SHANGHIED!!!!

SHANGHIED. Okay. Pay attention! Go immediately to Amazon.com and buy this book. I kid you not...this is the best book I think I've ever read...and my office is full of books. More I've written a book myself.

SHANGHIED is not a novel. The guy who wrote it, lived it. He was indeed shanghied..on to a huge cargo ship. He was 15 years old.

Trust me...you'll never look at a cargo ship the same way again.

Wrap...

War Casualties...

From Secrecy News...

AFGHANISTAN WAR CASUALTIES, AND MORE FROM CRS

Between January and June 2011, the United Nations documented 1,462 civilian deaths in Afghanistan, which was a 15% increase over the same six months the year before. Anti-government forces, e.g. the Taliban, were responsible for 77% of the casualties and pro-government forces were responsible for 12%. (The remainder were indeterminate.) These and other casualty figures were compiled from published sources by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in "Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians," September 30, 2011.

Wrap...

Geospatial Intel Agency...

GEOSPATIAL INTEL AGENCY RELEASES DECLASSIFIED BUDGET DOCS

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) hired 600 to 700 new employees each year between 2005 and 2008, newly released budget documents indicate. Still, "the coming wave of retirement... presents significant risks that the program will lose valuable institutional knowledge and critical skills and capability."

These observations were presented in NGA's annual budget justification materials for fiscal years 2009, 2010 and 2011 (pdf). Unclassified excerpts of the budget documents were released by NGA last week in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the Federation of American Scientists.

NGA is an intelligence agency that provides all manner of imagery, mapping and other "geospatial intelligence" (GEOINT) products for national security as well as other applications. It is funded through the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and also through the Military Intelligence Program (MIP).

NGA products "support mission planning, mapping, environmental monitoring, urban planning, treaty monitoring, safe navigation, management of natural resources, homeland defense planning, emergency preparedness, and responses to natural and manmade disasters worldwide," the budget documents say.

Only a fraction -- perhaps 10% or so -- of the classified NGA budget documents survived the declassification process and were released under FOIA. Some of the coherent themes that emerge from the declassified documents include the transition to a new Agency headquarters at Fort Belvoir, which was completed last year, and the continuing integration of commercial satellite imagery into the NGA product line. The Agency's classified programs and activities (and spending levels) were not disclosed.

But many unfamiliar fine details of Agency operation and management were described. The National GEOINT Committee was established as an Intelligence Community body chaired by NGA to promote cross-discipline collaboration on GEOINT issues. Beginning in FY 2010, a program or process called "LEAR JET" was introduced as "a CI [counterintelligence] network monitoring tool to combat the cyber insider threat." And so on.

These budget justification materials are the first such documents to be released by NGA. The move invites the question: Why did the Agency release them? (This in turn is a subset of a broader question: Why and how does secrecy policy ever change?)

In this case, several factors leading up to release can be identified. First, there was a "demand" for the documents; they would not have been spontaneously released. Second, the Agency might have attempted to withhold them anyway, but a ruling by Judge Reggie B. Walton in a 2006 lawsuit against the National Reconnaissance Office found that such documents are subject to the FOIA.

But even that might not have been enough without an indispensable measure of good faith on the part of the Agency. "NGA wants to make it easy for the public to understand who we are," said NGA Director Letitia Long earlier this month.

Wrap...

Having His Say....

AN OCTOGENARIAN'S LEGACY

by

KEITH TAYLOR





Insurance agents don't come around much any more. Octogenarians with high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation diabetes, neuropathy, and pessimism don't figure to be a good risk.



Dying doesn't particularly bother me. My legacy does, and that isn't looking too good right now. I came into the world a few months after the start of the greatest depression in America history.



And now in my "golden years" things are happening that worry me. When I see a virtually unanimous effort to throw out a president, as happened in the Clinton presidency, I cringe knowing that's part of the legacy I will leave behind.



And I cringe that my country actually re-elected a president after there was compelling evidence he had cooked intelligence to start a war against a nation which represented no danger to ours.



The folks whose agenda is the same as the guy who started this mess in the first place have now drawn their line in the sand. With little mention of what their plan is, they harp on just one thing: Make Obama a one-term president.



I've always been an active participant in elections, and I'll be more so this time. I write, talk to people, exchange ideas on the Internet, and give dirty looks to folks who say "God bless you" when I sneeze.



The political party which motivates me to fuss so much isn't going it alone. They have backing from the folks who have the bucks and the know-how to buy anything they want. These folks count their small change in the billions have been buying up politicians as if there is a fire sale on them.



Nothing could be more disastrous to our country than to see even more of them in positions of power. For something to worry you before you've finished your first cup of morning coffee, contemplate what the results will be if the next couple appointments to the Supreme Court are dogmatic theists like Scalia and Thomas.



They will be fine if you don't mind a theocracy. And it will be even dandy if you don't mind paying the taxes which aren't paid by the minority who control the majority of the wealth.



And that's going to happen if we put more of those folks who only have to remember that obstruction will guarantee we won't have to look at an uppity Negro in the White House.



Yes I have heard that so often it sickens me. Even worse is when it's always accompanied by a claim of patriotism.



It isn't easy to take a stand as intransigent as the one I oppose because It's long been American chic to vote for the man, not the party. Dating back to my first election in 1952 I have routinely split my ticket and voted for candidates from both major parties.



No more! I insist that anything less than the reelection of our current president will be a disaster. The coattails of any of Republican will drag in more folks determined to not only crush liberals, but crush things they, themselves, refuse to believe because believing might take action and action might hurt next quarters profits for their employers.



Check the politics of the next person you hear claim climate change is a hoax. Check the politics of the next person who cries that taxes are un-American, especially taxes on the folks who own the oil well, coal mines, automobile factories which turn our air brown.



And above all check the politics of those who kept their promise and got government off the back of our financial institutions. You know, those guys who turned loose predatory lenders, invented a spanking new word "robo-signing," and turned six million people out of their homes.



Now, protesters are marching again, only this time it's called "occupying." Wall Street has been filled with protesters for more than a week. Other cities have followed. San Diego's media have been agog at how our laid back city came to life.



Suits me. I intend to take part in one next Monday. Moveon.org has organized a protest on the corner of University Avenue and College Avenue starting at noon.



Moveon is by any means of measure a left wing group. It started in 1998 to protest the brouhaha which brought about the impeachment of President Clinton and has held the line against right wing shenanigans ever since.



The local mover and shaker for Moveon is lady named Carolyn Zollender who seems to have been put on earth to keep people like me involved. Carolyn has done her homework, and resistance is futile when she gets going. I recently visited with her in her son's beauty salon. I disagreed with her on a point or so and next thing I knew I was backed into a corner. She knew her stuff and made sure I was aware of it as well.



When the current brouhaha over the current obstruction subsides we'll still have the party of obstruction pursuing it's goal of preventing the re-election of President Obama. I hope to be involved all the way.



My legacy demands it.

Wrap...

Weather!

San Diego had some! It started raining yesterday afternoon and rained a good portion of the night too. I was horrified. :)) But that disappeared before dawn and so on my way down to Acapulco for breakfast, blue skies and sunshine...tho I admit there were still some clouds floating around. So I'm content.

Wrap...

Whoa! Been Awhile Since I've Been Here...

I'm just going happily along, reading all about our politics. Love it that people are in the streets and protesting Wall Street's shenanigans. If I could I'd just wring the necks of those Wall Street greedy bastards.

And 2012 is getting closer and closer and still nobody to vote for for Prez. Fine state of affairs. I'm talkin' both Repubs and Dem here. If it were possible, I swear I'd vote for Warren. Time we had a female president...and she has excellent sense. The males running certainly don't seem to have any sense.

Been trying to find a writer to write a book on a guy...a former Ranger, who has done both Iraq and Afghanistan and who, I think, has one awful case of PTSD. Like the Vietnam vet who I wrote a book with based on his experiences, this Ranger says, "Sleep is my enemy." The Ranger, having read that book, wants me to write his. Problem is, I've never met him in person. I can't imagine doing a book concerning someone I've never met, using his real experiences. For this kind of book, I'm definitely a hands on writer. Ah me...

Wrap...

Love Those Indy Weblogs...

Well, hell. I swear I truly tried to watch the Repubs' debate tonight. I guess I lasted about ten minutes before turning away and doing the recommends on the Indy Weblogs. The Indys are a group of Dem political bloggers. Altogether there are 425 of them at last count. Thank heavens they don't all post at once. Usually about 30 of them post. Less on weekends. Often mighty stringent opinions. Good people. In case anyone would like to read some of them, the URL is:

http://www.drlaniac.com/feeds/search.asp?mode=recent

My apologies for not making that URL a link, but I never learned how to do that. :(((

Ralph, who lives in New Jersey, gathered up those bloggers and he ships the posts to Lana up in San Francisco and Lana gets them all in order and I have the URL to get them down here in San Diego so I can do the recommends. Posts are up every 4 hours, 24 hours a day. I do the recommends at 11AM, 3PM, and 7PM. Do them 7 days a week.
And they're bloggers from all over the USA so there's certainly different opinions of what's going on in our country. Wouldn't give them up for love nor money.

And the poor East Coast is getting rained on something terrible again. Sure do feel for them.

Wrap...

Things To Watch Out For....

*Heaven forbid, but if you have a family member who is about to die, and if you intend to have a notice of that death in your newspaper's Obituaries page, you'd better have enough money in the bank to pay for it. They cost a fortune. Just check that out and prepare to be shocked.

*The Southern California Writers Conference convenes this weekend in Anaheim, California. If you're a writer...beginning or experienced...it is definitely worth attending. Not only are the workshop leaders excellent, but agents are accomplished and if you've written a book, gotten it polished, and need an agent (it's a very tough market out there) do try and attend. Check details at www.writersconference.com/la.

*Be very sure that you want to access the sites of either Linked In or Facebook. Once you get in, you may never find a way to get out. I tried, with zero success. Have come to the conclusion that if either pops up on my email again, I'll simply delete them. Also have decided that the reason deleting is almost impossible is because they can then trap enough people on their sites to be able to say they have one huge number of folks who use their sites.

Wrap...

Open Government or No?.....

From Secrecy News:

AN AMBIVALENT WHITE HOUSE REPORT ON OPEN GOVERNMENT

The White House reiterated its support for open government in a new report issued Friday afternoon. But curiously, the 33-page document on "The Obama Administration's Commitment to Open Government" (pdf) downplays or overlooks many of the Administration's principal achievements in reducing inappropriate secrecy. At the same time, it fails to acknowledge the major defects of the openness program to date. And so it presents a muddled picture of the state of open government, while providing a poor guide to future policy.

"At the President's direction, federal agencies have promoted greater transparency, participation, and collaboration through a number of major initiatives," the new report says. "The results of those efforts are measurable, and they are substantial. Agencies have disclosed more information in response to FOIA requests; developed and begun to implement comprehensive Open Government plans; made thousands of government data sets publically available; promoted partnerships and leveraged private innovation to improve citizens' lives; increased federal spending transparency; and declassified information and limited the proliferation of classified information."

Most of that is true, in varying degrees. (However, there is no evidence that the proliferation of classified information has in fact been limited; the opposite is the case.)

And yet despite the abundance of itemized detail in the new report, it misses or misrepresents crucial aspects of what has been accomplished and what has not.

Particularly within the domain of national security secrecy, the report leaves out the Obama Administration's boldest departures from past secrecy policies, suggesting that the White House itself is ambivalent or perhaps remorseful about them. For example, the report does not mention these groundbreaking measures:

In April 2009, the President broke with prior policy and declassified four Office of Legal Counsel opinions on interrogation and torture that had been tightly held by the previous Administration. ("OLC Torture Memos Declassified," Secrecy News, April 17, 2009). This act finally exposed the purported legal basis for some of the government's most controversial actions of recent years, and for a while it seemed to promise a new attitude toward the use of secrecy.

In May 2010, the Obama Administration declassified the current size of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal for the first time ever. ("Size of Nuclear Stockpile to be Disclosed," May 3, 2010). This is a category of information the disclosure of which had been sought without success for more than half a century, and its release created the potential for greater transparency and accountability in nuclear weapons policy.

In May 2011, the President personally ordered the declassification of an excerpt of a 1968 edition of the President's Daily Brief -- over the objections of intelligence agencies. ("Obama Declassifies Portion of 1968 President's Daily Brief," June 3, 2011). This act alone lent new substance to the otherwise rhetorical statement that "no information may remain classified indefinitely" and prompted a revision of entrenched prejudices concerning secret intelligence records.

For the first time ever, the Administration this year declassified and disclosed the size of the intelligence budget request for the coming year. ("A New Milestone in Intelligence Budget Disclosure," February 15, 2011). In 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence declared under penalty of perjury that disclosure of such information would cause damage to national security. But in the Obama Administration, that Cold War perspective has finally been abandoned even by the most senior intelligence officials.

These are among the most important changes in national security secrecy that have been accomplished in the Obama Administration. So it is puzzling and disturbing that in its own "review of the progress the Administration has made" in promoting greater openness, the new report does not mention any of them. For whatever reason, the White House does not seem to want to take "credit" for these actions, or to remind readers of them.

If the report minimizes the most positive achievements of secrecy reform to date, it also declines to acknowledge the serious failures of the President's openness initiative.

Thus, it does not mention that during the first full year of the Obama Administration, the number of new national security secrets (or "original classification decisions") actually increased by 22.6 percent, according to the latest annual report of the Information Security Oversight Office. ("Transforming Classification, or Not," May 18, 2011). Because it does not include such significant adverse data, the White House report more closely approximates a public relations exercise than a candid account of the current status of openness.

The report alludes to new requirements in the President's 2009 executive order 13256 that dictate "clarified, and stricter, standards for classifying information." But it does not mention that the Department of Defense, the largest classifying agency, failed to meet the President's deadline for issuing implementing guidance for the new executive order. The upshot is that many of those new requirements are not being fulfilled in practice, more than a year after the President's order came into effect. ("Secrecy Reform Stymied by the Pentagon," February 24, 2011). By not admitting such problems, the report also misses the opportunity to identify solutions to them.

Nor does the term "state secrets privilege" appear in the new report, although the Administration's use of the privilege has been an impenetrable barrier to the resolution of many festering disputes on torture, rendition and surveillance. Can one even speak of open government when individuals who have been victims of torture like Maher Arar and Khaled el-Masri are barred by secrecy from presenting evidence in a court of law or seeking some other lawful remedy?

The White House report demonstrates that the Obama Administration not only wants to be perceived as open, but that it actually has a commitment to open government. In addition to the precedent-setting breakthroughs noted above, many of the openness initiatives discussed in the report, such as the access to agency information provided through the website Data.gov, are commendable and worthwhile.

But the report also shows that the Administration's commitment lacks clarity, consistency, and self-confidence. This makes it harder to build on the most notable and successful achievements of the past few years.

On Tuesday, September 20, President Obama will participate in the launch of the Open Government Partnership, a multi-national effort to foster open government practices around the world.



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Wrap...

I Absolutely Hate....

...the phrase, "Just sayin'". It's a copout if ever there was one. Saying the person speaking is not responsible in any way, shape, or form for whatever the hell is coming outta their mouth. Noooo. They're just repeating what someone else is saying or has said or done...but they're not giving it as their opinion or anything else. Just an absolutely cowardly phrase.

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Book Review: The 19th Wife....

This was first published in Secular Humanist Briefs, a newsletter of the Council of Secular Humanism.



The 19th Wife

a novel by David Ebershoff

Published by Random House 2008

ISBN: 987-1-58836-748-8

V3.0



An Irreverent look at Mormons and their weird church

by

Keith Taylor



Religions fascinate atheists and skeptics. The 19th Wife, a novel covering the antics of Mormons of the nineteenth and of the twenty-first centuries, will do more than fascinate you. It will grab you and refuse to let go.



All Christian religions stress taking things on faith and come up with some strange beliefs. But the Mormons! That religion is a wonderment unto itself. In less than a couple centuries the Saints came up with as many impossible ideas as had the Catholic Church in twenty.



Joseph Smith threw out most of the irrational Christian ideas and replaced them with a new set of even more irrational ones. None were tested by dispassionate examination. Religious things are above that with the old "higher power" copout they all claim guides their lives.



Books critical of the Mormon church such as Trouble Enough by Ernest Taves, Secret Ceremonies by Deborah Laake, and A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tell compelling stories of a strange religion. But none impressed me as did the tale by David Ebershoff. He told the story of Ann Eliza Young, Brigham's nineteenth, or, maybe fifty-fourth wife..



Ann divorced her husband and asked for money from him, possibly the richest man in the country. The resulting tumult resulted in polygamy being banned.



Ebershoff not only told the story of Ms. Young, he told it convincingly from the viewpoints of herself, her mother, her father, Brigham Young, and a young twenty-first century man who was excommunicated by later version of the church which insisted it was the first.



The 19th Wife keeps the reader on his toes by shifting from one point of view to another, one story line to another, and by moving between the mid 19th century to the 21st. century Somehow Ebershoff does a superb job of it.



The reader's hardest job is to keep track of the century and the narrator. It is a culture shock to leave the 19th century with the problems of a young, pious 19th century polygamous bride, then try to empathize with a 21st century young, recalcitrant, excommunicated, Mormon who is trying to save his mom from execution for killing his dad.



The book is rightly described as a page turner, so finishing a chapter isn't hard. What's hard is to resist starting the next where the reader will land in a different century and in the mind of a different point of view. Bring along the forbidden drink, coffee, because you'll read longer than you planned. and find yourself still reading far into the morning.



Although his life is the secondary story line Jordan Scott, the young recalcitrant guy, is the most compelling character in the book. As a doddering geezer I take a perverse delight in imaginative cussing. Thus I laughed when Jordan used the term "fuck log" to describe the notes his father kept to remind himself who was the next wife he'd sleep with. And for empathy we can feel Jordan's discomfort in explaining the term to his pious mother.



If a humanist or skeptics group had a list of "must read" books, this one would be near the top. As with Huckleberry Finn and all other great novels it is much more than a good story. It takes the gentiles, as we're called, inside a church recently created out of whole cloth and lets us see the damage done by deliberate ignorance.

*******************************************

//Keith Taylor is a former president and program chair for the San Diego Association for Rational Inquiry. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com //

Wrap...

Our Secret Government...

From Secrecy News...

A SPOTLIGHT ON "TOP SECRET AMERICA"

Most people can vaguely recall that there was once no U.S. Department of Homeland Security and that there was a time when you didn't have to take your shoes off before boarding an airplane or submit to other dubious security practices.

But hardly anyone truly comprehends the enormous expansion of the military, intelligence and homeland security bureaucracy that has occurred over the past decade, and the often irrational transformation of American life that has accompanied it.

The great virtue of the new book "Top Secret America" by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (Little Brown, September 2011) is that it illuminates various facets of our secret government, lifting them from the periphery of awareness to full, sustained attention.

Top Secret America, which builds on the series of stories the authors produced for the Washington Post in July 2010, delineates the contours of "the new American security state." Since 9/11, for example, some 33 large office complexes for top secret intelligence work have been completed in the Washington DC area, the equivalent in size of nearly three Pentagons. More than 250,000 contractors are working on top secret programs. A bewildering number of agencies - more than a thousand -- have been created to execute security policy, including at least 24 new organizations last year alone. And so on.

But the vast scale of this activity says nothing about its quality or utility. The authors, who are scrupulous in their presentation of the facts, are critical in their evaluation:

"One of the greatest secrets of Top Secret America is its disturbing dysfunction."

"Ten years after the attacks of 9/11, more secret projects, more secret organizations, more secret authorities, more secret decision making, more watchlists, and more databases are not the answer to every problem. In fact, more has become too much."

"It is time to close the decade-long chapter of fear, to confront the colossal sum of money that could have been saved or better spent, to remember what we are truly defending, and in doing so, to begin a new era of openness and better security against our enemies."

(From this point of view, it was disappointing to hear the former chair of the 9/11 Commission, Gov. Tom Kean, declare yesterday that "we are not as secure as we could or should be." We need to accelerate along the path we have been following, Gov. Kean seemed to say, not to fundamentally change course.)

According to Priest and Arkin, "The government has still not engaged the American people in an honest conversation about terrorism and the appropriate U.S. response to it. We hope our book will promote one."

Despite the sobering subject matter, Top Secret America actually makes for lively reading. It is full of the authors' remarkable insights, anecdotes and encounters. Dana Priest explored some of the physical geography of the classified world, taking elevators to unmarked floors in suburban office buildings and driving up to guard booths at secret facilities to innocently ask for information. She accompanied police in Memphis while they conducted neighborhood surveillance with newfangled automatic license plate readers. She was polygraphed at her request -- and found to be a poor liar. Bill Arkin, whose painstaking research informed the entire work (which is narrated by Priest), spent ten days in Qatar at the U.S. military facility that controls air operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and somehow got himself invited to classified briefings.

One question that lurks throughout the book is whether the excesses and misjudgments that constitute so much of Top Secret America can be corrected or reversed. The authors are not very optimistic, particularly since there are so many people who benefit from current arrangements, however wasteful, useless or pointless they might be.

By way of illustration they cite U.S. Northern Command, the newest military command that is nominally responsible for defense of North America but in practice is largely subordinate to other agencies and organizations. "The fact that Northern Command would even continue to exist as a major, four-star-led, geographic military command, with virtually no responsibilities, no competencies, and no unique role to fill, demonstrated the resiliency of institutions created in the wake of 9/11 and just how difficult it would be to ever actually shrink Top Secret America," they wrote.

Secrecy is naturally a persistent theme throughout the book. As is often the case in national security reporting, the authors relied on unauthorized disclosures to complement their own research and reporting. And in this case, such disclosures served as a particularly effective antidote to overclassification.

"Most of those who helped us did so with the knowledge that they were breaking some internal agency rule in doing so; they proceeded anyway because they wanted us to have a more complete picture of the inner workings of the post-9/11 world we sought to describe and because they, too, believe too much information is classified for no good reason," they wrote.

At the same time, the authors noted that they "have left out some information" based on national security considerations.

Top Secret America will be featured on PBS Frontline on September 6, the book's official release date.

******************************************
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 83
September 1, 2011

Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Wrap...

What's Good For The Crooks is Good For the Cops...

Gettin' a little late here, but the neighborhood is quiet. Hope that's not deceiving. A couple of streets away, sometimes within 600 feet so at the end of our block, bad things are going on...assaults, home burglaries, stuff with cars, etc. All started about 5 or 6 months ago. I'm thinking a new family moved into the area. Most of us have been here for years. Never had that stuff before.

Except for once...couple of guys stole the back wheel off my car, which was parked on the street in front of the house. Little did they know that the neighbor across the street in front and another neighbor across the side street were both armed and watching the whole thing. One of them got the thieves' license number. Both were prepared to act if either of the thieves headed toward our house.

So of course we phoned the police and they came and took information from all of us. Now I consider the San Diego police force to be the best and most decent in the entire USA...and they can also be hilarious.

Next day came a knock on the door. I answered and there stood 2 policemen and my wheel. I asked how they got it back...and they grinned from ear to ear and one said, "The same way the crooks got it." :)))

They'd actually gone out that night and stole it right off the crooks' car. Just tickled themselves. And I just cracked up laughing. :))

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Thinking vs Believing....

That Undying Symbol


by

Keith Taylor


It is a simple design, useful in the construction of grand buildings, or as a small platform from which to hang trouble makers. It has also become the world's most recognizable religious symbol.

In its most utilitarian usage, it is part of the framework of building
It is so impressive, we need be reminded it is utilitarian, not miraculous. Despite its inspiring design, it failed along with the rest of the framework, to stop religious zealots from destroying two of our largest buildings plus themselves in their effort to prove their god was better than our god.

Somewhere in there lies an inspiring religious message. It must be so because when our buildings fell and 2700 people died, people in many foreign countries, those with the other god celebrated. Death and the celebration of it are big deals in religions.



The cross, called the symbol of peace, is more often associated with mass killing and cruelty. Spanish conquistadors brandished flags decorated with crosses as they killed countless native Americans in their search for gold and other riches. Pious Christians, crosses on their vestments and shields, journeyed from Europe to the Holy Land to kill, plunder, and secure land they deemed sacred because a man/god had been crucified there.



It was the very symbol of the Spanish Inquisition. Countless heretics were killed because they committed one of the prime sins: questioning unproven claims. Today the word "inquisition" conjures up a vision of cruel men wearing crosses causing unbearable pain to folks who merely asked the most basic sentence in science "why?"



Reminders of the sacred icon are everywhere, and defended zealously. Defying the Constitution, a court order, and affirmation of that order by an appeals court, a cross still stands on public property on a mountain overlooking La Jolla, California.



Others have not been so prominently displayed. A piece of the framework in the shape of a cross was found in the wreckage of the twin towers. This was the symbol, many felt, to inspire us to . . . uh, to adorn a new, replacement building.



A photo shows a priest and the former mayor of our greatest city adding a blessing to the symbol pulled from the wreckage of the twin towers felled on 9/11. Some object to this use of a religious symbol, sometimes citing it's long and poignant history of violence and killing.



But to the adherents of our god, history is ignored. After all, they claim, believers are enjoined to never question God or his works. You can find it in every catechism or Sunday school tract.



So, should we object to yet another religious symbol? After all those of us who don't share this zealous feeling that comes from belief in things not proved are shunned, often considered eccentric. More than half the electorate would not vote for someone who does not acknowledge a belief in a supreme being, and the cross does represent just such a thing. Who knows how bad it will get if we object to a sacred symbol?



Let's leave it be. Agree it will stay there, but as a reminder of what we lose when we substitute faith for reason in trying to determine what is happening on our earth. When a non-believer views the symbol which inspires so many believers he might take off his hat and stand quietly while contemplating what the world would be like if we started thinking rather than believing.



Thinking will not produce miracles but it may help us understand those who believe in them.

-0-

//Keith Taylor is a retired Navy officer living in Chula Vista, Ca. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com //

Wrap...

Law Enforcement Officer...From the Inside....

http://richardcraiganderson.com/

For some fascinating reading, go to Rick's blog. URL above. Rick is a former Maryland State trooper. Moved to Florida and became a FAM...Federal Air Marshall. Their motto:
"We don't miss". Better not, since they're the guy in the plane with you, there to take out the bad guy, and they really don't want to shoot a hole in the plane rather than a hole in the bad guy.

Just fascinating. Latest post from Rick is on the matter of confidential informants. A good police officer...and every other law enforcement officer...has those crucial people.

It's one thing to know about these things and, believe me, another to learn about them from inside the game...which you will if you read Rick's posts. Enjoy!

Wrap...

Huntsman for President!!!

So now Rick Perry from Texas is joining the run for Prez. W.Bush was better than this guy would be. I can just see Perry keeping religion separate. Not a chance.

Have not changed my mind one bit...Jon Huntsman is my choice. He may be a Repub, but he is an INDEPENDENT Repub. And that gives the other people and the media fits. The media invariably leaves the Independent out. More, he's no liar.

It's plain to see he qualifies, having been Gov of Utah and diplomat to China. But he continually gets ignored because he's not flashy like the other Repubs running. He just does the job.

Wrap...

Take It On Faith...Or Else.....

This was to be the first chapter in a book I intended to call Epiphany of an Atheist. Sadly I don't have the stamina to fight the battle of self publishing, and not many publishers are interested in the musings of someone without high profile.



How I Became a True Believer . .. . With a Few Doubts

by

Keith Taylor


One night sixty-one years ago, a young lass and I were – as they say today – making out. We were parked in the shadow of a tree on a Naval station near Seattle. She had let me get to second base. My hand was under her blouse. Only her thin bra stood between my fingers and a real life titty.



Surely it was about to happen; my 20-year virginity would come to an end right there in the back seat. I had read Forever Amber and Duchess Hotspur. It was all there – the passionate kissing, the heavy breathing, the tight embrace.



I pleaded, “Can we do it? You know, go all the way?”



She stopped me with, “Oh God, I want to, but I can’t, not unless we’re married.”



“Let's get married tonight, maybe drive to Canada or something?”



“No, it has to be by a priest, and I can’t even do that unless you are a Catholic.”



The next morning I hied myself down to Saint Cecilia’s, found the parish priest, and asked him how I could become a Catholic. He told me I would have to take instructions. That was easy. Hell, I was a sailor and folks gave me instructions all day long. I couldn't even clean the head without a boatswain's mate telling me how to clean up the turd tracks.



But instructions on how to find God defied logic. Father Murphy explained that people didn’t really have to believe that a woman talked to a snake, but they had to be baptized to excise the damage done by that conversation anyhow. He also taught me that the passion that led me to St. Cecilia’s was itself a sin. I would have to sincerely repent the heavy breathing as well as the indecent touching that caused it.



Also I would have to firmly resolve that it wouldn’t happen again. How disappointing! That girl taught me how to French kiss and I liked it so much I was sure we would do it again even before holy words sanctified the consummation of our lust.



She went back home to Illinois. The Navy kept me in the Seattle area. All the while I practiced the repenting and firmly-resolving business, but those prurient sinful thoughts popped up again and again. Self-abuse was immediately followed by prayers begging forgiveness for doing it. This religious business took all the fun out of it.



Although I’d always been one of those who felt “something must be out there” the instructions taught by Father Murphy revealed a religion not filled with hope and answers, but one filled with conundrums. Some had been with the church from the beginning; others were added, seemingly willy-nilly, over 2000 years. Father Murphy’s answer to my questions was that each had a special purpose and must be taken on faith.



The Father Murphys of the world were allowed to make their claims with little interference, even from outside the church. The rare dissenting voices were shushed with "oh it's their right to believe what they want." Any doubts I might have had were simply to be subjected the one great truth and immune from critical thought, as were claims proclaimed by a thousand different interpretations by thousands of other religions.



A parishioner had to take all sorts of things on faith. Furthermore that faith must not be questioned, especially by reading. The Catholic Church of the 1950s dutifully provided “The Index of Forbidden Books” – a compilation of books, plays, songs, and other heretical tracts deemed dangerous to people’s faith. The list, running into the thousands, forbad a Catholic’s reading some or all of the works of many of the most respected writers in history.



After I thwarted the devil by having water dumped on my head, I could no longer read things by Anatole France, René Descartes, Emile Zola and, it seems, some versions of God’s book itself. The King James version of the holy book was not only off limits for reading, in 1950, a Catholic could not have one in his house!



While all this was going on, the girl who caused my conversion sent me a “Dear John.” She had gone back home to Elgin, Illinois and left me to marry a Marine. Undeterred I went on with my conversion. The priest said things in Latin as he poured water over my head. I tried but didn’t feel the ecstasy associated with the possibility of now living forever in bliss.



I was a Catholic, the only one from Sevastopol, Indiana. My conversion lasted about ten years.

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From Presidential Candidates to ComicCon....

So be it. Jon Huntsman, Republican running for Prez of the USA...just happens to be the only decent, honest candidate I have seen. Therefore, he's my choice for Prez, no matter that I have never voted Repub before. So that's settled.

Then there's the Oslo killer. Pay attention here: he is NOT a Muslim. What he is is a CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST. You sure wouldn't know it from most of the media reports. We have a whole bunch of those people on the Repub Right. Especially in the Southern US states. Now, who do you think we'd best keep an eye on?

It's hotter than hell in almost every state in the USA. Only civilized weather is in Alaska, and the West Coast states...along the beaches only.

Don't you just admire the new labels on cigarettes? GAWD! But don't try and convince me that drinking doesn't kill more people...especially drinking and driving. I have yet to see a single person, upon getting a whiff of someone's cigarette smoke, just keel over dead...but a clip from a drinking or texting driver on any road in the country can make people dead a whole lot faster...and does, every hour of every day.

Somehow, some way, the scientists MUST find a way to cure or eliminate cancer. One out of every five men is cursed with prostate cancer. Our daughter died when her second brain cancer developed and attached to her brain stem. A horrible way to go. Moments before her death, her facial muscles just melted away and her face below her eyes simply flowed down toward her right ear. She'd been beautiful and was a former model. Never mind new weapons...CURE CANCER.

Some good news...ComicCon, with somewhere around 130,000 attendees at the San Diego Convention Center, has been a tremendous success. Yesterday afternoon, strolling through the lobby and stopping to chat with people, was Johnny Depp...star of Pirates of the Carribean. Not going to see stars doing that very often, but attend ComicCon and you will. Keep in mind though that Security Guards from all over the city and those who work there were keeping Conv.Center safe. Not that they had anything much to do since the attendees were all happy souls and behaving wonderfully well as usual. And the media were definitely in attendence. One of their groups asked permission of the Conv Ctrs' #1 Doorman to photo and interview him. His reply was that it was fine with him, but they'd have to get an okay from his bosses to do that. But no, the media did not have time. Too much else needed to be covered.
A pity. That doorman has worked there for 21 years and has been at the door for every ComicCon that has been held there...and so knows all the guys who originated the convention.

And that's all for now...
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Science? Deliberate Ignorance? Choose...

This appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine dedicated to rational and critical thought and to using science, not dogma or superstition to find answers. It is available at some newstands. Individual copies can also be bought at www.csicop.org





DELIBERATE IGNORANCE

by

Keith Taylor



Perhaps fearful that even a small amount of it is a dangerous thing, knowledge is held in disdain by many Americans. Yet the same people accept ridiculous claims as long as they are they want to hear. And legislators know what that is!



Turn on C-SPAN and the chances are good you'll see a member of Congress leading a blind charge into the land of make believe.



Climate change? Some time back, the chair of the Senate Science Climate Change Committee invited a science fiction author, not a scientist, and certainly not a climatologist, to testify. Then, having heard what he wanted to hear, the Senator joined the author in declaring that the scientists' concern over the looming disaster was a myth.



That year was the hottest on record. So was the next and the next. The pattern continues, but thanks in part to the senator, the myth about a myth persists.



Science can be touted, but only if it reflects what a legislator thinks the majority of his constituents want to hear. One from the Midwest regularly holds forth on the virtues of ethanol to protect us from the climate change he doesn't believe in. I've never heard him own up to the scientifically tested and vetted fact that ethanol made from corn or soy beans gives a us net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere while decreasing the world food supply.



Deliberate ignorance along with jingoism and dogmatic stubbornness shapes too much of America's intellect. During the cold war we simply would not be beat or outdone by the Soviets, not even in silly things. In the late sixties someone in our intelligence services suspected the commies were keeping tabs on us with remote viewing. Not to be outdone in dumb ideas our army set up a program headed by the Stanford Research Institute -- no direct connection to the university.



By 1985 no useful information was gleaned by folks sitting around thinking real hard, so the Army ceased funding it. Still when an idea, no matter how wacko, gets the attention of Congress it's life is extended and the money keeps coming in.



Operation Stargate, as it was sometimes called, was kept alive. It only cost 20 million dollars and had some interesting results which couldn't be denied because they were never tested. In 1996 the Science Applications International Corp, a San Diego Based think tank had conducted some of the experiments. When I checked on it for a story, they admitted they participated in the program but all results are classified. I called the FBI and a PR guy also told me told they couldn't comment because it was classified.



The best I got was from a less reticent source, the grapevine. There I "learned" one remote viewer got a peek inside a Rusky submarine but wasn't able see anything classified. Nor was she able to determine which ocean the U-boat was in, but it was somewhere! As a retired Navy cryptologist I was amazed at the ability of an outfit to spend so much for information which could be gleaned by just thinking.



Thomas Jefferson warned us, "An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic." You have to wonder what ol' Tom would have to say about the citizenry which elected today's leaders.



Where do we get our wacko ideas? Try the information highway. The brightest scholars in history would envy today's Americans with who have so much valid scientific information available on the web. But today's Americans also have even more claims of things they want to believe, verification be damned!



Then they vote.



Is there help in stemming this tide of deliberate ignorance? Not from Texas it seems. In May, the Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum which undermined much of what we know about science and our past. Tom Jefferson who worried about such credulity was himself was downgraded, perhaps to make room for Jefferson Davis who was President of the Confederacy.



Because Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks, credulous ideas will be taught as fact to children across our nation. The pious Texans want us to understand that we were founded as a Christian nation, which might have surprised one of the founders. John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which emphatically said America was in no sense a Christian nation. That treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate and has never been withdrawn.



The Constitution's only mention of religion is to restrict it.



But today. America is galloping blithely down the road to blind faith in nonsense. Their race into credulous thinking is supported by the vested interests of those who want their next quarter's interests protected whether an interminably long summer bodes ill for our grandchildren or not.



We hear "oh scientists don't know everything" so often it ought to be a warning to every skeptic. We who believe in science are also dismissed with the canard that we are merely eccentric. After all deliberate ignorance works wonders for the deliberately ignorant. To those of us who want our history untainted and our findings of science tested it will be a disaster.



Can this disaster be avoided or averted? Sure, but it will take a massive effort backed by a knowledgeable populace.



Will it? Probably not unless more of the populace start looking for real answers That won't be easy when faced with relentless barrage of sophistic answers from deniers of hard facts. The ultimate refuge for deniers of hard facts is religion; every congressman except Pete Stark of Oakland claims a belief in a supreme being. , and only Pete Stark in Oakland will admit he didn't believe.



I hate to be contrary, but was anybody except me frightened when, at a political debate of would-be presidents, three viable candidates admitted they admitted they do not believe in evolution. And how much different are they from the rest of the candidates who will grudgingly admit they do believe in the most tested scientific theory of all time, but refuse to support it?



Science can't compete with charisma except in the real world.



And don't forget the money! A recent headline blared: OIL BILLIONAIRES BACKING PROP. 23 -- a California effort to curb global warming. Yup, and that included a million from Koch Industries, ranked by Forbes as the second largest private company in the U.S.A. It is also among the top ten polluters. I'm proud to say my state rejected the self-serving proposition.



We're in a world of hurt here folks and you can take that from a very worried but eccentric curmudgeon.



//Keith Taylor is a former president and current program chair of the San Diego Association for Rational Inquiry living in Chula Vista, Ca. He can be reached at krtaylorxyz@aol.com//

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Trying Honesty...

Let's Try Honesty

by

Keith Taylor



Loch David Crane just sent a letter announcing his intention to run for mayor of San Diego. He has no chance, but he's got my support. San Diego would be better off with a mayor of his stature and imagination. This is an open letter to my hero:



Dear Loch: Sorry I cannot give you more encouragement, but you aren't going to be elected. Mayors of cities the size of San Diego are bought by the folks who own the country -- the corporations. They aren't about to open their pockets to a man so honest he won't claim supernatural powers to pull rabbits out of a hat.



Of course that doesn't mean your effort has to be in vain. Richard Rider, who could be your inspiration in losing elections, pointed out that in 1940 Socialist perennial presidential candidate Norman Thomas was asked if he'd run for a seventh time. Thomas remarked that he didn't need to. Everything the Socialists had fought for in 1916 had been enacted by Republicans and Democrats by 1940.

And of course it's true. We can't always effect change but we can sit quietly by as it evolves. Uh, don't use the word "evolve" in your campaign. Let God take credit for it all. Then folks will admire your sagacity.

In your campaign you ought not have any problem getting plenty of attention from the media. They love the flamboyant over the mundane. Be sure to use your startrike, USS Enterprise, the one connoting the starship not CVN-69.

I remember you got some great publicity when you used the contraption to give a lift to Mike Aguirre. He needed a ride so he could make his commitment to both the Rock and Roll Marathon and his engagement to speak at the graduation ceremony of the Thomas Jefferson Law School.

Perhaps some sort of reenactment of that would be appropriate. The publicity might be even more effective if you took Mike off somewhere, say in Oklahoma, and left him there. Mike has little political capital. His record didn't inspire voters in his own run for mayor. I'm telling ya being honest just isn't going to do much for you on election day.

First you're gonna need a platform. No, don't promise to fix the impressive debt racked up by your predecessors. That can't be done unless we get more money and that means taxes, and taxes are more deadly than cuss words at a Mormon prayer meeting. Also don't promise a commitment to the new library. That's only of interest to folks who actually read, a rapidly shrinking part of our population.

One issue will ensure the inevitable, your defeat. It will also ensure all sorts of attention which can be used after honesty comes back into vogue.

Come out in support of the Constitution. Demand the city obey the law and take down the cross from Mt. Soledad. While it is true that most San Diegans are Christians, a significant minority are not. Furthermore they're getting restless at listening to talk show hosts shoving a decidedly sectarian symbol in their faces then claiming the symbol as a reason to make decisions based on belief not rational thought.

Just think of the wacko things we've done in the name of God. Then when someone objects, pseudo pious leaders claim symbols as validation for whatever they choose to believe and do.

Suck it up Loch and take a giant stand for the minority of us who don't believe. Be the leader who makes his decisions based on science and facts rather than obeisance to a being who hasn't shown up for two thousand years.

You won't ride that idea into the mayor's mansion (do we have one?) but you aren't going to win anyhow. Let's use your candidacy to help advance ideas not superstition. Believe me you won't have much competition.

The cross issue is an open and shut case. It was placed atop the mountain on Easter Sunday 1954 and dedicated to "our lord and savior, Jesus Christ." Each Easter thereafter an Easter sunrise service was held atop the mountain.

Then in 1989 my good friend Phil Paulson and his co-litigant Howard Kristner sued to have it removed from public property. In 1993 the decision in favor of the plaintiffs was handed down by Gordon Thompson, a judge for the United States District Court. Suddenly -- almost supernaturally -- plaques started appearing on the base of the cross.

We had us a retroactive war memorial. History and truth be damned! The cross is still there, still mocking those of us who don't accept a symbol which also has been used to as a reason for 2000 years of crusades, wars, inquisitions, book burning, slavery and other misdemeanors.

But in the eyes of the courts the case has been settled. The thing left to do is lead a charge to get San Diego to obey the law.

Naturally there will be a last ditch stand by those who insist we shun critical thinking and embrace dogma. Leading the charge are Maureen O'Connor and Roger Hedgecock, two former mayors who have pledged to defend the symbol from destruction by lying down in front of the bulldozers.

That alone would be worth the effort. Just think of Maureen and Roger lying down together. In a moment of passion they might do to each other what they did to the city while in office.

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