stated:

“No, nobody really wanted to talk to us about the core of the problem, and nobody wanted to listen to us. So, listen to us now!”

I fear Mr Putin has over-estimated the rationality of these ‘nobodies.’ It may well be they’re incapable of listening. They have weapons mass of destruction and they’ll lie to themselves concerning any mismatch of capabilities and ultimately decide they have developed sufficient strategy to ‘test’ those weapons in some circumstance other than a game. In other words, the American generals are legitimately insane. If you don’t think so, likely you’re suffering a form of denial that is insanity too.

By definition, people who lie to themselves as a matter of habit, should be considered mentally unbalanced. It follows, when your institutions and leadership pervasively lie to the public (because they are organically incapable of being honest with themselves) and actually believe this lying is a ‘good thing’, after all, these people do go to church, you have a ‘larger than life’ problem, Jesus saying ‘everything that is concealed will be revealed’ notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, our media having run with these lies, despite ample evidence there’s not an honest man in the lot of these cowards who would rule us, points to outcome beyond the comprehension of a public incapable of absorbing facts they have little access to. When this charade falls apart, as it must, it may be well too late for any resolution within the bounds of reason. By then, the criminal element will have upped the ante to outright actionable insanity, because leopards don’t shed their spots and criminals don’t voluntarily surrender their business models. They’ll take whatever action they think necessary to avoid going to jail and if that means a serious enough war justifying suspending civil liberties and declaring martial law at home, that is precisely the direction things will take, short of some courageous statesman, at the state level, leveling with the people, and getting media to go along. What are the chances of this civil salvation? Slim to none and growing more remote everyday.

*

“You’re telling me 28 to 34 percent of our military want 7 billion people to die” [believe in literal Armageddon] … “The simple answer is affirmative”

Over the past 12 years or so, since the founding of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, complaints the  American military’s commanders are (illegally) shoving unwanted, extreme Christian, fundamentalism down our soldiers’ throats, on average, are reported 12 times everyday. This constitutes, as of today’s composition, well over 53,000 complaints of what amounts to violations by our military leaders of  their oath to uphold the constitution.

From Saint Augustine’s ‘Just War’ theology taught to nuclear launch officers, to Bible verses engraved on military issue sniper scopes, to persistent, repeated, mandatory prayer attendance (and much more), the United States Department of Defense has both; established a religion, that is fundamentalist Christianity, and made a religious test of compliance throughout command structures. 53,000 complaints in 12 years, over 90% from non-fundamentalist Christian members of the military, have established there IS a fundamentalist Christian religious requirement in the American military.

This necrotic ugliness not only rules at the Pentagon, but is also embedded in the White House. White House Chief of Staff General Kelly, Secretary of Defense General Mattis and National Security Advisor Lieutenant General McMaster, all, are in position to team up and put an emphatic and final stop to these dangerous, illegal and demoralizing behaviors but none of them lifts a finger.

Meanwhile, no one fights these treasonous, anti-constitutional behaviors more effectively than the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Please support the Military Religious Freedom Foundation any way you can, whether by raising awareness and the organization’s profile or making a financial donation. Online at https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/

The following republished with permission:

Chris Rodda
Senior Research Director, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF)
MRFF’s Most Memorable Emails Of 2017
12/28/2017

Throughout the year, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) gets a lot of email, and, not surprisingly, as a civil rights organization protecting the separation of church and state in our military, much of the email is hate mail. We are bombarded on a daily basis with emails from so-called “Christians” — emails containing the most vile racist and anti-semitic cartoons; stomach-turning references to the Holocaust, usually directed specifically at MRFF’s founder and president Mikey Weinstein and his family; and a steady stream of the most disgusting homophobic, Islamophobic, and white supremacist vomit that a computer keyboard is capable of emitting — all in the name of Christ, of course.

A typical email from one of these fine “Christians” will usually include a line like this: “All soldiers will bow to the Flag of CHRIST! Last time we checked there are more white Christians who have bled out and died for our US of A then jews nigras or arab insects.” Others will make their point with subject lines like: “LGBT = Liberty, Guns, Bibles, Trump… Michael, NO QUEERS in our Military!”

But for those of us at MRFF it is not the hate-filled emails that are the most memorable. These merely serve as a constant reminder of the evil we are fighting. The emails that are the most memorable to us are the ones from the service members, veterans, and others who we’ve been able to help when this evil has left them with nowhere else to turn.

So, to end 2017, here are a handful of the emails from this year that, in the midst of all the hate mail, make it all worth it.

From: (Military Pilot’s Mother’s E-Mail Address Withheld)

Subject: L’dor va’dor-MRFF Enables Daughter To Achieve Pilot Dreams

To The Military Religious Freedom Foundation,

We are a Jewish family living in (city and state withheld). We are proud that our daughter is now a full fledged (military service branch name withheld) pilot. Please keep our family’s identification confidential.

As my husband and I reflect back on this year we wanted to thank all of you at the MRFF for the intervention the MRFF provided this past (summer month withheld) on behalf of our daughter, (military officer’s name and rank withheld) who was so badly struggling.

(Daughter’s name withheld) had faced both direct and in-direct antisemitism while a student pilot at (military training base name withheld). She had also been forced to endure nearly constant Christian proselytizing by her immediate chain of command especially 2 of her Instructor Pilots and her (unit’s name designation withheld and unit senior ranking job title withheld). She was hurt and despondent and did not know what to do or where to turn.

We love our daughter. We tried to help her to help herself by any means the (military service branch name withheld) had available at hand within her (unit designation withheld) for such things. Nothing worked and it became even harder for her and us. (Daughter’s name withheld) looked like she would wash out of pilot training and even the (military service branch name withheld). Her lifelong dream was to fly in the (military service branch name withheld). Her dreams were about to be dashed.

We were just heartbroken. We had all but given up.

Until our daughter spoke with (name and rank of MRFF representative) at (name of military training base withheld) who connected us with Mikey Weinstein of the MRFF. I will not detail what or how Mikey Weinstein did what he did. I will only say that he did it very fast and very strong in defense of our daughter. Just a matter of a week and half later our daughter’s plight had been confirmed by the (military service branch name withheld) at (military training base name withheld). Those who had been doing her wrong because of her Jewish faith were removed from further training and evaluating her. She was given a fresh chance to prove that her flying met the standards. And she was no longer being told that she needed to demonstrate to her superiors that she would “get right with Christ” in order to graduate from pilot training.

(Daughter’s name withheld) graduated on (2017 date withheld) and is now thriving as a (military service branch withheld) pilot. She has achieved her dearest dreams! She has achieved our dreams too!

My father survived the Holocaust after suffering the unimaginable for (number of years and months withheld) as a very young man at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He lived to raise a loving family but did not live to see our daughter, his granddaughter, have pilot’s wings placed on her (military service branch name withheld) uniform. But on that day of days and through tears of joy (daughter’s name withheld) had her grandfather’s picture in her pocket when those wings were pinned on at the graduation ceremony by her Commander.

Oh he would have been so very proud of her.

And he would have been so proud of the MRFF which made it happen.

Our family will never forget what the MRFF did to enable these dreams of three generations of our family to be realized. Our hearts filled with love and thanks go out to all of you at the MRFF who help so many like us. Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas to the people and heroes of the MRFF.

L’dor va’dor.

—————————————————————-

From: U.S. Army Soldier’s E-mail Address withheld

Subject: Pres. Trump bad example

Mister Mickey W. MRFF:

I am Muslim US soldier at Fort (name withheld). So is my sister and other brother but at Fort (name withheld) and Fort (name withheld).

Thank you for taking call from me after our (U.S. Army senior NCO title withheld) tell all soldier in our (U.S. Army unit name withheld) that President Trump tweet videos to prove that muslims no good for anything and especially that we are security risk. How can this be? I am a good soldier. So is sister and brother.

I join US Army to become US citizen and are proud of USA. Me and my brother and sister even though we soldiers now get made fun of and be angered upon by other soldiers because they say even President says we are low terrorsts. If we are christians we are fine and trump like us. But if muslim then we are bad even if we fight and die for USA.

You only one who is helping and MRFF call our (unit name withheld) commander to have him stop our (U.S. Army senior NCO title withheld) from using Pres.Trump to say we are untrustworthy and no honor to be US soldiers. (Commander’s name and title withheld) talked to Mister Mickey and then he quick call in (U.S. Army senior NCO’s name and title withheld) and yell at him and issue warning to counseling to him to leave muslim soldiers alone. This is so good I cannot know how to thank the MRFF and Mr. Mickey W!

We do nothing wrong for just being people and US soldier even if Pres.Trump hate muslim US soldier. Why does he hate us so bad?
Subscribe to The Morning Email.
Wake up to the day’s most important news.

Thank you to the MRFF to put a stop to this bad thing happening just because we are Muslim and Pres. tweet videos to say we are lower than wineing dog.

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From: U.S. Army Soldier’s Parents’ E-Mail Address Withheld

Subject: Veterans Day Thank You to The MRFF Foundation

Dear Mr. Micky Weinstein and the MRFF.

Our daughter (name and rank withheld) is in the U.S. Army and was helped by the MRFF over 6 months ago at Fort (name withheld), (state withheld). She was being bad bullied for being Roman Catholic by her (unit supervisor’s title and rank withheld) who is Christian evangelist. What she was forced to go through was very mean and hurtful. As her parents we did not know where to turn to to help our daughter.

But her battle buddy knew different. She had been helped by the MRFF 2 years before over something also bad because she was not evangelist. She told her to call you all at the MRFF. (daughter’s name withheld) did this with our blessing. Even though after midnight Mr. M. Weinstein took the phone call. Thanks to the MRFF she was given the fast help she needed to stop the anti-R. Catholic harassment from her Army boss. She is now thriving and even been promoted. She names the MRFF as the reason she is and why she is now so happy!

As (name withheld)’s mom and dad we just wanted to thank all of you at the MRFF on this Veterans Day 2017. Our love to all of you. Thank you all for all you do!

Our family will never forget what you did to help our proud soldier daughter (name withheld).

May the Lord bless all of you. As our family does.

(*Please do not use our names or other contact info. Or our daughter’s because of those mean-hearteds which attack the MRFF. But we would like our words of thanks to be seen by all who might ever need the MRFF. And their families and all the others who support our troops.)

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From: U.S. Army Soldier’s E-Mail Address Withheld

Subject: Followed your Advice at Fort (Name Withheld)

Mickey Wienstein with the mrff.

Thanks for talking with us last week sir here at Fort (name withheld). Didn’t know our rights until you explained them. Hooah the Mrff!

We took your advice and confronted our (U.S. Army soldier’s title and rank withheld) about what he said at our (name of mandatory military formation withheld) on (date withheld).

He said at first that he denied saying that the Armys jews atheists and muslims were not as trustworthy in combat as the army’s christians. That they were not saved for not having Christ and all. But too many of us heard it and he had no choice but to try to slip out of it and just say that he had just been misunderstood and some other bullshit.

Me and the other soldiers in our (Army unit name withheld) told him that we had filed complaints with you and the mrff. And that we were considering filing with Insp Gen and with (senior Army unit Commander’s name withheld) and others. Anyways he got all scared and all. Now he know how he makes us feel. And he asked us to give him another chance and all. Course he is still the one we told you about who said all the bad shit about Obama not being a christian and all. Says Obama being an arab muslim and never stops talking about how better trump is and all. So this is now the 2d time he has messed up with this Christian Best stuff to all of us below him in our chain. In just 10 days too.

We have your numbers sir and will see how (name, rank and title of their Army superior withheld) behaves from now on. He’ll prolly start in again soon and we’ll need mrff’s help a new time for it. Unless he is now too chicken shit to try us all again? He knows about when mrff fixed that other stuff at Fort (name withheld) with the bible study and all last (date withheld). Told him about it too.

again thanks sir! please keep our names out of this mess and all. We plan to reach out if he does it again.

—————————————————————-

From: USAF Airman’s E-Mail Address Withheld

Subject: Jesus is NOT our Wingman

To Military Religious Freedom Foundation of New Mexico,

I am sorry for taking too much time to write in thanks for what you all did for us to fix a bad problem with what our (unit name withheld) Commander said to us all at our (annual training event name withheld) in (month withheld) of 2017 at (installation name withheld) AFB in (city and state withheld).

He was explaining what it meant to be a great Wingman for our fellow airman and then went on a freaking rant about how we ‘should all be like the greatest wingman ever in the world’s history Jesus Christ.’ He said stuff like to be a good wingman is to be a good Christian and vive versa. So many of us were pissed at all of this. We’re not idiots and making all of the Jesus comparing to USAF Wingman standards was stupid even tho some airmen liked it.

Me and many other members of the (unit name withheld) saw this as super messed up. I tried to tell this wrongness to our (unit name withheld) (subordinate military supervisor’s title withheld) but all he said was that we were dead wrong and was being a very disloyal wingmen to even object to what our (unit name withheld) Commander had spoken about Jesus at (annual training event name withheld). And by the way I am not Christian but my wife is and most of those who joined me in asking for the MRFFs help are Christians.

Our First Shirt (name and rank withheld) gave us Mr. Weinstein’s name and phone number from when he needed the MRFF back in the day of 2011 on National prayer breakfast at (installation name and state withheld). He said none of our names would ever get out to anyone especially AF OSI for asking for the MRFFs help.

We called Mr. Weinstein at late night and he talks to us for almost an hour. Can’t say what or how it was done but only 2 days later (name and rank withheld) who is the (higher unit name withheld) Commander spoke to us at (previously scheduled unit training event name withheld) to tell us that comparing a good Wingman to Jesus was wrong and out of line. Broke regs too. Best part was when our (unit name withheld) commander spoke to us next and also apologized. We were all like “F— YES”!!

For me and my fellow airmen who asked for their help we thank the MRFF for making it all good again. The MRFF is our Wingman now!

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Pence-Kushner

Why is Trump fulfilling the wishes of religious extremists he more typically mocks? How is it Jared Kushner convinced Trump to choose hyper-extreme Christian Mike Pence over Chris Christie for Vice President? The short fact is, Pence would be Bibi Netanyahu’s hyper-right wing coalition partners’ choice of a Christian Zionist in the American executive and that smells more of ‘foreign influence’ than any of the recent Russian controversy, when it comes to actual meddling in the USA election.

Now, with Trump’s recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, there is already a push to rebuild the Jewish temple destroyed by the Roman  commander Titus 1,948 years ago.

“The next step, the most important step, must be taken by the Jews. We need to begin going up to the Temple Mount is massive numbers. Once we do that, the Temple is the next inevitable step”

There is just a few big problems with this.

  1. The site does not belong to Israel. Temple Mount is not Israel’s, according to United Nations resolutions and international law.
  2. The site is holy to Muslims and destruction of Dome of the Rock and al Aqsa mosque, to make way for a Jewish temple at its’ original site will expand the issue to all Muslim nations, no longer a Palestinian issue. This ‘rebuilding’ of the Temple is openly advocated together with (and on account of) Trump’s action of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
  3. This violation of international law had to have passed muster with the religious right generals surrounding Trump, that is White House Chief of Staff General Kelly, Secretary of Defense General Mattis and National Security Advisor Lieutenant General McMaster. These are generals in a position to, but who’ve refused, to clean up an illegal movement within the larger United States armed forces essentially establishing conservative Christianity as an official religion in violation of the USA’s constitution and other laws, as documented extensively over this immediate past twelve years by the non-profit Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
  4. Taken together, the circumstance sets up a war of civilizations playing to extreme religious conservatives on both sides of the Christian-Muslim divide, both believing in literal Armageddon, with a Jewish apocalyptic movement at its’ center. The American generals, who believe in the literal rebuilding  of the Jewish temple as a matter of their extreme Christian faith, cannot be trusted to render legal, secular service in this scenario, they’ve already suborned American law to their ultra-conservative religious beliefs.

The immediate preceding recalls Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer and pick for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who could be described as so ultra-right, he’s far to the right of Netanyahu:

“There has never been a “two-state solution” – only a “two-state narrative.” The former never existed because a “solution” to the Israel-Palestinian dispute would have required, as a threshold matter, that Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state, renounce terrorism, discontinue anti-Israel incitement in their schools and abandon their desire to flood Israel with so-called “refugees” from other countries who never spent a day of their lives in Israel”David Friedman

Like most people, to a greater or lesser degree, Friedman sees his world through a self-serving prism.  The first sentence of his short paragraph is refreshingly straightforward. The remainder of the paragraph is notable for its stunning hypocrisy. Let’s examine the first sentence, first, and then have at the rest of the story.

The ‘two-state’ narrative has always been a lie. It’s not only a case of ‘actions speak louder than words’, but the driving idea of a ‘Greater Israel’ is behind the Israeli intransigence in negotiations (or better said, avoidance of negotiations) towards a so-called ‘two-state’ solution (which under Israeli diktat would be no solution at all.) It is combined social and cultural psychology demands (or drives) the Jewish state towards a ‘Greater Israel.’ This demand is embedded in the mythology of history where ‘Samaria’ and ‘Judea’ are, at one time or another in ancient past linked, aligned with, or integrated to the historical Kingdom of Israel, having little to do with the fact of modern Israel.

According to the Oxford:

Samaria |səˈme(ə)rēə|
1 an ancient city in central Palestine, founded in the 9th century bc as the capital of the northern Hebrew kingdom of Israel. The ancient site is situated in the modern West Bank, northwest of Nablus.
2 the region of ancient Palestine around Samaria, between Galilee in the north and Judaea in the south.

Judaea |jo͝oˈdēə, -ˈdāə|
the southern part of ancient Palestine that corresponds to the former kingdom of Judah.

This next pretty much nails it:

roman_judea-jpg-1

“The term Judea as a geographical term was revived by the Israeli government in the 20th century as part of the Israeli administrative district name Judea and Samaria Area for the territory generally referred to as the West Bank”

A state does not give the names of one’s historical mythology to an area except that state intends to assert sovereignty over the same. Prior to this, Judea had last been the name of the area under Hadrian’s rule, changed shortly after the era of Agrippa II, the last Roman approved ‘Herodian’, or ‘titular’ king of the Jews, who were NOT a sovereign people.

The so-called ‘two-state’ solution was, and always had been, a geopolitical lie. The purpose of that lie has been, and always had been, to satisfy political correctness relating to international law. The USA and it’s Christian Zionist cohorts never dared to support the annexation of the West Bank as a matter of stated policy, because to do so would be to openly support a rogue state in its transgressions (if a rogue state is to be defined as a state in persistent violation of international law.) This is the purpose the ‘two-state’ geopolitical lie has served, as a cover story that buys time towards implementing the inevitable ‘Greater Israel.’

Inevitable? The USA supported Friedman’s Israel is a nuclear armed state aggressively colonizing the West Bank (with Friedman’s staunch support.) There will be a Greater Israel or there will be mushroom clouds, or perhaps both. People who embrace myths of history are not particularly rational people and Israel is not a particularly rational state, relating to Friedman’s hypocritical finger-pointing at the Palestinians:

“For refugees, camps were shelters for the reconstruction of personal and social life, but were also seen as sites of great political significance, the material testimony of what was destroyed and ‘all that remains’ of more than four hundred cities, towns and villages forcefully cleansed throughout Palestine in the Nakba of 1947-9. This is the reason refugees sometimes refer to the destruction of camps as ‘the destruction of destruction.’ The camp is not a home, it is a temporary arrangement, and its destruction is but the last iteration in an ongoing process of destruction.

“This rhetoric of double negation – the negation of negation – tallies well with what Saree Makdisi, talking about the Israeli refusal to acknowledge the Nakba, has termed ‘the denial of denial’, which is, he says, ‘a form of foreclosure that produces the inability – the absolutely honest, sincere incapacity – to acknowledge that denial and erasure have themselves been erased in turn and purged from consciousness.’ What has been denied is continuously repeated: Israel keeps on inflicting destruction on refugees and keeps on denying that a wrong has been done” –Eyal Weizman: ‘The Least Of All Possible Evils’ (Humanitarian Violence From Arendt To Gaza)

Which brings us to the rank hypocrisy going to the conclusion of Friedman’s small paragraph. If there were Jews who were enslaved or fled Roman rule, there were many, many more who stayed in what was no longer ‘Judea’ but what became Roman ruled Palaestina, renamed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Where are those ancient Jewish people’s descendants today? They’re in Palestine and they’re called Palestinians. The inconvenience for the modern Ashkenazi is, most of these indigenous people had, with passing time, converted to Islam.

Imagine your rural family’s city dwelling uncle Mordecai’s entire neighborhood (Jerusalem) had been convicted of treason by the Roman state and their sons and daughters were consequently enslaved and removed to Italy and surrounding area. Now, some 1,800 or more years later, Mordecai’s and his neighbors’ descendants show up and demand you give them your farm as their rightful inheritance because you are no longer Jewish. That’s what historical myths do to people.

This goes to the most crass aspect of Friedman’s hypocrisy when he had stated his conclusion to the Palestinians demand of a right to return:

“…their desire to flood Israel with so-called “refugees” from other countries who never spent a day of their lives in Israel”

So tell me, David Friedman (this is a rhetorical question), exactly what do your words describe better than Uncle Mordecai’s (put any European nationality here) neighborhood’s progeny descending on Palestine?

There is, after all, an experience shaping the Palestinian point of view.

Except now, with the USA recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the associated, developing push to rebuild the Jewish temple on a very holy Muslim site, the ‘two state solution’ having been a lie all along, is no longer a Palestinian issue, it is become an issue for all of Islam.

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A Constitutional Law essay for common people; IQ required to read and understand this essay: Average around 100.

On 29 November 2017, the number was fifty two thousand, nine hundred twenty seven. The message accompanying the number was “we’ll break through 53,000 in a few days, I assure you.” We will come back to this.

Now, about that 1st paragraph in the USA’s so-called “Bill of Rights”

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Every one of these preceding stipulations is routinely trashed; by people who put on a cloak called color of law, when they swear an oath to uphold the constitution and promptly set out to violate that very oath. It would require a book the size of the greater Los Angeles telephone directory to get through a comprehensive documentation of just how widespread and pervasive this has become, across the institutions of the USA. So, we’ll condense the lesson.

Let’s take the last 1st Amendment clause, this one is key to understanding the crux of the problem:

Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Well, they did, with the complicity of the judicial and executive branches, when the United States assumed and asserted a doctrine of Sovereign Immunity from suit. In the simplest words, in the USA supposedly The People are the sovereign, not your congressman, senator, or the president, and the courts should uphold that. But instead of meaning something concrete, like a right  to force compliance with the constitution via lawsuit, Sovereign Immunity has seen this right reduced to a right to whine, per wikipedia:

The Petition Clause protects the right to petition all branches and agencies of government for action

Excuse me, but what’s been left out of Wikipedia’s explanation is “redress” is a synonym for justice. Whining to your congressman the courts are denying fundamental rights isn’t going to cut it when it comes to complying with the  constitution, because they’re all in bed together undercutting the foundational law and here’s a premium example … the Senate confirms the president’s appointment of John Roberts to become Chief Justice. The Chief Justice appoints the judges of the secret FISA court, and this following 4th Amendment language is flushed down the public commode:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

And this 5th Amendment language:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

And this 6th Amendment language:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence

All of these rights have been flushed by Congress, with passing the FISA laws, like a junkie with the police at his door, disposing of his heroin, and not a single justice of the Supreme Court of the United States stands up and says Hey! What about our oath to uphold the Constitution?

That’s precisely what ‘color of law‘ is, it is the government, in this case the courts, saying the constitution doesn’t mean what it says because Congress says it means something else, and we’re the ones [the courts] who will [wrongly] uphold this law. In other words, the foundational law (constitution) says justice is white, but we can [wrongfully] color it red. Clearly there is a problem with the president appointing, and the senate approving, rank political animals to the federal courts, whose oath to uphold the constitution is patently meaningless:

Because of FISA provisions brought on by the Patriot Act, the … administration can … invoke “sovereign immunity” which would … allow it to nullify legal challenges brought on by Americans who were spied on. US district judge Jeffrey White specifically notes in the opinion that the government hasn’t waived its right to do so [invoke sovereign immunity] with FISA, stating that “the potential risk to national security may still be too great to pursue confirmation of the existence or facts relating to the scope of the alleged governmental program.” The US government normally has this kind of legal protection unless it is either waived or special laws apply.

‘Waived or special laws apply’ appears to mean if you have a lot of money and hire precisely the right law dog, one who is trained to jump through the very specific hoops of the Federal Fictitious Claims Tort Act, ok, then you might get lucky and slip past sovereign immunity (but probably never in a FISA case.)

Now, to the 11th Amendment and the associated, suspect, idea the USA has rightfully reasserted the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State

What had happened here, is a contractor from South Carolina was owed a war debt by the State of Georgia, which didn’t want to pay up. The Supreme Court had ruled there was no such thing as a state sovereign immunity, in the case of Chisholm v Georgia

Nearly all of the states freaked out at the prospect of having to pay up on their war debts and the 11th Amendment was passed, posthaste. And just like that, two immediate and a third, remarkable things happened;

1) Although the 11th Amendment is specific and narrow, and doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, the legendary English Common Law expert William Blackstone’s Sovereign Immunity doctrine is reinstated in the former colonies: “The King moreover is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.” Only now, suddenly it is no longer the ‘King’ can act with impunity, but the institutions of government in the newly formed United States.

2) With the passing of the 11th Amendment by the several states legislators, all of the lawsuits pending in federal court per state war debts had been erased, and half the language of Article One, Section Nine, of the Constitution had been tossed into the ash bin: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Thomas Jefferson indicated this language had been meant to cover both criminal and civil circumstance of law, and the constitutional language supports this assertion by Jefferson; ‘Bill of Attainder’ should refer to criminal, and ‘ex post facto’ should refer to civil liabilities. In other words, the USA should not have been allowed to make law, criminalizing or creating liability, or excusing crime and liability, after the fact, to get the outcome it wants. The 11th Amendment neither mentions nor lifts this other constitutional provision. But now, civil ex post facto law happens frequently, such as Congress ‘forgiving’ the telecom companies illegally spying on Americans, erasing liability and robbing citizens of their day in court.

3) The third thing to happen was, as late as 1991, in Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, the Supreme Court wrote:

“we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal feudal system with their sovereignty intact, that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the “plan of the convention” [my correction of SCOTUS language in bold]

And there you have it, from the early days of the Supreme Court saying Sovereign Immunity is a non existent thing in immediate post colonial USA law, to the several states’ legislatures passing the 11th Amendment which doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, to escape war debt, to the modern Supreme Court stating the language of our constitution’s 11th Amendment doesn’t mean what it actually says, but instead means what they want it to say, essentially stating ‘we’ll extend ‘the King’s prerogative‘ as far as we please, and we’ll use the 11th Amendment to absurdly assert what amounts to a claim the King’s Sovereign Immunity was never a point of the American Revolution.’

Here’s the simple math: From King George III was our ‘sovereign’ entitled to immunity (amounting to impunity), to ‘the people’ are sovereign, to politicians claiming they hold the people’s sovereignty (amounting to impunity), to judges appointed by those very politicians upholding this political theft of our freedoms, to the oath to uphold our constitution becoming patently meaningless, even especially when before the courts.

Recalling:

On 29 November 2017, the number was fifty two thousand, nine hundred twenty seven. The message accompanying the number was “we’ll break through 53,000 in a few days, I assure you.”

Relevant to the preceding, there are two mentions of religion in the USA’s constitution:

Article Six, Section 3 states “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”

And the 1st Amendment’s ‘no establishment’ clause enumerates “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”

Over the past 12 years or so, complaints these clauses have been violated, on average, are reported 12 times everyday; concerning a single United States institution. That institution is the Department of Defense.

As of today’s composition, 53,000 or so complaints of violations by our military leaders of  their oath to uphold the constitution.

From Saint Augustine’s ‘Just War’ theology taught to nuclear launch officers, to Bible verses engraved on military issue sniper scopes, to persistent, repeated, mandatory prayer attendance, the United States Department of Defense has both; established a religion, that is fundamentalist Christianity, and made a religious test of compliance throughout command structures. 53,000 complaints in 12 years, over 90% from non-fundamentalist Christian members of the military, have established there IS a fundamentalist Christian religious requirement in the American military.

53,000 complaints, 12 years of forcing the military into administrative procedures to correct having ‘the gospel of Jesus Christ’ [fundamentalist version] shoved down the rank and file throats, all brought to the attention of the command structures in the United States military, there is no courts martial, no administrative punishments and the Pentagon takes no action. This is a fundamentalist Christian culture of anti-constitutional impunity.

Now, where this gets really interesting is, we have generals who were/are on duty, at the highest levels of the American military structures, when this should have been cleaned up, it was not cleaned up, and is not being cleaned up, surrounding Trump. One of them, General Mattis, is the boss of the Department of Defense. Another, Lieutenant General McMaster, is Trump’s National Security Advisor. The ‘retired’ General Kelly is Trump’s Chief of Staff [Trump’s baby sitter, the generals appear to own Trump] and it’s General Kelly is behind the latest administration change: the proposed pushing Rex Tillerson out as Secretary of State and bringing the rabid Christian fundamentalist, Mike Pompeo, from CIA to replace Tillerson. Pompeo’s replacement to be, at CIA? A military crusader turned politician, Tom Cotton, his trajectory being from the Arkansas family farm, to Harvard Law, to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, to one term congressman, to freshman senator, to CIA. His only qualifications for the job appear to be an Iran animus and militant Christian fundamentalism.

Does anyone see where this is all pointed?

“we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior is truly the only solution for our world” -Mike Pompeo

One more thing. Trump has handed off his Commander-in-Chief responsibilities to General Mattis. With the General’s known Iran animus and pushing war game after war game in North Korea’s face, is this the guy will end it all?

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all” -General Mattis

Number one, that’s not a language of diplomacy. It’s a pretense, very thinly concealing ‘it’s my way or I’ll blow you away’ and that’s not how you do business with the Ayatollahs or Kim Jong Un, not to mention China or Russia. But maybe that’s besides the point. The guy that refuses to clean up the crusading in the American military probably could care less if the rest of us all die. After-all, what’s actually important to Mattis is, that he is a good general for Jesus, at the battle of Armageddon, upholding our constitution be damned:

“You’re telling me 28 to 34 percent of our military want 7 billion people to die” [believe in literal Armageddon] … “The simple answer is affirmative”

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5 December 20017 update: portion of a mail sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation on 4 December, typical of multiple communications sent everyday:

I had finished reading your book, “With God on Our Side” on the airplane about 2 hours before we touched down at Ft Campbell on our redeployment from an extended tour in Iraq. It was dark, cold, and rainy when we walked down the jet’s stairs to shake hands with a 1- or 2- star general. We then dropped our gear, and got into a mandatory formation to head into the hangar where all the families were. Still in formation, we were “treated” to a completely mandatory Christian talk (? sermon) by the Division Chaplain. All this just a few hours after reading in your book how this shouldn’t be happening in our military. I was pretty upset about it, but was stuck in formation and couldn’t go anywhere.

I started supporting MRFF shortly after that.

Thanks again for what you and MRFF do. No other organization can or will do what MRFF does to fight this type of bigotry in the military ranks. It’s uncomfortable to put up with (at best) and difficult or impossible to fight it from within the chain of command

U.S. Army officer’s identity withheld for reasons of retaliation by commanders is common –

13 March 2018 update: Veteran CIA torturer Gina Haspel was chosen over Tom Cotton to replace Pompeo at CIA.

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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background is primarily social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire –

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” – Seneca the Younger

This short, brutal essay could have been called jealousy. Or envy. It is about the inter-generational violence of ideas. It is the distilling of what had been simple and straightforward but rendered complicated through centuries of the Christian culture’s pretense of charity; back to the simple and straightforward. In short, it is an essay about a culture that is not compatible with its’ pretensions.

The messiah nobody prophesied

Jesus rarely makes pronouncements or speaks about himself in the first person.  Jesus makes no claim to be the Anointed, the messiah”

Well, it’d be difficult for most Christians in this day and age to accept the idea Jesus never claimed to be the messiah. But hey, guess what? All of the ‘mainstream’ scholars of early Christianity accept the idea Christianity was ultimately created by a group having little to do with the historical Jesus, going so far as to state the movement that co-opted Jesus as its’ cultic hero put words on Jesus lips. Example prima facie is, Jesus did not speak words John put in Jesus mouth:

All New Testament scholars agree that Jesus did not say what John puts into his mouth, but that it is the position of the Gospel’s author”

Now, suppose you’ve named a messiah and you’ve been kicked out of the synagogue, not for that, but for radical departure from the norms governing Jewish society’s cohesion; with incoherent demand Greeks, Romans, and their ilk, be allowed in without regard to the rules. Well, that’s essentially what had happened to the followers of the Pharisee turned apostate Saul, also known as Paul. So, the evictees had to take their messiah with them and claim he was the authentic one. Otherwise, not only do you have a messiah who never claimed the title, you also have a messiah nobody prophesied and you’d have to invent something. Granted, this second instance would be little less ludicrous than an angel named Moron appeared to pastor Smith, as he laughed all the way to the bank, so to speak, at his flock’s naiveté, but that’s human nature:

“You can’t convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana with the promise it will get 20 more bananas in chimpanzee heaven. It won’t do it. But humans will” -Behaviorist Yuval Noah Harari

Quite naturally, human nature being what it is, the eviction caused a lot of injured feeling and consequent name-calling, as the exiled group essentially had not only become Romanized, but now had to come up with a mythology to self-sustain (a foundation of human social structure.) This name calling made it into the new Christian cult’s scriptures, along with a rather childish ‘we’re the real Jews with the real messiah’ assertion, never mind the cultural Jewishness had been squished out of the new group, by the now predominate Greco-Roman elements, a little bit like juice spurts out of a stepped on bug. But that didn’t prevent the new Greco-Roman-Christian theology claiming to be the ‘real Jews’ and the originals to be ‘devil deviant murdered Jesus’ Jews.

Consequently, when projecting subsequent ethnocentric bias (cultural narcissism), you wouldn’t necessarily have to be a Christian to suffer what Christian rooted culture shapes people to experience, a sort of butt-hurt jealousy over Jewish people never surrendered legal title to, or their sovereignty over, the noun Jew, necessary to legitimize what amounts to stolen prophecies of a messiah. It’s a kind of deeply rooted insecurity but nothing unusual within the culture. As mundane as, and possibly why, a lot of people masturbate. Or go on rampage with pogroms.

In related irony, with Christian theology demanding Christians are the real Jews, and hyper-Christian types, or better said in Christian terminology, when radical ‘New’ Jews, like Condoleezza Rice, see opportunity to make a bit of money (with her Chevron stocks), the stereotype is perfect!

Not a very charitable history now, were it? For that matter, the example given is neither a Rastafarian one.

Meanwhile, having been stepped on for well over a millennia by these  ‘New Jews’, it should come as no surprise to any more or less socially astute observer; there will manifest paranoid-insane-psychopath Jews of the original tribe with names like Krystal, Krum, Dershowitz and Netanyahu, whose antipathy to the Christian goy is protective of their own to point of collective, self-destructive madness – in case of Israel taking advantage of USA to fight Israel’s real and/or imagined enemies, inclusive of very real enemies created from acts of pure paranoia.

This ‘better their boys die than ours’ motivation, taken in a rather sardonic light, seems superior to what amounts to attitude of Ann Coulter or ‘shoot them all and let god sort them out’ or, in the case of the related sending fellow Americans to die, a Nikki Haley ‘let those who will be shot, be shot and god will ‘gracefully’ sort them out’ reflection of the Christian psychopath. Such a perfect ‘peace’ is conferred by her ‘jesus.’

By way of balanced perception, it’s a pity these ‘new jews’ had never discovered their own version of Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world we live in; as opposed to an apocalyptic-messianic tradition more resembling a northern pagan or Teutonic Jüngster Tag:

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Related: Jews in the News