The World Informer

Joe Wäges
Infowars.com
December 29, 2009

Reading the college thesis of our former First Lady Hillary Clinton titled “There is Only the Fight… An Analysis of the Alinsky Model”, it becomes painfully clear why this document has been off limits for the public at large until recently. It shows in very tangible unambiguous detail the motivations and methodology of the modern incarnation of Marxism. In an equally disturbing fashion the author not only shows no aversion to its aims but defends at every chance, the pioneer of this modern system, Saul Alinsky.

Hillary Clinton during her Wellesley College days in the mid to late 60s when she wrote her thesis on Alinksy.

Let us begin by noting that in the acknowledgements section she gives thanks to Mr. Alinsky for providing a topic sharing some time and offering a job to then Ms. Rodham. She asks the question what a radical is and provides the answer in Mr. Alinsky’s own words.

“They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a new man kind—a people of the world.”

This is precisely the aim of the power structure behind Communism, the erasing of all borders and boundaries and the establishment of a world government based on a modified form of Communism called Humanistic Socialism. The author continues and defines what it means to be an American radical. Again she lets Mr. Alinsky define the term.

“…that unique person who actually believes what he says… to whom the common good is the greatest personal value… who genuinely and completely believes in mankind.… Alinsky outlines American history focusing on men he would call “radical,” confronting his readers again with the “unique” way Americans have synthesized the alien roots of radicalism, Marxism, Utopian socialism, syndicalism, the French Revolution, with their own conditions and experiences:”

So the reader concludes that an American radical is someone who believes in collectivism and synthesizes the roots of Communism with the origins of Liberty. What an exercise in semantical and mental gymnastics. To equate liberty and authoritarianism as synonymous terms is a perversion in and of itself. Ms. Rodham continues defining radical in her own terms.

“A radical is one who advocates sweeping changes in the existing laws and methods of government. These proposed changes are aimed at the roots of political problems which in Marxian terms are the attitudes and the behaviors of men. Radicals are not interested in ameliorating the symptoms of decay but in drastically altering the causes of societal conditions. Radicalism “emphasizes reason rather than reverence, although Radicals have often been the most emotional and least reasonable of men.” One of the strongest strains in modern radicalism is the eighteenth Century Enlightenment’s faith in human reason and the possible perfectibility of men. This faith in the continuing improvement of man was and is dominated by values derived from the French and American Revolutions and profoundly influenced by the Industrial Revolution.”

She herself defines radicalism under Marxian terms and correctly points out that the origins of radicalism do indeed begin in the Enlightenment. Her term the “perfectibility of men” is rather striking considering that the object of Communism is to create the perfect man. Also the original name of the Illuminati Order, the prototype of Communism, was the Order of the Perfectibilists and that Adam Weishaupt’s successor J. J. C. Bode went to The Grand Orient Lodge and initiated the architects of the French Revolution into the order some two years before the French Revolution began. This account is confirmed in Bode’s personal diary and also in the book “Fire in the Minds of Men”.

The author points out that radicalism often must be achieved through non-radical means, chiefly operating inside the existing system. We learn that the object of radicalism is power and it is obtained through organization. The means to obtaining power is through conflict. It is pointed out that …

“Alinsky argues that those who wish to change circumstances must develop a mass-based organization and be prepared for conflict. He is a Neo-Hobbesian who objects to the consensual mystique surrounding political processes; for him conflict is the route to power.”

In short it is learned that through collective action in the form of conflict can power be achieved. She expands on this concept in relation to morality.

“Alinsky claims a position of moral relativism, but his moral context is stabilized a belief in the eventual manifestation of the goodness of man. He believes that if men were allowed to live free from fear and want they would live in peace. He also believes that only men with a sense of their own worth an a respect for the commonality of humanity will be able to create this new world.”

This is a repetition of the central theme in Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, the end justifies the means. Morality then is subjective so long as the object of creating a new world based on the commonality of humanity also known as Communism. Not surprisingly the idea that the ends justify the means is central in his 1971 work titled “Rules for Radicals”. Interestingly this work was dedicated to what he referred to as the original radical, Lucifer.

Ms. Rodham focuses on community organizing efforts in relation to the Alinsky Method noting that it has two distinct elements.

“One, the “Alinsky-type protest” is “an explosive mixture of rigid discipline, brilliant showmanship, and a street fighters instinct for ruthlessly exploiting his enemies weakness.” The second, modeled after trade union organization methods, involves the hard work of recorganizing interests, seeking out indigenous leaders, and building an organization whose power is viewed as legitimate by the larger comunity.”

So the elements then are staged theatrical protests, prying on your enemies weaknesses, and identifying indigenous leaders so as to appear legitimate to the community that you are trying to organize. This idea is repeated in the following excerpt that defines the criteria of an Alinsky organization.

(a) It is rooted in the local tradition, the local indigenous leader ship, the local organizations and agencies, and, in short, the local people.

(b) Its energy or driving force is generated by the self-interest of the local residents for the welfare of their children and themselves.

(c) Its program for action develops hand in hand with the organ Ization of the community council. The program is in actual fact that series of common agreements which results in the develop ment of the local organization.

(d) It is a program arising out of the local people carrying with it the direct participation of practically all the organizations in a particular area. It involves a substantial degree of indi vidual citizen participation; a constant day to day flow of vol unteer activities and the daily functioning of numerous local com mites charged with specific short term functions.

(e) It constantly emphasizes the functional relationship between prob lems and therefore its program is as broad as the social horizon of the community. It avoids, at all costs, circumscribed and seg mental programs which in turn attract the support of only a seg ment of the local population.

(f) It recognizes that a democratic society is one which responds to popular pressures, and therefore realistically operates on the basis of pressure. For the same reason it does not shy away from involvement in matters of controversy.

(g) It concentrates on the utilization of indigenous individuals, who, if not leaders at the beginning, can be developed into leaders.

(h) It gives priority to the significance of self-interest. The organ Ization itself proceeds on the idea of channeling the many diverse forces of self-interest within the community into a common dir ection for the common good and at the same time respects the autonomy of individuals and organizations.

(i) It becomes completely self-financed at the end of approximately Three years. This not only testifies to its representative character In that the local residents support their own organization finan cially, but insures to the local council the acid test of ide pendence: “the ability to pay one’s way”

The over arching theme is the rule and representation of the collective by its indigenous leaders, whether real or developed. The power lies in mob rule. This is precisely what a democracy is. Our founders understood that a democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner. That is why we are founded as a Republic and not as a democracy as Ms. Rodham falsely believes. The term democracy in fact appears nowhere in our founding documents.

The point of the preceding analysis is to reveal the motivation and methodology of the modern collectivist. Through understanding their means and motives, we can safeguard our liberty from the mob waiting to tear this great nation to pieces. Communism has taken many forms throughout the last few hundred years and it ideology is rooted in antiquity. It is not a monolithic form and is always changing to the needs of the groups it represents. It has been called Illuminism, radicalism, democracy, socialism, syndicalism, and lately communism. It is not for the benefit of the people but is the tool of totalitarian oligarchical control. If you need any verification of this, then consider why all ten pillars of the Communist Party destroy the freedoms and rights of the individual in the name of the collective but transfer it to the banks and the state. Who in their right mind would advocate for such a thing?

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

 "There is only the fight…" An Analyisis of the Alinsky Model by Hillary D. Rodham May 2, 1969

by Henry Makow Ph.D.

Tiger Wood's downfall contains an almost Biblical  lesson for all men: Don't be controlled by your penis. It will ruin your life.

Tiger Woods had everything: a beautiful wife and family, athletic achievement and fortune, and the respect of the whole world. Why throw it away for skank?

This seems to be the year for athletes self-destructing over women.

Last summer, retired (and married) Tennessee Titan quarterback Steve McNair was shot dead by a girlfriend who feared he was going to dump her. She then shot herself.

Today, Cincinnati Bengal receiver Chris Henry died during a domestic dispute with his fiance. And closer to home, Winnipeg Blue Bomber coach Mike Kelly got fired today after roughing up an ex-girlfriend (who probably attacked him first.)

The lesson for men: Sow your wild oats before you get married. Then, marry for life. Find a woman who is naturally traditional and accepts your leadership. Devote yourself to her and to your children. Restore to marriage and family the sanctity they deserve.

DE-FANGING SEX

Sex is a powerful force. Either we control it or it (and woman) controls us.  Like Samson, Woods forfeited his power for sex.

Men are fighting a powerful meme created by the banker-owned mass media. Although sexual attraction is a natural instinct to propagate, the media has turned it into an entertainment, therapy and commodity.

It proclaims anonymous sex is an end in itself, meaningful and liberating. Men have been programmed by media culture as much as by our hormones. We need to question the assumption that young women and sex are the be-all and end-all. A man's work should be his primary focus.  
 
It's time we deconstructed anonymous sex. Somehow, females have got the upper hand. Much like the diamond cartel, they have hoodwinked males into thinking that a commodity as commonplace and plentiful as p---y is rare and precious. It's not.  In Andy Warhol's words, "Sex is the biggest nothing in the world."

I'll never understand why a man would owe a woman for sexual gratification. Why shouldn't she owe him? Sex is just as necessary for her. What fools men are. Don't they know that all cats are gray in the dark?

The excitement for a man is a woman's response to him. How responsive can a woman be to a hook-up? How satisfying can it be if, as in Eliot Spitzer's case, the meter is running?  In anonymous sex, both parties are miming what they think should be happening, rather than admitting that the experience is empty and degrading.

Let's deconstruct the fertile female while we're at it.  Having lost her ability to love men and children, young women today are in danger of becoming obsolete. They are scrawny men, with narrow shoulders, a couple of vestigial feed bags on their chests, and some unsightly jungle below. 

Young women are pretty much physically identical. As one wag said, "Put a clock in it."

What other creatures get by largely on their looks? Only a narcissist would imagine she is exceptional. There are 500 million just like her. 

Yet despite the tedious repetitive nature of the product, male yokels have pandered for it for centuries. 

The only thing that truly differentiates women is beauty, grace, talent, intelligence, character and personality.  Yet most young women today ignore these and compete on the basis of sex appeal.

Similarly, most men are unable to look beyond the physical artifice. Yet understanding the human being inside is the key to success or failure.  

I love feminine women, the kind that marry and sacrifice for husband and family, the kind that know that feminine is the opposite of masculine.   

We live in a culture that promotes arrested development by inflating the status of women and teaching men to pander to them, with sex as their reward like a dog treat. Of course women eventually tire of this, and men end up neutered and alone.

CONCLUSION

Tiger Woods spent too much time overachieving and didn't develop emotionally. Part of that requires we get sex out of our system.  Realize how truly mundane it is. That there is no "there" there. With all the sex available, with all the porn, when will men finally learn that casual sex is a bore?

Men must also realize that no woman can give them what they really seek--- themselves. You get that by serving God (i.e. a spiritual ideal.)

Romantic love also is a crock. Women are just companions on the journey.  Real love is based on meeting mutual needs over a long period of time. It is based on sticking with someone when they're down. It's based on loyalty and trust.

In closing, let's learn from Tiger Wood's folly. Sex is used to control men (and women.) When we control our sex drive, we are free to serve a higher master.
------------------

Written by: Paul Drockton

One thing that all Christians need to understand is that God is not influenced by our decisions or values. We are influenced by His.

by Henry Makow Ph.D.

When a reader tipped me to a talk delivered by a slave owner in 1712, entitled "The Making of a Slave," I decided to compare past and present. Past methods of enslavement were highly sophisticated, and closely resemble modern feminist social engineering.

Willie Lynch was a British slave owner in the West Indies. He was invited to the colony of Virginia in 1712 to teach his methods to slave owners there. The term "lynching" is derived from his last name.

He advised slave owners to foster division, "fear, envy and distrust for control." Pit young versus old, light skinned versus dark skinned and most importantly, male versus female.

In a section called "The Breaking Process of the African Woman,"  he advocated shifting her dependency from the African male to the slave owner.  This is achieved by beating and humiliating the male in front of the female. Then, beating the female if she doesn't get the message. This instills a kind of frigidity.

"We reversed nature by burning and pulling a civilized nigger apart, and bull whipping the other to the point of death, all in her presence. By her being left alone, unprotected, with the male image destroyed, the ordeal caused her to move from her psychological dependent state to a frozen independent state. In this frozen psychological state of independence, she will raise her male and female offspring in reverse roles."

"For fear of the young male's life she will psychologically train him to be mentally weak and dependent, but physically strong. Because she has become psychologically independent, she will train her female offspring to be psychologically independent. What have you got? You've got the nigger woman out front and the nigger man behind and scared. This is a perfect situation of sound sleep and economic."

She will teach her female offspring "to be like herself, independent and negotiable (...we negotiate her at will.)" She will raise her "nigger male offspring to be mentally dependent and weak, but physically strong, in other words body over mind."

"We will mate and breed them and continue the cycle. This is good and sound and long range comprehensive planning."

Sound familiar?  We recognize these patterns in the US Black community, and, thanks to the hidden agenda of feminism, increasingly in the White.

AVOIDING SELF CORRECTION

"Willie Lynch" starts to sound like the Cabalist author of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

"By reversing the positions of the male and female savages, we created an orbited cycle that turns on its own axis forever.." But "our experts" warned us of the danger that the mind might correct itself  "if it can touch some substantial historical base." They advised us to "shave off the brute's mental history and create a multiplicity of phenomena of illusions, so that each illusion will twirl in its own orbit, sometimes similar to floating balls in a vacuum."

I haven't heard our society described better. Our collective identity (race, religion,nation and family) is being systematically erased and replaced by air. Lynch goes on to promote interracial breeding so the slaves are different shades of color befitting different levels of labor "and different values of illusion at each connecting level of labor." 

"Cross breeding niggers means taking so many drops of good white blood and putting them into as many nigger women as possible, varying the drops by the various tones that you want, and then letting them breed with each other until another cycle of color appears as you desire."

In Orwellian fashion, Lynch concludes by stressing the importance of creating a new language befitting slavery. "We must completely annihilate the mother tongue of the new nigger..."
Again sounding like a Cabalist, he says, "language is a peculiar institution. It leads to the heart of a people. The more a foreigner knows about the language of a country the more he is able to move through all levels of that society. Therefore if the foreigner is an enemy, the country is vulnerable to attack or invasion of a foreign culture."

For example, the slave should learn the term "hog pen" but never "house."

CONCLUSION

Some people think this speech is apocryphal. The language has been modernized. Was the term "nigger" used in 1712?  However, Blacks seem to think the speech is genuine. It is on many Black websites.

The point is that we are being socially engineered to be slaves in much the same way as Blacks were, and by the very same people.

The modern female has been "frozen psychologically" and now depends on the slave owner (government, corporation) for her security. The modern male is emasculated, strong in body but not in mind, grateful to be allowed to serve a master, who often is a woman.

Two key memorandums from WHO, discovered by Patrick Jordan, prove WHO has intentionally created the three-shot killer vaccine that people in the USA and other countries could soon be forced to take.

1972 WHO Bulletin 47, No 2 Memordanda #1 and #2 Virus-associated immunopathology:

Animal models and implications for human disease * technically outline the ability to create biological weapons in the form of vaccines that:

1) First totally disable the Immune System.

2) Load every cell of the Victim’s body up with Infection.

3) Switch the Immune System on causing the host to kill themselves in a Cytokine Storm.

One, Two, Three, Dead.

These WHO Memorandas describe the three-stage impact of the three "shots" many people will be forced to take this fall to allegedly treat a virus that WHO also helped create and release.

This is a crucial piece of evidence of WHO's long-term genocidal intentions that could stand in any court of law because these memorandums give the best and fullest explanation WHO's and affiliated labs (such as the CDC) current activities, such as their patenting of the most lethal bird flu viruses, their sending that virus to Baxter's subsidiary in Austria, which weaponised it and sent out 72 kilos to 16 labs in four countries almost triggering a global pandemic.

For every crime, there needs to be motive, an indication that it was deliberate, planned. The WHO memorandums provide the evidence of just that deliberate, long-term planning to kill people by weakening their immune system by use of the first vaccine, injecting a live virus into their body by a second, and creating a cytokine storm using squalene in a third.

Download the WHO Memoranda on:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?iid=169484

Scroll down until you find:

Memoranda

Virus-associated immunopathology : animal models and implications for human disease:

1. Effects of viruses on the immune system, immune-complex diseases, and antibody-mediated immunologic injury

Bull World Health Organ. 1972; 47(2): 257?264.
PMCID: PMC2480894

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2480894&blobtype=pdf

Virus-associated immunopathology: animal models and implications for human disease:

2. Cell-mediated immunity, autoimmune diseases, genetics, and implications for clinical research

Bull World Health Organ. 1972; 47(2): 265?274
PMCID: PMC2480896

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2480896&blobtype=pdf

If you find any difficulty please download it from our Download Section : Here

The vocal, sanctimonious Free-Polanski uproar is merely a symptom of an entertainment culture infected with a moral cancer – a culture that regularly practices up on the screen what we’ve heard them preach this last week on behalf of a confessed child rapist.

Last year Miramax released “Doubt,” a high-profile piece of Oscar-bait starring Academy Award winners’ Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Streep plays a puritanical nun on a moral crusade to expose a Priest (Hoffman) who she believes is sexually abusing a 12 year-old boy. Both characters are portrayed as unsympathetic (especially Streep’s) but in just a couple scenes the boy’s working-class mother (Mrs. Miller, played by Viola Davis) is established as the moral center of the film – the only one truly interested in the welfare of her child. When Mrs. Miller’s informed that her son’s being molested, the Moral Center Of The Film responds that her 12 year-old boy is gay, a social outcast, and beaten regularly by his homophobic father … so maybe the best option for him is a sexual relationship with a forty-something child predator.

Starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, and written and directed by Oscar-winner Alan Ball, last year’s “Towelhead” is a film Roman Polanski might have seen many, many times while wearing a rain coat. The protagonist is 13 year-old Jasira (played by the then barely eighteen Summer Bishil) and the story surrounds her sexual abuse at the hands of a number of men, including Eckhart’s Gulf War Vet. Rather than the repeated abuse damaging the young girl, the filmmaker portrays the rapes and molestations as a healthy and sexually liberating experience. More than once the audience is “treated” to lingering shots of Jasira’s bare legs as she discovers the joys of the orgasm while masturbating to photographs of naked women.

Kate Winslet won last year’s Best Actress Oscar for her role in “The Reader,” in which she plays a “sympathetic” Nazi guilty of mass murder who seduces and then engages in a steamy sexual affair with a 15 year-old boy. The sex scenes between this mature woman and a child lean heavily on the erotic, as opposed to the creepy. (The “sympathetic Nazi” issue we’ll save for another post.)

Yes, in just one year, Hollywood released three films that in one way or another portrayed sex with children as potentially healthy or their molester as sympathetic. And these aren’t fringe, indie films either. All three involve name stars and Oscar winners.

Unfortunately, this is not a conspiracy. Hollywood deviants never gathered together to plan for a slate of films aimed at a drip-drip campaign designed to dull our moral outrage towards the most heinous crime imaginable. It’s worse than that. We’re up against a culture; the same culture that can’t quite grasp why a child rapist should have to serve prison time for a crime he’s confessed to.

And this is how cinematic propaganda works. Whether the filmmaker’s motivations are good or evil, the idea is to get decent and thoughtful people to start second guessing themselves as they’re enveloped in the dark and held captive by the powerful sound and fury of the moving picture. First we’re led to identify and sympathize with a particular character, then that character does something designed to challenge our belief structure. This can range from, “If John Wayne opposes racism, maybe I should,” to, “Well, if a loving mother is okay with it, maybe I need to get a little more nuanced and tolerant about this whole child-rape thing.”

On its face, that may sound laughable, and maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean our eyes are lying to us. Last year merely topped off a campaign targeted at our children that began some time ago.

In 2006’s “Notes on a Scandal,” Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett plays a school teacher engaged in a steamy sexual affair with one of her students. Like “The Reader,” the sex scenes between a mature woman and her student strive for the erotic and never once does the story stop to examine how such a destructive affair might psychologically affect a teen-aged boy. That same year, in “Little Children,” Jackie Earle Haley was Oscar-nominated for his support work as a molester just released from prison who’s the victim of that favorite Hollywood whipping boy, suburban hypocrisy. Just two years earlier, Kevin Bacon’s heroic molester in “The Woodsman” not only saves the day and wins the pretty girl, but in his valiant struggle to “reform” he’s presented as a kind of “civil rights” metaphor as policemen and “intolerant” co-workers torment him.

The award for Most Unsettling, however, must go to 2004’s “Birth,” where Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman stars as a widow convinced her dead husband has returned in the form of a 10 year-old boy. If watching a near-forty year-old woman exchange longing looks with a little kid isn’t creepy enough, wait till they end up naked in a bathtub together.

Whether it’s true or not that seventy-five years ago Clark Gable nearly bankrupted the t-shirt industry by not wearing one in “It Happened One Night,” what is true is that billions of dollars are spent annually by advertisers convinced sound and images can alter behavior. You’d have to be a fool to make an argument against the persuasive powers of moving images, but those fools do exist. Most of them are liars.

The Hollywood Left is many things but they’re not fools and they fully understand the power of the medium under their control. Certainly, damning everyone who works in the entertainment world would be unfair, but this is also a culture where only a handful of “names” were willing to speak out against the pro-Polanski movement – including many Leftists who have never been shy about speaking out in the past.

The film industry has a history to be proud of when it comes to opposing racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, the most vocal from this current crop seem all too ready to tarnish that legacy as they target our children for profit and worse.

Is it too much to ask of the Hollywood Left that they show as much intolerance towards the sexualization of young children as they do towards conservatives and Christians?

That question has already been answered.

By Irving Kristol
Originally published in

The New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1971

 

New York University Professor Irving Kristol argues that a liberal today 'ought to favor a liberal form of censorship. " Basing his arguments on the moral relevance of art, Kristol says bluntly: "If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship."   Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want. For almost a century now, a great many intelligent, well-meaning and articulate people have argued eloquently against any kind of censorship of art and entertainment. Within the past ten years, courts and legislatures have found these arguments so persuasive that censorship is now a relative rarity in most states.   Is there triumphant exhilaration in the land? Hardly. Somehow, things have not worked out as they were supposed to, and many civil-libertarians have said this was not what they meant. They wanted a world in which Eugene O'Neill's Desire under the Elms could be produced, or James Joyce's Ulysses published, without interference. They got that, of course; but they also got a world in which homosexual rape is simulated on the stage, in which the public flocks to witness professional fornication, in which New York's Times Square has become a hideous marketplace for printed filth. But does this really matter? Might not our disquiet be merely a cultural hangover? Was anyone ever corrupted by a book?   This last question, oddly enough, is asked by the same people who seem convinced that advertisements in magazines or displays of violence on television do have the power to corrupt. It is also asked, incredibly enough and in all sincerity, by university professors and teachers whose very lives provide the answer. After all, if you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book. You have to believe, in other words, that art is morally trivial and that education is morally irrelevant.   To be sure, it is extremely difficult to trace the effects of any single book (or play or movie) on any reader. But we all know that the ways in which we use our minds and imaginations do shape our characters and help define us as persons. That those who certainly know this are moved to deny it merely indicates how a dogmatic resistance to the idea of censorship can result in a mindless insistence on the absurd.   For the plain fact is that we all believe that there is a point at which the public authorities ought to step in to limit the "self-expression" of an individual or a group. A theatrical director might find someone willing to commit suicide on the stage. We would not allow that. And I know of no one who argues that we ought to permit public gladiatorial contests, even between consenting adults.   No society can be utterly indifferent to the ways its citizens publicly entertain themselves. Bearbaiting and cockfighting are prohibited only in part out of compassion for the animals; the main reason is that such spectacles, were felt to debase and brutalize the citizenry who flocked to witness them. The question with regard to pornography and obscenity is whether they will brutalize and debase our citizenry. We are, after all, not dealing with one book or one movie. We are dealing with a general tendency that is suffusing our entire culture.   Pornography's whole purpose, it seems to me, is to treat human beings obscenely, to deprive them of their specifically human dimension. Imagine a well-known man in a hospital ward, dying an agonizing death. His bladder and bowels empty themselves of their own accord. His consciousness is overwhelmed by pain, so that he cannot communicate with us, nor we with him. Now, it would be technically easy to put a television camera in his room and let the whole world witness this spectacle. We don't do it-at least not yet-because we regard this as an obscene invasion of privacy. And what would make the spectacle obscene is that we would be witnessing the extinguishing of humanity in a human animal.   Sex-like death-is an activity that is both animal and human. There are human sentiments and human ideals involved in this animal activity. But when sex is public, I do not believe the viewer can see the sentiments and the ideals, but sees only the animal coupling. And that is why when most men and women make love, they prefer to be alone, because it is only when you are alone that you can make love, as distinct from merely copulating. When sex is a public spectacle, a human relationship has been debased into a mere animal connection.   But even if all this is granted, it doubtless will be said that we ought not to be unduly concerned. Free competition in the cultural marketplace, it is argued by those who have never otherwise had a kind word to say for laissez-faire, will dispose of the problem; in the course of time, people will get bored with pornography and obscenity.   I would like to be able to go along with this reasoning, but I think it is false, and for two reasons. The first reason is psychological, the second, political.   In my opinion, pornography and obscenity appeal to and provoke a kind of sexual regression. The pleasure one gets from pornography and obscenity is infantile and autoerotic; put bluntly, it is a masturbatory exercise of the imagination. Now, people who masturbate do not get bored with masturba- tion, just as sadists don't get bored with sadism, and voyeurs don't get bored with voyeurism. In other words, like all infantile sexuality, it can quite easily become a permanent self-reinforcing neurosis. And such a neurosis, on a mass scale, is a threat to our civilization and humanity, nothing less.   I am already touching upon a political aspect of pornography when I suggest that it is inherently subversive of civilization. But there is another political aspect, which has to do with the relationship of pornography and obscenity to democracy, and especially to the quality of public life on which democratic government ultimately rests.   Today a "managerial" conception of democracy prevails wherein democracy is seen as a set of rules and procedures, and nothing but a set of rules and procedures, by which majority rule and minority rights are reconciled into a state of equilibrium. Thus, the political system can be fully reduced to its mechanical arrangements.   There is, however, an older idea of democracy-fairly common until about the beginning of this century-for which the conception of the quality of public life is absolutely crucial. This idea starts from the proposition that democracy is a form of self-government, and that you are entitled to it only if that "self" is worthy of governing. Because the desirability of self-government depends on the character of the people who govern, the older idea of democracy was very solicitous of the condition of this character. This older democracy had no problem in principle with pornography and obscenity; it censored them; it was not about to permit people to corrupt themselves. But can a liberal-today-be for censorship? Yes, but he ought to favor liberal form of censorship.   I don't think this is a contradiction in terms. We have no problem contrasting repressive laws governing alcohol, drugs and tobacco with laws regulating (that is, discouraging the sale of ) alcohol, drugs and tobacco. We have not made smoking a criminal offense. We have, however, and with good liberal conscience, prohibited cigarette advertising on television. The idea of restricting individual freedom, in a liberal way, is not at all unfamiliar to us.   I therefore see no reason why we should not be able to distinguish repressive censorship from liberal censorship of the written and spoken word. In Britain, until a few years ago, you could perform almost any play you wished-but certain plays, judged to be obscene, had to be performed in private theatrical clubs. In the United States, all of us who grew up using, public libraries are familiar with the circumstances under which certain books could be circulated only to adults, while still other books had to be read in the library. In both cases, a small minority that was willing to make a serious effort to see an obscene play or book could do so. But the impact of obscenity was circumscribed, and the quality of public life was only marginally affective   If you look at the history of American or English literature, there is precious little damage you can point to as a consequence of the censorship that prevailed throughout most of that history. I doubt that many works of real literary merit ever were suppressed. Nor did I notice that hitherto suppressed masterpieces flooded the market when censorship was eased. I should say, to the contrary, that literature has lost quite a bit now that so much is permitted. It seems to me that the cultural market in the United States today is awash in dirty books, dirty movies, dirty theater. Our cultural condition has not improved as a result of the new freedom.   I'll put it bluntly: if you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

 

The following interview is ficticious, it has not happened; the objective of this ficticious interview is directed as an open letter to the President.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with our 44^th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, while he was out promoting his health care reform initiative. I requested 30 minutes given the scope and detail of my inquiry; they said I could have 20. Twenty minutes, 1200 seconds, not a lot of time to question the President about one of the most important events in our nation’s history. The following is a transcript of our remarkable discussion.

————————————————————————————————————————

Charlie Sheen – Good afternoon Mr. President, thank you so much for taking time out of your demanding schedule.

President Barack Obama – My pleasure, the content of your request seemed like something I should carve out a few minutes for.

CS – I should point out that I voted for you, as your promises of hope and change, transparency and accountability, as well as putting government back into the hands of the American people, struck an emotional chord in me that I hadn’t felt in quite some time, perhaps ever.

PBO – And I appreciate that Charlie. Big fan of the show, by the way.

CS – Sir, I can’t imagine when you might find the time to actually watch my show given the measure of what you inherited.

PBO – I have it Tivo’d on Air Force One. Nice break from the traveling press corps. (He glances at his watch) not to be abrupt or to rush you, but you have 19 minutes left.

CS – I’ll take that as an invitation to cut to the chase.

PBO – I’m all ears. Or so I’ve been told.

CS – Sir, in the very near future we will be experiencing our first 9/11 anniversary with you as Commander in Chief.

PBO – Yes. A very solemn day for our Nation. A day of reflection and yet a day of historical consciousness as well.

CS – Very much so sir, very much so indeed…. Now; In researching your position regarding the events of 9/11 and the subsequent investigation that followed, am I correct to understand that you fully support and endorse the findings of the commission report otherwise known as the ‘official story’?

PBO – Do I have any reason not to? Given that most of us are presumably in touch with similar evidence.

CS – I really wish that were the case, sir. Are you aware, Mr. President, of the recent stunning revelations that sixty percent of the 9/11 commissioners have publicly stated that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11 and that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack?

PBO – I am aware of certain “in fighting” during the course of their very thorough and tireless investigative process.

CS – Mr. President, it’s hard to label this type of friction as “in fighting” or make the irresponsible leap to “thorough,” when the evidence I insist you examine regarding 6 of the 10 members are statements of fact.

(At this point one of Obama’s senior aides approaches the President and whispers into his ear. Obama glances quickly at his watch and nods as the aide resumes his post at the doorway, directly behind me.)

PBO – No disrespect Mr. Sheen, but I have to ask; what is it that you seem to be implying with the initial direction of this discussion?

CS – I am not implying anything Mr. President. I am here to present the facts and see what you plan to do with them.

PBO – Let me guess; your ‘facts,’ allegedly supporting these claims are in the folders you brought with you?

CS – Good guess Mr. President.

(I hand the first folder of documents to the President)

CS – Again sir, these are not my opinions or assumptions, this is all a matter of public record, reported through mainstream media, painstakingly fact checked and verified.

(the President glances into the folder I handed him)

CS – You’ll notice sir on page one of the dossier dated August of ‘06 from the Washington Post, the statements of John Farmer, senior council to the 9/11 commission, his quote stating, “I was shocked how different the truth was from the way it was described.”

PBO – (as he glances down at the report, almost inaudible) …. um hmm….

CS – He goes on to further state “The [NORAD Air Defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years….”

(the President continues to view the documents)

CS – On pages two and three, sir, are the statements, as well, from commission co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, commissioners Bob Kerrey, Timothy Roemer and John Lehman, as well as the statements of commissioner Max Cleland, an ex-Senator from Georgia , who resigned, stating:

“It is a national scandal. This investigation is now compromised. One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9/11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up.”

He also described President Bush’s desire to delay the process as not to damage the ‘04 re-election bid. They suspected deception to the point where they considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Mr. President, this information alone is unequivocally grounds for a new investigation!

PBO – Mistakes were clearly made but we as a people and as a country need to move forward. It is obviously in our best interest as a democratic society to focus our efforts and our resources on the future of this great nation and our ability to protect the American people and our allies from this type of terrorism in the coming years.

CS – Sir, how can we focus on the future when THE COMMISSION ITSELF is on record stating that they still do not know the truth??

PBO – Even if what you state, might in some capacity, begin to approach an open discussion or balanced debate, I can’t speak for, or about the decisions certain commission members made during an extremely difficult period. Perhaps you should be interviewing them instead of me. Wait, don’t tell me; I was easier to track down than they were?

CS – Not exactly sir, but let’s be honest. You’re the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the buck stops with you. 9/11 has been the pretext for the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Your administration is reading from the same playbook that the Bush administration foisted on America through documented secrecy and deception.

PBO – Mr. Sheen, I’m having a difficult time sitting here and listening to you draw distorted parallels between the Bush/Cheney regime and mine.

CS – Mr. President the parallels are not distorted just because you say they are. Let’s stick to the facts. You promised to abolish the Patriot Act and then voted to re-authorize it. You pledged to end warrantless wire tapping against the American people and now energetically defend it. You decried the practice of rendition and now continue it. You promised over and over again on the campaign trail, that you would end the practice of indefinite detention and instead, you have expanded it to permanent detention of “detainees” without trial. This far exceeds the outrages of the former administration. Call me crazy Mr. President, but is this not your record?

PBO – Mr. Sheen, my staff and I authorized this interview based on your request to discuss 9/11 and deliver some additional information you’re convinced I’d not previously reviewed. Call me crazy, But it appears as though you’ve blindly wandered off topic.

CS – Sir, the examples I just illustrated are a direct result of 9/11.

PBO – And I’m telling you that we must move forward, we must endure through these dangerous and politically challenging years ahead.

CS – Mr. President, we cannot move forward with a bottomless warren of unanswered questions surrounding that day and its aftermath.

PBO – I read the official report. Every word every page. Perhaps you should do the same.

CS – I have sir, and so have thousands of family members of the victims, and guess what; they have the same questions I do and probably a lot more. I didn’t lose a loved one on that horrific day Mr. President and neither did you. But since then I, along with millions of other Americans lost something we held true and dear for most of our lives in this great country of ours; we lost our hope.

PBO – And I’d like to believe that I am here to restore that hope. To restore confidence in your leaders, in the system that the voting public chose through a peaceful transfer of power.

(An odd moment of silence between us. Precious time ticking away).

CS – Mr. President, are you aware of the number of days it took to begin the investigation into JFK’s assassination?

PBO – If memory serves I believe it was two weeks.

CS – Close. Seventeen days to be exact. Are you aware sir, how long it took to begin the investigation into Pearl Harbor?

PBO – I would say again about….two weeks.

CS – Close again sir, eleven days to be exact. Are you aware Mr. President how long it took to begin the investigation into 9/11?

PBO – I know it must have seemed like a very long time for all the grieving families.

CS – It was a very long time Mr. President – four hundred and forty days. Roughly 14 months. Does it bother you Mr. President that it only took FIVE HOURS for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the initial attack to recommend and endorse a full scale offensive against Iraq?

PBO – I am not aware of any such purported claim.

CS – I have the proof Mr. President, along with scores of documents and facts I’d like you to take a look at. Here.

(I hand him another file – much thicker than the first)

PBO – I see you came prepared Charlie.

CS – No other way to show up Mr. President. When in doubt over prepare I always say.

PBO – Now you sound like the First Lady.

CS – That’s quite a compliment sir.

PBO – As you wish. Please continue.

CS – Sir, I’d like to direct your attention to the stack of documents in the folder I just handed you. The first in from the top is entitled “ Operation Northwoods“, a declassified Pentagon plan to stage terror attacks on US soil, to be blamed on Cuba as a pretext for war.

PBO – And I’d like to direct your attention to the fact that the principle draftsman of this improbable blueprint was quickly denied a second term as Joint Chiefs chairman and sent packing to a European NATO garrison. Thank God his otherworldly ambitions never saw the light of day.

CS – I wouldn’t be so certain about that Mr. President.

PBO – I could easily say the same to you Charlie.

(the President checks his watch)

CS – The next document reads “Declassified staged provocations.” Now, Honestly Mr. President I wish I was making this stuff up. I’m certain you are familiar with the USS Maine Incident, the sinking of the Lusitania, which we all now know brought us into WW1, and of course the most famous, the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

PBO – Of course I am familiar with these historical events and I’m aware that there’s a measure of controversy surrounding them. But to be quite frank with you, this is all ancient history.

CS – Mr. President, it has been often said; “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” And I concede to you sir, these events are the past.

PBO – A vastly different world young man, shouldering a radically disparate state of universal affairs.

CS – No argument sir, I’m merely inviting you to acknowledge some credibility to the pattern or the theme. Case in point; the next document in your folder. It was published by the think-tank, Project For a New American Century and it’s entitled “ Rebuilding Americas Defenses“, and was written by Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush. To quote from the document sir – (the President interrupts)

PBO – “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

CS – Touche, sir. Your thoughts on this statement Mr. President?

PBO – I would call this a blatant case of misjudgment fueled by an unfortunate milieu of assumption. For some, the uninformed denial of coincidece.

CS – Interesting angle sir. Nevertheless, Vice President Cheney didn’t stop there. In early 2008, Pulitzer prize winning journalist  Seymour Hersh and  MSNBC, both reported that Cheney had proposed to the Pentagon an outrageous plan to have the U.S. Navy create fake Iranian patrol boats, to be manned by Navy Seals, who would then stage an attack on US destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz. This event was to be blamed on Iran and used as a pretext for war. Does any of this information worry you Mr. President? Should we just ignore it, until these realities can be dismissed years from now by our children, as ancient history as well?

PBO – Of course this information worries me, yet it’s not nearly as worrisome as you sitting here today suspiciously implying that 9/11 was somehow allowed to happen or even orchestrated from the inside.

CS – Mr. President I am not suspiciously implying anything. I am merely exposing the documents and asking the questions that nobody in power will even look at or acknowledge. And as I stated earlier, I voted for you, I believed in your message of hope and change. Mr. President I have come to you specifically hoping for a change. A change in the perception that our government has not yet made itself open and accountable to the people. These are your words Mr. President not mine. The lives of thousands were brutally cut short and those left behind to suffer their infinite pain are with me today Mr. President. They are with me in spirit and flesh, and the message we carry will not be silenced anymore by media fueled mantras insisting how they are supposed to feel. Deciding for them, for 8 long years, what can be thought, what can be said, what can be asked.

PBO – And I appreciate your passion, I appreciate your conviction. In spite of your concerns, in spite of what your data might or might not reveal, what you and the families must understand and accept is that we are doing everything we can to protect you.

CS – Mr. President , I realize were very short on time, so please allow me to run down a list of bullet points that might illuminate some reasons why we don’t embrace the warm hug of Federal protection.

PBO – We’ve come this far. Fire away.

CS – Please keep in mind Mr. President everything I’m about to say is documented as fact and part of the public record. The information you are holding in your hands chronicles and verifies each and every point.

PBO – You have five minutes left. The floor is yours. Brief me.

CS – Thank you Mr. President. Okay, first; On the FBI’s most wanted list Osama Bin Laden is not charged with the crimes of 911. When I called the FBI to ask them why this was the case, they replied: “There’s not enough evidence to link Bin Laden to the crime scene,” I later discovered he had never even been indicted by the D.O.J.

CS – Number 2; FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was dismissed and gagged by the D.O.J. after she revealed that the government had foreknowledge of plans to attack American cities using planes as bombs as early as April 2001. In July of ‘09, Mrs. Edmonds broke the Federal gag order and went public to reveal that Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were all working for and with the C.I.A. up until the day of 9/11.

CS – Number 3; The following is a quote from Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with Peter Jennings for ABC News. “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.”

WHO TOLD HIM THIS??? To this day, the answer to this question remains unanswered, completely ignored and emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several public occasions.

CS – Number 4; In April 2004, USA Today reported, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the targets was the World Trade Center.

CS – Number 5; On September 12th 2007, CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360′, reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted and videotaped by multiple media outlets, flying in restricted airspace over the White House shortly before 10am on the morning of 9/11, was in fact the Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit; otherwise known as “The Doomsday Plane”.

Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission did not deem the appearance of the military plane to be of any interest and did not include it in the final 9/11 Commission report.

CS – Number 6; Three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, are conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207 miles away as the first plane crashes into the WTC. Even at significantly less than their top speed of 1500 mph, they could still have defended the skies over Washington well before 9am, more than 37 minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, however, they did not return until after 9:55am.

Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready to take off on the morning of 9/11.

CS – Number 7; WTC Building 7. Watch the video of its collapse.

CS – Number 8; Flight 93 is fourth plane to crash on 9/11 at 10:03am. V.P. Cheney only gives shoot down order at 10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.

Fueling further suspicion on this front is the fact that three months before the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney usurped control of NORAD, and therefore he, and no one else on planet Earth, had the power to call for military sorties on the hijacked airliners on 9/11. He did not exercise that power. Three months after 9/11, he relinquished command of NORAD and returned it to military operation.

CS – Number 9; Scores of main stream news outlets reported that the F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed and need to be declassified.

CS – Number 10; In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep their mouths shut by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.

As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”

CS – Number 11 – Hundreds of eye witnesses including first responders, fire captains, news reporters, and police, all described multiple explosions in both towers before and during the collapse.

CS – Number 12; An astounding video uncovered from the archives shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26 minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before admitting that they made the “error” of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without adequately explaining how they could have obtained advance knowledge of the event.

In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC 7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”

CS – Number 13; Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box cutters, was a central plank of the official 9/11 story.

However, the credibility of the story was completely undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about whether his wife used her cell phone or the airplane phone. The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004. American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane phones on board.

According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to call her husband only once and the call failed to connect, therefore Olsen must have been lying when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from Flight 77.

CS – Number 14; The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in width and yet images of the impact zone at the Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show a hole no more than 16ft in diameter. The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images before the partial collapse of the impact zone show little real impact damage and a sparse debris field completely inconsistent with the crash of a large jetliner, especially when contrasted with other images showing airplane crashes into buildings.

CS – Number 15; What is the meaning behind the following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The passage is taken from testimony given by then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not activated, are we to take it that the orders were to let the plane find its target?

CS – Number 16; In May 2003, the Miami Herald reported how the Bush administration was refusing to release a 900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report,” particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S. flight schools.

CS – Number 17; Top Pentagon officials cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11^th on September 10^th. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was scheduled for the morning of 9/11.

CS – Number 18; The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004, and even by that point it was only in the trial phase. Calls from cell phones which formed an integral part of the official government version of events were technologically impossible at the time.

CS – Number 19: On April 29, 2004, President Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the commission under specific clandestine conditions. They insisted on testifying together and not under oath. They also demanded that their testimony be treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date, nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public domain.

CS – And finally Mr. President – Number 20; A few days after the attack, several newspapers as well as the FBI reported that a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the WTC. In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

At least a third of the WTC victim’s bodies were vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon incident were burned beyond recognition. And yet visas and paper passports which identify the perpetrators and back up the official version of events miraculously survive explosions and fires that we are told melted steel buildings.

(The Senior aide appears again beside the President whispering in his ear. He then quickly moves off).

PBO – Well Charlie I can’t say this hasn’t been interesting. As I said earlier you’ve showed up today focused and organized. Regardless how I feel about the material you’ve presented, I must commend your dedication and zeal. However, our time here is up.

(the President rises from his chair , I do the same).

CS – Mr. President! One more second!

(The President starts towards the door – I follow him quickly step for step).

CS – Mr. President, I implore you based on the evidence you now possess, to use your Executive Power. Prove to us all Sir, that you do, in fact, care. Create a truly comprehensive and open Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath. The families deserve the truth, the American people and the rest of the free world deserve the truth. Mr. President -

(He pauses. We shake hands).

CS – Make sure your on the right side of history.

(The President breaks the handshake).

PBO – I am on the right side of history. Thank you Charlie, my staff and I will be in touch.

(I watch as he strides gracefully out of the room, the truth I provided him held firmly by his side; in the hand of providence.)

No wonder President Obama is in such a rush to get his health care reform package through Congress before the August recess. And before the public finds out about Ezekiel Emanuel, special advisor to Peter Orzag, Obama's director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and brother to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel has written in medical journals of how health care should be rationed, with priority given to younger people over seniors and over those suffering from dementia, according to John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). Ezekiel also believes that very young children should be lower on the priority list than younger people who have received public educations.

Goodman cites an article Ezekiel co-authored with two other men that appeared in the January 31, 2009, edition of the British medical journal, The Lancet. Goodman also cites a 1996 article by Ezekiel that appeared in The Hastings Report. In the latter, which was titled "Where civic republicanism and deliberative democracy meet," Ezekiel argued for limiting health care for “individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.”  He cited "not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” as an example.

Goodman offers additional analysis on his blog of Ezekiel's presence among Obama's health care advisors. Goodman notes that the health care reform legislation now being crafted in Congress includes a provision designed to ration the availability of MRI, CT and other advanced technology scans that often are critical to identifying dangerous diseases at a sufficiently early stage to enable life-extending treatment:

“An example of what can be done is actually in legislation being written on Capitol Hill. Buried somewhere in the 1,000 plus pages is a provision to severely limit what Medicare pays for CT and MRI scans performed in doctors' offices. This would force elderly patients, for example, to go to the hospital for their radiology — where there are often lengthy waits. Patients in rural areas who must travel long distances to get to hospital-based testing facilities may be discouraged from getting the tests done at all.”

“individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.”  Emanuel wrote, “An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

Goodman notes that the World Health Organization estimates that 25,000 cancer patients die in Britain annually as a result of such restrictions on medical scans.

by Eric Ruder / April 23rd, 2009

The jailers of the 19th century — even in the pre-Civil War South — largely abandoned the practice of imprisoning people for falling into debt as counterproductive and ultimately barbaric. In the 1970s and ’80s, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that incarcerating people who can’t pay fines because of poverty violates the U.S. Constitution.

Apparently, though, some states and county jails never got the memo. Welcome to the debtors’ prisons of the 21st century.

“Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son,” the New York Times wrote in an editorial.

“When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.”

The details of Nowlin’s case are even more alarming than the Times editorial suggests. Not only was Nowlin under orders to pay a fine stemming from someone else’s actions, but she had been laid off from work and lost her home at the time she was ordered to “reimburse” the county for her son’s detention.

Despite her inability to pay, she was held in contempt of court and ordered to serve a 30-day sentence. On March 6, three days after she was incarcerated, she was released for one day to work. She also picked up her paycheck, in the amount of $178.53. This, she thought, could be used to pay the $104, and she would be released from jail.

But when she got back to the jail, the sheriff told her to sign her check over to the county — to pay $120 for her own room and board, and $22 for a drug test and booking fee.

Even more absurd, Nowlin requested but was denied a court-appointed lawyer. So because she was too poor to afford a lawyer and denied her constitutional right to have the court provide one for her, she couldn’t fight the contempt charge that stemmed from her poverty. And her contempt conviction only added to her poverty, as the fines and fees she was obligated to pay now multiplied.

“Like many people in these desperate economic times, Ms. Nowlin was laid off from work, lost her home and is destitute,” said Michael Steinberg, legal director of the Michigan ACLU. “Jailing her because of her poverty is not only unconstitutional, it’s unconscionable and a shameful waste of resources. It is not a crime to be poor in this country, and the government must stop resurrecting debtor’s prisons from the dustbin of history.”

Michigan isn’t the only place where you can be imprisoned for the crime of involuntary poverty. The same Catch-22 ensnares poor defendants daily in courtrooms across the country.

In 2006, the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR) filed a suit on behalf of Ora Lee Hurley, who couldn’t get out of prison until she had enough money to pay a $705 fine. But she couldn’t pay the fine because she had to pay the Georgia Department of Corrections $600 a month for room and board, and spend $76 a month on public transportation, laundry and food.

She was released five days a week to work at the K&K Soul Food restaurant, where she earned $6.50 an hour, which netted her about $700 a month after taxes. Hurley was trapped in prison for eight months beyond her initial 120-day sentence until the Southern Center intervened. Over the course of her incarceration, she earned about $7,000, but she never had enough at one time to pay off her $705 fine.

“This is a situation where if this woman was able to write a check for the amount of the fine, she would be out of there,” Sarah Geraghty, a SCHR lawyer, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution while Hurley was still imprisoned. “And because she can’t, she’s still in custody. It’s as simple as that.”

Georgia also lets for-profit probation companies prey on people too poor to pay their traffic violations and court fees. According to a 2008 SCHR report entitled “Profiting from the poor”:

In courts around Georgia, people who are charged with misdemeanors and cannot pay their fines that day in court are placed on probation under the supervision of private, for-profit companies until they pay off their fines. On probation, they must pay these companies substantial monthly “supervision fees” that may double or triple the amount that a person of means would pay for the same offense.

For example, a person of means may pay $200 for a traffic ticket on the day of court and be done with it, while a person too poor to pay that day is placed on probation and ends up paying $500 or more for the same offense.

The privatization of misdemeanor probation has placed unprecedented law enforcement authority in the hands of for-profit companies that act essentially as collection agencies. These companies, focused on profit rather than public safety or rehabilitation, are not designed to supervise people or connect them to services and jobs. Rather, they charge exorbitant monthly fees and use the threat of imprisonment and a variety of bullying tactics to squeeze money out of the men and women under their supervision.

For too many poor people convicted of misdemeanors, our state is not living up to the constitutional promise of equal justice under law.

In Gulfport, Miss., the municipal court started a “fine collection task force” to crack down on people who owed fees for misdemeanors. According to the SCHR Web site:

The task force trolled through predominantly African American neighborhoods, rounding up people who had outstanding court fines. After arresting and jailing them, the City of Gulfport processed these people through a court proceeding at which no defense attorney was present or even offered.

Many people were jailed for months after hearings lasting just seconds. While the city collected money, it also packed the jail with hundreds of people who couldn’t pay, including people who were sick, physically disabled and/or limited by mental disabilities.

The disregard of the justice system for the rights of poor people to equal protection and due process is cause for outrage. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise in an era when the government spends billions bailing out banks while letting foreclosures and unemployment ruin the lives of working people.

We need to build a movement, like the working-class struggles of the 1930s, that can demand an end to the inhuman practice of incarcerating people for no other crime than finding themselves at the bottom of the social ladder.