The Texas Child Grab: Cowpie ala Mode (Updated)

The news was simply too good to hide under a bushel.


Arrow Child and Family Ministries, a foster care and adoption agency with headquarters near Houston, "found out today that they will be receiving 80-100 permanent placement children," exulted the sister of an assistant to Mark A. Tennant, founder and head of the agency. "More than likely, the parental rights of their parents will eventually be terminated and they will be placed in foster homes and/or adopted out."


That letter was set adrift in the blogosphere (scroll down to comment number 71 et. seq.) sometime around April 22-23 -- that is, at approximately the same time that Judge Barbara Walther issued a "placement order" that resulted in hundreds of children being torn away from their mothers and sent away in buses.


Walther has a lot to answer for, beginning with the fact that she didn't compel the State to produce the anonymous "victim" whose call produced the original search warrant for the YFZ Ranch. It's also quite likely that she was aware of the fact that "Sarah" didn't exist, and that the original call was a demented hoax, at the time Walther issued the original search warrant; she had to have known as much when she issued the April 22 "placement order."


So it's clear that Walther, like most people who wear the habiliments of the judicial profession, is guilty of serious crimes against the Constitution. But she hasn't yet issued an order to "terminate" the parental rights of the FLDS mothers. The obvious import of the letter cited above is that this development is a foregone conclusion, since provisions have already been made for long-term custodial care for the abducted children by Arrow and other foster care/adoption agencies.


"These children will be in a wonderful Christian environment," gushes the author of that letter, who goes on to explain that the Arrow Center was in need of volunteers to help clean the facility and perform other routine tasks "over the next couple of years." Furthermore, "it looks like CPS [Child "Protective" Services] is coordinating with the University of Texas to have a charter school on site at the retreat center. This will take place in the fall. Therefore: Arrow will have to build several new buildings for the school."


Immediately after the children had been removed from YFZ, the Arrow Center "sent a staff of 15 over a two week period to assist the Department [of Family and Protective Services] and other providers on the ground in San Angelo to help with activities and supervision of the children and families from the compound."


How thoughtful of them.


Mental health workers assigned to help CPS have testified that the conditions for FLDS children and mothers in state custody were akin to those of Nazi "concentration camps." So the role played by the good Christian people from the Arrow Center was to help with "activities." You know, sort of like organizing games of Red Rover and Ring-around-the-Rosy at Ravensbruck.


Obviously, a great deal of planning and preparation went into all of this. The initial raid on YFZ Ranch took place on April 3; within less than a week, Houston's NBC affiliate KVUE reported that Arrow's staff was preparing to receive scores of children.


"The Arrow Retreat Center was built to be just that -- a retreat center," reported KVUE. "But after Hurricane Katrina, they turned it into a shelter. Now that, once again, hundreds of children are being forced from their homes in West Texas, the center could be used to house them."


Rex and Patricia Childress, foster parents of five boys, were presented by KVUE as potential foster parents for girls ripped from their home at YFZ Ranch.


"You've got to show [the children] that people do care about them, and that there are people out here that are willing to help," Rex Childress explained.


The typical passive consumer of the officially sanctioned lies we call "news" was thus invited to perceive the scores of children taken from their mothers as victims of some tragic caprice of inscrutable nature, rather than the victims of armed abduction by a state-sanctioned criminal syndicate called the CPS.


There's no evidence at all that the children of YFZ Ranch had been abused or neglected in any way, or that they had been deprived of affection from the people who mattered the most to them. And now that those kind, caring, self-described Christian people have "helped" them by terrorizing them at gunpoint and breaking up their families, at least some of these children will be left hurting, confused, and probably susceptible to whatever mind-rape the CPS sees fit to inflict on them in the course of creating "evidence" to justify this entire abominable enterprise.


After being silent about the matter for a month -- he was busy; it takes time to find the right shade of Just For Men to keep one's youthful thatch of hair a preternatural chestnut brown -- Texas Governor Rick Perry finally commented about the El Dorado affair. By way of an intermediary, Perry defended the honor, such as it is, of the CPS and promised a full investigation of the allegations of CPS mistreatment at San Angelo. That investigation of the CPS will be conducted by the CPS, of course.


"The Governor is very proud of the work being done by CPS," Perry said via spokeswoman Krista Piferrer. "CPS has handled a very complex situation both professionally and compassionately. " Perry also "applauded" the CPS for promising an "internal" inquiry into the charges, which amounts to the Governor granting the agency plenary authority to conduct a cover-up.


This is the same Governor Perry, of course, who has presided over a foster care system rife with abuse -- including murder and the sexual molestation of children as young as three years of age. It is the same Governor Perry who promised a "top-to-bottom review" of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) following revelations of widespread physical and sexual abuse of teenage detainees by guards, staff, and other inmates within that juvenile correctional system. In the year that's passed since the TYC scandal went public, the agency has been through five chief administrators without seeing any serious improvement.


Given the near-ubiquity of criminal violence and abuse directed at children in Rick Perry's Texas, I'm starting to wonder if the YFZ Ranch was the only place in the state where children were safe from such treatment.


So far there is no evidence that anyone living there was ever mistreated in any way. And since the only witnesses to any alleged abuse are going to be in the custody of an agency with every reason to taint their testimony, it's difficult to see how any abuse allegation could be free of reasonable doubt. But with the children securely in their possession, the CPS can either manufacture the needed "evidence" after the fact, or simply hold on to the children while legal proceedings grind on interminably.


Uh-oh: FLDS women under CPS detention are seen waving at friends and family members, a gesture they were told was forbidden to them.


Like the war on Iraq, the war waged by Texas on the women and children of the FLDS community may turn out to be an immaculate deception.

Everybody knows that the reasons behind it are utterly spurious, and that innocent people are suffering needlessly, but nobody is willing to do what is necessary to end it and punish those responsible. So people just pretend as if the truth is either infinitely malleable, or entirely inconsequential.


And we can see good Christian people playing roles similar to those they've essayed where the war in Iraq is concerned. Christians have been enablers, facilitators, and supporters of official crimes, eager consumers and diligent regurgitators of official propaganda, sanctimonious sanctifiers of the State's criminal aggression, and pious profiteers when presented with the opportunity.


If those who profess to worship Jesus can't become principled opponents of the lawless Regime ruling us, the very least they should do is stop volunteering to be the ice cream every time the State feeds us a helping of cowpie ala mode.


Update: The Ice Cream's All Gone...

... and this is what's underneath:


"Abandoning their religion and husbands may be the only way that FLDS mothers will be reunited with their children," reports Rod Decker of Salt Lake City's KUTV news. "Texas officials issued new rules Thursday that dictate what the mothers will have to do before the state will return the 464 children. The plan says that the mothers will have to prove that they have provided the children with `a home free of persons who have, or will abuse the children.'"


Does the State of Texas now have a fully functioning Department of Pre-Crime? Or does it merely expect the mothers to exercise some form of precognitive gifts?


Neither is the case, of course. As Decker surmises, the People's Republic of Texas is demanding nothing less than a full and unconditional repudiation of the FLDS religion by the mothers, and the rat bastards are using their children as blackmail leverage to extract this concession.


"To hammer their point even harder," continues Decker, "Texas officials told FLDS communities that if they don't cooperate, the court could `terminate parental rights' and `appoint a conservator with authority to consent to each child's adoption.'"


None of this will come as a surprise to the supernally sweet Christian folks at Arrow Child and Family Ministries, who were advised weeks in advance of Judge Walther's April 22 "placement order" that FLDS members would have their parental rights terminated.


Among the nastiest things former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs did to rebellious members of the sect was to "reassign" their wives and children to more faithful members. He did this with the help of a state-sanctioned police force.


How, exactly, does this differ from what the State of Texas is now threatening to do to the FLDS mothers?


And of course, the most effective way for the FLDS mothers to ensure an abuse-free environment for their children would be to keep them out of the hands of the State of Texas by whatever means necessary.


It bears repeating that all of this is being done without so much as a particle of evidence that abuse has ever been committed by anyone at the YFZ Ranch. From the beginning, this entire undertaking has been carried out without probable cause, and in defiance of every principle of due process known to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under law.


It's not just that the CPS has delivered this ultimatum without bothering to prove its case; that ultimatum has been issued without the CPS even bothering to make a case of any kind. This is straight-up mass child abduction and extortion devoid of even the pretense of legal authority. And if the perps are successful, the atrocity in El Dorado will be just the beginning of sorrows.




Available now!











Dum spiro, pugno!

Iraq, Five Years In: They Really Don't Care (Updated, March 20)

Oh, lucky you! What a privilege you've been given by your Emperor, who so earnestly wishes he were young enough to join you on the front lines! (Or not. I'm betting on "not.")


The setting was the National Religious Broadcasters annual convention at Nashville's infelicitously named Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, and George W. Bush thought he would do a little trash-talking at the expense of the "Islamo-Fascists."


"Our enemies are ruthless, but they're going to be defeated," mock-drawled Bush to Pavlovian applause. "They've got the capacity to blow people up through suicide -- but you notice none of the leaders ever are the suicide bombers, however."


Yes, I'd noticed that.


I'd also noticed that the Idiot King who sent thousands of our men to die needlessly in his useless wars hasn't exactly led from the front, either.


Admittedly, that comparison is somewhat unfair. It's difficult to imagine the typical jihadist leader being so stupidly self-absorbed as to send off a corps of suicide bombers with the following benediction:


"I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here at Islamo-Fascist Central, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of building the new Global Caliphate. . .. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, to experience the blessings of martyrdom. You're really making history, and thanks."


Adapted ever-so-slightly (by the inserted red text), that is the statement Bush the Blessed made during a recent videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan. While this made a poor pep talk, it makes a wonderful emetic, if you happen to need that kind of help.


Although the Idiot King treats the Afghan front of his eternal war as an afterthought, it is every bit the debacle that Iraq has become. And while Bush tries to enhance the morale of those stationed in Afghanistan by portraying that conflict as some kind of Outward Bound experience -- only with, you know, suicide bombers, and stuff -- the stolid wad of congealed evil who actually runs his administration has made it known just how little our rulers care about the views of those who bear the burdens of the wars they've inflicted on us.


"Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting," pointed out Martha Raddatz of Good Morning America during a recent interview with Cthulhu.


"So?" replied Cheney, his porcine eyes glinting with self-satisfied contempt.

"So? You don't care what the American people think?" pressed Raddatz.

"No," Cheney responded. "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. "


While it's true that we shouldn't be governed by opinion polls, a finding of 67% in opposition to a policy doesn't reflect a "fluctuation" in public opinion; it represents a super-majority.


















Dick Cheney: He's even evil in the Mirror Universe.*


But this doesn't make a particle of difference to those who rule us. As Tony Snow once put it during his term as chief spokesliar for the White House, the Regime, having manipulated a terrified public and opportunistic Congress into supporting the war, has never been interested in "re-litigating" the issue -- no matter how many lives are wasted, how much damage is done to the economy, or how many times the rationales for the war have been revealed as conscious falsehoods.


Here's the division of labor, as our rulers see things:


They have the task of contriving foreign wars by cultivating, supporting, and subsidizing foreign thugs like Saddam, and then pivoting on an inflation-depleted dime to depict their sub-contractors as this year's Hitler. This permits them to mobilize the country for wars that result in long-term reconstruction projects that offer nearly unlimited opportunities for themselves and their cronies to cash in at taxpayer expense.

Oh, most fortunate Iraqi! Have you prostrated yourself today in humble gratitude to Bush the Benevolent for conferring the blessings of "liberation" on your unworthy family?



Our role is to provide, uncomplainingly, the blood and wealth to be devoured by the wars those people contrive; to believe the self-contradictory and palpably untrue pretexts our rulers supply for those wars; and to purge our minds of the accumulated knowledge and understanding that would make it difficult to repeat this experience as often as our rulers desire.


Our rulers frankly claim to create their own reality, but unlike other solipsists they insist on compelling us to live -- and, of course, to die -- within it, as well. When the facts prove intractable, they simply bury them and enlist the help of their media courtesans to mis-direct those few people who may have been paying attention.


Last week, for example, the Pentagon announced that a comprehensive review of tons of captured Iraqi documents, in addition to the interrogation of scores of top officials from the old regime, have made it clear that there was no operational connection between Saddam's junta and al-Qaeda. The Regime reacted to this disclosure in now-familiar fashion: It consigned the report to the memory hole and took refuge behind a barricade of belligerent denial.


At the conclusion of a press conference held Monday (March 17) during a fleeting visit to Iraq, Cheney engaged in a highly orchestrated piece of performance art to dismiss the significance of the Pentagon report. Calling on a reporter identified as "Steve Hayes," Cheney was asked the softest of softball questions about that Pentagon report.


Cheney replied by making reference to the report's executive summary and "an article in -- I think it was the Weekly Standard that dealt with the subject." On the basis of that review, Cheney confidently asserted that the really important question was not whether there was an "operational" link between Saddam and the 9-11 plotters, as the administration carefully led the public to believe, but rather the extent to which "he was a state sponsor of terror," a status he shared with, well, pretty much every ruler of consequence. But the links between Saddam and al-Qaeda would be made "clear" to anyone able "to dig into the report in depth," Cheney declared.


Oh. What a pity, then, that the White House has chosen not to make available, via "the internets," the very report that, Cheney insists, so completely validates their chief rationale for the war.


Oh sure, you might be able to get it via snail mail several weeks from now in the event the administration sees fit to let you have it. But one would think that the administration would disseminate it as widely and quickly as possible, given that it so thoroughly vindicates the administration. Or so Cheney said in Baghdad a couple of days ago.


At the end of that press conference, Cheney was asked directly: "So you think there was a direct link between al Qaeda...."


"You heard what I said," snapped Cheney. "I was very precise."


"Yes, you were," simpered the supposed journalist, who chose not to pursue the matter further.

Alleged journalist Stephen Hayes, Dick Cheney's "Jeff Gannon."



"Steve Hayes," the alleged reporter involved in that colloquy, was Stephen F. Hayes, author of the same Weekly Standard piece Cheney cited to deflect the conclusions of the Defense Intelligence Agency report.


Some reporters are mere stenographers, but where Cheney is concerned Hayes is a full-service sycophant, having been commissioned to write the Vice President's official biography. That's a chore that wouldn't be assigned to someone inclined to challenge Cheney's assertions.


So when Cheney needed someone with whom to carry out a circle-jerk of mutual self-validation, Hayes was the obvious choice -- just as "Jeff Gannon" was George W. Bush's go-to, uh, guy whenever he wanted to duck a question from a real journalist during a White House press conference.


Cheney was still in the region today. How did he choose to commemorate the fifth anniversary of an unnecessary, immoral, illegal war he did so much to bring about?


He borrowed the 60-foot royal yacht that belongs to the Sheik of Oman in order to do some deep-sea fishing. But Cheney wasn't too busy to continue his campaign to expand the war to Iran.


While there is little, if anything to commend the likes of Cheney as human beings, I will say this: He and his little simian front-man have helped me understand one largely under-appreciated blessing conferred by my Christian faith. Most of the time I take comfort and strength from the knowledge that heaven exists. But as I examine the misery, bloodshed, and horror wrought by Bush, Cheney, and their ilk, I find some consolation in the knowledge that there is also a hell.


Update: This really is a dictatorship....


In January 2005, after the incumbent secured a second term in an election that offered two almost entirely interchangeable candidates (right down to their shared affiliation in Yale's Skull & Bones society), the Bushling was asked if there would be any changes in policy toward Iraq.

His face falling into the contemptuous smirk that is its natural expression, Bush sneered that the 2004 election was an "accountability moment" that ratified ... well, everything he and his cabal had done: The demonstrable lies that led to the war, the evisceration of the Bill of Rights, the implementation of torture, wholesale violation of constitutional principles and criminal statutes -- all of that was made retroactively inconsequential because Bush had won (or stolen) an election.

Yesterday (March 19), Dana Perino, the current White House lie-flinger, was asked about Dick Cheney's "So?" response regarding the public's overwhelming opposition to continuing the Iraq war:

HELEN THOMAS: The American people are being asked to die and pay for this. And you’re saying they have no say in this war?

PERINO: No, I didn’t say that Helen. But Helen, this president was elected…

THOMAS: But it amounts to it. You’re saying we have no input at all.

PERINO: You had input. The American people have input every four years, and that’s the way our system is set up.

(See the video of this exchange here.)

As with so much that is done and said by the degenerate criminal junta ruling us, the statements above are the product of an idiot child's version of Leninism -- in this case, the concept of "democratic centralism." The idea here is that once consent is obtained by a ruler, it is irrevocable, and the decisions undertaken by him are to be supported without cavil or question.


Adolf Hitler, Lenin's largely disowned but very faithful disciple, refined that concept into the fuhrerprinzip (Leader Principle), in which the Fuhrer was seen as embodying the General Will.
Brought to power democratically, Hitler and his Party created a revolution within the form of the fatally flawed Weimar constitution (which permitted, inter alia, the executive to rule by decree in emergencies). They then decreed that there would be "no second revolution" -- because, you see, just like the Bushified GOP, they insisted that the election that had put Hitler into a position to become Germany's ruler had been the Nazi movement's "accountability moment."


Though milder in application than its Soviet and Nazi antecedents -- unless you have the misfortune of being an Iraqi, or someone at the mercy of the Homeland Security State -- the Bush Regime, and the Republican Party it leads, have embraced a Leninist/Hitlerian doctrine of executive power.


In contradiction to Perino's claim that the American "system" is set up to facilitate executive dictatorship, the Declaration of Independence explicitly acknowledges the unlimited right of the people to withdraw their consent, at any time, from any government that becomes "destructive" of the individual rights it was created to protect.

It's likely that I'll have more to say about this subject later....















Dum spiro, pugno!

________

*The line about Cheney being evil even in the Mirror Universe comes by way of William Wallace Grigg, age 10.

Flesh For War Fantasies

One significant problem with being an Empire: Everything is supposedly "our" business.

To my considerable shame, I just realized that it had been a long time since I had thought of Angola. In fact, it occurs to me that I really don't have a feeling toward that country one way or another.

How utterly scandalous this is. I obviously suffer from a severely parochial worldview, if not outright bigotry. All decent people are required to take an interest in Angolan affairs, and to work on behalf of that nation's survival.

Whoops – I made a mistake. It was Austria I had forgotten, not Angola – an easy mistake, I suppose, given that the names of those countries are similar, if little else about them is. Austria is the nation that is supposed to hold captive all of my waking thoughts, and dominate the dreams that come once my eyes surrender to weariness at day's end.

Oh. Sorry. My bad.

It turns out that the small foreign country I'm morally obliged to care about is Guatemala, where I lived for a little more than a year in the 1980s --

Now, this has become simply obnoxious. Sierra Leone, that tragic land, scene of some of the most horrific atrocities of recent memory, is the country that should always be uppermost in my thoughts, lest I be accused of indifference to genocide.

Admittedly, it's difficult to keep track of which distant, unfamiliar country should by the focus of my concerns – to such an extent that I would be willing to surrender the blood of my children in its defense.

Perhaps the issue could be clarified if the regime running that country could stage a PR campaign in which its government shamelessly pimps several young female military veterans by having them pose in borderline pornographic photo spreads for Maxim magazine.

We have a winner! The nation in question is, of course, Israel.

Like much of the evil done in this world, the idea of a Maxim photo feature on Israeli women (starring former Miss Israel Gal Gadot) originated in New York, more specifically at the Israeli consulate, “where research showed that Israel meant little to young American men” in the all-important 18-35 demographic, reports the AP.

Former Miss Israel Gal Gadot, featured in the Israeli regime's quasi-porn propaganda campaign, seen here in suitable attire.

“Males that age have no feeling toward Israel one way or another, and we view that as a problem, so we came up with an idea that would be appealing to them,” explains an Israeli government media adviser named David Dorfman. Thus Maxim was contacted by the Israeli consulate and asked to take part in “reshaping Israel's public image.”

What neither the Dorfster nor any of his allies in this effort would explain is this: Why is it obligatory for American males of any age -- let alone those in an age bracket targeted for military recruitment -- to have feelings of any sort about a country to which they have no organic connection or moral responsibility?

Israel can expect the allegiance of its citizens, and for understandable reasons Jews in every nation take an interest in its survival. But I cannot think of a compelling reason why the typical American should take a greater interest in Israel than he does in Angola, Austria, Guatemala, or Sierra Leone.

Ecclesio-Leninists of John Hagee's ilk would insist that Christians have a God-prescribed duty to support the Israeli government, to the point of mass bloodshed, if necessary. Since Hagee considers it just and meet to kill on Israel's behalf, I wonder if he would consider it appropriate to peddle quasi-porn, and consume the same, in that cause. (I'm suddenly afflicted with a mental image of Hagee poring over the pages of the July installment of Maxim, his wattles quivering and his eyes distended as he succumbs to a combination of sanctimony and salacity).

Hagee is precisely the kind of "friend to Israel" whose preferred policies would kill a lot of Israelis and other innocent people. He really should pause and ask himself if a government that would exploit prurient interests in this fashion (not to mention sponsoring "Gay Pride" parades) is really the Zion longed for by prophets and saints of ages past. From where I sit, that government appears no better or worse than any of a dozen others I could name, our own most definitely included.

While the Israeli consulate in New York prepares to fire the Maxim gun in its propaganda arsenal, the War Party is pursuing a somewhat subtler approach in preparing the public for a US/Israeli attack on Iran. Yesterday (June 20) the House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding that the UN Security Council “charge Iranian President Maumoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide,” and that the Council consider unspecified “measures” to “prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons....”

The resolution regurgitates the claim, which has been canonized through repetition although patently and demonstrably false, that Ahmadinejad “called for Israel to be `wiped off the map'.” While the Iranian president is a certifiable maniac guilty of many crimes against decency, that phrase was not uttered by him: He was, in fact, calling for what is now “regime change” by calling for an end to the Israeli government, not the annihilation of the Israeli people. If calling for “regime change” is now to be considered an incitement to genocide, the entire staff of the American Enterprise Institute should be seized and extradited to stand trial before the UN International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Only two congressmen, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), voted against the resolution. Kucinich “attempted to have read into the record alternate translations of Ahmadinejad's remarks that suggest the Iranian leader was calling Israel to come to an end through democratic means, and not through violence,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

While describing himself as “unequivocal in my support for the security and survival of Israel” and possessed of “serious concerns with the remarks made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” Kucinich denounced the resolution, correctly describing it as an attempt to “lay the groundwork for an offensive, unprovoked war” -- one in which Israelis, as well as Americans and Iranians, would be killed, and that will probably ignite a broader conflict lasting for years or even decades.

And that is an obscenity far greater than anything available in the pages of Maxim.

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