Study Military Conscientiously BEFORE You Join

Sadly, this fellow merely accepted the public relations tales:

In December 2013 he was deployed to Camp Hovey in South Korea, 10 miles from the border with North Korea. He was attached as a medic to the 4-7 Cavalry. He began to hear disturbing stories about the wars in the Middle East, not the glorified stories spun out by recruiters, the media or the entertainment industry, but stories about whole families being blown up or gunned down by U.S. troops in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan. He lived among soldiers who were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Many were drinking heavily. He listened to them talk about being prescribed anti-depressants by Army doctors and then being redeployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He may have been a medic, but he was required to carry a weapon and to use it in combat. He knew that for him, to do so would be impossible. 

I was told by a naval officer who exited the military when he realized standing military was not tenable he told his superior office he wanted out, and in turn as told to keep it a secret and he could get out, but if he told anyone outside the process he would be held in and made an example of.

The USA military truly feat conscientious objectors.

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Private Law

A good argument for anarchy:

The fact is that there is no such thing as a government of law and not people. The law is an amalgam of contradictory rules and counter-rules expressed in inherently vague language that can yield a legitimate legal argument for any desired conclusion. For this reason, as long as the law remains a state monopoly, it will always reflect the political ideology of those invested with decisionmaking power. Like it or not, we are faced with only two choices. We can continue the ideological power struggle for control of the law in which the group that gains dominance is empowered to impose its will on the rest of society, or we can end the monopoly.

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Misogi: 55C Air Temp and 55C Water Temp

I was told sports trainers use ice baths for athletes, I wonder how and to what end?

Misogi-swimming has side effects.  Going to sleep earlier, and getting up earlier seems ot be a side effect.  Plus, lakes have all sorts of bugs in them, so it must also make for a robust immune system.  I imagine sports-training water is well-filtered.

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Not Made For This World

When I see how wonderful life and the universe that is around us, I cannot deny there is a God.  When I see the abject evil, the depths of depravity, I cannot deny there is free will.  We were made to live forever as creatures in a perfect world.  We creatures destroyed that perfect world, by our free will,  but we did not lose immortality.  We live in an imperfect world, designed for immortality, so we are not made for this imperfect world, but for a prefect world.  We are made for eternity after death, where we will experience perfection.   If we live as though we belong in a perfect world, in spite of living in the imperfect world, then we can expect and eternity of perfection.

Anyway, that is how I understand it.

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Dee Harkey: US Marshall/Anarchist

The Wild West was fairly anarchic, and rather productive:

According to U.S. Marshal Dee Harkey, the reality of the old West was order without law, society without state. It was anarchy in action.Dee Harkey was ninety-two years-old in 1958. At his home in New Mexico, the former lawman gave an interview to Monk Lofton just two weeks before he passed away. Harkey set the record straight about the old West. He also expressed the unease he felt for his own role in transferring the responsibility of law from the individual to the state.

I've made about a half-dozen arrests, citizen arrests, because I am a pacifist and a anarchist.  I don't think there should be police officers.  One these that always surprises me, is how people generally  accept being arrested.  It is like kids who push things until they are stopped.  I've had to get physical, but certainly I'd be no match for the PCP-laced berzerker, but that is why God put the invincibly ignorant among us who would simply kill the mad dog.  And then honestly say killing is wrong.  "Was that killing you just did wrong?"  "Yes, but he is dead." Or something like that.

There is necessary and sufficient violence among us without the state to deal with the bad guys.

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U S A Criminal Justice

A man who commits a murder is proven guilty thirty years after another man was sentenced to life.

Now, of course, this would all be simplified if the state had executed the innocent man, so now it is an embarrassment.  Like all those videos showing cops murdering people now. Martin Stroud is the prosecutor who railroaded the innocent man.

Marty Stroud admitted in a letter published in a Louisiana newspaper last month that he was to blame for putting Glenn Ford behind bars in 1983

OK...  so... (Glenn Ford is the victim.)

In the letter, Stroud admitted that he was to blame for mistakenly putting Ford behind bars for the fatal shooting of a jeweler, despite no murder weapon or witnesses placing him at the scene.

'In 1984, I was 33 years old,' he wrote. 'I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning.' 

Mistakenly?  Is that what we call it?  This is an otherwise unheard of event?  OK.. so what to do?

'Glenn Ford should be completely compensated to every extent possible because of the flaws of a system that effectively destroyed his life,' Stroud wrote.

'The audacity of the state's effort to deny Mr. Ford any compensation for the horrors he suffered in the name of Louisiana justice is appalling.' 

Ah, it is the systems' fault, not the individual whose actions are immune from prosecution.  Martin Stroud had nothing to do with this right?   Maybe, just maybe, if prosecutors were answerable for fun-time career-enhancing false prosecutions, there would be fewer executions and incarcerations of innocent poor and minority.  Just maybe.  Martin Stroud did nothing wrong, it is the system!

If Martin Stroud III actually had the slightest concern about what he had done to the man, he would take everything he gained in the last 33 years and give it to the man he personally railroaded up the river, and not condemn the taxpayers for not kicking in to cover up Strouds' malfeasance and personal aggrandizement.

But that ain't gonna happen.  This is America.

We need truth commissions, not government prosecutors.

Update:  Today, this -

The government has identified almost 3,000 cases in which FBI agents may have given testimony involving the now-discredited technique. So far only about 500 of those cases have been been reviewed.
Some 268 of those involved FBI examiners providing expert evidence in court that pointed to the guilt of the defendant – of which 257, or 96%, included false testimony.
Most shockingly, at least 35 defendants received the death penalty, 33 of which were the subject of false FBI testimony. Nine of the prisoners were executed and five died from other causes on death row.

Something like 90% of cases involve plea bargain with no trial, so figure about ten times as many people falsely convicted, but no chance of review since they admitted guilt to avoid a life sentence.

Truth commissions.

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USA War & Jesus

An interesting article on sniper-worship, with a summary I've long suspected:

I’m a Christian, but I don’t go to church. Americans have made modern Christianity almost synonymous with war and the US military. I’m not alone in avoiding churches for exactly this reason. I can’t stand sitting through sermons on the myth of American exceptionalism. American Christianity has lost all moral authority and now suffers the intellectual backlash for its pro-war rhetoric. What thinking person wants to belong to a church that places greater moral weight on petty vices than the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

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