Here is Confessions of an American Patriot in its entirety:

"Confessions of an American Ex-Patriot"

Concept by Matthew Webb

It all began about a year ago. I had just finished watching the morning news over a cup of coffee, and nothing felt quite right. Having dutifully pecked the cheek of my wife with a kiss, I stood beside my sporty new car with mug in hand. The engine was purring away before my drive to work, and my favorite bumper sticker caught my eye. "Proud to be an American" it read. I paused for a moment, reflecting upon this. For some reason it just didn't set well, like a lunch eaten too fast. On the way to the office I was at a loss to explain, in fact, why it began to seriously irritate me. I see statements like these on countless other cars every day, and I wondered how many people think for themselves these days. Then the question arose...What are we so proud of? As I asked myself this question over and over again, I suddenly couldn't think of a single response. So why did I have this proclamation on my bumper, if I didn't know what it meant? Why does everyone else seem to have one too, (or a flag or sticker in the window and yard). Do they know something I don't??

My day at work was pretty much the same as always, except for one thing. I seemed to raise a few eyebrows over lunch with my question, "Why are you proud to be an American"? The immediate reactions were about the same as mine. There was also obvious irritation about being asked a question to which everyone is expected to know the answer. Each person I asked had no immediate response, and their confusion reminded me of my own. But then to my relief the answer that was provided one way or another, was something to the effect of..."Well, we're a free country. We're a democracy, and the people decide how they want to believe, and you know, that's a lot better than any place else in the world, right?" But my sense of relief at this answer did not last. I kept the thought that came to mind secret, which was, "Yeah, you're free to believe whatever you want, so long as it's politically correct". Recalling recent events and the sorry shape the world is in right now, such responses seemed very shallow. They sounded like tape recordings being played on cue. It was a little eerie how everybody answered in the same basic way, using the same words I'd heard on television so many times. It would be interesting to know if everyone would talk differently if the television and newspapers were taking a different stand. I suspect they would be.

When I got home that evening, I made my wife nervous by talking about how the last presidential election was a farce. George W. Bush is president today, but not by a vote of the people. I said, "Yes, don't you remember...nobody ever talks about this now, as though it's ancient history. But George W. was put in office by the Supreme Court, while the recount of votes in Florida was actually prevented. How can a court decide who wins the presidency in a democracy? She did not seem to appreciate my new fascination with being politically incorrect, and offered no answers.

Afterwards, other questions arose in my mind. If we're a democracy, then why is it that the important decisions of running this country and how our tax dollars are spent, are rarely a matter of public knowledge, let alone votes? Do we really live in a free country or a police state? Are we really promoting democracy around the world as the television claims we are, or are we just installing puppets who do our economic bidding? I thought of recent police suppression of demonstrations in Seattle, Portland and elsewhere. Images of pepper spray, riot gear, Nazi insignias, and countless people in prison cells filled my mind. I thought about how the Justice Department locks people up indefinitely now, without charges, even if they are American citizens. Bank accounts are frozen and lives are destroyed, just because George and company says they have "ties" to so and so. Our words speak of "nation building" but our actions speak more loudly of. nation destroying. I remembered hearing how the CIA meddles in governments the world over, staging armed rebellions and the like, yet without a single vote from the people involved. How does one establish a democracy by installing puppet dictators who are on the CIA payroll? I thought about the "Patriot Act" which makes wire taps, e-mail interception and house searches without warrants "legal". So much for the Bill of Rights. I considered how it's becoming more and more accepted that neighbors report each other to the government for "suspicious behavior". What is "suspicious" behavior anyway, not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day?? How will this new "Homeland Security" office be used against our citizens? Perhaps it should be called "The Office of Suspicious Behavior". I thought about college professors being fired and receiving death threats, for teaching that we should critically examine how our Bill of Rights and Constitution are being trampled on by recent legislation. We're told, "we have to give up our liberties for the sake of our protection". How is giving up our sovereignty and freedoms protecting us from anything, and why does one have to come at the cost of the other?

The more I thought about such questions the more uncertain I became about how "proud" I am to be an American. I certainly want to be proud, don't get me wrong. I would like nothing better than to believe that my government is just and honest, that it represents the people who pay for its existence, (taxpayers) and which is a force for good in the modern world. Yet it's pretty clear that our government is no longer for the people, but for money interests. Ours has become a government by and for the corporations, and as such how can it be a democracy? The general attitude today seems to be that the people exist to serve and obey government, rather than the other way around. Media exists to condition a response rather than to just inform. Isn't a government that has this attitude a parasite?

I was raised in an upper middle class family, attended a private school for "gifted students" and have an excellent academic record. I hold Masters degrees in business administration and psychology, having firmly believed that such accreditation is essential for "success" in this wonderful, modern world of ever-increasing standards of living. I was employed for many years in a significant middle management position at an electronics firm based in Dallas Texas, making in excess of $85,000 a year. My wife and I and our two children, lived in a 5 bedroom, 3500 square foot home, in an excellent neighborhood. Yet through all these years I was never truly satisfied, and didn't know why. I didn't know anyone else who was satisfied either. After giving the whole thing some thought, I've come to the conclusion that our society is moving in the wrong direction. It glorifies greed as the supreme goal in life, and egotism as the norm for social interaction. I honestly can't think of any other reason at this point, why anyone would even desire more than they need to live well.

But all that is changed now. The more I've learned in fact, the more I realize the world isn't going to last very much longer at this rate....

In the weeks following my initial "political incorrectness", I did some research on the internet, and at the library. My mind was really opened by all this information, but even more so by the implications of what I was finding out. The following statistics are fully verifiable;
As of August 2001, the national debt has risen to the astronomical figure of over 6 trillion dollars. That's 6000 billion! I asked myself, "Good God! Where has all this money been spent? If we're supposedly the richest nation in the world, with the highest standards of living, then how can we possibly owe 6000 billion dollars?" If we've spent this much money, then why is the quality of life for most people continuing to decay? That sounds like monumental mismanagement to me. This debt I'm told, increases by an average of 1 billion, 111 million dollars a day! As it is now, a child born tomorrow will be born into debt to the amount of $21,438! Mind you, this figure only reflects the national debt. If one were to figure in state, county and city debts, the amount owed by a newborn today is well over $100,000! And the government has the nerve to criticize or penalize corporations for their mismanagement of funds? Almost as much money is spent on paying the interest to this incredible sum, than is spent on the military! That's right, we all pay interest on this debt, in the form of increased taxes and loss of social programs. I read in the paper recently that budgets have been cut so drastically, that grade schools can't afford construction paper, sufficient teachers to fill positions, or even to fix their own computers. Social welfare programs are evaporating like desert ponds in summertime. The elderly can't afford their pills, consumer debt is at an all-time high, and thousands get laid off every quarter. Meanwhile, corporate scandals rage on, with a predictably higher level of corruption than ever before to the tune of tens of billions. Political campaigns and "political contributions" run into the tens of millions of dollars, while the local library can't afford to buy new encyclopedias. I wonder if it ever occurred to most people that while we're spending these astronomical sums on the military and government, we're spending less on what matters in life. Why are all the state budgets so strapped? Because the government is no longer there for the people, that's why.

Proud to be an American? Yeah, proud like a armed robber, leaving another bank with an armful.

There's been a lot of talk about attacking Iran for months, and yet another war is not far away. Why is it we always seem to be in a state of war? The "debate" rages on, not so much as to why we should attack, or what right we have playing policeman, (or God Almighty) to the rest of the world. We seem to assume that the whole world is ours to do with as we wish, while punishing those who dare to manage their own affairs. We hear congressmen screaming for blood, and a president who consults "legal advisors" as to whether or not he can go to war without the approval of congress. Of course, there is a high public approval rating for all this, if the news is to be believed. You know, it's really fascinating to watch such events with an attitude of detachment. If for instance you had just arrived on this planet and knew absolutely nothing about "the war on terror", how would you perceive the American attitude? Try that mental exercise and see where it leads.

In any case, we're told by the media that it is our dire need to immediately attack Iraq in a "pre-emptive strike", before they attack us or anyone else. Because Iraq possesses, or might possess, "weapons of mass destruction" we should do away with Saddam Hussein. Hmmm. I guess that means it's OK for us to attack them, since we are morally perfect in every way. It's our self-assigned role on this planet to define right and wrong, after all. So while it would be "evil" (i.e. George Bush's "axis of evil") for them to attack and kill us, it is "good" for us to attack and kill them. When 'they" kill it's called "terrorism"...when we kill it's called "establishing democracy". Continuing on this line of reasoning then, it's called "murder" if anybody else kills, but if we do it, it's called, "preventing murder". Confused? I should hope so. If this makes sense to you I suggest you look up the word "hypocrisy" in the dictionary.. Imagine if our legal system adopted this same reasoning. Picture the police driving around shooting and killing anyone on the street who, "looks like they might commit a crime" or who, "appears to have an interest in buying a gun" thereby preventing murder, rape and other atrocities.. "Justice" could then be dispensed at the humble price of a bullet, rather than messy court proceedings and the silly presentation of evidence. If we have such a foreign policy, devoid of all due process, UN approval or international court proceedings, then why not adopt such a policy at home? That seems to be where we're headed. Everyone is assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, assuming that is, you are even allowed to see a lawyer behind closed doors, after the police beat you when they're sure no one has a camera aimed in their direction.

Also, if by merely possessing or hoping to possess, "weapons of mass destruction" a country deserves to be bombed and occupied, then almost all the countries of the world will have to be leveled flat. What about Russia, Canada, China, France or Great Britain? Hey, for that matter, what about US? Nobody has more of these weapons than we do, and nobody has sold more of them to other countries than we have. Oh, that's right, we can do that because we're "God's chosen". Isn't this the official line? Well, what other excuse can one offer?

We spend about 300 billion dollars a year on the military budget, not counting the cost of wars and preparations for war. This is far more than any country, anywhere, in the history of this planet. That's enough to completely transform the environment and world poverty, in one stroke. It's not hard to see where our priorities are.

Proud to be an American? Am I proud about the bombing of Afghanistan or Iraq for weeks on end, and at the cost of a billion dollars a day? No, mass murder is not something I cherish, nor is it a hobby of mine. I'm not convinced that the Afghan people had anything to do with the events of 9-11. Nor am I convinced that Iraq deserves to be singled out for execution, as a "bad guy" with a black hat, amidst a sea of pearly white morality the world over. And what's this about "IF" we go to war with Iraq? Don't our warplanes bomb Iraqi targets on a regular basis, even as we speak?

Recently there was an "Earth Summit" held in Africa by the United Nations, attended by most of the countries of the world, with the notable exception of the president of the United States. This is no surprise, since as a country, we've also pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol regarding greenhouse emissions, and several other environmental treaties. I guess "green" isn't good for business. Bush and company have reduced clean air and water standards, increased logging and mining, given big businesses billions in government subsidies, (free handouts) calling that an "economic stimulus package", while the Environmental Protection Agency receives less than one percent of the national budget. Again, it's all a matter of greed, not concern for future generations.

Did you know that out of the 6 billion people in the world, over one billion don't have clean water to drink, and two billion don't have access to adequate sanitation? Four billion don't have running water. Two billion don't have electricity. 1.6 billion people are poorer now than they were 15 years ago. Did you know that one billion people live on about a dollar a day, while we consider $20,000 a year underpaid? I didn't.

Americans comprise 5% of the world's population, and yet consume 30% of its resources. Does this make us moral and good?

A child born in the US will use 5-20 times the amount of energy of their counterparts in the developing world, by the time they live to be 75. The 20% of the world's population which has the "highest standards of living", consumes 85% of the aluminum and chemicals of the world, 80% of the paper, iron and steel, 75% of the timber and energy, 60% of the meat, fertilizer and cement, half the world's fish and grain, and 40% of the fresh water. At the same time they will generate 96% of the radioactive wastes, and 90% of the ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons. (source; Presidents' Council on Sustainable Development). Millions of third world children die of disease and malnutrition every year, and our concern is how to make the next car payment on that luxury sedan. Meanwhile the World Bank and International Monetary fund, (in which the US plays a central role) squeezes the poor even further with "austerity measures", so they can keep making their national interest payments.

It's not hard to realize how the lack of the majority, is directly proportional to the relative greed of a privileged few. How many acres of forest, tons of coal and metals, megawatts of electricity and square feet of sweat shop labor, did it take to build that fancy house of mine in Texas? Or that fancy new car? How much pollution was created to make and sustain these things? I didn't NEED a NEW car to get from one place to another, and we didn't NEED a modern mansion to live happily. But then I guess "happy" isn't the point any more is it? The very thought makes me nauseous in the realization that I contributed to all that, for the sake of ego. And all this is what is called "success" and "getting ahead". It sounds more like failure and falling behind to me, when it's considered in the light of spiritual values.

Calling this consumerist way of life, a "higher standard of living" sounds nice, but another name for it is endless selfishness. The more money people have in this culture the more they want, (and the bigger house and more expensive car that goes along with it). They complain about not having enough, no matter how much they have. But that's not because they don't have enough, it's because they waste what they have. The more they have, the more they waste. And I confess that I too believed THE GREAT LIE that "more is better". I believed that a person who owns expensive things is a better person, someone to be admired. But now I realize this is only a very shallow concept. Only a misguided and selfish person spends their whole existence accumulating more than they need, at the expense of lives and the children of tomorrow. Only a base egotist thinks that they must live to impress, while hiding their real face underneath a façade of "things". My training in this culture made me a glutton, an egotist and a fool. I admit this to the world now. What a relief it is to be honest! My humanity as a soul, and as caring person, has opened my eyes to a more sane lifestyle.

Proud to be an American? Proud to value egotism and image, over practicality and reality? The US spends 6 billion dollars annually on education, and 8 billion for cosmetics! Any television ad should prove this point to you. People buy things not for their practicality but for their image....in other words, they aim to show off, which reminds me of small children trying to show "who's got the best toy" in the sandbox. That's pretty sad. If this is all life is about, then no wonder people are committing suicide in increasing numbers. Never again for me. The American Dream has become a nightmare for the world and for ourselves.

And whatever happened to just being truly happy and fulfilled, by living an uncomplicated life? Americans are, for the most part, an unhappy lot. They don't look healthy, they thrive on soap operas and romance novels, laugh nervously, smoke cigarettes, eat junk food, talk non-stop trivia and need to take pills just to experience some sexual appetite. In fact, we're becoming more unhappy by the minute, if one is to understand what statistics and simple observation are revealing. We're taking more Prozac, Zantril, vallium, alcohol and a million other antidepressants than ever before, because of what they're calling "chronic stress syndrome" or "chronic depression". Our children are on Riddlin for the same reason, and 20 years ago that would have been unheard of. We're a nervous and suspicious people, never missing a chance to dial 911 at the slightest provocation. We've got more people in prison per capita than any other country in the world, and we're the most "medicated". It's politically correct to call all this a "chemical imbalance" but the fact of the matter is, our lifestyle and materialistic values are KILLING us. Our young people are suicidally depressed. Grade school children carry knives and guns to school. Do you suppose there's something wrong with society, rather than with these kids? You bet.

We fully expect to surgically remove this stressed organ and that diseased tissue, and maybe our lives will be extended, (though not improved) another five years. And you know what? We count on being diseased and incapacitated after 30 years of hard labor in the 9-5, (or is that 8 to 6?) routine. That's why it's common to believe that we each need a million + dollars saved up, to survive our self abuse in the nearest rest home. We've become wage slaves who never question what it's all for. What is all this "success" for anyway? So that somebody, somewhere, some day might somehow admire you as a great person, when deep down you know it's all just a façade? We supposedly work for all these material "conveniences", yet there is nothing convenient about living 30+ years according to a job description. We're destroying our minds, bodies and planet to accomplish nothing more than an extended hospital stay. I've noticed that some people I've discussed these matters with call such statements "negative". But is the truth "negative" or is it simply true? Is an ostrich safe just because it sticks it's head in the sand?

We all sit in front of television sets like zombies. Televisions have become our closest companions, instead of other people. And people will watch anything, as an "escape". If we're so "successful" then why is it that all we want to do is escape? Our mental lives are like those of soap opera characters concerned only with game show trivia. Our intellectual standards have sunk to a point where no one even asks "Why"? any more, and no one questions anything. The words "truth", "logic" "honesty" and "reality" aren't even in our vocabulary. No one dares speak them because of the responsibility they might imply.. Everyone has "their own truth" as though truth is whatever you want to make up. We don't really talk to each other any more. It's only polite smiles and small talk, as though there isn't anything more important to talk about. We care more about our petty emotional distress and what product to buy next, than we do for the planet, which is being destroyed as we speak. We care more for what goes into the engines of our cars then our own bodies, while spending more time taking care of the lawn rather than working out. Don't you see? Image has become far more important to us than substance. Our lives are like a fancy box with exquisite wrapping paper and bows, but with nothing inside.
Wars are spoken of so casually that you'd think killing another ten thousand or so, had no more relevance than a change in the weather. Perhaps less.

Every 20 minutes the world population goes up 3500 people, one species of plant or animal is destroyed forever, and the average American gets fatter. We've become the Feared, rather than the Just and the Trusted. And does anybody really care? No. I've noticed that such topics are considered impolite. People react to such subjects like they would the plague. We've become the tyranny and war mongering imperialist which the writers of our Constitution sought to change. The Revolutionary War was fought over such issues, but the people have forgotten what freedom really is. They've traded their responsibility and freedom for a false sense of "security". To quote a famous dictator:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war,
In order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor,
for patriotism is indeed a double edged sword.
It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch A
nd the blood boils with hate
And the mind has closed, the leader will have no need of seizing
the rights of the citizenry.
Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism,
will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.
How do I know?
For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar."

Julius Caesar

Nobody really wants to change how they live, even though they don't enjoy life. Why is this? Because we're all secretly terrified at what we've become, and feel powerless to do anything about it. But in reality that's no excuse. The world situation isn't going to magically improve itself without intelligent realism.

Obviously it's time for a fundamental change of how we view life. Consumerism, militarism and materialism just don't work. Yet I don't personally know of even one person who will admit that there's a problem, let alone actually change for the better.

I realized that in our culture, when someone asks "what do you do for a living?" they don't mean how spiritually you live, how socially conscious you are or how you have contributed to the real progress of the human condition. What they mean is, "What job do you have and how much do you make?". It all boils down to dollars. They ask this so that they can determine how worthy or unworthy you are to be in their company. If you want to understand ANYTHING about our domestic or foreign policies, just ask "Where's the money?"

That will tell you everything you need to know about when, what, how, where and why, anything occurs as it does. Young people are encouraged to go to college, but I notice that the motive for this is not personal enlightenment, the improvement of the human condition or the understanding of life.

It is for one simple purpose, and that is to gain more "earning power" as a showpiece on your resume'. It's interesting how we've reduced all the knowledge, spirituality and Universal Truth to the lowest common denominator...dollars earned per annum, as though God himself is nothing more than The Cosmic Banker, and Reality is summarized perfectly in the pages of tax returns.
Materialism and consumerism are eating us alive, just as we are "consuming" the whole planet. Why shouldn't consumers, after all, not consume each other as well? In the end, that's exactly what's going to happen. Already the countries of the world are fighting over what little is left, while people starve by the millions the world over.

Proud to be an American?

I'm not a consumer, worms are. I believe that this is a very demeaning thing to call oneself, and to call others. And I no longer worship the dollar as God. So I guess that excludes me from the club. I know, I know, it's "unpatriotic" to talk that way, which means of course, that the truth itself has become unpatriotic. I guess the universe will just have to change to suit our whims, ay?

I've become disillusioned with "the American Dream" and all that it supposedly stands for. Although I care about the people, I care less and less for governments bent on conquering the world to get their oil, and anything else that isn't tied down. I'm no supporter of unprovoked war, or war for profit. But disillusionment is good...the word means; "no more illusions". I don't believe in raping the earth for dollars. I no longer blind myself to the impact of lifestyle on the world situation.. I no longer believe that just because everybody else is doing it, that this makes it OK. It's not.

After realizing all this over a period of months, a bought a packet of razor blades from the hardware store, and scraped off my "Proud to be an American" bumper sticker in disgust. I'm not proud of any of these things, and frankly, it would be an embarrassment to be identified as an American if I were traveling abroad.

I quit my corporate job because I didn't want to be a wage slave any more, for people who don't care about anything but money. And yes, they're being investigated by the SEC also, while my former co-workers and I lose our 401K pensions. I broke up with my wife who still, "plays the corporate game", having realized that she loved my money more than she loved me, something that is taken as commonplace these days. When I visit my children, I try to explain to them why mommy is so stressed out, and never has any time for them, (and never did). I tell them that there's a better way to live beyond "happy pills", that's natural, simple and inexpensive.

I live and travel in an RV converted van now, spending not even a hundredth as much as I once did to live well.. In this way I've gone from "living to work" to "working to live". The apparent irony of this is that I've never been happier, healthier or wiser. I only wish I'd realized all this sooner.

I refuse to pay any more taxes for endless wars, and trillions in national debt, while scoundrels sit in places of government power. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's? NO way. Death and destruction is what is Caesar's, not my money or my children's lives..

I'm taking responsibility for the truth now, rather than trying to live the absurd fantasy of the American dream. It's like waking up from a nightmare you've been trying to outrun. It feels really good. I dearly hope the reader of this message will do the same.

Yours truly,

A caring American

______________________________________________

Reflections of Dhane Blue as he revisits "Confessions of an American Patriot":

I was inspired by the first posting of this title to add my own reflections -- similar, but different for various reasons. First, I've already lived out of the U.S.A. for 25 of my 53 years, almost half of my life. So, I have been slowly growing out of my birth nation-matrix for some time and, for me, 911 was not so much of a surprise but more of a symbolic warning of major changes for the Western world on the horizon. I unconsciously managed to be 'home' for it, having returned to the U.S.A. with a Nepalese wife.

Readjusting to life in the U.S.A. after more than 15 years gone was more of a shock for me than 911 itself. Shortly after the event, I returned to Asia, which my heart identifies with more, but followed by a reawakened sympathy for my American siblings. The sympathy only goes so far, though, as I've spent a lot of time on the internet backtracking the events which contributed to 911's happening. Plenty of people have done this and the 'bullshit' we believe about American culture is slowly being scraped off of the painful 'truth' of our society. I suppose it is beneficial in some ways, kind of like a colon-cleansing for a nation -- but, none too pleasant to observe! Yet, there are Americans still not ready for a 'cleansing' who continue to play the 'blame game' -- they are probably in line for further shocks to their belief structure in the future.

Hierarchical civilization is based on just this (the idea that someone gets hurt, but it's not us), something so simple, hurt, power, the repression of meaning (truth) and the evasion of consequences. The Latin root of 'evade' means to 'walk out' on." (An Indigenous Perspective by Juan Santos, www.dissidentvoice.org , July 31, 2006)

So, I ask myself whether or not I am another 'walk out' on the situation -- isn't that what an ex-patriot is? Yes and no.I started out in my youth as just another 'dumbed-down' American patriot -- I enlisted of my own choice in 1972 in the U.S. Navy and served as a communications technician in the U.S. Naval Security Group. I was very impressed upon the completion of my schooling to be sent to Washington, D.C. and remember my oath-taking for a security clearance in an N.S.A. office overlooking the Pentagon. Pledging to keep the nation's secrets has been an initiation for many fools into the illusion that we actually have a government. That illusion of being one of the initiated into a special group takes a lot of us in hook, line and sinker! Waking up from that one has taken some work.
(Forbidden Knowledge)

Many people have criticized George Bush for remarking that the 'Constitution is ONLY a piece of paper' and some have reacted in the same way as people who've been offended by flag-burning protests. I remember all those little American flags on cars shortly after 911. People are really attached to those little pieces of plastic! Here I am in Thailand, on the border with Burma, and I've witnessed the local police burning the rags of homeless/parentless street children. Their reaction is like mine -- none! They live without shoes and only have the clothes on their back. They are not attached to possessions or the lifestyle of an American materialist. A flag is 'ONLY a piece of cloth'. The piece of cloth can never be a living contract between people and those they designate to manage some of their affairs. I think our present government is, in reality, just another corporate entity. The law on this, of course, is hard to find. It's like a maze of string hopelessly tangled into a ball of monstrous lies and deception. You can pull a piece of string out of it this way or that but never get to the original agreement. Actually, in hindsight, George Bush is probably right.

"The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man . And it does not so muich as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. ... Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal matter. Those persons, if any who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children."

The Constitution of No Authority, by Lysander Spooner, 1867

I've pulled on this legal ball of string and come away with a few pieces -- Social Security and the IRS are probably both scams to steal our money and we've probably been under marshal law for most of our lives. I've lived in two countries under marshal law and now know how to recognize it when I see it.

http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/new/home.asp

http://www.fff.org/comment/ed0901j.asp

http://www.freedomfiles.org/

Of course, since 911 happened, everyone has had to play the 'blame game' -- was it our own government, was it a Zionist conspiracy or part of the Illuminati's One World Order plan? And, of course, we won't know until we can 'follow the money' trail or examine the evidence not divulged by our government. Take your pick! I find it is a puzzle not so all-consuming as it was at first. I have worked as a 'mystery shopper' and once for a security company founded by the ex-Chief of Police in New Orleans but I am neither Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson. I can only conclude it is ALL part of the same 'ball of string' -- pull on it any way you choose and you'll come up with another piece of string. It's kind of like the new super-string theory model of the universe. Even Stephen Hawkings, who recently asked the question 'How can the human race survive the next hundred years' admits he doesn't know the answer.

"Few realize the extent to which society is manipulated and controlled by unseen forces. So much of what we know is programmed and indoctrinated into us by unseen forces. So much of what we know is programmed and indoctrinated into us at an early age, that many people do not give any thought to why they believe some of the things that they believe."

Jewish Persecution: Tool of the International Zionists' Plan for World Dominion, by Jackie Patru , from the Introduction)

So, we could consume the time left in the rest of our lives by trying to discover who the hidden manipulators are or we can get on with our lives. It is each individual's choice -- unless you're a reborn Sherlock Holmes or a professional colon cleansing therapist, I'd suggest you observe the world's evil in small doses. I am reminded of this daily as I am a teacher in contact with the reality that children live in. It is a challenge not to further indoctrinate them into the system that wants to consume them. I am lucky that I live on a simple farm house with Karen refugees. I have more to learn from them than the English language I teach them. Born in Thailand after their parents escaped another war-torn country, they are here with no rights of citizenship in either country. Yet, they are not 'consumed' with this search for id-entity (the entity people identify with their basic being and its nurturance). They just are. Society is an idea completely foreign to their way of life. I envy them their true freedom. It is in this simple lifestyle I have learned from the people living in villages of Asia that I look to for further growth. As a teacher, how could I ever approach my students with the horrors of Western civilization that I'm growing out of?

"No teacher openly tells a room of school children, 'success means destruction, ... and in our culture (western) means death.' (Yet) the most conscious elements of humanity (get) this deeper message -- often at great personal cost: not only that the Bomb is evil, or that slavery, conquest and genocide are evil, but that this way we live is a way of death, in its entirety." (An Indigenous Perspective by Juan Santos, www.dissidentvoice.org, July 31, 2006)

So, to finally answer my own question -- am I just another 'walk out' on the situation? Considering that I was never given the 'truth' and asked to sign a contract with the corporate entity now masking itself as the government of the U.S.A., I don't consider myself so much as a 'walk out' but as a 'walk on' as in 'keep on truckin'! I choose not to participate in a society that is intent on dying instead of living . I don't accept the rules of the games I was taught to play during my upbringing -- I have new peaks to climb and can't afford to let the 'bullshit' weight me down too much! If others still want to become mesmerized by the sideshow of American politics or the lies fed daily to the 'sheeple' still consuming them like the depleted uranium poisoned grass on a pasture of further killing fields, so be it. I finally don't feel responsible for relating to them indefinitely. If that makes me an ex-patriot, OK!

"In tribal times, there were the medicine-men. In the Middle Ages, there were the Priests. Today there are the lawyers (our modern day Pharisees). For every age, a group of bright boys, learned in their trade and jealous of their learning, who blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to make themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual autocracy, guarding the tricks of its trade from the unitiated, and running after its own pattern, the civilization of its day. "

(Woe Unto You Lawyers (2d edition 1957) by Fred Rodell, pg. 7)

I've worked as a laywer's personal assistant and as a court reporter, including transcribing proceedings of Grand Jury hearings, and observed our 'great' legal system from its bowels -- more colon-cleansing needs to go on there, for sure! The only way I would become a patriot again is with a 'real' contract between myself and those I would delegate authority to for the management of the affairs of government. I don't think that will happen in my lifetime unless there is a genuine American war for independence against the world's banking system, usury and the people who would 'own' the collective soul of my birth nation-matrix. The cult of 'national secrecy' would have to be destroyed totally for this to be possible. The American people would have to abnegate the corporate entity that masquerades as our government. With my present understanding, I would only identify a 'true' American as a native American Indian -- the rest of us are 'interlopers' at best, and genocidal marauders, at worst. I am brave enough to say that this corporate entity we identify as the government of the U.S.A. must be dissolved but at the same time I have no stomach for the destruction of the cancer it represents upon the American political body. I have studied alternative medicine and work to prevent disease, not react to it with death-dealing drugs or radiation instead of a healing therapy. I was never born to be a surgeon -- and emergency room trauma surgeons are the only ones equipped to do the job. I know from talking with Karen refugees that child warriors just across the border, who have stepped on land mines and had a foot or half a leg amputed in the field have the courage for the kind of work needed. It would only be poetic justice for the 'living' bodies serving the cancer of the present American corporate killing machine clothed in the transparent clothing of an Uncle Sam parading as the 'Grim Reaper' to be eradicated by the Bomb of their own creation.

"In the most coherent and morally consistent of the indigenous prophecies -- that of the Hopi nation -- it is said that during the Time of the Purification, a brave person will stand up and demand of the rulers, 'you profit at the expense of all life. Come and pay your debt'!"

Who will this brave person be? I am reminded of when I was a student in India and living in Tamil Nadu. I met many Tamil refugees there with the courage of true patriots. I remember well the suicide bomber from their ranks who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi. If the American government continues its onslaught against the innocent women and children of the Middle East in their new killing fields, they only deserve the same fate!

http://www.gnosticpathfinder.blogspot.com/

On December 16, 2005, the Times reported that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor thousands of telephone conversations and e-mails in the US without court approval. At the time, the Times acknowledged that it had, at the urging of the Bush administration, withheld publication of the story, saying it held its exposé back "for a year." This time frame suggested that the newspaper made the decision to withhold publication of the story after the 2004 presidential election.

Such a delay was, in itself, unpardonable, and provoked angry criticism. Now we learn, from an interview with Executive Editor Bill Keller conducted by Calame, that internal discussions at the Times about drafts of the eventual article had been "dragging on for weeks" before the November 2, 2004, election, which resulted in a victory for Bush.

"The process," the public editor notes, "had included talks with the Bush administration." A fresh draft was the subject of discussion at the newspaper "less than a week" before the election.

Involved here is not a trivial sex scandal or some moral peccadillo committed by one or another of the major candidates. At issue was a major policy question-one that goes to the core of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties and basic democratic rights.

The electorate had the right to know that the incumbent president was systematically breaking the law in order to secretly wiretap, without court warrants, the communications of American citizens. As the Times was well aware, similar illegalities-although on a smaller scale-were among the charges leveled against Richard Nixon in the second article of impeachment, entitled "Abuse of Power," approved by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives in July 1974, leading to Nixon's resignation the following month.

The NSA spying, authorized by Bush shortly after September 11, 2001, violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal specifically to prohibit the type of warrantless wiretaps and intercepts ordered by Nixon against his political opponents, and secretly sanctioned by Bush without congressional approval after 9/11. (As the Bush administration revealed in the wake of the Times's December, 2005 exposé, some leading members of Congress of both parties were briefed on the program after it was initiated, and Democrats and Republicans alike remained silent.)

As a federal judge pointed out in her ruling last week ordering the shutdown of the NSA program, it also breaches the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures, and the First Amendment, which protects free speech.

The NSA spying operation is a major component of a massive and unprecedented assault on the democratic rights of the American people, involving a drive by the Bush administration to establish what amounts to a presidential dictatorship.

In the fall of 2004, the Times, under pressure from a lawless president running for reelection, chose to conceal the existence of the surveillance program from the electorate. The history of this decision and its cover-up is quite revealing.

In his August 13 column, entitled "Eavesdropping and the Election: An Answer on the Question of Timing," Calame makes reference to "a number of readers critical of the Bush administration" who "have remained particularly suspicious of the [original Times] article's assertion that the publication delay dated back only 'a year' to Dec. 16, 2004." Clearly, Calame's piece comes in response to protests and inquiries as to when the decision was made to withhold the domestic spying story.

His admission is itself an effort at damage control.

Calame asks in the second paragraph of his August 13 commentary, "Did the Times mislead readers by stating that any delay in publication came after the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election?" The answer, although the public editor doesn't care to say so directly, is unequivocally "Yes," based on his own findings.

Calame writes: "Mr. Keller, who wouldn't answer any questions for my January column, recently agreed to an interview about the delay, although he saw it as 'old business.' But he had some new things to say about the delay and the election."

These "new things" include the following:

" 'The climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election,' Mr. Keller said. The pre-election discussions included Jill Abramson, a managing editor; Philip Taubman, the chief of the Washington bureau; Rebecca Corbett, the editor handling the story, and often Mr. [James] Risen [one of the article's co-authors]. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, was briefed, but Mr. Keller said the final decision to hold the story was his.

"Mr. Keller declined to explain in detail his pre-election decision to hold the article, citing obligations to preserve the confidentiality of sources. He has repeatedly indicated that a major reason for the publication delays was the administration's claim that everyone involved was satisfied with the program's legality. Later, he has said, it became clear that questions about the program's legality 'loomed larger within the government than we had previously understood.' "

If one is believe this account, Keller and company chose to accept the Bush administration's arguments about the legality of its own unconstitutional domestic surveillance operation. The Times hierarchy took the word of a government that epitomizes the rise of the political underworld and its consolidation of power. Not only did the Bush administration come to power on the basis of a stolen election, it used lie after lie to drag the American people into a bloody and unprovoked war in Iraq.

Either Keller is being disingenuous, or he is so ignorant of elementary political realities that he is unfit to edit a newspaper of any kind, let alone the supposed "newspaper of record."

Concerning the Times's change of heart in 2005, Calame notes that Keller recently e-mailed him "a description of how that picture had changed by December 2005, and it cast some new light on the pre-election situation for me. It implied that the paper's pre-election sources hadn't been sufficiently 'well-placed and credible' to convince him that questions about the program's legality and oversight were serious enough to make it 'responsible to publish.' But by December, he wrote, 'We now had some new people who could in no way be characterized as disgruntled bureaucrats or war-on-terror doves saying we should publish. That was a big deal.'"

This ostensible justification is itself damning. The Times knew that the secret program existed, that it flouted the letter and spirit of the 1978 FISA Act, and that it was a matter of immense political import. Why, otherwise, would the Bush administration be so insistent that the story be killed? There was no credible rationale, given what the newspaper knew at the time, to withhold the existence of the domestic spying program from the public-especially on the eve of an election.

Particularly significant is Keller's contemptuous reference to "war-on-terror doves," which only reveals the fundamental agreement of Keller and the rest of the Times leadership with the administration's all-purpose pretext for war abroad and repression at home. Those who question or challenge the so-called "war on terror" are, evidently, relegated by the Times to the lunatic fringe of politics.

As for the description of the newspaper's devotion to the most scrupulous and conscientious regard for verifiable facts and unimpeachable sources, one need only consider its approach to the current British terror scare. Take last Sunday's Times editorial ("Hokum on Homeland Security"), which begins with the following phrase: "Ever since British intelligence did such a masterly job in rounding up terrorists intent on blowing up airliners...."

Really? How do they know that those imprisoned in London were "terrorists intent on blowing up airliners?" Because Bush and British Home Secretary John Reid say so? Not a shred of evidence has been presented by either the British or American authorities to substantiate this claim. No charges were even lodged until yesterday, and even sections of the American media have decided to somewhat downplay the alleged plot because of lack of proof and growing public skepticism.

Calame goes on to quote Keller, approvingly, that the decision to withhold the NSA story only days before the election "also was an issue of fairness." Calame says he agrees "that candidates affected by a negative article deserve to have time-several days to a week-to get their response disseminated before voters head to the polls."

Aside from the sophistry arising from the fact that Keller admitted to having the basic story in hand for weeks before the election, what is truly astounding is that neither Calame nor Keller shows the slightest concern for "fairness" toward the voters, who went to the polls not knowing, thanks to the Times, that the Republican candidate was tearing up the Constitution.

As for Keller's dishonest claim last December that the story had been held up only "for a year," Calame quotes his executive editor, without comment, saying, "It was probably inelegant wording."

This entire affair is one more devastating example of the cowardice of the Times and its capitulation to the White House and the most ruthless elements in the ruling elite, who are irremediably hostile to any signs of opposition and democratic political life in general. More broadly, the Times's conduct speaks to the virtual integration of the American mass media into the state apparatus. It reveals the degree to which the media functions as a propaganda appendage of the government, concealing or distorting facts on cue.

See Also:
US court rules NSA spying program unconstitutional
Bush appeals decision and denounces judge
[19 August 2006]
US Congress moves to sanction domestic spying
[10 August 2006]
July 4th 2006: The state of US democracy 230 years after the American Revolution
[4 July 2006]

The dismissed charge carried a potential life prison sentence, while the remaining conspiracy count could net a maximum of 15 years. But Padilla and the others could still get a life sentence if the prosecutors can link the alleged conspiracy directly to a person's death.

U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of Miami said prosecutors were undeterred by the setback.

"We stand by the charges in this indictment and will respond after a full review of the court's order," Acosta said.

Padilla's lawyer Andrew Patel said only that the order "speaks for itself."

Kenneth Swartz, attorney for co-defendant Adham Amin Hassoun, said the ruling was significant because it removed what he called "exaggerated allegations."

"It made it sound a lot more serious and a lot worse," Swartz said. "But we're still facing the same case. It's still a very serious charge."

Padilla, 35, is a U.S. citizen and former Chicago gang member who was held without charges for 3 1/2 years by the U.S. military as an enemy combatant. He was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, purportedly on an al-Qaida mission to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major U.S. city.

He was added in November to an existing Miami terrorism case after an intense legal battle over President Bush's wartime detention powers. The Miami indictment does not mention the "dirty bomb" allegations, contending instead that Padilla was part of a North American terror support cell led by Hassoun.

The case is scheduled for trial in January. The other two defendants in U.S. custody are Hassoun, allegedly Padilla's recruiter, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi. Two others named in the indictment are in custody overseas.



The defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of raising money and recruiting operatives to fight for radical Islamic causes in several foreign countries. Padilla is accused in the indictment of filling out an al-Qaida application in July 2000 to train for "violent jihad" in Afghanistan.

In both the House and Senate versions of the bill, Americans are described as "consumers" and "subscribers," not citizens deserving substantial rights when it comes to the creation and distribution of digital media. A handful of companies stand to gain incredible monopoly power from such legislation, especially AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon. They have already used their political clout in Washington to secure for the phone and cable industries a stunning 98 percent control of the US residential market for high-speed Internet.

Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens, the powerful Commerce Committee chair, is trying to line up votes for his "Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunities Reform Act." It was Stevens who called the Internet a "series of tubes" as he tried to explain his bill. Now the subject of well-honed satirical jabs from The Daily Show, as well as dozens of independently made videos, Stevens is hunkering down to get his bill passed by the Senate when it reconvenes in September.

But thanks to the work of groups like Save the Internet, many Senate Democrats now oppose the bill because of its failure to address net neutrality. (Disclosure: The Center for Digital Democracy, where I work, is a member of that coalition.) Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan have joined forces to protect the US Internet. Wyden has placed a "hold" on the bill, requiring Stevens (and the phone and cable lobbies) to strong-arm sixty colleagues to prevent a filibuster. But with a number of GOP senators in tight races now fearful of opposing net neutrality, the bill's chances for passage before the midterm election are slim. Stevens, however, may be able to gain enough support for passage when Congress returns for a lame-duck session.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell


Thus far, the strategy of the phone and cable lobbies has been to dismiss concerns about net neutrality as either paranoid fantasies or political discontent from progressives. "It's a made-up issue," AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre said in early August at a meeting of state regulators. New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu claims that net neutrality is "what the liberal left have hung their hat on," suggesting that the outcry over Internet freedom is more partisan than substantive. Other critics of net neutrality, including many front groups, have tried to frame the debate around unsubstantiated fears about users finding access to websites blocked, pointing to a 2005 FCC policy statement that "consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice." But the issue of blocking has been purposefully raised to shift the focus from what should be the real concerns about why the phone and cable giants are challenging federal rules requiring nondiscriminatory treatment of digital content.

Verizon, Comcast and the others are terrified of the Internet as we know it today. Net neutrality rules would jeopardize their far-reaching plans to transform our digital communications system. Both the cable and phone industries recognize that if their broadband pipes (now a monopoly) must be operated in an open and neutral fashion, they will face real competition--and drastically reduced revenues--from an ever-growing number of lower-cost phone and video providers. Alcatel, a major technology company helping Verizon and AT&T build their broadband networks, notes in one business white paper that cable and phone companies are "really competing with the Internet as a business model, which is even more formidable than just competing with a few innovative service aggregators such as Google, Yahoo and Skype." (Skype is a telephone service provider using the Internet.)

Policy Racket

The goal of dominating the nation's principal broadband pipeline serving all of our everyday (and ever-growing) communications needs is also a major motivation behind opposition to net neutrality. Alcatel and other broadband equipment firms are helping the phone and cable industries build what will be a reconfigured Internet--one optimized to generate what they call "triple play" profits from "high revenue services such as video, voice and multimedia communications." Triple play means generating revenues from a single customer who is using a bundle of services for phone, TV and PC--at home, at work or via wireless devices. The corporate system emerging for the United States (and elsewhere in the world) is being designed to boost how much we spend on services, so phone and cable providers can increase what they call our "ARPU" (average revenue per user). This is the "next generation" Internet system being created for us, one purposefully designed to facilitate the needs of a mass consumerist culture.

Absent net neutrality and other safeguards, the phone/cable plan seeks to impose what is called a "policy-based" broadband system that creates "rules" of service for every user and online content provider. How much one can afford to spend would determine the range and quality of digital media access. Broadband connections would be governed by ever-vigilant network software engaged in "traffic policing" to insure each user couldn't exceed the "granted resources" supervised by "admission control" technologies. Mechanisms are being put in place so our monopoly providers can "differentiate charging in real time for a wide range of applications and events." Among the services that can form the basis of new revenues, notes Alcatel, is online content related to "community, forums, Internet access, information, news, find your way (navigation), marketing push, and health monitoring."

Missing from the current legislative debate on communications is how the plans of cable and phone companies threaten civic participation, the free flow of information and meaningful competition. Nor do the House or Senate versions of the bill insure that the public will receive high-speed Internet service at a reasonable price. According to market analysts, the costs US users pay for broadband service is more than eight times higher than what subscribers pay in Japan and South Korea. (Japanese consumers pay a mere 75 cents per megabit. South Koreans are charged only 73 cents. But US users are paying $6.10 per megabit. Internet service abroad is also much faster than it is here.)

Why are US online users being held hostage to higher rates at slower speeds? Blame the business plans of the phone and cable companies. As technology pioneer Bob Frankston and PBS tech columnist Robert Cringely recently explained , the phone and cable companies see our broadband future as merely a "billable event." Frankston and Cringely urge us to be part of a movement where we--and our communities--are not just passive generators of corporate profit but proactive creators of our own digital futures. That means we would become owners of the "last mile" of fiber wire, the key link to the emerging broadband world. For about $17 a month, over ten years, the high-speed connections coming to our homes would be ours--not in perpetual hock to phone or cable monopolists. Under such a scenario, notes Cringely, we would just pay around $2 a month for super-speed Internet access.

Regardless of whether Congress passes legislation in the fall, progressives need to create a forward-looking telecom policy agenda. They should seek to insure online access for low-income Americans, provide public oversight of broadband services, foster the development of digital communities and make it clear that the public's free speech rights online are paramount. It's now time to help kill the Stevens "tube" bill and work toward a digital future where Internet access is a right--and not dependent on how much we can pay to "admission control."

But others see a future where politicians are more vapid and risk averse than ever. Matthew Dowd, a longtime strategist for President Bush who is now a partner in a social networking Internet venture, Hot Soup, looks at the YouTube-ization of politics, and sees the death of spontaneity.

"Politicians can't experiment with messages," Mr. Dowd said. "They can't get voter response. Seventy or 80 years ago, a politician could go give a speech in Des Moines and road-test some ideas and then refine it and then test it again in Milwaukee."

He sees a future where candidates must be camera-ready before they hit the road, rather than be a work in progress. "What's happened is that politicians now have to be perfect from Day 1," he said. "It's taken some richness out of the political discourse."

Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not known for her spontaneity, agrees.

"It is a continuation of a trend in which politicians have to assume they are on live TV all the time," Mr. Wolfson said. "You can't get away with making an offensive or dumb remark and assume it won't get out."

I'm not certain that it is such a terrible thing to put politicians on notice that they cannot speak out of both sides of their mouth, offering contradictory positions to different crowds. What's more, it's certainly beneficial to our political system to have tousands of citizen watchdogs, not just a handful of gatekeepers who control the most powerful positions in the political media. Lizza rightly notes that it's highly unlikely that the video of George Allen making (allegedly) racist comments would have ever reached Virginia voters in the pre-YouTube era. Similarly, video of Conrad Burns sleeping through a field hearing in Montana would not have reached the tens of thousands of people it has in just a few days had it not been for the power of YouTube.

Now, there can be detrimental effects to having candidates believe that they must always be "on", mainly that there is a tendency among today's politicians to become overly cautious in language and stick entirely to message (instead of embracing the spontaneity required to truly connect with voters). However, this trend began much earlier than the YouTube revolution, with the proliferation of 24-hour cable news stations causing politicians to be guarded long before YouTube was online (let alone political blogs).

But frankly, even though campaign staffers might spend more time at night fretting over the possibility that their candidate stumbled off message (as I have at times even in my modest campaign) and members of the elitist media worry that their monopoly over political reporting is in jeopardy, the fact that actual people outside of Washington and Manhattan have more of a say in our political process is great for our democracy.

This impromptu singing duel capped the pandemonium that erupted during a Jan. 3 Costa Mesa City Council meeting after a young Hispanic man who was testifying against Costa Mesa's ongoing anti-immigrant crackdown asked the crowd to stand in opposition to the mayor's policies. The mayor ordered his microphone shut off, and when he refused to leave the podium he was swarmed by police officers and strong-armed out the door.

If Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor and his supporters have their way, thousands of undocumented Hispanic immigrants will be similarly run out of Costa Mesa. Last December, the City Council narrowly passed a resolution pushed by Mansoor calling for the city's police officers to be trained and empowered to arrest illegal aliens for violating federal immigration law. Costa Mesa was the first city in the country to pass such a measure.

Additionally, Mansoor and his allies on the City Council, Gary Monahan and Eric Bever, have disbanded the city's human rights committee, shut down the city's day laborer center, and sliced funding for charities that serve Hispanics. There has also been talk of closing the Latino swap meet and even banning pick-up games of soccer from public parks.

More than 40% of Costa Mesa's 110,000 residents are Hispanic, many of them undocumented workers from Mexico. But while the leaders of some nearby cities have declared their communities "sanctuary cities," Mansoor's administration has taken the exact opposite stance with a hard-line campaign to roll up the welcome mat.

That campaign has transformed Costa Mesa into a closely watched and especially volatile tinderbox within the raging national debate over immigration. The success or failure of Mansoor's policies could set the tone for how other cities around the country deal with what is quickly emerging as one of the most divisive political issues in the United States. Outside activists from both sides of the debate have flocked to Costa Mesa and declared the city a critical battleground.

"Costa Mesa is at the epicenter of the immigration debate and a microcosm of what is taking place across the United States," says Humberto Caspa, a professor at the University of California, Long Beach. Of the mayor and his supporters, Caspa says, "Their objective is simple: to kick all the Latinos out."

'Mexican-hating county'

Costa Mesa, "The City of the Arts," is located on 17 square miles of bluffs just inland from the California coast, in the midst of Orange County, a staunchly conservative region with a long history of groundbreaking initiatives designed to drive out Hispanic immigrants. "Orange County is the most Mexican-hating county in the country," says Orange County Weekly syndicated columnist and investigative editor Gustavo Arellano.

The county is home to Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist, whose "citizens border patrol" now has chapters nationwide, and to the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR), a major force behind 1994's Proposition 187, which sought to deprive undocumented immigrants of social services, health care, and public education. CCIR's official ballot argument described Proposition 187 as "the first giant stride in ultimately ending the ILLEGAL ALIEN invasion." The bulk of Proposition 187 was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge years after it was passed by 59% of California voters, but it has nevertheless served as the model for similar measures in other states, notably Arizona's Proposition 200.

Costa Mesa's proposal to effectively transform its local police officers into immigration cops is based on a new policy developed by the Orange County Sheriff's Department, which has spent nearly two years working out an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for Orange County sheriff's deputies to investigate and make arrests for violations of federal immigration law (illegal entry into the United States is a federal misdemeanor). The Costa Mesa plan calls for 30 city officers, including gang investigators and detectives, to receive ICE training at an initial cost of around $200,000 to the city.

Elected officials in other communities around the country, large and small, have also recently taken measures to show they're tough on immigration. In Phoenix, Ariz., Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio formed a 250-member citizen volunteer border posse to patrol the desert for illegal immigrants. In Hamilton, Ohio, the local sheriff billed the government of Mexico $125,000 for law enforcement expenses, imprisoned undocumented immigrants, and put up billboards showing himself in front of a jail with the legend "Illegal Aliens Here."

But while those programs are largely symbolic, Costa Mesa's crackdown policies, both proposed and already enacted, have actual, sharp teeth. Detractors say they promote racial profiling, and further alienate an already marginalized population in a community that is newly and bitterly divided. "I've never seen our city like this, I've never seen it this way," says Councilwoman Katrina Foley, who along with Linda Dixon is one of two council members opposed to the mayor's anti-immigration policies. "Usually we get complaints about traffic on the streets, litter in the fields," Foley says. "We had a reputation of being a city that listens to residents, that works with residents ... and now our city is on the map for immigration."

Law enforcement and latinos

Billy Folsom sits in a booth at Skosh Monahan's Irish pub nursing a white Russian. Folsom's a longhaired, tattooed biker and member of the National Rifle Association who repairs police cars for the City of Costa Mesa.

Folsom's got a story to tell, he says, as he sips from his tumbler.

"I drive cop cars all day long," he explains, "up and down one little street behind the cop shop," which is where Folsom tests out his repair jobs and diagnoses mechanical problems.

On this particular street, Folsom says, "there's a stop sign and a little kid lives in the apartment there, a Hispanic boy maybe 4 years old. He loves to wave at policemen, which he thinks I am because he sees me in the cars everyday." Folsom smiles and waves back as part of his routine.

"Well, the City Council resolution was approved on a Tuesday night. On Thursday, I stop at the stop sign and here comes this little kid. But instead of a smile and a wave, the kid throws a clump of dirt at my car then runs away. That's what this has done to this city."

Dave Snowden, Costa Mesa's chief of police for 17 years until his retirement in 2003, worries that kids pelting cop cars with dirt clods is just the beginning of the trouble the mayor's policies will cause for the Costa Mesa Police Department. Snowden knows several cops who recently left the Costa Mesa force for jobs in more immigrant-friendly cities, and he doesn't blame them. Building and maintaining trust with undocumented immigrants has become essential to effective local police work in Southern California, Snowden says. "You need to build a confidence level in the [Hispanic] community," Snowden says, and the mayor's proposals undercut that confidence. His greatest fear is, "the broadening of this policy to where cops stop people on the street because they are a different color."

Snowden's successor as chief of police, John Hensley, recently announced his retirement, although he'll remain on the job until the city finds a replacement. Hensley won't say why he quit, but his being dubbed "Hitler Hensley" and sarcastically seig-heiled by immigration-rights activists at City Council meetings couldn't have made his job any easier, especially since Hensley, like Snowden, does not support the mayor's law enforcement proposals.

Snowden and Hensley's opinion is nearly unanimous among cops, and not just in California. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) issued a statement in December 2004 condemning such policies. "Many leaders in the law enforcement community have serious concerns about the chilling effect any measure of this nature would have on legal and illegal aliens reporting criminal activity or assisting police in criminal investigations," IACP president Joseph Estey wrote. "We don't have the time and personnel to be immigration agents."

Racism's rudder

While law enforcement experts weighed in against the enforcement policy, it had the full support of longtime Costa Mesa resident and notorious white supremacist Martin Millard, a man in his 50s with close-cropped grey hair who sells real estate and claims to have once worked as an actor. A City Council gadfly who has the mayor's ear, Millard classified Hispanic immigrants in a 2003 essay as "a bunch of cockroaches with brown shells, brown eyes, and black hair. They are indicative of the changes that have helped California become like a dark corner under a refrigerator."

Millard has been a featured columnist on the website of the hate group Council of Conservative Citizens, where he railed against Hispanic immigrants since at least 1999. Millard also contributes to the racist website New Nation News, where he wrote, "We have no compunction against discussing the differences between different breeds of dogs, so why should we be so afraid to discuss the differences among different breeds of humans? The real issue is that our society is being transformed into something different than it has been and this is being done through the invasion of our land by those who are upsetting the traditional genetic balance we have had in this country."

Mansoor recently defended his decision to dismantle Costa Mesa's human rights commission in a letter to The Orange County Register: "When the government-funded committee was in existence the only beliefs it allowed were extreme-left views. ... People who said they believe illegal immigration was wrong were labeled 'racist.'"

There is no question that label fits Millard perfectly. But despite Millard's openly racist beliefs, Mansoor has been known to carpool to City Council meetings with him, and last year the mayor appointed Millard to Costa Mesa's Redevelopment Committee. The mayor's critics view Millard as a Rasputin-like figure, a fringe wacko who somehow wormed his way to influence and is now a guiding force behind Costa Mesa's anti-immigrant agenda.

"Millard is starting to get traction," says Billy Folsom, the cop car mechanic. "Racism is prevalent everywhere, but it's like a boat without a rudder. When the boat gets a rudder is when you need to start to worry, and Millard started being that rudder."

The soccer war

It has been in the last year that Millard's influence has emerged from the confines of cyberspace and begun to affect policy in Costa Mesa, something that prompted Republican retiree Geoff West to take notice -- and take Millard on, which he does on a regular basis in his blog, The Bubbling Cauldron, which West runs as a counterpoint to Millard's own blog, Costa Mesa Press.

"Millard's influence on the City Council is covert but substantial and his approach is tenacious but articulate," says West. "What upsets Millard are things intrinsic to Latino culture: swap meets, street vendors, and even soccer playing."

Millard's war against soccer dates back to at least 2001. In letter after letter to the City Council he has complained of the physical danger posed by flying soccer balls at a park near his home and the "human waste, broken beer bottles and a strong smell of urine in the slide in the tot lot" that soccer players leave behind.

"Millard will write some scathing letter about people playing soccer in the park," says Councilwoman Foley, "and I put that right in the trash whereas those guys [Mansoor, Monahan and Bever] call the chief [of police] about it." In response to Millard's complaints, police and park rangers have visited the park more than 130 times. They've found no sign of dangerous activity and no human waste.

Millard became more than just a loud voice at council meetings when he was appointed to the Redevelopment and Residential Rehabilitation Committee in 2005, which makes recommendations to the council on how to fund charities.

His participation in city government is a calculated move.

"Now we need to get realistic, and we need to start moving into positions where we can fix this broken country," wrote Millard in 2003. "Immigration activists need to start getting themselves on the many city committees that all cities have."

During his tenure, Millard withheld support from organizations serving a mostly Latino population including the Boys and Girls Club, which he called a "recruiting and staging station for gangs and criminal activity."

"He was tenacious to the point of rudeness to charities that were not his favorites," says West. "Like those that support immigrants which he calls 'magnets for undesirables' -- things like soup kitchens."

Millard resigned without explanation last February, not long after the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion came out with several articles denouncing him, with headlines like "Costa Mesa must liberate itself from the racist."

Protest night

It's Friday night in Costa Mesa and the setting sun bruises the evening sky as a gaggle of young activists arrive in groups of twos and threes on the sidewalk in front of Skosh Monahan's Irish Pub, the bar where Billy Folsom criticized the mayor a few nights earlier.

Inside is Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist and a handful of his supporters. Gilchrist is a frequent visitor to Costa Mesa's council meetings who makes it a point to come to Monahan's on protest night to show his support.

At one point, Gilchrist sends his wife Sandy out to size up the crowd, which will grow to around 30 protesters wielding an assortment of signs denouncing the restaurant's owner, City Councilman Gary Monahan, as a racist.

Monahan's mountainous security guard, clad in a black leather duster, steps out from the restaurant and stands to one side of the assembled group, arms folded, chit-chatting from time to time with some of the regular protesters, including Huntington Beach activist John Earl, who greets him warmly. It's a familiar scene for all concerned, a weekly protest organized by pro-immigrant activists that's been taking place since early February. Passing cars occasionally honk in support, which brings a cheer from the young crowd, but that's about as raucous as it gets -- until Gilchrist decides to come out and play.

Frequently, instead of exiting the restaurant, climbing into his car and leaving, Gilchrist engages the protesters. Earl has filmed Gilchrist in states of near hysteria, pacing back and forth, hurling insults and claims of "240 million supporters" at Earl's video camera while Earl gently goads him. Minutemen call Earl and the protesters "goons." Earl posts the Gilchrist videos on his ocorganizer website. It's a dance that Gilchrist, for all his anger, and Earl both clearly relish.

This night, though, Gilchrist's exit is swift. Accompanied by the co-founder of Latinos for Immigration Reform, Lupe Moreno, Gilchrist and friends are off to do a little protesting of their own.

The handful of Minutemen make their way to El Chinaco, a tiny El Salvadoran restaurant with a large "Keep Costa Mesa Friendly" sticker on its front door.

Gilchrist pulls out a bullhorn, his followers grab picket signs, and they proceed to march up and down the sidewalk in front of El Chinaco declaring the restaurant's owner an "anti-white racist" and harassing customers until a sudden downpour sends them scurrying to their cars.

Empty tables

It's hard to say whether Gilchrist's action affected business, since El Chinaco owner Mirna Burciaga says business has been abysmal at the restaurant since last December. Many of her immigrant customers are so afraid of being rounded up and deported that they don't go out to eat, she explains.

A vocal critic of Mansoor and frequent speaker at City Council meetings, Burciaga has owned El Chinaco for 18 years but says she recently has been forced to dip into her savings to keep the restaurant afloat.

She's not alone. Every week, dozens of Latino business owners gather to discuss the effect Mansoor's policies are having on their sales and strategize about ways to combat it. Burciaga, for her part, designed the sticker on her front door, which includes clasped hands, stars and stripes, and a dove of peace. She also places stacks of fliers in English and Spanish next to her cash register explaining that the immigration enforcement policy is for now an approved idea that has yet to take actual effect.

But rumors are spreading quicker than fact. The empty tables at El Chinaco seem to be a sign that stickers and fliers are not enough to quell fears. And so Burciaga has decided to run for City Council in November. Gary Monahan is prevented by term limits from running again after 12 years on the council, and Mansoor is up for reelection (the City Council selects the mayor from among its five members).

A win in November by someone like Burciaga would mean a pivotal shift in the balance of power on the council -- and she would be the first Latino to hold public office in Costa Mesa's 50-year history.

Millard, in one of his many anti-immigrant screeds, wrote: "If we want to win, we have to be smarter than the other side and we need to have political power." For once, Burciaga would have to agree with him.

Whether voters in Costa Mesa back the mayor's anti-immigrant politicking is something other cities around the country will be playing close attention to as communities struggle to deal with growing numbers of immigrants. Should a hard line on immigration prove beneficial for fledgling politician Alan Mansoor, some observers predict similar measures in other towns across America.

"All roads eventually come back here to Orange County," says Orange County Weekly columnist Gustavo Arellano, citing the battle in Costa Mesa as just another example -- along with the Minuteman movement and Proposition 187 -- of Orange County's influence on national immigration politics. "What happens here spreads to the entire country."

Back in the day, most of my friends saw marriage as a strange ritual, honeycombed with contradictions. Marriages were stultifying, burdened by adultery and inequality. They were invitations to divorce. Of course, as the idealistic 1970s gave way to the pragmatic Reagan years, some of my best friends also got married, though like me with the stipulation, "I don't need the government to sanctify my relationship."

In the context of my own cynicism about marriage, the current fervent pursuit of the right to marriage by gays and lesbians is perplexing. But equally perplexing is the defense of heterosexual-only marriage by judges and religious conservatives. In the debate over who can marry, both sides imbue the institution of marriage with sanctity and an importance that it neither deserves nor possesses.

I don't say this simply because I had the most painful divorce in human history. (Well, maybe not as painful as the fellow in Manhattan who recently blew up his home -- with himself in it -- to stop his wife from getting the place in the final dissolution.) Certainly, failed marriages are no justification for the end of marriage itself. Even I remarried, three years ago, though once again cynically, in order to help my new life partner gain permanent residency in the United States. There are unquestionably practical benefits to marrying. That's why I'm in favor of gay marriage as a legal matter. But in favoring a more liberal criteria for marriage, I worry that we lose sight of the wider and weirder problem of permitting government to validate our most personal social partnerships.

During my lifetime, many good people expended much effort trying to stop the government from lording over the private lives of romantic partners. When I was 12 years old, for instance, a court struck down the ban on blacks and whites marrying. In my 20s, laws against homosexual sex began to collapse. The whole trend seemed downright sane: Get the government out of the bedroom.

By my later 30s, in the 1990s, the privileged status of marriage as an institution had nearly vanished. Children of unmarried parents, once stigmatized as bastards, were now born "out of wedlock," which sounded much nicer and reflected an end to the stigma of unmarried women bearing children. Employers and government, meanwhile, began to recognize "domestic partnerships," handing out equivalent benefits to couples who claimed to have the same sort of binding commitment and mutual regard as husbands and wives. Later, these same benefits were extended to same-sex partners, and for good reason. Gay couples deserve the same effective legal protections and benefits as straight ones, married or not.

All these changes highlighted the essential arbitrariness of marriage, undermining fatally the claims that romantic partnerships must be endorsed by God in order to qualify as moral or legal. The government accepted that marriage was purely civil and subject to the same rules of procedure as any other. Of course, the implications of this principle have delivered us to our present conundrum. If we do not exclude gays from adoption, or employment in a police force or attendance at Giants games, then we cannot exclude them from marriage either.

I accept the implications of the principle. At the same time, I pine away from the good old days when it seemed marriage was doomed as a legal institution and a social ideal. Obviously, the challenge to marriage has receded, if not vanished altogether. As a ceremony and a social reality, marriage reigns supreme. But, rather than celebrate the hegemony of marriage, I submit that we are rather stuck with this peculiar institution in much the same way as we are afflicted by death, disease and taxes. In the battle over who gets to marry and who doesn't, we would be wise to remember that, wide or narrow, the circle of marriage brings pain as well as joy and sometimes more of the former than the later.

G. Pascal Zachary, a frequent contributor to AlterNet, is the author of "Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century."