Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Zen Master Teaching #65
Zen Master Teaching #65: Always wash hands thoroughly. Memory can fail one at certain times. One does not wish Icy Hot from finger to end up on tongue.
Monday, December 28, 2009
We Are Next.
Guys, I am not jumping on my soapbox. In fact, I am calm as a rock in a snowstorm here. I know what the stakes are and I know where the hearts of the citizens of America lie. The truth is people are unhappy and we are going to see it soon. I am not unduly worried. However, we are not yet headed down that road. Right now is the dangerous time. We, ladies and gentleman, are headed to be socialistic. Whether you think that is a good thing or not is irrelevant. Socialism does not work, never has and never will. We are corrupt, greedy beings who look out for themselves. The systems we have barely work... but they do work. There are perfect systems out there. Whether they have been implemented or not... well, time will tell. However, our country is not headed down the straight and narrow. Our principles have been jeopardized. Don't believe me? Just read all the presses. Look at who writes each article. Trace who they work for. All sides have some corruption, but I guarantee you, some have it as their main goal. Some people want us all under a system of control. Crazy? Fantastic? Ridiculous? ... How quickly we forget the Cold War.
Either way (whether we do fall into the pits of corruption and foolish ideas that we are headed towards or not) I know I will be safe. Survival is first, and I will forever be two steps ahead of those who are out to put me down. However, my job for now is to inform all of you what is out there. Read the article below and tell me we are not headed here next. Bet you twenty bucks (what's the dollar worth now? Maybe I should bet euro...) this kind of stuff is already happening. Don't take that bet.... the dice are loaded in my favor.
RUSSIA TO PROSECUTE YOUTUBE POLICE WHISTLEBLOWER
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A former policeman who accused senior officers of corruption in a series of video blogs will himself face prosecution for abuse of office, Russian investigators said on Monday.
Former police major Alexei Dymovsky became a household name in Russia earlier this year when he used YouTube to appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to tackle corruption in the police force.
A criminal case would be brought against Dymovsky for "fraud committed by a person using his official position," according to a statement from Prosecutor-General's investigative committee. It gave no further details.
Dymovsky, who worked for the police force in the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, appealed to Putin to rein in senior officers whom he accused of pressuring subordinates to charge innocent people to meet statistical targets.
"I want to show you from the inside the life of cops across Russia ... the ignorance, the boorishness, the recklessness, where officers die because of their dim-witted bosses," Dymovsky said in the video.
The clip received more than one million hits on YouTube.
He was fired after making the appeal. Regional police also conducted their own investigation after the videos were released, which they said did not back up Dymovsky's allegations.
Corruption is endemic in Russian society and global surveys have repeatedly ranked the former Soviet state as one of the most corrupt in the world.
Either way (whether we do fall into the pits of corruption and foolish ideas that we are headed towards or not) I know I will be safe. Survival is first, and I will forever be two steps ahead of those who are out to put me down. However, my job for now is to inform all of you what is out there. Read the article below and tell me we are not headed here next. Bet you twenty bucks (what's the dollar worth now? Maybe I should bet euro...) this kind of stuff is already happening. Don't take that bet.... the dice are loaded in my favor.
RUSSIA TO PROSECUTE YOUTUBE POLICE WHISTLEBLOWER
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A former policeman who accused senior officers of corruption in a series of video blogs will himself face prosecution for abuse of office, Russian investigators said on Monday.
Former police major Alexei Dymovsky became a household name in Russia earlier this year when he used YouTube to appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to tackle corruption in the police force.
A criminal case would be brought against Dymovsky for "fraud committed by a person using his official position," according to a statement from Prosecutor-General's investigative committee. It gave no further details.
Dymovsky, who worked for the police force in the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, appealed to Putin to rein in senior officers whom he accused of pressuring subordinates to charge innocent people to meet statistical targets.
"I want to show you from the inside the life of cops across Russia ... the ignorance, the boorishness, the recklessness, where officers die because of their dim-witted bosses," Dymovsky said in the video.
The clip received more than one million hits on YouTube.
He was fired after making the appeal. Regional police also conducted their own investigation after the videos were released, which they said did not back up Dymovsky's allegations.
Corruption is endemic in Russian society and global surveys have repeatedly ranked the former Soviet state as one of the most corrupt in the world.
Zen Master Teaching #64
Zen Master Teaching #64: Unwise is he who drinks sugared beverage before sleep. If one wishes for rest, one cannot be energetic. More wise to consume soothing concoctions, or else will one bounce off walls like proverbial rubber ball.
Night
Cold, broken, lonely, here I lie
on the small bed of my mistakes.
Fierce, howling wind blows through my veins,
Sharpening my cruel pains and aches.
I see here no light reflected.
My small darken’d room does not care
What long scars I have afflicted
With sick, poisonous summer air.
Wounds will go deep, and deeper still,
Angry shadows of an age past.
They have the tools to break my will
And shatter all my resolve last.
But quickly, deep breaths do I take
To calm me from my blackest fears
Few struggles of man ever make
A protest which falls on deaf ears.
These memories will pass and fade,
In time, I will refuse to weep.
I look at things I have now made
And retire to a fitful sleep.
Maybe? I don't know... This poetry thing is all well and good, but it seems as though it is never quite written as I want it...
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Inevitabilty
Fresh young tree in spring time heat,
Feel the weed take water sweet.
Lone deer running in the cold,
Fear the hunter cruel and bold.
Rabbit who is wise and calm,
See the wolf who runs so long.
Butterfly on high tree branch,
Hear the mantis comes to dance.
Human, high upon the crown,
Know you will burn to the ground.
Untitled
I have no title for this... it is the first in Iambic pentameter...
Soft December flakes fall upon the ground.
Sunlight peers down through imposing storm clouds.
The boy walks alone without a word or sound.
His footfalls echo only in his mind.
Memories distant flow before his eyes.
To his core, tendrils of fear seep like ice.
He sees bright futures as though they have past.
Mind, body and soul know what he now has.
A soul entombed, as though in hard bronze cast.
He struggles to shatter his prison cold.
Resolve gathers strength, he tries to be bold.
The world will fade, but his love grows not old.
Early Stabs.
Here are a couple early stabs at poetry...
Lament
The sailor stands upon the cliff,
Glowering to sea below.
He remembers a young sweet girl,
Eyes like gems and mountains of curls.
A summer spent in blissful union
No cares, no worries, only hearts desires.
A grim slash for a smile is all he musters;
Now that time is dead and gone.
The hounds behind him yelp and howl,
Gunshots pierce the moonlit night.
With a sigh he turns away,
To face the glory of battle’s death
Just then a whisper floats on the breeze;
His eyes glimmer with furious hope.
He spins around and leaps from the rock
Into the dark, cruel waves below.
A Setting Sunrise
On his dying bed, he watched the sun
Take the place of that awful moon.
His tired eyes saw only rays of gold and blue.
The warmth spread through his very limbs
More intoxicating than any gin.
He allowed one last eye to be cast upon the room.
Filthy boards, sweaty rags, and cheap cologne filled the air.
He struggled to his feet, wavering as the years anchored him
At last, he stepped out the door, feet falling on soft grass
And with no regrets and little joy,
He became a part of the morning dew.
Unless you really like Congress, read this.
Before you read this, understand I am not directing this at anyone in particular. No matter where you stand on party lines, everyone needs to be informed. And the simple fact tis that we are heading towards socialism, which simply does not work. If you are my friend and you like the people in power right now, fine so be it. I don't care what your views are. However, at least be informed of the facts.
Yes this is Rush Limbaugh. He is right 98.7% of the time... Look it up. He is telling the truth here folks.
RUSH: Now, folks, let me address this, because I got an e-mail, I mentioned it briefly at the conclusion of the previous hour. I'm not trying to dispirit anybody but I must be honest with you about how I think the Democrats are going to play this, and I have to be honest when I tell you I don't think they care about losing their majority. That's how committed to this they are, and I don't doubt for a minute that health care and health insurance will become the new third rail, just like Social Security. Every election they're going to accuse Republicans who want to take away your health insurance, just like they traditionally accuse Republicans who want to take away Social Security. It's the way they play the game.
Now, I think you all should keep calling offices, flooding offices with faxes, e-mails, and so forth, and do the rallies. They have helped. They have made a huge difference, they've delayed this. This was going to happen in August. Remember, they wanted all this to happen in August. And the protests did matter. But honestly, this isn't the long view. This is a spontaneous grassroots uprising that is happening, tea party movement and so forth that, as I say, did in fact slow this down, and it will make a difference in November. Movements take time to develop and the conservative movement, this one, after decades of neglect, is on the march. Conservatism is on the ascendancy. Now, when we face the kind of despotism that we're facing in today's Democrat Party, it takes all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. The public is energized. There are people who are willing to go to jail rather than be forced to buy health insurance. They are willing to do it. I got a guy waiting to talk to me who is a small business guy in St. Louis -- well, let's grab him now. Jim in St. Louis, I'm glad you called, tell everybody what it is that you are suggesting.
CALLER: Well, Rush it's very, very great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Longtime listener. Listen, I think even though I'd love to talk to you, I want to talk to small business in this country. I think small business could stop this health care dead in its tracks. All we have to do as small business for a short term pain for a long term gain is just shed your payrolls down 50%. Let's overrun the unemployment offices to where they cannot deal with this crisis and let them know that we as small businesses in this country are the ones in charge and without our money they can't do any of this. We are the ones that allow them to do to us what they are doing. If we quit sending our money to these people, they cannot implement these programs. They work for us. We do not work for them. I'm tired. I've run a company for almost 30 years. I'm in the housing market and I manufacture window products. And I can tell you this. I know that everybody this time is hurting, but you know what? For about two weeks we could bring Washington to their knees.
RUSH: Okay, Snerdley, Dawn, Brian, you're fired. Do not come back. You are going on the unemployment line next year. We're going to flood -- (laughing) well this is what it's going to take. Would you do it? If you were an employee would you accept being fired on this principle?
CALLER: Yes. I'm looking at my family and what's going to affect me the next 30 years of my life. What if you don't take a stand for two or three weeks to what's going to affect you for the next 30 years of your life while you're alive? What are you going to do about your parents when this passes?
RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute, what's to say it's just two or three weeks that people are going to be unemployed?
CALLER: Rush, we pay payroll taxes every week to the coffers of the federal government, every week. You start drying that up, the only way that they can do anything is with our money. And the only way they get our money is we have employment, and the time you start taking away the withholding, you quit paying them the Social Security, you quit matching unemployment benefits, you quit doing that, they do not have the money in the state of Illinois right now where I have my business to even keep unemployment checks current.
RUSH: I know. Chicago has had to shut down for budgetary reasons.
CALLER: That's right.
RUSH: The city of Chicago. Now, here's the thing. When you're dealing with rational people in government this makes great theoretical sense, but this bunch will just turn on the printing presses, which is what they're doing now.
CALLER: They will not be able to sustain. They need unemployment numbers not to be at 500,000. They need them to be at 1.5 million for a week and then panic is going to have set in to let them know, "Look, business in this country runs this nation. You don't. And either you come back down to the table and talk to us --" we as businesspeople across this country have to make them come to us and then maybe we can get a dialogue. The way we're going about it now, there will be no dialogue. And the only way there's no dialogue now is we keep sending them our money.
RUSH: Well, that's because people have to eat. Look, philosophically I admire what you're saying, and it would be great to be able to some way deny them this money, but at the same time people have to eat, they have to feed their kids. So you're suggesting go on unemployment, get by with just what you get on unemployment for a while just to make the case, run real unemployment numbers way, way up like triple 'em, to send a message.
CALLER: That's correct, because there's one thing for sure. When this takes effect, the unemployment numbers are gonna go up because the employers aren't going to go along with it when it does go into effect. So it's either now or later.
RUSH: That's the design. That's the design, to get 'em going to government for their health insurance and for their health coverage.
CALLER: We have to reverse the design. We have to give them the design before they get it passed.
RUSH: I'm sitting here thinking. Snerdley is sending me a note, Jim, suggesting the AP lead headline tonight will be: "Limbaugh Calls for One Million to be Fired Before Christmas Day." New York Times: "Limbaugh Fires Millions," Washington Post: "Women and Children Hardest Hit."
CALLER: Well, I can understand that, but I think the American people have gone through a lot of pain right now, and I don't think the pain is as great as it's going to be here in the future.
RUSH: Well, now, that is a point. It is going to get worse. There's no question. This is a tough call. But what I want to emphasize about what Jim said here is that we still do run this country. We still do run the country. This kind of action is not unprecedented. We've had the Boston Tea Party and any number of other things. I want to find for you in my stack -- let me take a break and find it -- I gotta find the tipping point for the Founding Fathers to say, "Enough!" and rebel against the crown to found this country. Jim, thanks very much for the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, small business caller from St. Louis, Jim was his name. Without realizing it, what Jim was advocating was a leftist strategy to destroy the country and it's called Cloward-Piven, and these are people, Saul Alinsky bought into them, they go way, way back. They predate Alinsky, and Obama is a big believer. I think -- now, allow me the opportunity to be wrong on this -- I think they were Columbia University types, Cloward-Piven. The idea was to flood the welfare system, flood the welfare state to make it collapse, to bring on a revolution. Now, the kind of revolution Cloward-Piven want is a revolution not where the people run the show, but where the people have nothing to say about anything, just flood the system to prove it doesn't work and then get everybody worthless, powerless, with nothing, with only the government to come in and save the day. That's their theory on it. Jim's theory of the outcome is different, that government would have to cave. It's like France, when the people in France go on strike, when they get ticked off they just go on strike. There are any number of ways of pulling this off. Just don't go to work. You gotta make sure that you don't get paid when you don't go to work and you gotta be willing not to get paid if you're going to do this. It will require a huge commitment.
Here's Tanya in Marion, Illinois, who wants to weigh in on it. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, my God, Rush, what a privilege. I am so thankful I am calling after Jim.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I am a caseworker in southern Illinois. I'm probably going to lose my job over this --
RUSH: What kind of caseworker?
CALLER: I am a welfare caseworker.
RUSH: Welfare.
CALLER: I hand out food stamps.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I hand out food stamps and medical cards. You follow Jim. You lower those tax rolls by 50%. They all hit the food stamps, the department of public aid, they come in, they get food stamps, they get free medical, state of Illinois, you get free medical if you got kids in the home and you make less than, you know, X-amount of dollars and if you're on unemployment you get it automatically. And it will destroy the food stamp which is of course everybody knows the Department of Agriculture, which is yours and my tax dollars. Our state's close to bankruptcy as it is. It is a joke. But if they follow Jim and then they all hit the public aid offices to make a point about what they're doing in Congress, Rush, I've listened to you for 15 years, I worked at Boatmen's Trust company in St. Louis, prior to that I was at Citicorp in St. Louis, I have followed you, I have personally had lunch with your cousin in Cape Girardeau when he was running the bank at Boatmen's down there. Due to a seizure disorder, I have had to go to the state where I am a union employee. Though I pay the nonunion dues, they hate me because of that, but I am now protected, they cannot fire me. Now, of course my salary's dropped in half but that's beside the point. I have a job, they can't fire me, and I've taught my kids the best I can. I've listened to you forever. A thousand times I have called you. And this could not have been the -- it was the most opportune, opportunity for Snerdley to take my call.
RUSH: Opportune time for you to get through. You know, yesterday we had a story about food stamps and how more Americans than ever are on them and the poverty level is at an all-time high, and the story was about how businesses are adjusting to the first of the month and the end of the month when the government dumps the food stamp benefits on these people's debit cards.
CALLER: Oh, you bet, the grocery stores, absolutely. Rush, okay, just for your listeners, I am college educated, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, bachelors, MBA, okay? And I'm making $50 grand a year, okay? That's it. But that's okay. That's okay. I'm doing just fine. I have taken a second job at a little convenience store called Huck's. I work 20 to 26 hours a week to put groceries on my table. But, Rush, what eats me up more than anything in this world is when they talk about the obesity problem, they talk about how everybody is obese, guess who comes in to the little grocery stores and the little Huck's and the convenience stores across this nation and they buy the candy and they buy the Red Bull? I've never in my life tried Red Bull because I can't afford a $3.50 energy drink.
RUSH: You ought to try it with vodka.
CALLER: We don't sell liquor at the little store I work at. I work 40 hours a week at my real job and 20 to 26 hours a week on my second job, and I barely have food for my two kids, it is a joke. And they come in there, and they go crazy because they've never had to pay for themselves ever.
RUSH: Now, this is the point about all this. The point about all this is that this is the greatest country with the greatest economy in the history of humanity, and yet the poverty level is at an all-time high under whose tutelage? The Democrats have been running all the spending since 2007. Obama is the president. And now we've got a record poverty rate, we have a record number of people on food stamps, and we have the federal government working with business to timely dump these food stamp and other benefits on their debit cards, and then they head to the stores to stock up when that happens. See, my theory is that this is all by design. My theory is that this is by design to make sure as many people in this country dependent as possible.
I maintain to you that if your strategery were implemented, that if we added to the unemployment rolls one million people next week rather than the 500,000 that are going to show up, that there are people in the Democrat Party who would rub their hands together and go, "All right, all right." They may not understand what's going on, that it was part of a movement, but believe me, this is the hideous nature of this. The chaos that we're seeing has been created, the chaos is on purpose. The employment situation is on purpose. Everything that Obama has done since he took office has been contraindicative of what to do to create jobs. He is doing just the opposite of what's necessary to create jobs. He is stifling investment; he is offering no incentive whatsoever; he's got these health care plans and cap and trade lurking in the future; people who are going to be responsible for investing in business or lending money to people have no idea what the rules are going to be, this is by design.
This economy is coming to a slowdown, and the difference is that it's on purpose. A lot of people don't want to believe this because they can't understand why anybody would want to do it. All you have to do is look at what they're doing with health care to understand it. It's power. It's control. And it's power in perpetuity for them. The more people who have these debit cards every month waiting for the government to load 'em up with benefits so they can go to the Huck's and pick up some Red Bull and candy, the happier people like Obama are. I mean it's hideous. These people are anathema to the traditions, institutions that have made this country great. It's not just people are going to be looking at what they're eating, you wait 'til people have a big screen TV next door for you when you're illegal and they call the government on you. Citizens are going to be pitted against citizens once this health care thing passes, it's disastrous.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Cloward-Piven was indeed from Columbia University. "The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, then both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work, in a 1966 article in The Nation. The two argued that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would create a political crisis that would force US politicians, particularly the Democratic Party, to enact legislation 'establishing a guaranteed national income.'" These people were anti-free market, they were anti-capitalist, they were pro-statist, doing everything they could with their strategy here to blow up the country as it existed and exists, same thing with Saul Alinsky.
Now, I don't think you would even need to layoff workers to do this. Just don't send the tax payments to Washington. That would be one way of doing this. Because Jim in St. Louis was right, I mean the feds rely on all those payroll taxes from all these businesses, sales tax and all this. If every business just banded together and said we're not sending the money, just stop sending it, put it in an escrow account, the feds do not have the personnel to even to attempt to collect those taxes. (interruption) Well, that's the thing, they'll just print the money, but, no, that would be unrest they would have to deal with. Here's the next AP headline: "After Calling for Mass Firings, Limbaugh Calls for Mass Tax Evasion Two Days Before Christmas." (laughing) Probably right. That's probably what's going to happen.
I'm thinking about Tom Friedman. This little punk who goes over to Copenhagen talks about how wonderful Copenhagen is comes back here and describes what a rotten place we are, it's like leaving the Jetsons and returning to the Flintstones. Friedman is the perfect example, folks, of a statist. He's wealthy -- he married into his wealth, by the way, he married into it -- he lives on several acres on an estate. He travels the world on an expense account. He eats the finest foods. But he doesn't produce anything. It's like Obama. He produces nothing but words. He appreciates nothing. He acts like he's leading some kind of revolution against the very society that enables a person like him to succeed, totally ungrateful for what this country has made possible for him. He hasn't produced diddly-squat. He's out there thinking he's leading a revolution, one of the smartest guys walking the planet. Copenhagen, yeah. That's the Jetsons. Flies back to Newark, why, that's the Flintstones.
The straw that broke the Founding Fathers' backs. The Intolerable Acts of 1774. When you listen to this stuff, these Intolerable Acts, this is the stuff that broke the camel's back for the Founders. This makes what's happening today seem like child's play. "The British government responded by passing several acts which came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which further darkened Colonial opinion towards the British. They consisted of four laws enacted by the British parliament. The first was the Massachusetts Government Act, which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings." That ticked them off. That's why freedom to associate is in the Constitution, because it was restricted. "The second Act, the Administration of Justice Act, ordered that all British soldiers to be tried were to be arraigned in Britain, not in the colonies." That ticked 'em off. "The third Act was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party (the British never received such a payment)." That ticked them off. "The fourth Act was the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner."
Those were the four things that sent Founding Fathers over the edge. They already escaped for freedom of religion. So that was already in the deck. Now, these things seem like child's play compared to what is happening today. And people ask me all the time, "Rush, do you think that there would ever be a revolution?" Let me just tell you this. Here's the third AP headline, Snerdley. I do think the American citizens and their anger is going to translate into some sort of citizen action. You can feel it percolating in every one of these phone calls that we've taken for the past six months here. Rebel, maybe, I don't know how it would manifest itself. Firing people, laying people off, not paying taxes, it could be any of these things but it's going to be something huge. I don't pretend to know what it is. But with all of the millions of Americans out there asking, "What can I do?" Snerdley, tell me the truth, every call, if you chose to, you could have put up there for the past two months, "What can I do?" Every single call could have been, "What can I do?" Everybody out there wants to know what they can do, and at some point this is going to translate into action.
Fourth AP headline tonight: "Limbaugh Calls for Obama Overthrow Amidst Economic Recovery." They'll throw that in there. Everybody asking, "What can I do?" The fact that so many people are asking the question will produce the perfect response, and it's going to be some sort of refusal to obey. It's going to be rooted in some sort of refusal to obey some of these un-American dictates that are being called health care legislation, Senate health care legislation, cap and trade, whatever it is. You know, we had the Rock the Vote video, the audio yesterday. Let these little young socialist youth out there, let them go ahead and withhold sex from people who oppose health care. The adults will withhold consent of the governed. That's what we're going to do. You know, let 'em go around there with Susan Sarandon's daughter playing games with withholding sex and so forth. (interruption) No, no, no, that's what she did. She and some stupid hare-brained actor have cut a video for Rock the Vote and they basically tell people who don't support them on health care they're going to be frozen out of the bedroom and they're advocating everybody do that. Fine, you go play those games. We will withhold the consent of being governed.
There is going to be some sort of refusal to obey the, quote, unquote, the crown, refusal to obey the government here. That's where this is headed, that's how un-American this is. And every time Tom Friedman comes back from some faraway eastern European capital where cell phone coverage gets shut down with a little snowfall and starts comparing this country to the Flintstones and that place to Jetsons, fine, stay there, Tom. If they've got it down pat, they live the way you think we ought to live, go where they live that way, but we are not them, this is the United States of America.
I just got a note here, a press release: "Today, US Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and John Ensign (R-Nevada), raised a Constitutional Point of Order on the Senate floor against the Democrat health care takeover bill on behalf of the Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators. The Senate will vote tomorrow on the bill’s constitutionality. 'I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,' said Senator Ensign. 'As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to force this mandate on its citizens.' 'Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,' said Senator DeMint."
So now it will naturally lose. But it still is a good idea because they're standing up and they're getting it out there. Well, let's see just how much coverage this gets. Mr. Snerdley, let's just see how many of the State-Controlled Media actually spend time reporting a vote on the constitutionality of the bill. I expect what will happen is, they will report it after the fact and after the Senate has voted that it is constitutional.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the phones, to Cecil, Amarillo, Texas. Welcome, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Mr. Limbaugh, or I should say good afternoon. I'm a former progressive Democrat forced into conversion by being required to watch your television show, and I agree with you most of the time. In my position I'm just going to refuse to purchase health care. I'm going to make them put me in jail and take me the court. It violates due process. My money is my property. They can't take my property without due process, and they can't put me in jail for a fine. If I owe a traffic fine they can't put me in jail for that, it's unconstitutional. So I would suggest if people are really upset about it, just force 'em to put you in jail and take you in front of the courts. Jury nullification works, and that's basically when the jury says, "Yeah, you committed the offense, but it was all right to do so," in a nutshell.
RUSH: Like the O.J. jury.
CALLER: Well, no, because there was evidence on both sides of that, you know, I mean you could argue --
RUSH: No, no, no, I was being lighthearted, but jury nullification, that jury was going to find him not guilty because of things that had nothing to do with the case.
CALLER: Right. Well, in this case jury nullification, I'll give you an example. There was a Navy SEAL down in south Texas, some kids shot his dog, he chased them through several counties before they were finally apprehended. He had the opportunity to shoot 'em and kill them and if he'd have went in front of a jury, the jury would have found him not guilty, but he didn't, you know, he restrained himself, he's a Navy SEAL and he used his training, and he restrained himself, but had he killed them, no jury in Texas would have found him guilty even though he had actually committed the offense of murder. So the same thing here. If you refuse to purchase health care insurance, people in the jury of similar mind just turn around and say you're not guilty irrespective of whatever the state presented as evidence.
RUSH: Wait a second. Along these lines, I have read some of the bill now. There are exemptions. There are religious exemptions for American native Indians. There are exemptions for people experiencing financial hardship. I kid you not. Now, I have a question because I have a naturally inquisitive mind. If people who are experiencing financial hardship are exempt from having to buy insurance, then how does this bill cover the uninsured? Aren't we told that most people are uninsured 'cause they can't afford it, and doesn't this bill really only make people buy insurance? That's what this is all about. So if we except the very people we're trying to force into insurance, what exactly is being accomplished here?
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RUSH: Here's Ernie in Chico, California. Ernie, it's great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thank you very much. Conservative, conservative here in Northern California, and I just wanted to say a couple things and then ask you a quick question -- and, by the way, thank you for commenting on the reason for the season. I appreciate that.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I have been in business for 20 years, and I'm just starting to get into politics. Well, I've always been in politics, but just starting to get heavily into it here in the state. And just a couple quick comments on Jim who called earlier. You know, we're already in Northern California here I'm seeing lots of and lots of, businesses going out of business, cutting back. You know, it's a state that has its own problems. It's in bankruptcy, and we're seeing that throughout numerous cities in California.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: And we're dealing with the medical community and in health care. You know, I know a lot of the doctors, this is the business that I'm in, in their own practices -- especially when they're dealing with Medi-Cal, that is a joke any way the fact that for the last three years these guys, these business owners -- which are doctors -- not getting paid for two, three, four months at a time from the State of California because of Medi-Cal.
RUSH: And it's going to get worse.
CALLER: Can you imagine if the federal government decides to do it? The state can't even get their budget under control and they go for two or three months and they don't pay?
RUSH: It's going to happen. That's what bundling is all about. That's exactly what bundling is all about, and the reimbursements are going to be less. Doctors are going to be earning less. This is an utter disaster. But that stuff's not going to start for four years.
CALLER: One of the comments that was made to me from one of the local doctors up here is basically that, you know, when you deal with the Blue Crosses -- the health care industry or the insurance agencies right now -- they can get something through within a week when they ask for it. On Medi-Cal, it takes a month or two to get an answer back on some kind of a procedure. So how in the world can government think that it's going to be able to do anything better? It can't. We have a pretty good health care system right now. I'm sure it needs to be taken care of in dealing with lawyers and some other things and being able to go across state lines.
RUSH: The question that you ask... The correct question is not, "When is the government going to realize it can't do it?" The correct question is: "When are the people who support this going to wake up and understand?" I'm not talking about the elected officials, because they support it for a whole different reason. They don't care how it turns out. They don't care how it functions. Do you think they care how bureaucracies function at all? They don't! There isn't one that functions smoothly. The real question is: Average Americans, Democrats who are for this, when are they going to realize that what you describe is headed their way as a matter of daily life?
CALLER: Well, yeah.
RUSH: You would hate to think that it's going to take the implementation of the program to make that happen. Look, Ernie, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. I've got just a minute and a half here. I want to say something. I went through all of these bribes. I looked at what Ben Nelson got and all these states got. All these bribes are exemptions. The state of Nebraska will be exempted from having to pay the new mandated Medicaid costs for new Medicaid patients. In Louisiana, more money will be sent there to help the state pay for it. The very act of bribing these Senators, to me, is a tantamount admission to what a lousy piece of legislation it is. If in order to get Senators to vote for it you have to exempt their states from the provisions, then you are saying, "We have here a punitive bill. We are going to wreak havoc on everybody. We are going to punish everybody. That's the only way we can make health care equal," and in the process, some people don't want to be punished or they won't vote for it so they're exempted. I mean, the very fact that these deals were made is the proof of how rotten this is and how it is not -- in any way, shape, manner, or form -- the way it is being promoted.
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RUSH: To New Orleans and Eileen, thank you for waiting. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, Merry Christmas. We love you down here.
RUSH: Thank you. I love you, too.
CALLER: I was just thinking, these Democrats are centralizing this massive amount of power and now this looks like they're willing to give up their majority. Do they ever consider that conservatives could get it back and appoint Dick Cheney to administer the death panels? Does it ever cross their mind?
RUSH: (laughing) I'll tell you, they do not think that we will do anything to roll back any of what they've passed if we do take power back, because they don't think the Republicans as currently constituted have the guts. Now, what you're saying is, with a new conservative leadership running the House and Senate, new conservative leadership running the Republican Party, the Democrats won't know what hit them. And that conservative movement is in an ascendancy here. The current House leadership, Senate leadership, they're probably right, because they would fall prey to the allegation that Republicans want to take people's health insurance away from them.
CALLER: But, Rush, they're not smart. You wanted to know the definition of smart the other day. Smart is knowing what you don't know. And that is their Achilles heel, and they have no idea what's going on out here, and Dick Cheney is our fantasy. Dick Cheney running the death panels would bring peace on earth.
RUSH: (laughing) It's a toss-up as to whether or not they know what's going on. You're probably right. They do not know the degree. But even if they did, I'm telling you, they wouldn't care. They don't care. This is not a representative republic anymore. These are dictatorial people. I'm glad you called, Eileen. Great to have you with us. Roland in Sarasota, Florida. Hello, you're next on the EIB Network. Welcome.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Sir.
CALLER: It's an honor to talk to you. And I want to thank you for all that you do.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: You had an earlier caller, Jim, and he was speaking about what business, small business people could do to withhold money from the Feds. As a worker that pays federal withholding tax, I've considered what a lot of people could do but it would have to be a lot of people to do it to make it work. Take nine exemptions on your W2. And if you do that in January you don't have to ante up 'til April 15th of 2011. And if 20 or 30 million people did that, I think it would be the equivalent of a bloodless revolution.
RUSH: Well, that's interesting. I don't know that you'd be affecting enough money doing that. You could be. But it's clear that there is sentiment out there. You're the, I don't know, fifth or sixth caller we've had today who has signed on to some sort of plan to withhold tax revenue from the federal and state governments simply because they haven't the manpower to police it and collect it. People have said we're willing to go to jail to do it. This goes to back to what Eileen was saying earlier, she doesn't think the Democrats have the slightest idea the degree of protest, rage, anger over the fruited plain, and they may not, but I also don't think they care, and I also think that they don't think this would work. When you think like they do, as dictators, not as small D Democrats, then there's any number of ways to punish people for all of these acts of disobedience. This is the way they would look at it. They'd be looking to find ways to punish them, even after the fact, even if it worked. I want to grab one more here before we go. Thanks, Roland. This is Sally in South Lake Tahoe. Nice to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. This is really awesome. My civil obedience suggestion is everyone use paper to file their taxes, download forms if necessary, and use their paper, and then mail them on April 15th. Do not mail anything early. Mail it all on the 15th of April, and that would get the point across.
RUSH: Well, here's the problem with that, and I hate to be negative here. But you've just highlighted one of the problems that we have. Most people have their taxes withheld throughout the year and you get your W-2 and that gets forwarded and the government's got your money all year.
CALLER: Yes, but if you have more taken out or you don't pay quite enough, you still have to file a tax form. And there's plenty of us that are -- I'm probably technically called poor, but I generally file early, but I think I'm going to file on the 15th this year.
RUSH: Well, good!
CALLER: And use as many forms as I can.
RUSH: You know, I grew up around people who loved getting a huge refund every April or May, whenever they got the refunds. They went around and bragged about how they shafted the government, "Look at the refund I got!" and I thought, "Well, how do I get in on this?" and I found they were having more withheld. They were giving the government the use of their money all in exchange for a big lump sum refund every year. And I finally figured out, well, that's silly. You're giving the government money, and they're not giving you any interest on it. And so I have advised people, "You should try, if you can, to go so that you get no refund." But people are so conditioned to have that lump sum, they can go out and spend it on whatever they need or want at the time that it's tough discipline. What I've learned about this, my objective is to spend everything I've got before I pass away. And my last check will be written to the IRS, and it will bounce. I have no desire whatsoever to give the government, states -- and I get audited every year by the state of New York, and I have been since 1997. I don't even live there and I haven't even been there this year.
But I'm getting away from your point. This is two calls in a row, and maybe, what is it, six or seven today that people have suggested withholding tax revenue from federal and state governments as a way of shutting them down and causing chaos in their lives. And I like the way people are thinking about this, this is an interesting way to think about it because it illustrates that people are not going to just sit here and take it anymore, that they really are fed up and more energized about this than ever before. Folks, I can't tell you what it's going to be. I don't know how, but people are going to rebel over this. AP headline number five: "Limbaugh Urges Rebellion Against President Obama Two Days Before Christmas."
Yes this is Rush Limbaugh. He is right 98.7% of the time... Look it up. He is telling the truth here folks.
RUSH: Now, folks, let me address this, because I got an e-mail, I mentioned it briefly at the conclusion of the previous hour. I'm not trying to dispirit anybody but I must be honest with you about how I think the Democrats are going to play this, and I have to be honest when I tell you I don't think they care about losing their majority. That's how committed to this they are, and I don't doubt for a minute that health care and health insurance will become the new third rail, just like Social Security. Every election they're going to accuse Republicans who want to take away your health insurance, just like they traditionally accuse Republicans who want to take away Social Security. It's the way they play the game.
Now, I think you all should keep calling offices, flooding offices with faxes, e-mails, and so forth, and do the rallies. They have helped. They have made a huge difference, they've delayed this. This was going to happen in August. Remember, they wanted all this to happen in August. And the protests did matter. But honestly, this isn't the long view. This is a spontaneous grassroots uprising that is happening, tea party movement and so forth that, as I say, did in fact slow this down, and it will make a difference in November. Movements take time to develop and the conservative movement, this one, after decades of neglect, is on the march. Conservatism is on the ascendancy. Now, when we face the kind of despotism that we're facing in today's Democrat Party, it takes all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. The public is energized. There are people who are willing to go to jail rather than be forced to buy health insurance. They are willing to do it. I got a guy waiting to talk to me who is a small business guy in St. Louis -- well, let's grab him now. Jim in St. Louis, I'm glad you called, tell everybody what it is that you are suggesting.
CALLER: Well, Rush it's very, very great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Longtime listener. Listen, I think even though I'd love to talk to you, I want to talk to small business in this country. I think small business could stop this health care dead in its tracks. All we have to do as small business for a short term pain for a long term gain is just shed your payrolls down 50%. Let's overrun the unemployment offices to where they cannot deal with this crisis and let them know that we as small businesses in this country are the ones in charge and without our money they can't do any of this. We are the ones that allow them to do to us what they are doing. If we quit sending our money to these people, they cannot implement these programs. They work for us. We do not work for them. I'm tired. I've run a company for almost 30 years. I'm in the housing market and I manufacture window products. And I can tell you this. I know that everybody this time is hurting, but you know what? For about two weeks we could bring Washington to their knees.
RUSH: Okay, Snerdley, Dawn, Brian, you're fired. Do not come back. You are going on the unemployment line next year. We're going to flood -- (laughing) well this is what it's going to take. Would you do it? If you were an employee would you accept being fired on this principle?
CALLER: Yes. I'm looking at my family and what's going to affect me the next 30 years of my life. What if you don't take a stand for two or three weeks to what's going to affect you for the next 30 years of your life while you're alive? What are you going to do about your parents when this passes?
RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute, what's to say it's just two or three weeks that people are going to be unemployed?
CALLER: Rush, we pay payroll taxes every week to the coffers of the federal government, every week. You start drying that up, the only way that they can do anything is with our money. And the only way they get our money is we have employment, and the time you start taking away the withholding, you quit paying them the Social Security, you quit matching unemployment benefits, you quit doing that, they do not have the money in the state of Illinois right now where I have my business to even keep unemployment checks current.
RUSH: I know. Chicago has had to shut down for budgetary reasons.
CALLER: That's right.
RUSH: The city of Chicago. Now, here's the thing. When you're dealing with rational people in government this makes great theoretical sense, but this bunch will just turn on the printing presses, which is what they're doing now.
CALLER: They will not be able to sustain. They need unemployment numbers not to be at 500,000. They need them to be at 1.5 million for a week and then panic is going to have set in to let them know, "Look, business in this country runs this nation. You don't. And either you come back down to the table and talk to us --" we as businesspeople across this country have to make them come to us and then maybe we can get a dialogue. The way we're going about it now, there will be no dialogue. And the only way there's no dialogue now is we keep sending them our money.
RUSH: Well, that's because people have to eat. Look, philosophically I admire what you're saying, and it would be great to be able to some way deny them this money, but at the same time people have to eat, they have to feed their kids. So you're suggesting go on unemployment, get by with just what you get on unemployment for a while just to make the case, run real unemployment numbers way, way up like triple 'em, to send a message.
CALLER: That's correct, because there's one thing for sure. When this takes effect, the unemployment numbers are gonna go up because the employers aren't going to go along with it when it does go into effect. So it's either now or later.
RUSH: That's the design. That's the design, to get 'em going to government for their health insurance and for their health coverage.
CALLER: We have to reverse the design. We have to give them the design before they get it passed.
RUSH: I'm sitting here thinking. Snerdley is sending me a note, Jim, suggesting the AP lead headline tonight will be: "Limbaugh Calls for One Million to be Fired Before Christmas Day." New York Times: "Limbaugh Fires Millions," Washington Post: "Women and Children Hardest Hit."
CALLER: Well, I can understand that, but I think the American people have gone through a lot of pain right now, and I don't think the pain is as great as it's going to be here in the future.
RUSH: Well, now, that is a point. It is going to get worse. There's no question. This is a tough call. But what I want to emphasize about what Jim said here is that we still do run this country. We still do run the country. This kind of action is not unprecedented. We've had the Boston Tea Party and any number of other things. I want to find for you in my stack -- let me take a break and find it -- I gotta find the tipping point for the Founding Fathers to say, "Enough!" and rebel against the crown to found this country. Jim, thanks very much for the call.
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RUSH: Okay, small business caller from St. Louis, Jim was his name. Without realizing it, what Jim was advocating was a leftist strategy to destroy the country and it's called Cloward-Piven, and these are people, Saul Alinsky bought into them, they go way, way back. They predate Alinsky, and Obama is a big believer. I think -- now, allow me the opportunity to be wrong on this -- I think they were Columbia University types, Cloward-Piven. The idea was to flood the welfare system, flood the welfare state to make it collapse, to bring on a revolution. Now, the kind of revolution Cloward-Piven want is a revolution not where the people run the show, but where the people have nothing to say about anything, just flood the system to prove it doesn't work and then get everybody worthless, powerless, with nothing, with only the government to come in and save the day. That's their theory on it. Jim's theory of the outcome is different, that government would have to cave. It's like France, when the people in France go on strike, when they get ticked off they just go on strike. There are any number of ways of pulling this off. Just don't go to work. You gotta make sure that you don't get paid when you don't go to work and you gotta be willing not to get paid if you're going to do this. It will require a huge commitment.
Here's Tanya in Marion, Illinois, who wants to weigh in on it. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, my God, Rush, what a privilege. I am so thankful I am calling after Jim.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I am a caseworker in southern Illinois. I'm probably going to lose my job over this --
RUSH: What kind of caseworker?
CALLER: I am a welfare caseworker.
RUSH: Welfare.
CALLER: I hand out food stamps.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I hand out food stamps and medical cards. You follow Jim. You lower those tax rolls by 50%. They all hit the food stamps, the department of public aid, they come in, they get food stamps, they get free medical, state of Illinois, you get free medical if you got kids in the home and you make less than, you know, X-amount of dollars and if you're on unemployment you get it automatically. And it will destroy the food stamp which is of course everybody knows the Department of Agriculture, which is yours and my tax dollars. Our state's close to bankruptcy as it is. It is a joke. But if they follow Jim and then they all hit the public aid offices to make a point about what they're doing in Congress, Rush, I've listened to you for 15 years, I worked at Boatmen's Trust company in St. Louis, prior to that I was at Citicorp in St. Louis, I have followed you, I have personally had lunch with your cousin in Cape Girardeau when he was running the bank at Boatmen's down there. Due to a seizure disorder, I have had to go to the state where I am a union employee. Though I pay the nonunion dues, they hate me because of that, but I am now protected, they cannot fire me. Now, of course my salary's dropped in half but that's beside the point. I have a job, they can't fire me, and I've taught my kids the best I can. I've listened to you forever. A thousand times I have called you. And this could not have been the -- it was the most opportune, opportunity for Snerdley to take my call.
RUSH: Opportune time for you to get through. You know, yesterday we had a story about food stamps and how more Americans than ever are on them and the poverty level is at an all-time high, and the story was about how businesses are adjusting to the first of the month and the end of the month when the government dumps the food stamp benefits on these people's debit cards.
CALLER: Oh, you bet, the grocery stores, absolutely. Rush, okay, just for your listeners, I am college educated, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, bachelors, MBA, okay? And I'm making $50 grand a year, okay? That's it. But that's okay. That's okay. I'm doing just fine. I have taken a second job at a little convenience store called Huck's. I work 20 to 26 hours a week to put groceries on my table. But, Rush, what eats me up more than anything in this world is when they talk about the obesity problem, they talk about how everybody is obese, guess who comes in to the little grocery stores and the little Huck's and the convenience stores across this nation and they buy the candy and they buy the Red Bull? I've never in my life tried Red Bull because I can't afford a $3.50 energy drink.
RUSH: You ought to try it with vodka.
CALLER: We don't sell liquor at the little store I work at. I work 40 hours a week at my real job and 20 to 26 hours a week on my second job, and I barely have food for my two kids, it is a joke. And they come in there, and they go crazy because they've never had to pay for themselves ever.
RUSH: Now, this is the point about all this. The point about all this is that this is the greatest country with the greatest economy in the history of humanity, and yet the poverty level is at an all-time high under whose tutelage? The Democrats have been running all the spending since 2007. Obama is the president. And now we've got a record poverty rate, we have a record number of people on food stamps, and we have the federal government working with business to timely dump these food stamp and other benefits on their debit cards, and then they head to the stores to stock up when that happens. See, my theory is that this is all by design. My theory is that this is by design to make sure as many people in this country dependent as possible.
I maintain to you that if your strategery were implemented, that if we added to the unemployment rolls one million people next week rather than the 500,000 that are going to show up, that there are people in the Democrat Party who would rub their hands together and go, "All right, all right." They may not understand what's going on, that it was part of a movement, but believe me, this is the hideous nature of this. The chaos that we're seeing has been created, the chaos is on purpose. The employment situation is on purpose. Everything that Obama has done since he took office has been contraindicative of what to do to create jobs. He is doing just the opposite of what's necessary to create jobs. He is stifling investment; he is offering no incentive whatsoever; he's got these health care plans and cap and trade lurking in the future; people who are going to be responsible for investing in business or lending money to people have no idea what the rules are going to be, this is by design.
This economy is coming to a slowdown, and the difference is that it's on purpose. A lot of people don't want to believe this because they can't understand why anybody would want to do it. All you have to do is look at what they're doing with health care to understand it. It's power. It's control. And it's power in perpetuity for them. The more people who have these debit cards every month waiting for the government to load 'em up with benefits so they can go to the Huck's and pick up some Red Bull and candy, the happier people like Obama are. I mean it's hideous. These people are anathema to the traditions, institutions that have made this country great. It's not just people are going to be looking at what they're eating, you wait 'til people have a big screen TV next door for you when you're illegal and they call the government on you. Citizens are going to be pitted against citizens once this health care thing passes, it's disastrous.
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RUSH: Cloward-Piven was indeed from Columbia University. "The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, then both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work, in a 1966 article in The Nation. The two argued that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would create a political crisis that would force US politicians, particularly the Democratic Party, to enact legislation 'establishing a guaranteed national income.'" These people were anti-free market, they were anti-capitalist, they were pro-statist, doing everything they could with their strategy here to blow up the country as it existed and exists, same thing with Saul Alinsky.
Now, I don't think you would even need to layoff workers to do this. Just don't send the tax payments to Washington. That would be one way of doing this. Because Jim in St. Louis was right, I mean the feds rely on all those payroll taxes from all these businesses, sales tax and all this. If every business just banded together and said we're not sending the money, just stop sending it, put it in an escrow account, the feds do not have the personnel to even to attempt to collect those taxes. (interruption) Well, that's the thing, they'll just print the money, but, no, that would be unrest they would have to deal with. Here's the next AP headline: "After Calling for Mass Firings, Limbaugh Calls for Mass Tax Evasion Two Days Before Christmas." (laughing) Probably right. That's probably what's going to happen.
I'm thinking about Tom Friedman. This little punk who goes over to Copenhagen talks about how wonderful Copenhagen is comes back here and describes what a rotten place we are, it's like leaving the Jetsons and returning to the Flintstones. Friedman is the perfect example, folks, of a statist. He's wealthy -- he married into his wealth, by the way, he married into it -- he lives on several acres on an estate. He travels the world on an expense account. He eats the finest foods. But he doesn't produce anything. It's like Obama. He produces nothing but words. He appreciates nothing. He acts like he's leading some kind of revolution against the very society that enables a person like him to succeed, totally ungrateful for what this country has made possible for him. He hasn't produced diddly-squat. He's out there thinking he's leading a revolution, one of the smartest guys walking the planet. Copenhagen, yeah. That's the Jetsons. Flies back to Newark, why, that's the Flintstones.
The straw that broke the Founding Fathers' backs. The Intolerable Acts of 1774. When you listen to this stuff, these Intolerable Acts, this is the stuff that broke the camel's back for the Founders. This makes what's happening today seem like child's play. "The British government responded by passing several acts which came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which further darkened Colonial opinion towards the British. They consisted of four laws enacted by the British parliament. The first was the Massachusetts Government Act, which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings." That ticked them off. That's why freedom to associate is in the Constitution, because it was restricted. "The second Act, the Administration of Justice Act, ordered that all British soldiers to be tried were to be arraigned in Britain, not in the colonies." That ticked 'em off. "The third Act was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party (the British never received such a payment)." That ticked them off. "The fourth Act was the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner."
Those were the four things that sent Founding Fathers over the edge. They already escaped for freedom of religion. So that was already in the deck. Now, these things seem like child's play compared to what is happening today. And people ask me all the time, "Rush, do you think that there would ever be a revolution?" Let me just tell you this. Here's the third AP headline, Snerdley. I do think the American citizens and their anger is going to translate into some sort of citizen action. You can feel it percolating in every one of these phone calls that we've taken for the past six months here. Rebel, maybe, I don't know how it would manifest itself. Firing people, laying people off, not paying taxes, it could be any of these things but it's going to be something huge. I don't pretend to know what it is. But with all of the millions of Americans out there asking, "What can I do?" Snerdley, tell me the truth, every call, if you chose to, you could have put up there for the past two months, "What can I do?" Every single call could have been, "What can I do?" Everybody out there wants to know what they can do, and at some point this is going to translate into action.
Fourth AP headline tonight: "Limbaugh Calls for Obama Overthrow Amidst Economic Recovery." They'll throw that in there. Everybody asking, "What can I do?" The fact that so many people are asking the question will produce the perfect response, and it's going to be some sort of refusal to obey. It's going to be rooted in some sort of refusal to obey some of these un-American dictates that are being called health care legislation, Senate health care legislation, cap and trade, whatever it is. You know, we had the Rock the Vote video, the audio yesterday. Let these little young socialist youth out there, let them go ahead and withhold sex from people who oppose health care. The adults will withhold consent of the governed. That's what we're going to do. You know, let 'em go around there with Susan Sarandon's daughter playing games with withholding sex and so forth. (interruption) No, no, no, that's what she did. She and some stupid hare-brained actor have cut a video for Rock the Vote and they basically tell people who don't support them on health care they're going to be frozen out of the bedroom and they're advocating everybody do that. Fine, you go play those games. We will withhold the consent of being governed.
There is going to be some sort of refusal to obey the, quote, unquote, the crown, refusal to obey the government here. That's where this is headed, that's how un-American this is. And every time Tom Friedman comes back from some faraway eastern European capital where cell phone coverage gets shut down with a little snowfall and starts comparing this country to the Flintstones and that place to Jetsons, fine, stay there, Tom. If they've got it down pat, they live the way you think we ought to live, go where they live that way, but we are not them, this is the United States of America.
I just got a note here, a press release: "Today, US Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and John Ensign (R-Nevada), raised a Constitutional Point of Order on the Senate floor against the Democrat health care takeover bill on behalf of the Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators. The Senate will vote tomorrow on the bill’s constitutionality. 'I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,' said Senator Ensign. 'As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to force this mandate on its citizens.' 'Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,' said Senator DeMint."
So now it will naturally lose. But it still is a good idea because they're standing up and they're getting it out there. Well, let's see just how much coverage this gets. Mr. Snerdley, let's just see how many of the State-Controlled Media actually spend time reporting a vote on the constitutionality of the bill. I expect what will happen is, they will report it after the fact and after the Senate has voted that it is constitutional.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the phones, to Cecil, Amarillo, Texas. Welcome, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Good morning, Mr. Limbaugh, or I should say good afternoon. I'm a former progressive Democrat forced into conversion by being required to watch your television show, and I agree with you most of the time. In my position I'm just going to refuse to purchase health care. I'm going to make them put me in jail and take me the court. It violates due process. My money is my property. They can't take my property without due process, and they can't put me in jail for a fine. If I owe a traffic fine they can't put me in jail for that, it's unconstitutional. So I would suggest if people are really upset about it, just force 'em to put you in jail and take you in front of the courts. Jury nullification works, and that's basically when the jury says, "Yeah, you committed the offense, but it was all right to do so," in a nutshell.
RUSH: Like the O.J. jury.
CALLER: Well, no, because there was evidence on both sides of that, you know, I mean you could argue --
RUSH: No, no, no, I was being lighthearted, but jury nullification, that jury was going to find him not guilty because of things that had nothing to do with the case.
CALLER: Right. Well, in this case jury nullification, I'll give you an example. There was a Navy SEAL down in south Texas, some kids shot his dog, he chased them through several counties before they were finally apprehended. He had the opportunity to shoot 'em and kill them and if he'd have went in front of a jury, the jury would have found him not guilty, but he didn't, you know, he restrained himself, he's a Navy SEAL and he used his training, and he restrained himself, but had he killed them, no jury in Texas would have found him guilty even though he had actually committed the offense of murder. So the same thing here. If you refuse to purchase health care insurance, people in the jury of similar mind just turn around and say you're not guilty irrespective of whatever the state presented as evidence.
RUSH: Wait a second. Along these lines, I have read some of the bill now. There are exemptions. There are religious exemptions for American native Indians. There are exemptions for people experiencing financial hardship. I kid you not. Now, I have a question because I have a naturally inquisitive mind. If people who are experiencing financial hardship are exempt from having to buy insurance, then how does this bill cover the uninsured? Aren't we told that most people are uninsured 'cause they can't afford it, and doesn't this bill really only make people buy insurance? That's what this is all about. So if we except the very people we're trying to force into insurance, what exactly is being accomplished here?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here's Ernie in Chico, California. Ernie, it's great to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thank you very much. Conservative, conservative here in Northern California, and I just wanted to say a couple things and then ask you a quick question -- and, by the way, thank you for commenting on the reason for the season. I appreciate that.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I have been in business for 20 years, and I'm just starting to get into politics. Well, I've always been in politics, but just starting to get heavily into it here in the state. And just a couple quick comments on Jim who called earlier. You know, we're already in Northern California here I'm seeing lots of and lots of, businesses going out of business, cutting back. You know, it's a state that has its own problems. It's in bankruptcy, and we're seeing that throughout numerous cities in California.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: And we're dealing with the medical community and in health care. You know, I know a lot of the doctors, this is the business that I'm in, in their own practices -- especially when they're dealing with Medi-Cal, that is a joke any way the fact that for the last three years these guys, these business owners -- which are doctors -- not getting paid for two, three, four months at a time from the State of California because of Medi-Cal.
RUSH: And it's going to get worse.
CALLER: Can you imagine if the federal government decides to do it? The state can't even get their budget under control and they go for two or three months and they don't pay?
RUSH: It's going to happen. That's what bundling is all about. That's exactly what bundling is all about, and the reimbursements are going to be less. Doctors are going to be earning less. This is an utter disaster. But that stuff's not going to start for four years.
CALLER: One of the comments that was made to me from one of the local doctors up here is basically that, you know, when you deal with the Blue Crosses -- the health care industry or the insurance agencies right now -- they can get something through within a week when they ask for it. On Medi-Cal, it takes a month or two to get an answer back on some kind of a procedure. So how in the world can government think that it's going to be able to do anything better? It can't. We have a pretty good health care system right now. I'm sure it needs to be taken care of in dealing with lawyers and some other things and being able to go across state lines.
RUSH: The question that you ask... The correct question is not, "When is the government going to realize it can't do it?" The correct question is: "When are the people who support this going to wake up and understand?" I'm not talking about the elected officials, because they support it for a whole different reason. They don't care how it turns out. They don't care how it functions. Do you think they care how bureaucracies function at all? They don't! There isn't one that functions smoothly. The real question is: Average Americans, Democrats who are for this, when are they going to realize that what you describe is headed their way as a matter of daily life?
CALLER: Well, yeah.
RUSH: You would hate to think that it's going to take the implementation of the program to make that happen. Look, Ernie, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. I've got just a minute and a half here. I want to say something. I went through all of these bribes. I looked at what Ben Nelson got and all these states got. All these bribes are exemptions. The state of Nebraska will be exempted from having to pay the new mandated Medicaid costs for new Medicaid patients. In Louisiana, more money will be sent there to help the state pay for it. The very act of bribing these Senators, to me, is a tantamount admission to what a lousy piece of legislation it is. If in order to get Senators to vote for it you have to exempt their states from the provisions, then you are saying, "We have here a punitive bill. We are going to wreak havoc on everybody. We are going to punish everybody. That's the only way we can make health care equal," and in the process, some people don't want to be punished or they won't vote for it so they're exempted. I mean, the very fact that these deals were made is the proof of how rotten this is and how it is not -- in any way, shape, manner, or form -- the way it is being promoted.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To New Orleans and Eileen, thank you for waiting. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, Merry Christmas. We love you down here.
RUSH: Thank you. I love you, too.
CALLER: I was just thinking, these Democrats are centralizing this massive amount of power and now this looks like they're willing to give up their majority. Do they ever consider that conservatives could get it back and appoint Dick Cheney to administer the death panels? Does it ever cross their mind?
RUSH: (laughing) I'll tell you, they do not think that we will do anything to roll back any of what they've passed if we do take power back, because they don't think the Republicans as currently constituted have the guts. Now, what you're saying is, with a new conservative leadership running the House and Senate, new conservative leadership running the Republican Party, the Democrats won't know what hit them. And that conservative movement is in an ascendancy here. The current House leadership, Senate leadership, they're probably right, because they would fall prey to the allegation that Republicans want to take people's health insurance away from them.
CALLER: But, Rush, they're not smart. You wanted to know the definition of smart the other day. Smart is knowing what you don't know. And that is their Achilles heel, and they have no idea what's going on out here, and Dick Cheney is our fantasy. Dick Cheney running the death panels would bring peace on earth.
RUSH: (laughing) It's a toss-up as to whether or not they know what's going on. You're probably right. They do not know the degree. But even if they did, I'm telling you, they wouldn't care. They don't care. This is not a representative republic anymore. These are dictatorial people. I'm glad you called, Eileen. Great to have you with us. Roland in Sarasota, Florida. Hello, you're next on the EIB Network. Welcome.
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Sir.
CALLER: It's an honor to talk to you. And I want to thank you for all that you do.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: You had an earlier caller, Jim, and he was speaking about what business, small business people could do to withhold money from the Feds. As a worker that pays federal withholding tax, I've considered what a lot of people could do but it would have to be a lot of people to do it to make it work. Take nine exemptions on your W2. And if you do that in January you don't have to ante up 'til April 15th of 2011. And if 20 or 30 million people did that, I think it would be the equivalent of a bloodless revolution.
RUSH: Well, that's interesting. I don't know that you'd be affecting enough money doing that. You could be. But it's clear that there is sentiment out there. You're the, I don't know, fifth or sixth caller we've had today who has signed on to some sort of plan to withhold tax revenue from the federal and state governments simply because they haven't the manpower to police it and collect it. People have said we're willing to go to jail to do it. This goes to back to what Eileen was saying earlier, she doesn't think the Democrats have the slightest idea the degree of protest, rage, anger over the fruited plain, and they may not, but I also don't think they care, and I also think that they don't think this would work. When you think like they do, as dictators, not as small D Democrats, then there's any number of ways to punish people for all of these acts of disobedience. This is the way they would look at it. They'd be looking to find ways to punish them, even after the fact, even if it worked. I want to grab one more here before we go. Thanks, Roland. This is Sally in South Lake Tahoe. Nice to have you with us. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. This is really awesome. My civil obedience suggestion is everyone use paper to file their taxes, download forms if necessary, and use their paper, and then mail them on April 15th. Do not mail anything early. Mail it all on the 15th of April, and that would get the point across.
RUSH: Well, here's the problem with that, and I hate to be negative here. But you've just highlighted one of the problems that we have. Most people have their taxes withheld throughout the year and you get your W-2 and that gets forwarded and the government's got your money all year.
CALLER: Yes, but if you have more taken out or you don't pay quite enough, you still have to file a tax form. And there's plenty of us that are -- I'm probably technically called poor, but I generally file early, but I think I'm going to file on the 15th this year.
RUSH: Well, good!
CALLER: And use as many forms as I can.
RUSH: You know, I grew up around people who loved getting a huge refund every April or May, whenever they got the refunds. They went around and bragged about how they shafted the government, "Look at the refund I got!" and I thought, "Well, how do I get in on this?" and I found they were having more withheld. They were giving the government the use of their money all in exchange for a big lump sum refund every year. And I finally figured out, well, that's silly. You're giving the government money, and they're not giving you any interest on it. And so I have advised people, "You should try, if you can, to go so that you get no refund." But people are so conditioned to have that lump sum, they can go out and spend it on whatever they need or want at the time that it's tough discipline. What I've learned about this, my objective is to spend everything I've got before I pass away. And my last check will be written to the IRS, and it will bounce. I have no desire whatsoever to give the government, states -- and I get audited every year by the state of New York, and I have been since 1997. I don't even live there and I haven't even been there this year.
But I'm getting away from your point. This is two calls in a row, and maybe, what is it, six or seven today that people have suggested withholding tax revenue from federal and state governments as a way of shutting them down and causing chaos in their lives. And I like the way people are thinking about this, this is an interesting way to think about it because it illustrates that people are not going to just sit here and take it anymore, that they really are fed up and more energized about this than ever before. Folks, I can't tell you what it's going to be. I don't know how, but people are going to rebel over this. AP headline number five: "Limbaugh Urges Rebellion Against President Obama Two Days Before Christmas."
Friday, December 25, 2009
Burn
My heart crumbles to dust
I search alone for the vase in which to put the ashes,
But I cannot see through the viscous night,
I do not know what folly lies in the darkness before me.
I know only that nothing guides me but the cold.
Vicious heat sears my skin and chars my mind.
Flames lash endlessly my toes and eyes.
I stumble through the blackest hell,
Knowing only that some part of me survives.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Zen Master Teaching #63
Zen Master Teaching #63: Focus. When setting mind upon task, be wary of distractions. One may get up in attempt to answer question from email, then end up finding ninety minutes lost to activities as meaningless as handleless sword.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Nowhere to Run
I may be out of comission for a bit, but I haven't neglected my duties. If you call yourself my friend, you should read this... Interesting little tidbit from the Drudge Report.
There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government
'Global' thinking won't necessarily solve the world's problems, says Janet Daley
By Janet Daley
Published: 7:24PM GMT 19 Dec 2009
There is scope for debate – and innumerable newspaper quizzes – about who was the most influential public figure of the year, or which the most significant event. But there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)
Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word "global", as in "global economic crisis", meant: "It's not my fault". To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.
Given the global ambitions of the terrorists, British casualties in Afghanistan are not disproportionate. The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.
Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational "legally binding agreements", what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro‑bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.
But, you may say, however dire the political consequences, surely there is something in this obsession with global dilemmas. Economics is now based on a world market, and if the planet really is facing some sort of man-made climate crisis, then that too is a problem that transcends national boundaries. Surely, if our problems are universal the solutions must be as well.
Well, yes and no. Calling a problem "global" is meant to imply three different things: that it is the result of the actions of people in different countries; that those actions have impacted on the lives of everyone in the world; and that the remedy must involve pretty much identical responses or correctives to those actions. These are separate premises, any of which might be true without the rest of them necessarily being so. The banking crisis certainly had its roots in the international nature of finance, but the way it affected countries and peoples varied considerably according to the differences in their internal arrangements. Britain suffered particularly badly because of its addiction to public and private debt, whereas Australia escaped relatively unscathed.
That a problem is international in its roots does not necessarily imply that the solution must involve the hammering out of a uniform global prescription: in fact, given the differences in effects and consequences for individual countries, the attempt to do such hammering might be a huge waste of time and resources that could be put to better use devising national remedies. France and Germany seem to have pulled themselves out of recession over the past year (and the US may be about to do so) while Britain has not. These variations owe almost nothing to the pompous, overblown attempts to find global solutions: they are largely to do with individual countries, under the pressure of democratic accountability, doing what they decide is best for their own people.
This is not what Mr Brown calls "narrow self-interest", or "beggar my neighbour" ruthlessness. It is the proper business of elected national leaders to make judgments that are appropriate for the conditions of their own populations. It is also right that heads of nations refuse to sign up to "legally binding" global agreements which would disadvantage their own people. The resistance of the developing nations to a climate change pact that would deny them the kind of economic growth and mass prosperity to which advanced countries have become accustomed is not mindless selfishness: it is proper regard for the welfare of their own citizens.
The word "global" has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily "narrow" and self-serving. (Never mind that a "global agreement" will almost certainly be disproportionately influenced by the most powerful nations.) Nor is our era so utterly unlike previous ones, for all its technological sophistication. We have always needed multilateral agreements, whether about trade, organised crime, border controls, or mutual defence.
If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. "Globalism" is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the "blood and soil" nationalism that gave rise to fascism.
The nation-state has never quite recovered from the bad name it acquired in the last century as the progenitor of world war. But if it is to be relegated to the dustbin of history then we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year's global challenge.
There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government
'Global' thinking won't necessarily solve the world's problems, says Janet Daley
By Janet Daley
Published: 7:24PM GMT 19 Dec 2009
There is scope for debate – and innumerable newspaper quizzes – about who was the most influential public figure of the year, or which the most significant event. But there can be little doubt which word won the prize for most important adjective. 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". Gordon Brown actually suggested something called a "global alliance" in response to climate change. (Would this be an alliance against the Axis of Extra-Terrestrials?)
Some of this was sheer hokum: when uttered by Gordon Brown, the word "global", as in "global economic crisis", meant: "It's not my fault". To the extent that the word had intelligible meaning, it also had political ramifications that were scarcely examined by those who bandied it about with such ponderous self-importance. The mere utterance of it was assumed to sweep away any consideration of what was once assumed to be the most basic principle of modern democracy: that elected national governments are responsible to their own people – that the right to govern derives from the consent of the electorate.
Given the global ambitions of the terrorists, British casualties in Afghanistan are not disproportionate. The dangerous idea that the democratic accountability of national governments should simply be dispensed with in favour of "global agreements" reached after closed negotiations between world leaders never, so far as I recall, entered into the arena of public discussion. Except in the United States, where it became a very contentious talking point, the US still holding firmly to the 18th-century idea that power should lie with the will of the people.
Nor was much consideration given to the logical conclusion of all this grandiose talk of global consensus as unquestionably desirable: if there was no popular choice about approving supranational "legally binding agreements", what would happen to dissenters who did not accept their premises (on climate change, for example) when there was no possibility of fleeing to another country in protest? Was this to be regarded as the emergence of world government? And would it have powers of policing and enforcement that would supersede the authority of elected national governments? In effect, this was the infamous "democratic deficit" of the European Union elevated on to a planetary scale. And if the EU model is anything to go by, then the agencies of global authority will involve vast tracts of power being handed to unelected officials. Forget the relatively petty irritations of Euro‑bureaucracy: welcome to the era of Earth-bureaucracy, when there will be literally nowhere to run.
But, you may say, however dire the political consequences, surely there is something in this obsession with global dilemmas. Economics is now based on a world market, and if the planet really is facing some sort of man-made climate crisis, then that too is a problem that transcends national boundaries. Surely, if our problems are universal the solutions must be as well.
Well, yes and no. Calling a problem "global" is meant to imply three different things: that it is the result of the actions of people in different countries; that those actions have impacted on the lives of everyone in the world; and that the remedy must involve pretty much identical responses or correctives to those actions. These are separate premises, any of which might be true without the rest of them necessarily being so. The banking crisis certainly had its roots in the international nature of finance, but the way it affected countries and peoples varied considerably according to the differences in their internal arrangements. Britain suffered particularly badly because of its addiction to public and private debt, whereas Australia escaped relatively unscathed.
That a problem is international in its roots does not necessarily imply that the solution must involve the hammering out of a uniform global prescription: in fact, given the differences in effects and consequences for individual countries, the attempt to do such hammering might be a huge waste of time and resources that could be put to better use devising national remedies. France and Germany seem to have pulled themselves out of recession over the past year (and the US may be about to do so) while Britain has not. These variations owe almost nothing to the pompous, overblown attempts to find global solutions: they are largely to do with individual countries, under the pressure of democratic accountability, doing what they decide is best for their own people.
This is not what Mr Brown calls "narrow self-interest", or "beggar my neighbour" ruthlessness. It is the proper business of elected national leaders to make judgments that are appropriate for the conditions of their own populations. It is also right that heads of nations refuse to sign up to "legally binding" global agreements which would disadvantage their own people. The resistance of the developing nations to a climate change pact that would deny them the kind of economic growth and mass prosperity to which advanced countries have become accustomed is not mindless selfishness: it is proper regard for the welfare of their own citizens.
The word "global" has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily "narrow" and self-serving. (Never mind that a "global agreement" will almost certainly be disproportionately influenced by the most powerful nations.) Nor is our era so utterly unlike previous ones, for all its technological sophistication. We have always needed multilateral agreements, whether about trade, organised crime, border controls, or mutual defence.
If the impact of our behaviour on humanity at large is much greater or more rapid than ever before then we shall have to find ways of dealing with that which do not involve sacrificing the most enlightened form of government ever devised. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. "Globalism" is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the "blood and soil" nationalism that gave rise to fascism.
The nation-state has never quite recovered from the bad name it acquired in the last century as the progenitor of world war. But if it is to be relegated to the dustbin of history then we had better come up with new mechanisms for allowing people to have a say in how they are governed. Maybe that could be next year's global challenge.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
On a Personal Note...
Life is tough, people. You live and you die by the sword... that is just the way it was meant to be.
Haha, bear with me, this note will be brief, but it is significant...
I have come to a few little notes of interest this past week, and it will help me immensely to post them where I can go back and read them. Here they are, bulleted and compressed.
--Wisdom is a perishable item. If we do not keep it constantly updated, we wither and waste away. I have been complacent, lazy, and selfish the past few months. It really doesn't matter where in the hell I am... I have to stay up to snuff. My brother has become an information junkie, and people I work with surpass me in knowledge of current events... that is most unacceptable.
--Music will be the only saving grace. Well, with the exception of God's love. However, in a more tangible sense, music will be the only thing that will keep you running. You must always remember that songs are life in motion... If we do not keep the right rhythm, we get thrown off balance...
--Skills are important, but developing them is what truly matters. Jacks of all trades are at least proficient in their tasks... Attempting to have many, many skills which you are only mediocre in accomplishing is about as useful as having ten different types of forks to eat one salad. That being said, keep with what you have. You will find that as you become proficient, more doors will open.
--Keep the avenues clear. Life gets tough, things weigh you down. However, all of that no longer matters. As the Irish would say, "You have your health, laddie. Who gives a damn how the winds' a-blowin?" When we get caught up in mental debauchery, we lose ourselves. Focus on the here, the now, and the ever present. Let the past flow down the river, and the future be as hills in the distance. What is pressing is what is just before you.
--Calm yourself. It is no use living in a state of hyper-awarness if the side effect is hyperventilation.
--Faith is key in life. If we have no faith, we cannot do any of the following: love, trust, make jokes, or skydive. Faith is the candle which we use to guide us through the haunted mansion, the dagger in our robes when surrounded by the enemy, the very sun which breaks through the clouds. Without faith, we are but ants scrabbling around barren dirt.
--Plan for those contingencies. Be one step ahead of that guy over there who is already two steps ahead. Get them before they get you.
--Smile. Life is not worth living if there is not some humor... that's why God invented the platypus ;)
Ok... my rambling is done... To all my readers, congratulations. You just got an insight into my thought process...
Make what you will of it.
Haha, bear with me, this note will be brief, but it is significant...
I have come to a few little notes of interest this past week, and it will help me immensely to post them where I can go back and read them. Here they are, bulleted and compressed.
--Wisdom is a perishable item. If we do not keep it constantly updated, we wither and waste away. I have been complacent, lazy, and selfish the past few months. It really doesn't matter where in the hell I am... I have to stay up to snuff. My brother has become an information junkie, and people I work with surpass me in knowledge of current events... that is most unacceptable.
--Music will be the only saving grace. Well, with the exception of God's love. However, in a more tangible sense, music will be the only thing that will keep you running. You must always remember that songs are life in motion... If we do not keep the right rhythm, we get thrown off balance...
--Skills are important, but developing them is what truly matters. Jacks of all trades are at least proficient in their tasks... Attempting to have many, many skills which you are only mediocre in accomplishing is about as useful as having ten different types of forks to eat one salad. That being said, keep with what you have. You will find that as you become proficient, more doors will open.
--Keep the avenues clear. Life gets tough, things weigh you down. However, all of that no longer matters. As the Irish would say, "You have your health, laddie. Who gives a damn how the winds' a-blowin?" When we get caught up in mental debauchery, we lose ourselves. Focus on the here, the now, and the ever present. Let the past flow down the river, and the future be as hills in the distance. What is pressing is what is just before you.
--Calm yourself. It is no use living in a state of hyper-awarness if the side effect is hyperventilation.
--Faith is key in life. If we have no faith, we cannot do any of the following: love, trust, make jokes, or skydive. Faith is the candle which we use to guide us through the haunted mansion, the dagger in our robes when surrounded by the enemy, the very sun which breaks through the clouds. Without faith, we are but ants scrabbling around barren dirt.
--Plan for those contingencies. Be one step ahead of that guy over there who is already two steps ahead. Get them before they get you.
--Smile. Life is not worth living if there is not some humor... that's why God invented the platypus ;)
Ok... my rambling is done... To all my readers, congratulations. You just got an insight into my thought process...
Make what you will of it.
The Real Gitmo
From now on, I will be posting a news article from the Early Bird News on AKO daily... Please, if you follow my writings, read them. Stay informed. Thank you, Kevin, for getting me back on the wagon.
Weekly Standard
December 28, 2009
Pg. 16
Cover Story
The Real Gitmo
What I saw at America's best detention facility for terrorists.
By Thomas Joscelyn
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- Shortly after 5 A.M., a detainee with an uneven voice sings the call to prayer. After a few bars, a second detainee joins in by sounding out another hymn.
"That's unusual," a tower guard who looks bored after a few months on the job remarks. "Usually, just one of them does it."
Detainees assemble in a corner of the camp and begin praying. Others pace back and forth in front of their cells with prayer beads in hand. For several minutes all is quiet--eerily so. Some of the world's most dangerous terrorists lurk just a short distance from our perch atop a guard tower, but you would never know it.
Welcome to Camp 4 at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
The iconic images of Gitmo are not photos of Camp 4, however. The pictures that have captured the world's imagination are of detainees shackled on bended knee in bright orange jumpsuits with their eyes and ears covered. Those pictures were taken more than seven and a half years ago at Camp X-Ray, in the long corridor that runs down the middle of the camp.
Today that corridor is overrun with weeds and unruly grass, and the rest of the camp is in no better state of repair. Camp X-Ray housed "war on terror" detainees for just four months, from January to April 2002. It has long since been abandoned. Banana rats, which look like some mutant combination of possum and rat, now hang from the cages that once housed the detainees. Gone, too, are the orange jumpsuits. They have been replaced by tan, white, and other neutral-colored clothing. During my multi-day tour of Guantánamo Bay, one official tells me that some journalists from Turkey wanted to take pictures of the detainees in their bright orange jumpsuits. When this official explained the detainees no longer wear those outfits, the Turkish reporters asked if a detainee could be dressed up in one for the photos as that is what their readers expect to see.
The story is emblematic of the disconnect between life at Guantánamo as it is today, and the Guantánamo of popular mythology. It is the latter that is the basis for the Obama administration's decision to close the detention facilities there.
As one of his first acts in office, President Obama ordered Guantánamo shuttered by January 2010. He has since conceded that his administration will not meet that goal. But both he and his team remain committed to the task. The chief rationale they offer is that Guantánamo has so tarnished America's image that it has become a major recruiting tool for al Qaeda. During a press conference last week, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that al Qaeda's senior leaders have referred to Guantánamo some 32 times in their recruitment videos since 2001. Gibbs implied that this is a lot. It isn't. Al Qaeda refers to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the existence of Israel, as reasons to wage jihad far more frequently in its propaganda.
Gibbs pointed to the fact that senior al Qaeda leaders referred to Guantánamo four times in 2009 alone. Gibbs did not specify which messages he had in mind, but Zawahiri's August 5 tape, entitled "The Facts of Jihad and the Lies of the Hypocrites," is a typical example of al Qaeda's Gitmo-related propaganda. According to a 26-page translation published online by the NEFA Foundation, Zawahiri mentioned Guantánamo five times. By way of comparison, words related to "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" appear more than 70 times each. The words "Israel" and "Israelis" appear 39 times. The word "Zionist" appears another four times--in the context of an imagined American-Zionist conspiracy against the Muslim world. (According to Ayman al-Zawahiri, by the way, Obama is himself a participant in this conspiracy.) And the words "Jew," "Jewish," and "Jewishness" appear another 12 times.
Guantánamo has simply never been a major part of al Qaeda's recruitment strategy. But even if it were and we closed it, the terror masters would simply find the next pretext for justifying their acts. After all, if we are to close Guantánamo because al Qaeda objects to it, then why not abandon America's entire foreign policy agenda?
Nonetheless the White House presses on with closing Gitmo--even in the face of substantial controversy.
This past week, the administration confirmed that it had selected an underutilized correctional center in the town of Thomson, in northwest Illinois, as the new home for up to 100 Gitmo detainees. A letter to Illinois governor Pat Quinn announced the administration's plan for the federal government to buy the prison in Thomson and rebuild one section of it to make the facility even more secure than America's "supermax" prison in Colorado--where several convicted terrorists are currently housed. This assurance is intended to assuage any concerns over the government's ability to safely detain the Gitmo detainees on U.S. soil.
Ironically, however, most of the roughly 210 detainees still held at Guantánamo are not in supermax-type facilities at all. At least 70 percent live in communal settings like Camp 4. They can play soccer, basketball, or foosball; exercise on elliptical equipment; and consort with their fellow detainees for up to 20 hours per day in the outdoor recreation area. They can take art classes or learn English. And while tensions flare every now and again, life in Camp 4 is generally calm. Camp officials prefer that the detainees live in this type of setting. It's easier on the guards and everyone else involved. As the commander of Camp 4 explains, the detainees have to "do something really bad" to get locked up in one of the more secure facilities.
The detainees have access to several satellite television channels and, as one DoD handout notes, a library consisting of "more than 14,000 books, magazines, and DVDs in 18 languages." During a visit to the library, I noticed a few copies of the poetry of Rumi--a 13th-century Sufi mystic whose writings explore deeply spiritual, ethereal topics. Rumi's view of the world is diametrically opposed to that of al Qaeda's jihadists. He searched for the universal deity who he believed resided in us all, regardless of race or creed. Jihadists, on the other hand, believe they are compelled to war against anyone who dares to oppose their intolerant beliefs.
I ask the head librarian, "Do you get many requests for Rumi's books?"
With a slight chuckle she replies, "No, we don't get many requests for him. They aren't too interested in Rumi."
Oddly, the detainees are interested in many aspects of Western culture. Harry Potter is very popular, and with each new movie that comes out the detainees request more of J.K. Rowling's books.
"Everything you know about out there, they know about in here," the librarian says. That includes news events. In addition to satellite television, most of the detainees have access to three newspapers--two from the Muslim world and USA Today. The papers are censored, but only to remove any material that the detainees may find lewd, such as advertisements showing a man and woman kissing.
A while back, one detainee smashed a television set when he saw a woman's bare arms during a broadcast of a soccer match. In response, camp officials bolted down the televisions and put protective plastic casings around them. They have also gone out of their way to make sure that the detainees are not exposed to any other material they may find objectionable. For example, the nondescript faces of the foosball table's characters have been chipped off so that the detainees will not be offended by any hint of idolatry.
It is also surprising to learn the identity of some of the terrorists currently housed in the open-air facilities of Camp 4. Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was slated to be the 20th hijacker on September 11, 2001, reportedly lives here. There is little chance that the Obama administration will release al-Qahtani, despite all of the controversy surrounding the methods used during his interrogations. (Al-Qahtani was unquestionably subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment during the early days of Guantánamo.) The public outrage would simply be too great. So, it is likely that al-Qahtani will be transferred to the new facility in Illinois--or some other similarly secure facility in the United States--and such terrorists will undoubtedly pine for their days in Cuba once they are locked away in one of America's more severe correctional facilities.
An Italian journalist who accompanies me throughout much of the tour says that two Tunisian detainees who were recently transferred from Guantánamo to Italy to await trial are probably very upset right about now. They are being held in a maximum-security prison in Milan that he describes as "hell" compared with Gitmo. The Italian gentleman tells me this right after we tour the food-preparation facilities. There we found that the detainees are offered six types of meals, totaling between 5,000 and 6,000 calories, daily. In their more candid moments, the detainees complain to camp personnel that it is difficult for them to claim they have been "tortured" when they have pot bellies.
Not all of the facilities at Guantánamo are like Camp 4, of course. Camp 5 is a maximum-security facility for detainees who refuse to be compliant. (A detainee is deemed to be compliant if he generally obeys orders and does not threaten the guards or others. Compliance does not hinge on the detainee cooperating with interrogators.) Echoing his counterpart at Camp 4, the commander of Camp 5 says that the ultraviolent individuals kept in his camp have "done something really bad" to warrant segregation from the communal areas of Guantánamo. Personnel at Camp 5 say that the detainees' abuse of guards is so frequent that they would not even venture a guess as to how many instances occur in any given week.
Camp 6 was built as a medium-security facility, and some of its cell blocks offer communal-style living. It is used as a step-down facility where detainees who are in the process of proving that they can be more compliant are placed prior to returning to the more permissive environment of Camp 4. Some detainees, however, choose a different path. Our tour of Camp 6 was cut short when an undisclosed "incident" occurred.
There are other detention facilities at Guantánamo that we do not tour. Camps 1, 2, and 3 were built as a replacement for Camp X-Ray, and the detainees were moved there in April 2002. Those camps are mostly vacant today as they, in turn, were replaced by Camps 4, 5, and 6 beginning in February 2003.
Then, there is the mysterious Camp 7. Throughout the tour of Guantánamo, I jokingly pester the military guides about Camp 7 because, quite frankly, I really want to see it. Camp 7 was opened in 2006 when the Bush administration relocated the "high value detainees" from the CIA's so-called "black sites" to Guantánamo. Among its current residents are the five September 11 co-conspirators, including al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the Obama administration has pledged to bring to New York for a federal trial.
For many New Yorkers, it is deeply unsettling to think of these al Qaeda supervillains standing trial just blocks away from where their henchmen killed thousands of Americans. It is more unsettling when you realize that even here at Guantánamo, a highly secure military detention facility in the middle of the Atlantic, they are kept segregated from the rest of the detainee population. I never do get to see Camp 7. The military personnel who escort me around the island all insist that they do not know where it is located. I believe them--that is just how secure Camp 7 is.
The more you learn about the real Guantánamo, the more the Obama administration's decision to move any of the detainees to the continental United States seems entirely unnecessary. The detainees probably can be safely housed on domestic soil, but why take the risk?
What's more: The facilities that are required already exist here in Cuba. Camps 5 and 6--the maximum and medium security facilities that house detainees who refuse to be compliant--were modeled after existing correctional facilities in the Midwest. Both camps (like the rest of Guantánamo) are maintained in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. These camps have more than enough capacity to continue to hold the detainees the Obama administration now wants to transfer to the United States. And even Attorney General Eric Holder conceded after visiting the camps earlier this year that Guantánamo is "well-run" with no sign of detainee mistreatment.
Why, then, is the Obama administration determined to close Guantánamo and reinvent the wheel in Thomson, Illinois? The answer has everything to do with anachronistic perceptions and an anti-military mythology that dates from the four months when Camp X-Ray was operational.
The only reason Camp X-Ray still stands today is that a U.S. court has ordered the military to keep it erect. There are active investigations into allegations of abuse, and the courts want the facility accessible until those investigations are closed. The court's order has not, however, stopped the relentless march of time, and it is difficult to see how any real investigative work could be done here today.
As we wade through the overgrown vegetation, our military guide points to the piping in the back of one of the cages. It is nothing more than a round hole protruding from a horizontal pipe running from one side of the cage to the other.
"The pipes were put in to give the detainees a urinal," she explains. "They had buckets too, but the detainees would throw the contents of the buckets at the guards."
The pipes were supposed to mitigate the detainees' penchant for throwing "feces cocktails"--as they are known at Gitmo--but it did not work. The detainees used whatever was at hand to lash out. Some still do to this day--despite the fact they all have access to modern plumbing.
The original doors to the cages were poorly thought-out as well. They swung back and forth, meaning that defiant detainees could crash the doors into the guards as they entered the cages. That was rectified after a new type of door, which only opened inward, was installed.
Though Camp X-Ray is a shell of its former self, it is clear that even in its heyday it was a primitive facility. The whole place has an ad hoc feel to it. The camp was originally built to house Cuban and Haitian migrants who had committed criminal acts in the mid-1990s, but was closed in 1996. It was rebuilt so quickly for its new mission in late 2001 that the fencing from a nearby sports field had to be repurposed during construction. The makeshift Camp X-Ray is symbolic, in many ways, of the military's scramble to deal with the detainees it was responsible for holding.
As we walk around the camp, I can't help but think back to January 2002, before "Guantánamo" had ever become a buzzword. The "war on terror" was just a few months old, and the United States had yet to capture any of the most senior al Qaeda leaders. At the time, we had little intelligence on our terrorist enemies. Desperate to understand the designs of our jihadist foes, the U.S. military went about trying to figure out what its detainees, who did not wear military uniforms or make their "rank" easy to discern, knew about al Qaeda's and the Taliban's operations.
Even though this was a difficult process, the intelligence that was collected has been invaluable. It has directly supported combat operations in Afghanistan. It has deepened the military's understanding of how terrorists are recruited and trained, and how they construct bombs (including improvised explosive devices that are used to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan). It has shed light on how terrorists are shuttled around the world and how they are financed. This intelligence has contributed greatly to America's overall understanding of the global terror network in numerous ways.
But in the public debate over closing Gitmo, the intelligence garnered has rarely been discussed, even though thousands of pages of documents detailing what the government has learned have been declassified and released online. These documents, consisting mainly of files created during the detainees' combatant status review tribunal and administrative review board hearings, are readily available on both the DoD's and the New York Times's websites. For the most part, the media just ignore them.
While the intelligence collected has been given short shrift, there has been no lack of stories about abuse that allegedly occurred during interrogations. The early efforts at Camp X-Ray were certainly clumsy. The first detainees did not want to volunteer any information, so the military forced them into involuntary interrogations. As our military guide explained during the tour, the detainees were strapped to wooden carts and wheeled over to one of three interrogation huts just outside the holding pens. That spectacle must have exacerbated tensions as it occurred in plain view of the detainees.
The temptation is to imagine that interrogations at Guantánamo are performed in a similar fashion today. They are not. Rear Admiral Thomas Copeman III, who took over as the commander of Joint Task Force Guantánamo in June, told me that there have not been any involuntary interrogations here in approximately four years. The only way a detainee is interrogated is if he volunteers to be so. Surprisingly, between 80 and 90 detainees have volunteered to attend an interrogation during the past year alone.
The detainees do not always give up real information. Sometimes they just want the treats that are given as a reward for their nominal participation in the interrogation sessions. (The interrogators offer incentives, such as extra candy bars, for the detainees to come to the interrogation rooms.) If the detainees don't cooperate, they are simply brought back to their camp. But even using this comparatively stress-free approach to interrogations the U.S. military is still acquiring important intelligence. The intelligence community consistently finds a significant amount of value in new Gitmo intelligence.
The military's detention policies have changed significantly too. During our tour of Camp X-Ray, our guide recounted how the first riot at Guantánamo broke out. It started when a guard mistakenly thought a detainee was being disobedient after he failed to comply with an order. In reality, the detainee was praying and refused to break prayer to respond to the guard. When the guard entered the detainee's cage and disrupted the ritual, the inmates thought their religion was being disrespected and a riot broke out. This type of mistake was avoidable, and to the military's credit, it has spent a considerable amount of time and money learning from its mistakes.
There have been further detainee uprisings. During one, the detainees used the blades from fans as weapons. The detainees themselves had requested the fans as a comfort item, but quite obviously had an ulterior motive in mind. That is how the dance here at Guantánamo works. It is a balancing act, and military officials must be constantly mindful of who it is they are dealing with.
I talk with "Zak," a native Jordanian who has lived all over the world. For the last several years, he has been the chief detainee liaison. Zak is tasked with listening to the detainees' grievances and, when appropriate, trying to rectify them. It is a thankless job and he endures his share of abusive comments from the detainees. He also teaches the guards about the detainees' religion so they can avoid obvious miscommunication. This is a tricky task, to say the least, given the detainees' radical beliefs.
One of the more damaging myths about Guantánamo is that U.S. military personnel regularly and intentionally desecrate the Koran. But only a handful of instances of Koran abuse have ever been verified, and some of those instances were completely unintentional. In 2005, Newsweek reported that interrogators had flushed a -detainee's copy down the toilet. This was not true. Newsweek retracted the story but only after it had sparked riots in the Muslim world. Zak says that while he does not know of any instances of U.S. military personnel disrespecting the Koran in such a manner, he has witnessed detainees doing so. One detainee ripped the pages out of his Koran and flushed them down his toilet in what was probably an act of rage or defiance, Zak says.
Knowing that the U.S. military will be roundly criticized for any hint of Koran desecration, the detainees play games with their holy books. A common practice, Zak says, is for the detainees to put their Korans in the middle of the floor of their cells, create a fuss, and then watch as the military guards try to avoid making any contact with Allah's word.
Zak also recounts one story in which a detainee claimed that a military guard had urinated on his Koran. When Zak inspected the detainee's copy, he noticed a perfect semi-circle imprinted on its pages. Zak quickly deduced that the detainee had pressed his bottle of Gatorade against his Koran's pages to make it look as if it had been defiled. (Yes, the detainees get sports drinks.)
Another myth is that detainees who are on hunger strike are brutally force-fed. During a visit to the hospital, we're shown small pullout tables with a few nose tubes, several cans of Ensure, and other dietary supplements. The way the feeding works is for a long tube to be put through the detainee's nose down to his stomach. The dietary supplement is then poured through the tube. The detainees get to pick the flavor of the supplement that they ingest because even though they aren't swallowing the supplement they do get an after-taste. Butter pecan is their usual preference.
The detainees' lawyers describe the act of "force-feeding" as barbaric and tantamount to torture. Looking at the nose tubes, which are only slightly thicker than the average strand of spaghetti, it is clear that the "force-feeding is torture" tale, like so many others about Gitmo, is sheer nonsense. Admiral Copeman volunteered to be "force-fed" and calls it a "nonevent." Copeman's predecessor did it for an entire week and had no problem maintaining his weight or regular exercise schedule. According to the medical personnel, some of the hunger strikers (not all) use their visits to the hospital area to eat full meals. It is a matter of pride for them to pretend that they remain committed to the cause in front of other detainees. Once they are out of sight, however, they scarf down real food.
Copeman has only been on the job for six months, so I ask him what his biggest adjustment has been. He says that he is not used to having a court give him an order. Copeman is referring, at least in part, to the habeas corpus decisions coming out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. As a result of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision, the detainees have the right to challenge their detention in America's courts. If the executive branch does not challenge the courts' rulings, federal judges effectively decide whether or not the military can continue to hold detainees.
On one of the days I was at Gitmo, a Kuwaiti named Fouad al-Rabiah was sent back to his home country. D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had ordered that the United States release Rabiah. In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly demonstrated disturbing ignorance about al Qaeda. She concluded, for example, that Rabiah had established his bona fides as a legitimate charity worker prior to his two suspicious trips to Afghanistan in 2001. Therefore, there was no reason to suspect that Rabiah had traveled to al Qaeda and Taliban country for nefarious reasons. In reality, the "charities" that Rabiah worked for are all known fronts for al Qaeda and have never pursued legitimate humanitarian objectives. This was just one of the many flaws in Kollar-Kotelly's ruling. Regardless, the military complied with her decision.
Unless Congress is able to overrule the Obama administration, in all likelihood, the Guantánamo detention facilities will be shuttered at some point in 2010. The Obama administration has spent too much political capital in pursuit of this cause to abandon it now. The president and his team are likely convinced that it is the right thing to do. But in justifying his decision to close Gitmo, President Obama has implicitly sided with those who have condemned the actions of our service men and women in Guantánamo.
When the president signed the executive order to close Gitmo in January 2009, he said that the message he was sending to the world "is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism . . . in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals." His implication was that the many critics of Gitmo had a point: America deserved blame.
The U.S. military may have made mistakes at Gitmo, but it did so in the context of an extremely difficult situation. And it has taken extraordinary steps to rectify them and improve facilities that, as we should never forget, house men who are committed to an extreme ideology that justifies acts of mass terror.
As we leave the part of Guantánamo Bay that houses Camps 4, 5, and 6, we are driven through the security checkpoint one last time. I see a sign displaying the "value of the week." These signs are sprinkled around the exterior of the detention facilities and are a transparent attempt to boost troop morale, which senior camp officials say has sagged in the face of the relentless criticism.
The value this week is "Pride." The troopers who have served here should be proud. And I know that we should be proud of them. They have served their country honorably.
Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Weekly Standard
December 28, 2009
Pg. 16
Cover Story
The Real Gitmo
What I saw at America's best detention facility for terrorists.
By Thomas Joscelyn
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- Shortly after 5 A.M., a detainee with an uneven voice sings the call to prayer. After a few bars, a second detainee joins in by sounding out another hymn.
"That's unusual," a tower guard who looks bored after a few months on the job remarks. "Usually, just one of them does it."
Detainees assemble in a corner of the camp and begin praying. Others pace back and forth in front of their cells with prayer beads in hand. For several minutes all is quiet--eerily so. Some of the world's most dangerous terrorists lurk just a short distance from our perch atop a guard tower, but you would never know it.
Welcome to Camp 4 at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
The iconic images of Gitmo are not photos of Camp 4, however. The pictures that have captured the world's imagination are of detainees shackled on bended knee in bright orange jumpsuits with their eyes and ears covered. Those pictures were taken more than seven and a half years ago at Camp X-Ray, in the long corridor that runs down the middle of the camp.
Today that corridor is overrun with weeds and unruly grass, and the rest of the camp is in no better state of repair. Camp X-Ray housed "war on terror" detainees for just four months, from January to April 2002. It has long since been abandoned. Banana rats, which look like some mutant combination of possum and rat, now hang from the cages that once housed the detainees. Gone, too, are the orange jumpsuits. They have been replaced by tan, white, and other neutral-colored clothing. During my multi-day tour of Guantánamo Bay, one official tells me that some journalists from Turkey wanted to take pictures of the detainees in their bright orange jumpsuits. When this official explained the detainees no longer wear those outfits, the Turkish reporters asked if a detainee could be dressed up in one for the photos as that is what their readers expect to see.
The story is emblematic of the disconnect between life at Guantánamo as it is today, and the Guantánamo of popular mythology. It is the latter that is the basis for the Obama administration's decision to close the detention facilities there.
As one of his first acts in office, President Obama ordered Guantánamo shuttered by January 2010. He has since conceded that his administration will not meet that goal. But both he and his team remain committed to the task. The chief rationale they offer is that Guantánamo has so tarnished America's image that it has become a major recruiting tool for al Qaeda. During a press conference last week, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that al Qaeda's senior leaders have referred to Guantánamo some 32 times in their recruitment videos since 2001. Gibbs implied that this is a lot. It isn't. Al Qaeda refers to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the existence of Israel, as reasons to wage jihad far more frequently in its propaganda.
Gibbs pointed to the fact that senior al Qaeda leaders referred to Guantánamo four times in 2009 alone. Gibbs did not specify which messages he had in mind, but Zawahiri's August 5 tape, entitled "The Facts of Jihad and the Lies of the Hypocrites," is a typical example of al Qaeda's Gitmo-related propaganda. According to a 26-page translation published online by the NEFA Foundation, Zawahiri mentioned Guantánamo five times. By way of comparison, words related to "Iraq" and "Afghanistan" appear more than 70 times each. The words "Israel" and "Israelis" appear 39 times. The word "Zionist" appears another four times--in the context of an imagined American-Zionist conspiracy against the Muslim world. (According to Ayman al-Zawahiri, by the way, Obama is himself a participant in this conspiracy.) And the words "Jew," "Jewish," and "Jewishness" appear another 12 times.
Guantánamo has simply never been a major part of al Qaeda's recruitment strategy. But even if it were and we closed it, the terror masters would simply find the next pretext for justifying their acts. After all, if we are to close Guantánamo because al Qaeda objects to it, then why not abandon America's entire foreign policy agenda?
Nonetheless the White House presses on with closing Gitmo--even in the face of substantial controversy.
This past week, the administration confirmed that it had selected an underutilized correctional center in the town of Thomson, in northwest Illinois, as the new home for up to 100 Gitmo detainees. A letter to Illinois governor Pat Quinn announced the administration's plan for the federal government to buy the prison in Thomson and rebuild one section of it to make the facility even more secure than America's "supermax" prison in Colorado--where several convicted terrorists are currently housed. This assurance is intended to assuage any concerns over the government's ability to safely detain the Gitmo detainees on U.S. soil.
Ironically, however, most of the roughly 210 detainees still held at Guantánamo are not in supermax-type facilities at all. At least 70 percent live in communal settings like Camp 4. They can play soccer, basketball, or foosball; exercise on elliptical equipment; and consort with their fellow detainees for up to 20 hours per day in the outdoor recreation area. They can take art classes or learn English. And while tensions flare every now and again, life in Camp 4 is generally calm. Camp officials prefer that the detainees live in this type of setting. It's easier on the guards and everyone else involved. As the commander of Camp 4 explains, the detainees have to "do something really bad" to get locked up in one of the more secure facilities.
The detainees have access to several satellite television channels and, as one DoD handout notes, a library consisting of "more than 14,000 books, magazines, and DVDs in 18 languages." During a visit to the library, I noticed a few copies of the poetry of Rumi--a 13th-century Sufi mystic whose writings explore deeply spiritual, ethereal topics. Rumi's view of the world is diametrically opposed to that of al Qaeda's jihadists. He searched for the universal deity who he believed resided in us all, regardless of race or creed. Jihadists, on the other hand, believe they are compelled to war against anyone who dares to oppose their intolerant beliefs.
I ask the head librarian, "Do you get many requests for Rumi's books?"
With a slight chuckle she replies, "No, we don't get many requests for him. They aren't too interested in Rumi."
Oddly, the detainees are interested in many aspects of Western culture. Harry Potter is very popular, and with each new movie that comes out the detainees request more of J.K. Rowling's books.
"Everything you know about out there, they know about in here," the librarian says. That includes news events. In addition to satellite television, most of the detainees have access to three newspapers--two from the Muslim world and USA Today. The papers are censored, but only to remove any material that the detainees may find lewd, such as advertisements showing a man and woman kissing.
A while back, one detainee smashed a television set when he saw a woman's bare arms during a broadcast of a soccer match. In response, camp officials bolted down the televisions and put protective plastic casings around them. They have also gone out of their way to make sure that the detainees are not exposed to any other material they may find objectionable. For example, the nondescript faces of the foosball table's characters have been chipped off so that the detainees will not be offended by any hint of idolatry.
It is also surprising to learn the identity of some of the terrorists currently housed in the open-air facilities of Camp 4. Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was slated to be the 20th hijacker on September 11, 2001, reportedly lives here. There is little chance that the Obama administration will release al-Qahtani, despite all of the controversy surrounding the methods used during his interrogations. (Al-Qahtani was unquestionably subjected to humiliating and degrading treatment during the early days of Guantánamo.) The public outrage would simply be too great. So, it is likely that al-Qahtani will be transferred to the new facility in Illinois--or some other similarly secure facility in the United States--and such terrorists will undoubtedly pine for their days in Cuba once they are locked away in one of America's more severe correctional facilities.
An Italian journalist who accompanies me throughout much of the tour says that two Tunisian detainees who were recently transferred from Guantánamo to Italy to await trial are probably very upset right about now. They are being held in a maximum-security prison in Milan that he describes as "hell" compared with Gitmo. The Italian gentleman tells me this right after we tour the food-preparation facilities. There we found that the detainees are offered six types of meals, totaling between 5,000 and 6,000 calories, daily. In their more candid moments, the detainees complain to camp personnel that it is difficult for them to claim they have been "tortured" when they have pot bellies.
Not all of the facilities at Guantánamo are like Camp 4, of course. Camp 5 is a maximum-security facility for detainees who refuse to be compliant. (A detainee is deemed to be compliant if he generally obeys orders and does not threaten the guards or others. Compliance does not hinge on the detainee cooperating with interrogators.) Echoing his counterpart at Camp 4, the commander of Camp 5 says that the ultraviolent individuals kept in his camp have "done something really bad" to warrant segregation from the communal areas of Guantánamo. Personnel at Camp 5 say that the detainees' abuse of guards is so frequent that they would not even venture a guess as to how many instances occur in any given week.
Camp 6 was built as a medium-security facility, and some of its cell blocks offer communal-style living. It is used as a step-down facility where detainees who are in the process of proving that they can be more compliant are placed prior to returning to the more permissive environment of Camp 4. Some detainees, however, choose a different path. Our tour of Camp 6 was cut short when an undisclosed "incident" occurred.
There are other detention facilities at Guantánamo that we do not tour. Camps 1, 2, and 3 were built as a replacement for Camp X-Ray, and the detainees were moved there in April 2002. Those camps are mostly vacant today as they, in turn, were replaced by Camps 4, 5, and 6 beginning in February 2003.
Then, there is the mysterious Camp 7. Throughout the tour of Guantánamo, I jokingly pester the military guides about Camp 7 because, quite frankly, I really want to see it. Camp 7 was opened in 2006 when the Bush administration relocated the "high value detainees" from the CIA's so-called "black sites" to Guantánamo. Among its current residents are the five September 11 co-conspirators, including al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the Obama administration has pledged to bring to New York for a federal trial.
For many New Yorkers, it is deeply unsettling to think of these al Qaeda supervillains standing trial just blocks away from where their henchmen killed thousands of Americans. It is more unsettling when you realize that even here at Guantánamo, a highly secure military detention facility in the middle of the Atlantic, they are kept segregated from the rest of the detainee population. I never do get to see Camp 7. The military personnel who escort me around the island all insist that they do not know where it is located. I believe them--that is just how secure Camp 7 is.
The more you learn about the real Guantánamo, the more the Obama administration's decision to move any of the detainees to the continental United States seems entirely unnecessary. The detainees probably can be safely housed on domestic soil, but why take the risk?
What's more: The facilities that are required already exist here in Cuba. Camps 5 and 6--the maximum and medium security facilities that house detainees who refuse to be compliant--were modeled after existing correctional facilities in the Midwest. Both camps (like the rest of Guantánamo) are maintained in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. These camps have more than enough capacity to continue to hold the detainees the Obama administration now wants to transfer to the United States. And even Attorney General Eric Holder conceded after visiting the camps earlier this year that Guantánamo is "well-run" with no sign of detainee mistreatment.
Why, then, is the Obama administration determined to close Guantánamo and reinvent the wheel in Thomson, Illinois? The answer has everything to do with anachronistic perceptions and an anti-military mythology that dates from the four months when Camp X-Ray was operational.
The only reason Camp X-Ray still stands today is that a U.S. court has ordered the military to keep it erect. There are active investigations into allegations of abuse, and the courts want the facility accessible until those investigations are closed. The court's order has not, however, stopped the relentless march of time, and it is difficult to see how any real investigative work could be done here today.
As we wade through the overgrown vegetation, our military guide points to the piping in the back of one of the cages. It is nothing more than a round hole protruding from a horizontal pipe running from one side of the cage to the other.
"The pipes were put in to give the detainees a urinal," she explains. "They had buckets too, but the detainees would throw the contents of the buckets at the guards."
The pipes were supposed to mitigate the detainees' penchant for throwing "feces cocktails"--as they are known at Gitmo--but it did not work. The detainees used whatever was at hand to lash out. Some still do to this day--despite the fact they all have access to modern plumbing.
The original doors to the cages were poorly thought-out as well. They swung back and forth, meaning that defiant detainees could crash the doors into the guards as they entered the cages. That was rectified after a new type of door, which only opened inward, was installed.
Though Camp X-Ray is a shell of its former self, it is clear that even in its heyday it was a primitive facility. The whole place has an ad hoc feel to it. The camp was originally built to house Cuban and Haitian migrants who had committed criminal acts in the mid-1990s, but was closed in 1996. It was rebuilt so quickly for its new mission in late 2001 that the fencing from a nearby sports field had to be repurposed during construction. The makeshift Camp X-Ray is symbolic, in many ways, of the military's scramble to deal with the detainees it was responsible for holding.
As we walk around the camp, I can't help but think back to January 2002, before "Guantánamo" had ever become a buzzword. The "war on terror" was just a few months old, and the United States had yet to capture any of the most senior al Qaeda leaders. At the time, we had little intelligence on our terrorist enemies. Desperate to understand the designs of our jihadist foes, the U.S. military went about trying to figure out what its detainees, who did not wear military uniforms or make their "rank" easy to discern, knew about al Qaeda's and the Taliban's operations.
Even though this was a difficult process, the intelligence that was collected has been invaluable. It has directly supported combat operations in Afghanistan. It has deepened the military's understanding of how terrorists are recruited and trained, and how they construct bombs (including improvised explosive devices that are used to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan). It has shed light on how terrorists are shuttled around the world and how they are financed. This intelligence has contributed greatly to America's overall understanding of the global terror network in numerous ways.
But in the public debate over closing Gitmo, the intelligence garnered has rarely been discussed, even though thousands of pages of documents detailing what the government has learned have been declassified and released online. These documents, consisting mainly of files created during the detainees' combatant status review tribunal and administrative review board hearings, are readily available on both the DoD's and the New York Times's websites. For the most part, the media just ignore them.
While the intelligence collected has been given short shrift, there has been no lack of stories about abuse that allegedly occurred during interrogations. The early efforts at Camp X-Ray were certainly clumsy. The first detainees did not want to volunteer any information, so the military forced them into involuntary interrogations. As our military guide explained during the tour, the detainees were strapped to wooden carts and wheeled over to one of three interrogation huts just outside the holding pens. That spectacle must have exacerbated tensions as it occurred in plain view of the detainees.
The temptation is to imagine that interrogations at Guantánamo are performed in a similar fashion today. They are not. Rear Admiral Thomas Copeman III, who took over as the commander of Joint Task Force Guantánamo in June, told me that there have not been any involuntary interrogations here in approximately four years. The only way a detainee is interrogated is if he volunteers to be so. Surprisingly, between 80 and 90 detainees have volunteered to attend an interrogation during the past year alone.
The detainees do not always give up real information. Sometimes they just want the treats that are given as a reward for their nominal participation in the interrogation sessions. (The interrogators offer incentives, such as extra candy bars, for the detainees to come to the interrogation rooms.) If the detainees don't cooperate, they are simply brought back to their camp. But even using this comparatively stress-free approach to interrogations the U.S. military is still acquiring important intelligence. The intelligence community consistently finds a significant amount of value in new Gitmo intelligence.
The military's detention policies have changed significantly too. During our tour of Camp X-Ray, our guide recounted how the first riot at Guantánamo broke out. It started when a guard mistakenly thought a detainee was being disobedient after he failed to comply with an order. In reality, the detainee was praying and refused to break prayer to respond to the guard. When the guard entered the detainee's cage and disrupted the ritual, the inmates thought their religion was being disrespected and a riot broke out. This type of mistake was avoidable, and to the military's credit, it has spent a considerable amount of time and money learning from its mistakes.
There have been further detainee uprisings. During one, the detainees used the blades from fans as weapons. The detainees themselves had requested the fans as a comfort item, but quite obviously had an ulterior motive in mind. That is how the dance here at Guantánamo works. It is a balancing act, and military officials must be constantly mindful of who it is they are dealing with.
I talk with "Zak," a native Jordanian who has lived all over the world. For the last several years, he has been the chief detainee liaison. Zak is tasked with listening to the detainees' grievances and, when appropriate, trying to rectify them. It is a thankless job and he endures his share of abusive comments from the detainees. He also teaches the guards about the detainees' religion so they can avoid obvious miscommunication. This is a tricky task, to say the least, given the detainees' radical beliefs.
One of the more damaging myths about Guantánamo is that U.S. military personnel regularly and intentionally desecrate the Koran. But only a handful of instances of Koran abuse have ever been verified, and some of those instances were completely unintentional. In 2005, Newsweek reported that interrogators had flushed a -detainee's copy down the toilet. This was not true. Newsweek retracted the story but only after it had sparked riots in the Muslim world. Zak says that while he does not know of any instances of U.S. military personnel disrespecting the Koran in such a manner, he has witnessed detainees doing so. One detainee ripped the pages out of his Koran and flushed them down his toilet in what was probably an act of rage or defiance, Zak says.
Knowing that the U.S. military will be roundly criticized for any hint of Koran desecration, the detainees play games with their holy books. A common practice, Zak says, is for the detainees to put their Korans in the middle of the floor of their cells, create a fuss, and then watch as the military guards try to avoid making any contact with Allah's word.
Zak also recounts one story in which a detainee claimed that a military guard had urinated on his Koran. When Zak inspected the detainee's copy, he noticed a perfect semi-circle imprinted on its pages. Zak quickly deduced that the detainee had pressed his bottle of Gatorade against his Koran's pages to make it look as if it had been defiled. (Yes, the detainees get sports drinks.)
Another myth is that detainees who are on hunger strike are brutally force-fed. During a visit to the hospital, we're shown small pullout tables with a few nose tubes, several cans of Ensure, and other dietary supplements. The way the feeding works is for a long tube to be put through the detainee's nose down to his stomach. The dietary supplement is then poured through the tube. The detainees get to pick the flavor of the supplement that they ingest because even though they aren't swallowing the supplement they do get an after-taste. Butter pecan is their usual preference.
The detainees' lawyers describe the act of "force-feeding" as barbaric and tantamount to torture. Looking at the nose tubes, which are only slightly thicker than the average strand of spaghetti, it is clear that the "force-feeding is torture" tale, like so many others about Gitmo, is sheer nonsense. Admiral Copeman volunteered to be "force-fed" and calls it a "nonevent." Copeman's predecessor did it for an entire week and had no problem maintaining his weight or regular exercise schedule. According to the medical personnel, some of the hunger strikers (not all) use their visits to the hospital area to eat full meals. It is a matter of pride for them to pretend that they remain committed to the cause in front of other detainees. Once they are out of sight, however, they scarf down real food.
Copeman has only been on the job for six months, so I ask him what his biggest adjustment has been. He says that he is not used to having a court give him an order. Copeman is referring, at least in part, to the habeas corpus decisions coming out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. As a result of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision, the detainees have the right to challenge their detention in America's courts. If the executive branch does not challenge the courts' rulings, federal judges effectively decide whether or not the military can continue to hold detainees.
On one of the days I was at Gitmo, a Kuwaiti named Fouad al-Rabiah was sent back to his home country. D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had ordered that the United States release Rabiah. In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly demonstrated disturbing ignorance about al Qaeda. She concluded, for example, that Rabiah had established his bona fides as a legitimate charity worker prior to his two suspicious trips to Afghanistan in 2001. Therefore, there was no reason to suspect that Rabiah had traveled to al Qaeda and Taliban country for nefarious reasons. In reality, the "charities" that Rabiah worked for are all known fronts for al Qaeda and have never pursued legitimate humanitarian objectives. This was just one of the many flaws in Kollar-Kotelly's ruling. Regardless, the military complied with her decision.
Unless Congress is able to overrule the Obama administration, in all likelihood, the Guantánamo detention facilities will be shuttered at some point in 2010. The Obama administration has spent too much political capital in pursuit of this cause to abandon it now. The president and his team are likely convinced that it is the right thing to do. But in justifying his decision to close Gitmo, President Obama has implicitly sided with those who have condemned the actions of our service men and women in Guantánamo.
When the president signed the executive order to close Gitmo in January 2009, he said that the message he was sending to the world "is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism . . . in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals." His implication was that the many critics of Gitmo had a point: America deserved blame.
The U.S. military may have made mistakes at Gitmo, but it did so in the context of an extremely difficult situation. And it has taken extraordinary steps to rectify them and improve facilities that, as we should never forget, house men who are committed to an extreme ideology that justifies acts of mass terror.
As we leave the part of Guantánamo Bay that houses Camps 4, 5, and 6, we are driven through the security checkpoint one last time. I see a sign displaying the "value of the week." These signs are sprinkled around the exterior of the detention facilities and are a transparent attempt to boost troop morale, which senior camp officials say has sagged in the face of the relentless criticism.
The value this week is "Pride." The troopers who have served here should be proud. And I know that we should be proud of them. They have served their country honorably.
Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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