by Todd Brendan Fahey
(Commissioned by Smoke magazine, October 23, 1996; "killed" by Smoke owner Robert Lockwood, November 3, 1996)

A Self-Reflexive Fantasy/An Expressionist Argument...a trip down the Rabbit Hole:
Is this the new face of Gonzo?; The New Paradigm Shuffle?...or Just a Hot New Way of Getting By?

"I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it--a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures. A group photo of the top ten journalists in America on any given day would be a monument to human ugliness. It is not a trade that attracts a lot of 'slick' people; none of the Calvin Klein crowd or International jet set types. The sun will set in a blazing red sky to the east of Casablanca before a journalist appears on the cover of People magazine."

-- Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the 80s


[E-mail transmission from Fahey to R.U. Sirius]

Subject: 'Fear & Loathing Indeed'

--but fr this place. P.U. Gotta boogie out of Louisiana SOON. Amsterdam was a dream. Just a dream. Where do I begin? OK: Fast notation style: Finished the Smoke piece three days ago. It blisters. Bought 4 pieces of original art, blew my Smoke $$$, but worth it. Got fantastic head from a Peruvian slut. wOw. Got meself into a rave/house music mag in the Netherlands--Basic Groove: gonna be a meaty piece, & photos too! Am in this week's campus newspaper, back at the ranch. A good article; makes me look pretty paranoid, but I probably am. Got a good idea for a full length Fear and Loathing in Amsterdam novel. On which, more later. Smoked the kill hash; ate pure ecstacy (duzn't do much for me any more, but my friends tripped hard); a whammer LSD trip, rivaling anything I've ever been in touch w/; cubensis 3 times, 2 of them hardtrips. Peddled 35 copies of Wisdom's Maw: placed copies in: W.H.Smith (London-based); The Athenaeum Bookshop; The English Bookstore, & Conscious Dreams, a righteous head shop (took 15). Also got on TV. The broadcast was taped tonight (was on a plane home, but have a tape); came on after Philip Glass (the composer). Yup. Pretty neat. I TORE IT UP! Was pretty sure I was gonna lose my mind during days 2-6, but got it pretty well back together. I haven't used drugs like that in years. But FUN. The Red Light District is amazing. Too many sluts, too little money (actually, a 30 minute head job goes for 100 guilders, which is about $65...

"making it hot for them" T. Southern

--tbf


There is almost no way to explain myself here, in the 2500 words alotted me by Smoke. I'm thankful like hell to have the chance to fill up a couple of their expensive pages, but it is a loaded prospect I face herewith. The enormity of the situation came to me on the plane ride over--an uneventful 8 1/2 hrs through the sky--a straight shot from Houston, the highlight of which was the Michael Keaton flop, Multiplicity, a disturbing film about a slacker who can't advance his fortunes, no matter how many of himself he clones. I was thumbing through my hardback first-edition copy of The Great Shark Hunt (which I bought for a bargain $17 at some second-hand bookstore in Lafayette, and in which some sad-hearted fucker had written once: "To Nancy, the love of my life, 1979"...), culling what last-minute nuggets I could from my brutal Lord and Savior. It is an impossible act to follow, & I am too fundamentally honest to begin yammering about how the world really needsanother Gonzo journalist around. The truth is, Hunter S. Thompson is a terrible genius, whose star is about to rise again. Soon there will appear a scholarly look at the mad Doktor's Life-Rant, and we will have him to kick around for another twenty or so years of internecine egghead warfare...which could make a decent segue into this Amsterdam piece.

I have been tracking Hunter Thompson since 1983, since on one sunny Santa Barbra afternoon and helplessly stoned on Humboldt, I was allowed to be taken in by his heavy con approach to the literary marketplace. Much can (& will) be said about Thompson's stylistic innovations, his "participatory journalism," yadda yadda. The thing about Thompson, for me, now, a 31-year old unknown novelist, is his understanding that a week on assignment in an exotic foreign locale is virtually always A Ticket To Ride. Open-ended gigs like this come around about as often as the comet Kahoutek. & there is simply no way of anticipating the kinds of connections, for good or ill, or both, that are to be made in the process of earning a heavy nonfiction Sex-&-Drugs legend.

There will be things told in this story that will scotch my reputation permanently in Puritan America. But the shitty truth of it is, Puritan America has never been particularly good to me. & there is also the fact that Hunter Thompson stopped writing serious Gonzo around 1979. The world has seen about nine major music movements since 1979. So maybe there is a need for another Gonzo journalist on the scene. Or maybe I'm just ego-stuffed and deranged…

My relationship with Smoke magazine may be important to clarify here. Assistant editor Rich Hoxey "got the call," as it were, when my felonious "acid novel" passed across his desk some time this past September. Smoke was, at the time, devising a plan for a "Fear & Loathing" assignment, to be set in Amsterdam. They tell me I was third on the List: Chris Elliot had scheduling problems; Matthew Perry--or one of those ubiquitous face-names...the Friends guy (& I'll check character assassination at the door)...some publicist for one among the Friends troupe decided that a story he wrote on or about Amsterdam would have to stink like Sex & Drugs, and that anything he wrote would be the death of his career; and so, alas, the duties fall to me. It is now my purpose in the Food Chain to bend the minds of the American reading populace. So let me begin.

There exists a world in which high-living men (and probably a couple of womyn) pay humans to get in trouble, or become stained by, and to confess publicly in venues such as Smoke (& before that, we had Rolling Stone, which is now the void that is Jann Wenner's existence...), there is a world in which writers are paid to experience things that could very well involve the bringing upon themselves heavy penal sentences. & once in a rare moon, there is a writer who, for whatever reason--& they are all good and weighty--has essentially "had it" with mainstream America: that vapid land of sitcoms and commercials & infomercials & talk shows & visionless, primarily materialistic, subsistants, & whatnot--a writer who, again in the words of the great Hunter S., "has found out a way to live out there where the real winds blow."

So, I am the Acid Novelist. & I have been paid by Smoke to get The Story of Amsterdam. Let us proceed.

It is true, there exists a realm in which "happening minds" function more or less unfettered by meddling forces. That this place is called, geographically, Amsterdam, is also true. Many have found its gypsy soul/drunk of its wisdom. & maybe the real truth here is that America is not worthy of The Message. Maybe we've blown our shot. Maybe that is why Hunter has been so quiet for the past fifteen years. Indeed.

This is a strong line of inquiry, and it deserves to be plundered, & I am probably the fellow to do it; but there is also the issue of the Amsterdam piece, which may not be the most important this on this writer's mind.

Hmm. Commerce is a heavy reality. There are many realities.

That is my message from Amsterdam. There exists a place where happening minds can be brought to beautiful (& probably terrifying) truths; where the body can be brought to pleasure in untold ways... There is a story here. Aaron Sigmond is getting the first whiff, because he laid down good money, proved himself a visionary fellow (or at least got really lucky).

There are portals into which happening minds can peer--worlds into which, if one has balls enough, a man may find himself amongst splendidly amusing, and generally very fine, and even lucrative company. There is such a world. I call it Amsterdam.

Should this story be told to an American audience? The sadist in me sez, "Fuck 'em, they ain't worthy." But Smoke is paying. Commerce is a heavy reality. There are many realities. It is a solid paradox that is mine inhabitance.

Is America ready for me? Will it buy my acid novel? Can I make this gig pay? If so, I am the luckiest bastard alive. & Aaron Sigmond and his bosses above will prove themselves very good men--like the last scions of the Medici giving funds to Michelangelo.

These are good shrooms.

I feel like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry: "In all this excitement, I lost count of how many rounds I've fired. Did I fire six shots, or did I fire five? Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?" So, America: are you gonna stand by like suckers for another four years, while Bill-who-didn't-inhale sends beautiful bright minds to penitentiaries for seeking wisdom through chemicals? Of so, you're no friend of mine.

The way I see it, it is time for many of us to make a deliberate, proactive choice: Revolt against the War on (some) Drugs...or move to Amsterdam, & if Amsterdam collapses as a place where happening minds can function fully and stay free...well, I will be in trouble. That would be a heavy day. I'll lay odds, though, now that I've been here and seen it for myself, that the Amsterdam intelligentsia would never let a thing like that happen.

So, I guess I'm an expatriate. Will any of my friends come over and play with me? & who will pay my bills? Bob Guccione? Hugh Hefner? Jann Wenner? Or Aaron Sigmond? My price is now $5,000 for a 5000 word installment of Fear & Loathing in Amsterdam, the novel. I think you're getting a bargain. Hunter won't get out of bed for less than $25,000; and from what I've heard, from an agent we used to share together, Uncle Duke is now biding his daze in the fine company of Lady White and will calcify that way, more or less--an exhilarating and disturbing fixture in the American psyche.

So, wire that $$$, dear editors, do it in Dutch guilders. Wire it to the Hotel Van Onna, 104 Bloemgracht. I stay in room 55. It is my lucky room. The proprietors know I'm trouble, but they take it with great humor. I have a twisted tale to share, bringing together a basement chemist named Heinrich, a smorgasboard of psychedelic shaman, a jazz player in exile since 1971, and an aging Gonzo journalist in need of spiritual redemption. It is a good story; I will put my soul into it. So, send the money. Allow me to finish this thing. Finance this pirate life of mine.

Do it now.

$ $ $

A "Fear & Loathing" place is a strange bird, journalistically. It lacks that which upon a true story depends: e.g., A Subject. And it is the lack of a subject that makes a "Fear & Loathing" piece as taxing as cleaning out the Augean stables. One lurches here and yon for an angle, casts about wildly for some goddamned Room with a View of Something interesting...and when one is finally worn ragged--because there is a God, and He is kind and has smiled upon his prodigal son on this day by granting him all three wishes in a single pop: an all-expense-paid trip to Amsterdam--the philosopher's stone is delivered unto wild Gonzo man, so that he may bring to the world his arcane vision.

The first thing a Gonzo journalist needs to know is his word-count--in my case 2,500, which is, as you might guess, not a lot of leg-room for the long-boned story-teller. But it gives me leverage. Since the story I have been privileged with is a black diamond, Aaron Sigmond will either have to splay this bugger over across the next half-dozen issues of Smoke, or I will have to publish another novel myself; & it is this win-win that brings me to the Mona Lisa Smile.

The other thing a Gonzo journalist needs to know, is how long his bills are being paid for. Aaron made it exquisitely clear that he was not paying for my Grand Tour, and I think I heard him toss off three days as a figure., which means I can stretch it to four--kind of like going sixty-one in the old fifty-five m.p.h. scheme, and knowing you won't be made to suffer for it. But the injured Hell of it is that I had not a whole lot interesting happen to me in the first four days. The piece nearly got hijacked by a low-budget, garden variety tale of a treacherous out-call girl and her pimply Iranian pimp/pusher boyfriend...but then the ecstasy started coming on, and revenge was no longer the best rush in town. And there was a night when I got involved in a savage fantasy featuring Courtney Cox and her body double, and I thought for a day or so that I might get some writing mileage out of that one.

It was around day seven when things began picking up the brilliant overtones unique to the Big Mystical Adventure. A quick mental survey told me it had been nearly a decade since my last significant sojourn in the weird world. Really good acid doesn't come around my neighborhood as often as it should.

The guarantors of Smoke will have a many vital and well-founded questions about my trip to Amsterdam. It is unusual for a 2,500-word piece (which now looks like it will top 3k) to take eight days to accomplish; probably it is more unusual that such a trip breaks five figures in expenses. Ah, let us burn yet another branch on the pyre of journalistic ethics.

Your money goes quickly in Amsterdam. Or, it has mine. I had been here 16 hours, and already I had spent $600: cab fare from the airport to the hotel @$45; a no-frills hotel in the museum district @$150/night; $200 for the hooker; $60 for two 3-gram baggies of hashish (not a lot, to the naked eye, but yr hash seems to stretch nice & far in Amsterdam...), another $60 for three baggies of freeze-dried psylocibin--which is over-the-counter material (or at least until this article comes out) at head-shops Amsterdam-wide, and about $40 at a Transylvanian fish-house, whose manager put me immediately on edge. Persons from or around the Mediterranean, I've concluded, are the most provincial on earth--a paranoiac, rigidly suspicious strain, which probably has something to do w/ guarding the hallowed secrets of the Son of the Real Jehova. I read a good paperback on the subject once, got it in an airport--but none of that matters now.

What I was after, after being forced by the autocratic young owner to clean my plate of the paella ("This is the best food," he kept repeating, "Best food in all Amsterdam. You don't like, we fix you something else. Come on, eat, this is best food..."), what I was after was the name of a good jazz club. I was in the mood to hear some young cat pluck off a stretch of guitar that would sound like Al DiMeola. It was a sophisticated mood, enhanced, no doubt, by the several pellets of 2cb I had eaten earlier in the evening.

"OK," I said, in a state of over-full exhaustion, and when he went to turn his well-oiled head to urge the Gen-X slacker waitress to earn her pay somehow, I managed to hide a couple boiled fish nuggets among or inside or underneath the mound of clam shells. "Is this good? Can I pay now?"

"Of course you can pay," he said, "You could have paid before. I just wanted you to eat best food."

I jogged across a cobbled walk to a smallish den called The Alto Club, on Liebenstraat, near the infamous Bulldog hash bar. I knew nothing of The Alto, except I had been warned that drink prices ran high for tourists. But at the door, I caught a vibe that was not real... accommodating to the traveling stranger: something about the way the clique of four pea-coated Dutchmen stared me down while I tried to ease my way through a clot of merrymakers. I actually thought about leaving, literally--just turning around; but the band was called Gator's Groove, and mebbe I was feeling nostalgic for my old place in de bayou. Who fucking knows. I walked in, paid for a club soda, and got ready to make an end-run around what looked to be four bad-asses from the Holland countryside.

One of them made a sucking sound in the teeth. I remember being concerned that my laptop--or the one I had borrowed from a friend--would be damaged in the fall. And the bartender shook loose of the strap on my wrist. But when I went, I went.

The floors are all hardwood in Holland, and though hardwood has some give, it is not a lot, and the bones, it seems, are not conditioned to take an uncushioned freefall. I remember reading a Reader's Digest article on the stunt-diver who once fell 3,000 feet without a parachute, and lived. He broke most of the bones in his body, but had remarkably few internal injuries, and none to the brain. His tip was to fall on the pressure points on one's side: the shoulder, the elbow, the hip, the knee, and the ankle. So that is what I did.

I took a long time to come to. When I finally did, it was midnight straight up, and I found myself sitting at a high table, next to a large black man who wore green shades and looked to be from out of the cast of the Mod Squad. Quite suddenly, the foggy qualities of concussion had receded and I was aware of being in the presence of brother Lucius, of the 12th Panther Brigade, of Oakland. I was massaging the socket near my scapula, where the shoulder had been put back in two sure motions by someone whom many in the crowd called "the Healer," and who had since departed with little in the way of forwarding information.

Lucius laid down his glass of wormwood nectar. "Man, that's nuthin'," he said. His teeth were like cinder-blocks, very uniform and with all the grace of an old U-Haul building. The pores on his nose were huge and deep, like so many abandoned water wells. "You want me to tell you a thing like that shouldn't happen in this town? See, I know. I saw you comin'. Shit, this town's gon' be as mean as you want to let it be. They's cats here gib me the crawlies--like findin' some old boy's head in yo' bed at night...no ketchup color on that picture, no Godfather hawse head, shit. But still, they's a spirit here save yo' soul. Save mine."

Lucius had seen better days, I knew. His eyes were clotted and rheumy, with real orange marmalade. They say absinthe is a harsh mistress, and he would make a good prohibition poster-child were it still a problem anywhere in the world.

He reached down into his lap and fumbled for something: I figured it was a cigar, but really I tried not to notice. Then, for the first time all night, I saw the glint of a tenor sax; the brass snake sat on the floor, its neck at rest against my companion's thigh, which was covered in a fine corduroy, of a rust complexion.

"Shit, most folks think of Amsterdam, and they see the steeple atop th' Temple of Gomorrah. But, they don't know. All I know is, a man can think straight over here. A man don't have to be scared all the time, 'bout gettin' his brains bashed in by some fool inbred thinks he's special 'cos he's Billy Joe's kissin' cousin, or some shit. I see what this place did for a lot o' sufferin' brothas. Saw Bud Powell go into a full bloom one May, right here, right in this club... If it wasn't this one, it was the one next door. And I don't have to tell some people what it's like to be 'round genius. Everything just kind'a gives," he said, pushing out deliberately with his fingertips. "Everything becomes possible. It's like, before everything was walled off--but you don't even know they's any walls there--and once the genius hits, there's no more opposition. Everything's clear, and orderly. Shit," he glimmered. "It's beautiful."


TO BE CONTINUED

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP’s top Senate recruits — a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

“I would say it’s the tip of the spear,” said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. “We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today.”

“What you’re going to see,” said Armey, “is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries.”

These high-stakes primaries, pitting the activist wing of the party against the establishment wing, stand to have a profound impact on the 2010 election landscape since they will create significant problems for moderate candidates recruited by the national party precisely because they appear well-suited to win in places that are not easily — or even plausibly — won by conservative candidates...

Associated Press - November 02, 2009

On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy.

WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way.

On 72 occasions, according to the 28-page FBI summary, Cheney equivocated to the FBI during his lengthy May 2004 interview, saying he could not be certain in his answers to questions about matters large and small in the Plame controversy.

The Cheney interview reflects a team of prosecutors and FBI agents trying to find out whether the leaks of Plame's CIA identity were orchestrated at the highest level of the White House and carried out by, among others, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

Among the most basic questions for Cheney in the Plame probe: How did Libby find out that the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson worked at the CIA?

Libby's own handwritten notes suggest Libby found out from Cheney. When Libby discovered Cheney's reference to Plame and the CIA in his notes -- notes that Libby knew he would soon have to turn over to the FBI -- the chief of staff went to the vice president, probably in late September or early October 2003.

Sharing the information with Cheney was in itself an unusual step at the outset of a criminal investigation in which potential White House witnesses were being ordered by their superiors not to talk to each other about the Plame matter.

"It turns out that I have a note that I had heard about" Plame's CIA identity "from you," Libby says he told the vice president.

And what did Cheney say in response? Fitzgerald asked Libby in front of a federal grand jury six months later.

"He didn't say much," Libby replied. "You know, he said something about 'From me?' something like that, and tilted his head, something he does commonly, and that was that."...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=185HKE2c5Gg&feature=related

Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation's terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list.

During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a "reasonable suspicion," according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week.

FBI officials cautioned that each nomination "does not necessarily represent a new individual, but may instead involve an alias or name variant for a previously watchlisted person."

The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government's "no fly" list...

By Stephen C. Webster
Sunday, October 25th, 2009 -- 6:34 pm

In the chronicle of America's war against its marijuana users, conservative columnist George Will may have just earned credit for his own Walter Cronkite moment.

Appearing on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, the Pulitzer-winning journalist and longtime icon of America's political right declared that with President Barack Obama's new policy which respects the states right to allow medical marijuana, the United States is "probably in the process now of legalizing marijuana."

He added that if there were to be a serious effort to fight the increasingly violent, powerful Mexican drug cartels, "you'd legalize marijuana," the sale of which provides the gangs the vast majority of their funding.

Will's comments come not even a week after a Gallup poll found record-breaking support across the United States for the legalization of marijuana, with nearly half of U.S. citizens in favor and a clear majority of support emerging among liberals, Democrats and moderates.

Will's proclamation, as a well-respected conservative thinker, is especially significant given that Gallup found the only two political groups in the U.S. that are still very strongly opposed to legalization are conservatives and Republicans.

BY Matthew Lysiak and Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Thursday, October 22nd 2009, 4:00 AM

Urbahn Architects

Former top cop Bernard Kerik (below) is getting to know his new noisy and smelly digs at Westchester County Jail, after years spent at his cushy mansion in Franklin Lakes, N.J.

Platt/Getty

The food is bland. The smell is awful. And the neighbors are noisy - if not dangerous.

This was the depressing world that Bernard Kerik found himself in Wednesday - his first full day at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla.

"People here live like animals," said 33-year-old Deidre Walters, whose boyfriend has been locked up there for three years. "When you're in their world, you throw your dignity out the window. You just try to make it to the next day."

Kerik became the first former NYPD commissioner to land in jail Tuesday when a judge revoked his bail for allegedly trying to taint the jury pool in his upcoming corruption trial.

The one-time "hero" of 9/11 found himself cuffed like a common criminal, given a number and made to pose for a mug shot.

Timeline and modus operandi of Dogshit Park & other atrocities


Six of the eight stories comprising this collection were tapped out on a failing 80386 IBM "clone" during the winter months of 1992 and into early 1993, Salt Lake City, Utah, riding an adrenaline wave from having just finished Wisdom's Maw and still with the majority of a sheet of LSD, which had--to that point--fueled nearly all of my works of fiction and "creative nonfiction."

As then-adjunct Professor of English at Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, I was facing an unpaid stretch of weeks through Christmas and the New Year and had no intention of getting a part-time job, as I knew that I would not see the new semester if I did not get that novel done. Wisdom's Maw had been sitting 1/4 finished since 1990, and it would take a couple of close friends who knew of my needs to supply me with what I needed to finish the bastard thing. Having suddenly come into a parcel of very fine blotter acid, I carved out a schedule and a List of Rules & Regulations for the house that I knew would allow for ample progress; barring a nervous breakdown or an intervention by the good members of the Salt Lake City police department, I was hopeful for the first time in ages.

I would rise with my then-wife in the mornings of that (for me) winter vacation, cook and eat breakfast together, and--as soon as I heard the car start up in the driveway--implant between 500 and 1,000 micrograms of Sandoz' finest between my cheek'n'gum. There would be no more than one phone call to the house during my Writing Day; she would enjoy lunches downtown with office colleagues or church members, and, by 5:15pm--to a heavy awareness of the sliding of the tumblers on our deadbolt lock--I would have completed between four and thirteen pages of a story of which I am still very proud and have come back to Consensus Reality (or, as close to it as I ever am). As a southern California transplant, I had almost no friends in Salt Lake City and, hence, no reason to fear a knocking on the door to jar me from out of my phantasmagoria. I had kicked booze two years earlier, was in complete control of my surroundings and had, during idle time in what was most of my earlier stint as a paralegal for an LA law firm, mapped out every scene, character sketch and venue in which the drama would take place. I simply had to sit in solace--to strains of the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison and Roxy Music--and get the bugger done.

And I did. In a white heat, basically smashed on acid and to endless mugs of herbal tea, and with enough incense and speaker volume to worry the neighbors, wrote 150+ pages in less than eight weeks. And still I had about 60 hits lurking in a filing cabinet. And is when I decided to begin writing the Dogshit Park stories.

I was on fire. Those four months stand as the most sustained stretch of creativity I have ever come into. A pleasant change of pace from the byzantine construction into which I had wrenched myself with Wisdom's Maw, the stories came as almost a cut-and-paste from the Beyond. Fat slabs of dialogue and narrative would simply come to me, and the days were that of joy. Each evening, the old white Honda would pull up behind our flat, and she would be greeted with an exuberance and laughter and a, "...You've got to read this," and I can understand now why she suspected nothing.

It had become routine; and who knows how artists work, anyway? At least I was producing something, which, to her, nearly compensated for the weeks of fiscal non-reward.

Not written in that eight-week stretch are "Family Circle" and "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad: A Report on the Health of the Amerikan Spine"--the latter, again, hammered out to a sustained chemical harvest (dextromethorphan hydrobromide, it was, this time). The former is the only thing I have ever written whilst drinking--a nasty weekend at a condo with my then-wife in Destin, Florida, the key to which her employer was kind enough to lend to us, as an escape from Lafayette, Louisiana, into which we never quite settled after leaving Utah. I had seen enough adjunct Professors clutching their Master's degree diplomas and wondering when they would need to return to the Auto Parts counter at Hanley's Lube & Exhaust, for lack of a Ph.D.

Having run out of drugs and, sadly, back to the bottle; into a doctoral program in American Literature (the last "literature" course I had taken having been probably in high school--my undergraduate degree in pre-Law; the Master's in the form of creative writing, over which not a book was ever assigned), a depressive wreck, I was left alone in a windy beachside condominium by a frightened wife who let me have it to myself only hours after arrival and who, instead, drove further into Florida to stay with a brother and sister-in-law, such was the fury of mine temper. I remember killing off a lot of wine and a catfish left in the refrigerator for indeterminate days; I remember little else. No sleep had come to me between the time she had jettisoned the loaner home and having reappeared on a Sunday afternoon, to drive us back to Lafayette. When she did, and after finding fully three empty bottles in the kitchen trash and a bathroom in a vomitus state, begged of me was an answer. I shrugged, pushed across the table the handwritten sheaves of "Family Circle," then watched a good-hearted woman nearly crack.

Days later, after recovering from the binge and of salmonella, I reread what I had conjured and laid down the pen.

Divorce papers were served to me in November 1996, by which time I had sacked two quality New York literary agents, set up a small press imprint of my own and published Wisdom's Maw. I would again quit drinking, but, again, by switching my poison. There were the expected phone calls, once review copies had begun making the rounds of magazines both mainstream and underground. I would "go on tour" for Boston's Lollipop magazine--a trainwreck exhibition slated to go 'cross country, to join the Grateful Dead's "Furthur Festival," but got as far as Atlanta, before turning tail. Sometime around Halloween 1997, Smoke magazine--a glossy, expensive affair--sent me to Amsterdam. I thought I had been issued a pardon; a Higher Court (Smoke owner Robert Lockwood) decided otherwise.

Now, in the waning hours of 2009, I've learned enough about the mechanics of The Publishing Industry to know that some writers are destined--largely to a clash of Puritan v. Nonconformist--to never being "accepted." Spending thousands of dollars to fell trees in Indonesia for to get these things to you, the Reader, in Book Form--and what with shipping costs per copy from my station as an expatriate abroad to what will be largely an American audience--makes little sense to me. The format you observe here is both a case of "Necessity being the mother of invention" and a fair guess as to the "future of book publishing."

I feel as if "I am on to something" again. (Whereas, for many years, I was mostly just "on something.")

Don't ever give up.


Todd Brendan Fahey
October 25, 2009

Denis Campbell
Guardian.co.uk
Friday 23 October 2009 18.54 BST

A growing number of people are taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy to help them cope with a variety of conditions including anorexia nervosa, cluster headaches and chronic anxiety attacks.

The emergence of a community that passes the drugs between users on the basis of friendship, support and need – with money rarely involved – comes amid a resurgence of research into the possible therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. This is leading to a growing optimism among those using the drugs that soon they may be able to obtain medicines based on psychedelics from their doctor, rather than risk jail for taking illicit drugs.

Among those in Britain already using the drugs and hoping for a change in the way they are viewed is Anna Jones (not her real name), a 35-year-old university lecturer, who takes LSD once or twice a year. She fears that without an occasional dose she will go back to the drinking problem she left behind 14 years ago with the help of the banned drug.

LSD, the drug synonymous with the 1960s counter-culture, changed her life, she says. "For me it was the catalyst to give up destructive behaviour – heavy drinking and smoking. As a student I used to drink two or three bottles of wine, two or three days a week, because I didn't have many friends and didn't feel comfortable in my own skin.

"Then I took a hit of LSD one day and didn't feel alone any more. It helped me to see myself differently, increase my self-confidence, lose my desire to drink or smoke and just feel at one with the world. I haven't touched alcohol or cigarettes since that day in 1995 and am much happier than before."...

By David Rosser-Owen
October 22, 2009

As a result of a Cabinet Office report, the UK Border Agency came into being just over a year ago. In fact it was on 1 April 2008; and this unhappy association with April Fools' Day seems to be being played out in various ways. Two of these have appeared this week. One displays the cultural myopia of the London ruling elite. This extravagance through the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) failed in 2007 to put forward the Gaelic language film Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle to the Oscars in Los Angeles, despite the American awarding body asking for it. In fact, BAFTA has no category that can accommodate Britain's ancient tongues of Welsh, Gaelic, Manx, and Cornish other than as "Foreign Language" films. This insulting and ignorant perspective seems to have found its way into the UK Border Agency.

On 9 June 2009, the Agency, without explanation, returned two young women, Evelyn Calcabrini and Shirley Edwards, to their homes in Puerto Madryn in Argentina's Patagonia province. The two women were on their way to Wales to continue their studies in the Welsh language. Wales has long historic and cultural associations with Patagonia. This is a fact known to just about everybody who lives in Wales except, it would seem, HM Secretary of State for Wales, the South African born Peter Hain. As a consequence, and in protest at this high-handed and ignorant behaviour, CeltFest has decided to cancel a Welsh festival that was planned for next month to coincide with a rugby match between Argentina and Wales partly amid fears that artists travelling from Argentina for the event will be turned away by the Agency. This is likely to cost the Welsh economy a six figure sum. Instead, CeltFest say they will be concentrating their efforts on another event on 7 November which will coincide with a rugby international between New Zealand and Wales. Shirley Edwards will be a guest of honour.

The lawyer for Evelyn Calcabrini has said that the UK government is insisting on taking the case to a tribunal, which will be held in Welsh in Birmingham in November. Yet, while focusing its attentions on denying entry to the culturally-linked Welsh Patagonians, this same Agency it seems has lost track of up to 40, 000 suspected illegal immigrants. This astonishing figure was admitted by the Home Office in the evening of Tuesday, 20 October. The 40, 000 had arrived in the UK legally but had had their requests to extend their stays turned down. Unlike Shirley Edwards and Evelyn Calcabrini, the Home Office did not deport them and has no record of them leaving the country.

In a letter to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Mrs Lin Homer, the chief executive of the Agency, also revealed that some 74, 000 asylum seekers have been allowed to stay under a controversial amnesty. The letter further contained the unwelcome news that of the 1,000 foreign convicts freed by the Home Office in 2006, only 860 have been deported and 85 have never been found. It would appear that it's much easier to get tough with Welsh Patagonian students, than for the Agency actually to do its job... whatever that is.

by Todd Brendan Fahey
October 18, 2009

“God, someone could drop a bomb on this place and the world would lose so much,” she said, apropos of nothing, and stunning in its timing.  “I feel  so small.”  With a sincerity bone deep and so unexpected, yet fully deserved and of a genius of its own—a critical assessment of set and setting to have made Huxley proud, silencing those around her, leaving only the sneaky coil of Walter Becker’s fretwork to writhe through the clot of her estimation.

Stan could have foretold that it would be Jack Jump who’d be punctuating the still, a: “I think I’ll go outside and have a smoke,” was what he could manage.  And he did so, directly—turned heel and stepped out to the porch and lit a Camel.  He’d begun again, to his own metronome, to which none—Stan, barely—could fathom.  One of the great minds of our generation, but whose liner notes on his campus Web page reads: “Currently serving what feels like a life sentence at University of Lafayette.”  The man could compartmentalize like any among the Top 10 villains of lore—tend graciously to a backyard grill and know to stock up on an extra kilo of ground round and precisely who might be showing up empty handed, but with a good story to rectify much, anyway, of a semblance of shame.  And it would always be Tom, and later on that summer they’d take off in his 4x4 to parts unknown to Stan, paying tribute to others among their ken, small gods of the littles: Baked Adobe and Circumfiction and Cold Mother’s Hubbard, whose makers, likewise, run to their own handwrung wave and flow—and who, upon the first notes of office drama, would take to the far end of the pond, near the clutch of bamboo, where a small green heron had once opened its yaw and let out, as he told it, “A croak, what sounded like from a hinge at the end of the world.”  Stan had given him those ‘shrooms, before they’d started to grow their own, and kept a sort of copyright on anything the mad Doktor would produce that day.

As a practice, Jump tended to not open his notebooks to Stan—not for fear of critique, but for the eidetic memory he had seen of his student and where and in what manner his thoughts and phrases culled were bound to bubble up.  To Stan, the world in-toto was like unto a bowl of candies left on the steps of a home on Halloween, its lights off and no car in the driveway.  That he deigned to leave the house itself alone was a blessing, but Stan considered himself fairly generous.

“This is a good party,” it said, through the din of The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, which is what Stan had put on, after tiring of Steely Dan.  “You should have us over more often.”

Stan admired Tom for his naivete.  Above the hardwood shone an idiot grin, of handsome--if lately long--tooth, and he knew why Jack Jump rode always with the perpetual dropout, his rig barreling cross country, twin contributions of insomnia and a steady hand to the pavement being the price of the burden’s passage.  A genuine crinkle to the eye, and not for any reason Tom could comprehend, brightened the smile.

“You gonna have anything for me anytime soon, man?  There are three poets in this world I’ll waste my money on,” Stan offered.  “Jim’s already had his handjob,” he said, pointing to Tolan’s clutch, which could be counted on to be bearing a copy of Fresh Fruit and Gravity.  “Jump’s a snob.  And that leaves you.”

Tom ran his fingers through a tussle of blond.  Having recently dismounted a 23 speed Shimano, and enveloped still in black lycra duds, he looked the part of Lance Armstrong's poor relation. And although the $680/monthly teaching stipend kept him a bit malnourished, Stan granted that DNA had fallen generally in his friend’s favor.  From the powder room was whispered, as well, to an impressive yield of trouser trout which had, if rumor is to be counted, navigated the channels of nearly every class of his attendance, and without a kvetch to be heard.  Indeed.  Beyond being a wordsmith, Tom could be counted on to gyrate the gears of the fairest campus- and county wide, leaving Stan wondering if he shouldn’t hold these getstogether more often and offer to Tom a sliding stipend for showing up and staying until he, himself, got some.

October 14, 2009

Dear Friend of Liberty,

For far too long, the Republican Party has been controlled by the “neoconservatives,” those who readily abandon the free market at the drop of a hat if it means expanding government power and who think the United States should be the policeman of the world.  They want us to support those who throw substance and principle to the wind in favor of political expediency.

Last Monday night, Senator Lindsey Graham reiterated his disdain for Ron Paul and limited government conservatives at a town hall when he said that he was not going to allow the Republican Party to be “hijacked by Ron Paul.”

Instead, he thinks we should get behind those who he tells us “can win,” even if it means abandoning every belief we hold dear in the process.

In addition to his afternoon appearance on Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch, Congressman Paul will be responding to the neoconservatives on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer tonight at 6 pm eastern and also on MSNBC’s The Ed Show at 6:30 pm eastern.

CNN has shared with my staff that they want to hear from you on this issue.  Contact The Situation Room and let them know you think neoconservatism has had its day and it is time for our elected officials to stick to the Constitution.

In our efforts over the past two years, we have made it clear we will no longer be silent while those who claim to believe in limited government and freedom behave exactly the opposite and help run our country into the ground.

The freedom movement is growing larger every day, and we will take our country back without abandoning our principles to do so.

In Liberty,

John Tate

President, Campaign for Liberty

FOXNews.com
Monday, October 12, 2009

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks in Tempe, Ariz., July 21. (Reuters Photo)

A firebrand Arizona sheriff known for his hard-line immigration enforcement is vowing to press ahead with an illegal immigrant sweep Friday, defying a revised Department of Homeland Security policy that takes away his federal authority to make such arrests. 

"I'm not gonna stop," Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in an interview with FOXNews.com. He said the federal changes amount to a political hit job and that if Immigration and Customs Enforcement won't take illegal immigrants off his hands he'll personally drive them to the U.S.-Mexico border. 

"Nothing will change," he said. "I'm not going to be deterred by any bully." 

A spokesman with DHS or ICE could not be reached for comment. It's unclear whether the agencies will try to stop or punish the county sheriff should he go forward with the sweep on Friday. 

The federal government stripped Arpaio of part of his federal authority to enforce immigration law by changing its rules under a program allowing local police to enforce those laws. Under the changes, Arpaio's jail officers would still be able to check inmates' immigration status but would not be able to make federal immigration arrests on the streets. 

More than 1,000 local law enforcement officials nationally have had those special powers, but Arpaio has signed more officers onto the program than any other agency. He has 100 deputies under the program, and his office reports having investigated and arrested 33,000 illegal immigrants -- or 25 percent of total arrests under the program. 

Arpaio claims he still has authority to make the arrests under state human smuggling laws and other provisions, regardless of whether he's charging the suspected illegal immigrants of any other crimes. He said that if ICE won't take his suspects, he'll drive them down to U.S. border patrol agents. If they don't take them, he said, "I assume they won't accept any illegals."...

There have been positive signs that America is reconsidering some aspects of drug prohibition.

• In February, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Administration would stop medical marijuana raids in states where it's legal
• In  May, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case arguing that California's medical marijuana law was in conflict with federal law
• The Obama Administration did not object when Mexico liberalized its drug possession law last month

But as America takes baby steps toward Drug War reform, statesmen south of the border are suggesting something bolder.

• Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is proposing an end to prohibition
• Three other Latin American ex-Presidents have called on the nations of the hemisphere to rethink prohibition

This week, the Global Public Policy Forum on the U.S. War on Drugs  was held on the front lines of the Drug War, in the border cities of El Paso and Juarez. The Forum was organized by the University of Texas-El Paso, but the idea originated with the El Paso City Council. The Council also unanimously called for "an honest open national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics" (although that resolution was vetoed by the mayor under the threat of losing federal funds).

Regrettably, Obama's "Border Czar" and "Drug Czar" chose not to attend.

But we agree with the El Paso City Council.

• Drug prohibition breeds corruption. 80 law enforcement officials have been convicted of drug-related corruption on the U.S.-Mexico border since 2006.
• Drug probition breeds violence, endangering the innocent. Violence related to drug trafficking is spreading to new areas such as British Columbia
• Drug prohibition is killing U.S. soliders in Afghanistan. The Taliban is being funded by drug profits, and the war is now less about ideology and more about drug profits

Indeed, prohibition can cause the retail price of drugs to be as much as 25 times higher than the production costs. Even if 75% of drug shipments were intercepted, the trade would still be profitable for drug lords.

Today, only a fraction of drug shipments are intercepted. This means the only way to "win" the War on Drugs is to lose the Bill of Rights and our way of life by substantially increasing arbitrary searches and seizures at home, and employing a much larger military as a narcotics police force across the globe.

In order to accomplish . . . what, exactly?

• Illicit drug-related deaths are one-fifth the rate of alcohol deaths and less than one-twenty-fiftth of tobacco-related deaths
• Three-fourths of all illicit drug use is marijuana use, and marijuana accounts for 0% of the deaths
•  Most of the other illicit drug use is the recreational use of legal prescription drugs
• Just 0.7% of the population over 12 used cocaine in the past month, and 0.4% used hallucinogens. One in a thousand used heroin.
• According LEAP, in 2006 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs, the same as in 1970 when the War on Drugs began, and the same as in 1914 when the first federal drug laws were passed.

Drug prohibition costs hundreds of billions in both direct costs and opportunity costs such as the lost wages of the imprisoned. It endangers the lives of innocents caught in turf wars. It promotes chaos and instability in much of the world -- and all of this in a futile attempt to save a tiny fraction of the population from themselves.

But if we lifted the prohibition on drugs . . .

• Drug prices would fall to a fraction of what they are now, meaning hopeless addicts would be less likely to rob you to pay for their fix
• The Taliban would lose their revenue stream
• We would have safer streets in America and much of the world

Please tell Congress to end the chaos in Mexico, in Afghanistan, and on our streets. Tell them to end drug prohibition. In your personal comments, explain how prohibition has created such huge profit margins that the government can't stop the flow no matter how hard it tries. You can send your comments here.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army. To see how fast your Army is growing, please check out the Keeping Score report below my signature.

James Wilson
Assistant Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org

By William La Jeunesse
FOXNews.com
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The U.S. is expected to spend about $36.7 billion on its foreign aid budget next year, but large chunks of that money will be going to countries whose leaders openly vilify the U.S. -- and to others that are already rolling in dough.

Americans went broke last year filling up their tanks thanks to high gas prices leveraged by OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Yet this year, the State Department budget provides millions to oil-rich kingdoms relishing huge profits, like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Ever-increasing spending on aid strikes some foreign policy experts as unwise -- and a monumental waste of money.

"We still cannot point to any relationship between foreign aid and growth, between foreign aid and the right kinds of policies or institutions that create prosperity," said Ian Vasquez, director of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute.

Click here for video.

Much of the foreign aid budget is spent on military, disaster and humanitarian assistance. But some of the spending for 2010 will be heading to countries where dictators rule:

• $98 million to persuade Kim Jong-il of North Korea to give up nuclear weapons
• $20 million for political prisoners and political rights in Castro's Cuba
• $6 million to promote civil society in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela
• $500,000 for border security in Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya
• $26 million to help train police in Evo Morales' Bolivia
• $56 million to support the rule of law and human rights in Vladimir Putin's Russia, arguably one of the world's richest nations

Foreign aid checks are rarely ever written directly to a government. Funding is generally provided to companies and non-governmental organizations that operate in other countries, which the U.S. government says helps advance human rights and the rule of law abroad. Some organizations keep close ties to their host government, and others work in spite of them...

By Craig Torres and Robert Schmidt

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve Board has rejected a request by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a public review of the central bank’s structure and governance, three people familiar with the matter said.

The Obama administration proposed on June 17 a financial- regulatory overhaul including a “comprehensive review” of the Fed’s “ability to accomplish its existing and proposed functions” and the role of its regional banks. The Fed was to lead the study and enlist the Treasury and “a wide range of external experts.”

Some top central bank officials, after agreeing to the review, saw a potential threat to Fed independence after the Treasury released the proposal, two of the people said. The Obama plan said the Treasury would consider recommendations from the review and “propose any changes to the Fed’s governance and structure.”

“It is not obvious at all why that is a Treasury responsibility or even appropriate why the Treasury would undertake that kind of study,” said Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Vineland, New Jersey, and a former Atlanta Fed research director. “The Fed was created by Congress and it is not part of the executive branch.”...

Recording Contained Accounts of Communications With Hijacked Planes

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 6, 2004

Six air traffic controllers provided accounts of their communications with hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, on a tape recording that was later destroyed by Federal Aviation Administration managers, according to a government investigative report issued today.

It is unclear what information was on the tape because no one ever listened to, transcribed or duplicated it, the report by the Department of Transportation inspector general said.

The report concluded that the FAA generally cooperated with the independent panel investigating the terrorist attacks by providing documents about its activities on Sept. 11, but the actions of two FAA managers "did not, in our view, serve the interests of the FAA, the Department [of Transportation] or the public."

The report was conducted at the request of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, complained that the FAA had been less than forthcoming in turning over documents and issued a subpoena to the agency for more information.

The FAA said it was cooperating fully with the 9/11 panel. The agency said it took disciplinary action against the employee who destroyed the tape but declined to elaborate on what kind of action they took. [Earlier, an FAA official incorrectly stated that the agency took action against two employees in the case.]

"We believe the audiotape in question appears to be consistent with written statements and other materials provided to FBI investigators and would not have added in any significant way to the information contained in what has already been provided to investigators and members of the 9/11 commission," said FAA spokesman Greg Martin.

Hours after the hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, an FAA manager at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center gathered six controllers who communicated or tracked two of the hijacked planes and recorded in a one-hour interview their personal accounts of what occurred, the report stated.

The manager, who is not named in the report, said that his intentions were to provide quick information to federal officials investigating the attack before the air traffic controllers involved took sick leave for the stress of their experiences, as is common practice.

According to the report, a second manager at the New York center promised a union official representing the controllers that he would "get rid of" the tape after controllers used it to provide written statements to federal officials about the events of the day...

by Declan McCullagh
Cnet.com
August 28, 2009

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do...

By Stephen C. Webster
RAWStory.com
Published: August 28, 2009

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), one of the most unabashed liberals in the U.S. House of Representatives, told a Massachusetts town hall recently that Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve will clear his chamber by October.

Over half of the House members, most of them Republican, have signed on to the bill, H.R. 1207.

Though Frank disagrees — as many proponents of the bill contend — that the Fed is the cause of the U.S. dollar’s shrinking value, he told a Massachusetts audience that he’s been a proponent of greater transparency at the nation’s central bank for some time.

“Here’s what we plan to do: I want to restrict the powers of the Federal Reserve in a number of ways,” he said. “First of all, they will be the major losers of power if we’re successful, as I believe we will be, setting up that, uh, financial product protection committee.”

The committee Frank mentioned was proposed by President Barack Obama during the campaign, as a way of protecting consumers. It was formally presented to Congress in the President’s financial regulatory reform white papers in July, noted law firm Wiley Rein LLP.

“The Federal Reserve is now charged with protecting consumers,” continued Frank. “They were supposed to do sub-prime mortgage restricted … Congress in 1994 gave the Federal Reserve the power to adopt rules to ban bad sub-prime mortgages. … They have the power to ban credit card abuses. They have the power to do most of it. They, under Greenspan, did nothing...

by Chuck Baldwin
August 28, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column questioning why it was necessary for our federal government to be constructing internment camps all over America. See the original column at

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2009/cbarchive_20090811.html

I felt it was time for someone such as me to publicly broach the subject. Needless to say, the response was overwhelming. Even more interesting is the fact that the web link to the National Guard Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) of "Internment/Resettlement Specialist" that I included in my column was removed shortly after the column was published. Was this a coincidence?

Of course, the U.S. Army still has their web site soliciting recruitment for "Internment/Resettlement Specialist" online. See it at

http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=292

Readers might also want to familiarize themselves with this story out of Fort Leavenworth:

http://www.ftleavenworthlamp.com/articles/2009/04/16/news/news1.txt

Predictably, I heard from a sizeable number of readers who expressed concern about my "credibility." Some were more direct: descriptions such as "conspiracy nut," "lunatic," "fringe," etc., popped up quite often. Several readers dismissed the entire proposition on the basis that, apparently, the link I provided to a photo of one such camp that was reported in the Idaho Observer as a FEMA camp was actually constructed in another country. Which, if true, changes nothing, of course. Others pointed to a very shallow "exposé" published in Popular Mechanics that attempted (lamely) to debunk the whole notion of internment camps. (This was the same source Glenn Beck used to dismiss the idea.) See the report at

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4312850.html

Criticism and name-calling aside, after reading the responses from hundreds of readers (and examining the evidence they submitted), I am more convinced than ever that our federal government is, indeed, constructing large numbers of internment camps. And as one might expect, I heard from a large number of military and law enforcement personnel, which made the evidence even more compelling.

One statement from a retired Air Force colonel (who is still active in military associations and stays well-informed on military issues) was especially telling. He said, "The Indiana plant is an AMTRAK repair area--there are probably similar reasons for other facilities. [Which is, no doubt, true.] I was a primary member of 'Continuity of Operations' planning in my second tour in the Pentagon in the 1960s--such planning has continued apace! This country was--and to a large extent still is--totally unprepared for the after effects of nuclear exchange. The millions of casualties of humans and animals--notwithstanding the almost total loss of communications and government infrastructure like police, fire, emergency response, etc. THERE ARE AND SHOULD BE PLANS TO DECLARE MARTIAL LAW to keep order, to provide assistance for food, shelter, medical, etc. FEMA was designed to do this work to fill the terrible losses in continuity of operations, which would keep this country viable. Katrina is a tiny example of how an emergency can destroy an entire geographical area--and Katrina is just a minor example of where we would be as a result of a nuclear exchange. As with all things military you plan for the worst and hope for the best.

"We remain vulnerable to massive catastrophes in this country--natural or man-caused. We need to be prepared and FEMA with all its faults--BACKED BY THE MILITARY--is charged with this job." (Emphasis added.)

(To learn more about "Continuity of Operations," to which the good colonel referred, start with these web sites:

http://www.nextgov.com/the_basics/tb_20080623_2687.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Operations_Plan

http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd/fpc-65.htm )

Notice that the retired colonel did not challenge the existence of internment camps, but rather linked them, and military-backed FEMA, with martial law--and he saw nothing wrong with that. (Please note: the colonel brought up martial law; I did not. Plus, the colonel was not adversarial with me, but on the contrary, expressed familiarity and favor toward me.) Several military men who wrote me shared the colonel's sentiment. Some of them expressed concern about the impact these plans will have on freedom and constitutional government, while others seemed completely unconcerned regarding any potential encroachment that plans of military action against American citizens might have upon the Bill of Rights. What is enlightening, however, is the fact that, regardless of the personal position taken, none of the military personnel who wrote me discounted the existence of internment camps.

Since the colonel brought up martial law, U.S. Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA) recently indicated that he believed the U.S. government was intending to do just that. See his comments at

http://tinyurl.com/pandemic-martial-law

And last year, the San Francisco Chronicle published a major story regarding the potential for the federal government to suspend the Constitution and institute martial law. See the story at

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL

In addition, is it a coincidence that a bill was recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 645) called the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act, which directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish "not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations"? See the report at

http://tinyurl.com/cong-to-auth-fema-camps

Is all of this information simply to be discarded as hysteria?

On the other hand, several readers chided me for being "late" to discuss the subject. And to be sure, some of these folks have done quite a bit of personal research and have amassed a large amount of data on the subject.

For example, readers supplied me with a plethora of material to substantiate the existence of large numbers of internment camps throughout the United States. I invite readers to peruse some of the information provided below and draw their own conclusions:

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/11/p27662

http://www.bing.com/search?q=fema+camps

http://tinyurl.com/locate-fema-camps1 (This site requires JavaScript to be enabled.)

Of course, the above is merely a sample of the scores of resources that were forwarded to me by readers. I encourage people to do their own research.

Even Mr. Skeptoid himself, Brian Dunning, grudgingly acknowledges the probability of the existence of internment camps on U.S. soil. As with the retired Air Force colonel referred to above, Dunning senses nothing sinister about the existence of the camps, and he doesn't address the numbers part of the story, but he does admit the plausibility of their existence.

Dunning wrote, "When I first heard the FEMA Prison Camp conspiracy story, it seemed ridiculous and paranoid at face value. But when I finally dug in to research it, I started by searching for the origins of the rumors, and found to my surprise that nearly all of the legal foundation and precedent for such a plan does in fact exist."

(See Dunning's blog at http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4145 )

As I was mulling over all this information, I remembered reading an interview that radio talk show host Geoff Metcalf had with author Ted Flynn regarding Flynn's (then) new book, "Hope of the Wicked: The Master Plan to Rule the World." According to Metcalf, "Flynn's book provides a strong historical basis to show that there is a global elite working to end the sovereignty of nations and to place every person on earth under the authority of the United Nations." This interview was conducted back in 2001, by the way.

In the interview, Metcalf asked Flynn, "Please explain what FEMA is. What is their authority and what is their job?"

Flynn replied, "The Federal Emergency Management Agency is probably going to be the enforcement arm of the New-World Order. Very few people could tell you that it is actually a cabinet position. By and large, a great percentage of their budget is 'black ops.' It's really not on the books. You only hear of them a little bit when there are disasters. But there is a great agenda to gather information for the government in stealth."

Metcalf then said, "I found it significant when Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, clarified the question of the existence of civilian detention camps. In an interview a few years ago, he said, 'the truth is yes--you do have these standby provisions, and the plans are here . . . whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism . . . evoke the military and arrest Americans and put them in detention camps.' They DO exist."

Flynn replied, "They do."

(See the interview at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=8853 )

Again, that our federal government has built large numbers of internment camps seems undeniable. What has not been determined is the purpose for which these facilities have been constructed. No one wants to believe that our government is planning evil designs upon us. Then again, neither did German Jews want to believe that their government was up to no good.

America's founders believed that a central government could not be trusted, which is why they tried to fence it in with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Neither should citizens today trust the federal government. As President George Washington put it, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

Therefore, keep a wary eye out for anything that the federal government could use to encroach upon our liberties and freedoms--even reports of internment camps. If the reports are bogus, you've lost nothing; but if they are real, you could end up losing your liberty.

*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:

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© Chuck Baldwin

By Mariano Castillo
CNN
August 27, 2009

(CNN) -- Immigrants living illegally in the United States could be mandated to have health insurance under the proposed health care reform bill but would be ineligible to receive subsidies to afford such coverage, a report from the Congressional Research Service says.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-California, rejected a citizenship verification system, calling rules it called for "unworkable."

The report, prepared by the nonpartisan policy research arm of Congress, provides a close reading of the treatment of noncitizens in the House bill on health care reform, HR 3200.

While the report found that federal subsidies to obtain health coverage would be restricted to U.S. citizens and legal residents, it also noted that the bill does not specify a citizenship verification system, something that critics say creates a loophole for undocumented immigrants to receive subsidies anyway.

The report, released Tuesday, "undermines the claims of the president and others that illegal immigrants would not be covered under the House version of the bill," Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, told CNN.

The bill specifically bars illegal immigrants from receiving payments, but opponents of the reform say that without verification, the system is open to abuse.

Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, last month proposed an amendment in the House Ways and Means Committee to add a verification process. Democrats on that committee, including Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, voted it down because the rules it called for would be "unworkable," the Democrat said.

"I think the report substantiates the exact opposite of what these critics say," Becerra told CNN...

Campaign recruiting for workers at 'civilian resettlement facility'

Posted: August 07, 2009
11:45 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

An ad campaign featured on a U.S. Army website seeking those who would be interested in being an "Internment/ Resettlement" specialist is raising alarms across the country, generating concerns that there is some truth in those theories about domestic detention camps, a roundup of dissidents and a crackdown on "threatening" conservatives.

Are you an enemy of the state? Get the bumper sticker that lets everyone know you have no apologies for being right!

The ads, at the GoArmy.com website as well as others including Monster.com, cite the need for:

"Internment/ Resettlement (I/R) Specialists in the Army are primarily responsible for day-to-day operations in a military confinement/ correctional facility or detention/internmen t facility. I/R Specialists provide rehabilitative, health, welfare, and security to U.S. military prisoners within a confinement or correctional facility; conduct inspections; prepare written reports; and coordinate activities of prisoners/internees and staff personnel.

The campaign follows by only weeks a report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warning about "right-wing extremists" who could pose a danger to the country – including those who support third-party political candidates, oppose abortion and would prefer to have the U.S. immigration laws already on the books enforced...

By Kenneth Li and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York

Published: August 6 2009 03:00 | Last updated: August 6 2009 03:00

Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.

The comments by News Corp's chairman came as he predicted a "high single digit" rebound in the group's operating profits next year. The worst of the media sector slump might be behind the company, he said, as he reported "some good signs of life" in advertising.

Newspaper and television revenues would be down "very low double digits" next year, but growth in cable properties such as Fox News would leave advertising revenues flat and total revenue up 4 per cent.

News Corp put the seal on a brutal fiscal year with a fourth- quarter net loss of $203m (£119m), dragged down by $680m in impairment and restructuring charges at Fox Interactive Media, whose MySpace social networking site cut more than 700 jobs in the period.

The latest writedown to boom-era acquisitions masked a 30 per cent fall in quarterly adjusted operating profit to $948m, in line with lowered projections, and adjusted earnings of 19 cents per share, narrowly ahead of Wall Street forecasts of 18 cents.

However, they resulted in a $3.4bn net loss for the full year, down from net income of $5.4bn a year earlier, reflecting $8.9bn in impairment charges.

The sweeping decision by the owner of titles including The News of the World and The Australian to abandon the practice of giving away news in exchange for attracting a large audience for advertisers could embolden other publishers warily examining paid content models.

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said.

"If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online...

Published on 08-02-2009

The Army National Guard is now recruiting individuals to fill job positions described as an internment/resettlement specialist according to job postings on Monster.Com and other employment based Internet sites such as one listed here.  In other words, they are recruiting individuals to man facilities that could be used to house political dissidents, so-called terrorists and other individuals that the government doesn’t like.  The term “resettlement” indicates that individuals holding this job position could also be responsible for moving people to other locations against their will.  It is a documented fact that the U.S. government has numerous facilities at their disposal that could easily be used to house large numbers of people.  Combine that, with this new job posting by the Army National Guard, and it seems as if the U.S. government is continuing to prepare for an eventual popular uprising. 

Let’s look at some of the evidence we have of the U.S. government’s intentions to establish the infrastructure that could be used to house large numbers of political dissidents, so-called terrorists and other individuals the U.S. government wants locked up.

HR 645 the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act is a proposed bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would authorize FEMA to build no less than six National Emergency Centers throughout the U.S. on closed or open military facilities.  These facilities are to be designed to house large numbers of people.  Why would emergency centers need to be built on closed or open military facilities unless there was a need to keep people from coming in and out of them? 
 
KBR was granted a government contract a few years ago to build facilities to house illegal immigrants.  Now with illegal immigration becoming less of a problem with the U.S. economy in the toilet, these facilities can now be used for other purposes.

World War II internment facilities used to house large numbers of Japanese-Americans were refurbished and maintained during the Bush administration.  

Information on Rex 84 or Readiness Exercise 84 which came out during the Iran-Contra Affair hearings in the 1980s and reported on in the Miami Herald and other newspapers detailed a top secret government plan that would suspend the Constitution and give FEMA dictator like powers over the U.S. government during a national emergency.  The plan also authorized the use of internment camps to house large numbers of people during a national emergency.

Take a look at this Army document that describes procedures for setting up a Civilian Inmate Labor Program...

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