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Nazis In The Military And No One In The Government Cares (Aside From Those Who Encourage Them)

Date: Sunday, September 7, 2008 - 7:56am
Keywords: war on terror, discrimination, racism, United States, forrest fogarty, tommy dunn
Links:


"I'm completely public about being a racist and Nazi," he says. "I get into fights maybe twice a month, because some niggers will get pissed off with it." Every time a black person enters the bar, he emits a hiss of disapproval.

"I just don't want to be around them," he tells me. "I don't want to look at them, I don't want them near me, I don't want to smell them. And people say, 'Oh people who are racialist you've never hung around black people'... bullshit, I've showered with them, I've lived with them, I don't like them... they're fucking savages, they're tribal motherfuckers, they are different to us, how they think, how they conduct themselves."

Despite his vitriolic racism Fogarty wasn't worried about not being allowed into the army. Military protocol stipulates that each new recruit with suspicious tattoos must write an explanation about the divinity and meaning of their body art. Fogarty's are quite clearly the kind written about in ARP 600-15 -- a Nordic warrior, and a Celtic cross. But this didn't hinder him. "They just told me to write an explanation of each tattoo and I made up some stuff and that was that," he says. Fogarty was enlisted and stationed in the 3rd Infantry Division based at Fort Stewart, GA, the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River.

This happened in 1997 even before the new military attitude to tattoos really took hold as troops were needed ever more desperately. It shows that regulations were loose before and have got even looser. Now more Fogarty's are getting through, as the commanders in the army hierarchy admit to a liberalism that wasn't in place previously.

...

The Army tome which deals with all the multifarious obligations that a soldier must uphold in the military is called AR 600-20, or "Army Command Policy". It devotes one of 125 pages to the problem of extremism, and states the policy generally as: "Participation in extremist organizations and activities by Army personnel is inconsistent with the responsibilities of military service".

...

There is no mention that membership itself is prohibited; it is the public display of allegiance that is barred. The options available to a Commander should these rules be transgressed are involuntary separation, reclassification action or bar to reenlistment actions, or other administrative or disciplinary action 'deemed appropriate' by the Commander.

...

Fogarty was dragged away from his girlfriend when he was positioned in Georgia. And the woman, who would later be the mother of Fogarty's first child, born in 1999, grew angry. "She hated that I was in the military," he says. Her anger became so acute that, according to Fogarty, she sent a dossier of pictures to his military command that showed him at white supremacist and neo-Nazi rallies, as well as performing his racist rock for Attack.

"They hauled me before some sort of committee, and showed me the pictures and asked me what they were. I just denied it and said my girlfriend was a spiteful bitch, which is true.

"They knew what I was about, but they let it go because I'm a great soldier, and they knew that."

The person heading the investigation was Command Sgt. Maj. Tommy Dunn. I contacted him and he claimed he couldn't remember who Sgt. Fogarty was. "It's funny," says Fogarty when I tell him, "he gave me medals and everything."

...

Fogarty gives me the latest Attack album, "Survival". The jacket is a picture of him in military fatigues while in Iraq and his songs give a clear indication of his thoughts on his time there. "Eye For An Eye" opens with the lines: "A slow painful death I strive/ Why are you still alive?" The chorus includes the lines: "It's our turn to watch you bleed/ It's our turn to tear you limb from limb... We will leave no survivors of this bloody war.
"
"In Battle" includes the lines "In battle there are no laws... Its kill or be killed, die with the rest... Relief came when I pulled the trigger and watched you die/ I can't stop laughing everytime I remember you start to cry/ Watch you cry!"

"To tell you the truth I hate Arabs more than anybody," he says at Lowry Zoo. "For the simple fact I've served over there and seen how they live. They're just a backward people... them and the Jews are just disgusting people as far as I'm concerned, their customs, everything to do with the Middle East is just repugnant to me."

But he believes the war can be won. "You have to break these people's will to fight, the only reason they are fighting is that there is some sort of profit to it, or its not that bad, that the Americans are not going to do what they did in World War Two and kill everybody."

Would he nuke Baghdad? "Fuck yeah! ... If we had occupying force cracking down on spitting on sidewalk would you spit on sidewalk if they shot you in the head for it? Go in with iron-fist, this is how you will live, if you don't we'll kill you... Quit pussy footing around, listen to us or die."

...

Fogarty was confident enough of carte blanche from the military that during his break from service in January 2004, he flew not back to see his family in the U.S but to Dresden, Germany to give a concert to 2,500 skinheads, on the army’s budget.

Barack Picks Biden To Be VP, No One Surprised

Date: Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 9:21am
Keywords: electoral process, United States, barack obama, joe biden
Links:


Barack Obama named Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, balancing his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.

So much for the much heralded text messages.

LA Times On Sean Tevis' Online Campaign

In one panel, a stick-figure Tevis greets a constituent by rattling off a stream of personal facts he's found online about her -- including her birthdate, voting pattern, divorce, paycheck, credit card balances and medical history -- to illustrate his interest in protecting individual privacy.

When she slams the door in his face, the cartoon Tevis muses, "Maybe I should rethink my approach."

"I figured I'd raise a few thousand dollars, at most," for his bid to become a state representative, said Tevis, a computer systems manager who works for an industrial manufacturing company.

In fact, before he created the comic strip, Tevis spent weeks asking cash-strapped friends and family for help and walking door-to-door in the district. He raised $1,525.

The comic strip -- at www.seantevis.com/3000 -- was first posted online July 16. Today, when he files his campaign finance forms with the Kansas secretary of state's office, Tevis will report that he has raised $95,162.76 in donations through PayPal, the online service that allows payments and money transfers via the Internet.

Common Sense, Intelligence Plus a Little xkcd Makes For A Pretty Good Campaign Strategy

My name is Sean Tevis. I'm an Information Architect in Kansas running for State Representative. I've decided to "retire" my current State Representative. I'm going to win. This is my story (XKCD homage style) so far.

Bush Looking To Speed Up Withdrawal From Iraq

Date: Sunday, July 13, 2008 - 4:38pm
Keywords: war on terror, George Bush, electoral process, United States, iraq
Links:


The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Just in time for the election!

Corporations Shouldn't Have Rights, They Were Left Our Of The Constitution Intentionally

Date: Friday, July 11, 2008 - 1:55pm
Keywords: constitution, United States, merger of government and corporations, corporation's rights
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The founding fathers of the United States were not interested in giving constitutional rights to corporations. In fact, they wanted to regulate corporations very tightly because they had had bad experiences with corporations during colonial times. The crown charter corporations like the East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company had been the rulers of America. So when the constitution was written, corporations were left out of the Constitution. Responsibility for corporate chartering was given to the states. State governance was closer to the people and would enable them to keep an eye on corporations.

Screw Being A Senator, I'm Going To Be President

Date: Friday, July 11, 2008 - 1:42pm
Keywords: electoral process, John McCain, United States, barack obama
Links:


John McCain: Missed 374 votes (61.8% of total)
Barack Obama: Missed 263 votes (43.5% of total)

As I've said before, missing a few votes when you're running for president is understandable. But at some point you have to at least attempt to do the job you were elected to do.

I disagree, if you can't do your job (one that you're being paid for), quit.

Senate Approves Retroactive Amnesty For Telcos Who Helped The Government Spy Without A Warrant

The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant retroactive amnesty to the telecoms that aided the President Bush's five-year secret, warrantless wiretapping of Americans, and to expand the government's authority to sift through U.S. communications, handing a key victory to the Bush administration.

...

Voting record for FISA Amendments Act of 2008

Orphan Works Act Of 2008

Date: Friday, July 4, 2008 - 12:30pm
Keywords: GPL, open source, patents trademarks and copyright, fair use, United States
Links:


I first heard of the Orphan Works Act of 2008 by way of an open source advocate voicing concerns regarding the lack of diligence allowing companies to ignore the GPL. While this is could be an issue, I think if a party fails to do something as simple as perform a google search and see it listed at the top, a judge would probably hold that the searcher didn't perform a diligent search, especially since computer stuff more often than not found in the Internet. Besides, there are plenty of GPL violations that occur now. And considering most software has in it (either in the code or the application itself) some sort of documentation that points to the software's website. I don't think there's a judge who would find a company who ignored that sort of obvious information as a company who performed a diligent search.

So I decided to find out more about this bill and the second google hit was a petition to stop the Orphan Works Act of 2008 by some nutjobs who think copyright should last, quite literally, for eternity:

We believe it is the unalienable right of the individual artist or person to decide how their photographs, illustrations, videos, music or paintings are used for eternity.

Sorry, but copyright shouldn't last for 50 years after the death of the creator, it shouldn't last for 70 years after the death of the author and it certainly shouldn't last for eternity. The ultimate purpose of copyright (which is a time-limited monopoly on the rights to copy (or otherwise reproduce) a work) is not to provide for the authors of the works, but rather to enrich society as a whole. As a way to encourage individuals to create works, there needed to be some financial benefit, so the government granted the author a time period of 14 years (renewable for an additional 14) during which the author would hold a monopoly on the right to copy the work. After that, the author had to either come up with a new work, or get another job because the work became public domain, because the goal all along was to give society free access to the largest amount of works possible.

Now that's not to say I'm in favor of the Orphan Works Act of 2008. I'm not. But I am against the 7336 people who have signed this online petition. And not only these people, but other people who run around claiming that this bill "destroys the copyright validity of all artists. And then go on to claim that the Bushites are the anti-christ:

Who or what is the motivating power behind such a horror as this bill?
Guess! Fascism, Neo-cons? You see, as I warned you long ago and forever since, The Bushites ARE the anti-Christ. They realize that much financial and critical support comes from the Progressives and Liberals in the arts and the vast majority of artists of all sorts ARE Progressives and Liberals. When God or nature bestows upon a man, woman, or child a great creative gift, with that gift most often includes the sensitivity it takes to recognize the vagaries and the subtlety in nature and art. Artists of every sort are keen observers, because they have to be, and they are trained to be and by their very gift they are born ro be so.

The Anti-Christ forces, which supplant merely being The Anti-Christ, but are in reality Anti-God, Anti-Spiritual giftedness, anti-prophet, but pro-illicit profit. Their goal is the utter destruction of the God-Gifted artists. They hate and hold on contempt those favored with gifts, which includes athletes. If you will note, they have gone after with scant evidence all members of the arts and sports with lawsuits and skimpy, fringe, phonied, trumped up indictments, many of which I have correctly called as failing, here in these pages in many articles. They are aided and abetted by those who attack the messengers rather than perpetrators.

I share the position of Adam Huttler regarding the Orphan Works Act of 2008 in that I don't know if the bill is either good or bad (or a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B). Huttler does make some interesting points, though, including that authors are still entitled to compensation even from someone protected by the Orphan Works Act and that registration isn't compulsory.

Court Finds That As Long As Incoming Foreigners Are Not Formally Let Into The Country, The Government Can Do Whatever They Want

Date: Friday, July 4, 2008 - 11:36am
Keywords: war on terror, Maher Arar, torture, due process, United States, canada, syria
Links:


Today, the majority in a federal Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Center for Constitutional Rights client Maher Arar's case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year under the extraordinary rendition program.

Maher Arar is not available to comment in person, but is issuing the following statement: "The Court's 2-1 ruling is outrageous. It basically legitimizes what was done to me, and permits the government to use immigration law as a disguise to send people to torture without regard for due process."

The majority ruled that Mr. Arar's constitutional claims that it was a violation of due process to lock him up for two weeks, obstruct his access to a lawyer and a court, and then to ship him to Syria for the purpose of having him interrogated under torture could not be heard in federal court for two reasons. It concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security, and that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights with respect to the government's interference with his access to a lawyer and the decision to send him to Syria to be tortured.

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