A Stain on the Congress

With 90% of the American public in favor of background checks for would-be firearm purchasers, the failure of our government to pass such a requirement is a betrayal of the public interest and a stain on the integrity of our representatives.

Since the Newtown massacre of school children and their teachers there have been more then six thousand victims of firearm violence in this country. Here in Oregon we have more deaths from firearms than from automobile accidents. Think about it.

Though anyone can buy an automobile, in order to drive it off your own property you must pass a driver’s test and have a license. Yet without background checks any idiot with the cash can buy a deadly weapon. God help us.

It may not be obvious to you, but this country is the largest manufacturer and exporter of weapons in the world. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about has taken over. Arms companies sponsor the NRA. With their contributions to the election campaigns of our representatives it sure looks like they are owned by the gun makers. They have sold their souls in order to be reelected. The Senate is so bound up by partisan bickering and conflict that no one wants to run for office. It reminds me of the last days of Rome described by Gibbon in his “Decline and Fall.” In those days it wasn’t the weapons makers who were the cause, but the fact that people ran for the Roman Senate in order to glean all they could from the system before they were poisoned. No one worth his salt would run.

It’s time that congress stood up for the safety of Americans they represent by supporting sensible background checks for firearm purchasers. 

A cautionary tale for American Muslims

The United States has a sad history of racism and intolerance that may be repeated if we are not vigilant.
Remember, the so-called New World was colonized for two purposes: for gold and to convert the indigenous peoples to Christianity.The Spanish conquerors made every effort to obliterate all traces of the previous cultures and religions.
As the new United States expanded westward, native peoples were displaced and even slaughtered. One tribe was hunted like animals until none remained.Surviing native American Indians had their children taken from them and put in missionary schools to convert them to Christianity and eliminate their native habits, language, and religion.
When the Chinese laborers came for the Gold Rush and to build the trans-continental railway, they were eventually expelled for fear of the "yellow peril."
The United States was one of the last countries to officially abolish slavery and indentured servitude, though the latter still exists in sweat shops and aur pair girls. 
The Mormons were persecuted and had to flee to the west and settle in Utah.
At the outbreak of World War II Japanese-Americans were interred in concentration camps.
Today thousands of so-called illegal immigrants are being reported and held in camps pending their expulson.
Now, since the 9/11 attack by fifteen Muslims, chiefly from Saudi Arabia, he country is at war against Muslim extremists, using drones flying over countries we are not at war with to assassinate alleged terrorists. Each so-called "collateral damage" of innocents adds to the recruitment of others seeking revenge.
Given that history, it is essential that all American Muslims speak out against terrorism and identify potential bombers. The risk is that besides being spied upon by FBI informants, we might see an American repeat of the Nazi Nurenberg Laws.

Getting off the Grid

MS# 1696/ 614 words

June 21, 2013

 

Getting off the Grid

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

Anyone who has read my columns about surveillance over the years should not be surprised by the so-called revelations that NSA is tracking your phone calls. It’s a useful intelligence gathering method for detecting potential terrorist activity by seeing who calls who when one of the callers is a known terrorist. Like expanding ripples when a stone hits the water, the pattern reveals the center of activity. Of course, to make any sense of this you need enormous data collecting ability and super fast computers to put it all together. NSA has that in its huge complex in Utah. But you’re not a terrorist, so what do you care? Well, you might care. Here’s how:

A woman told me she was shopping in Macy’s when she got a call on her cell phone from a manikin. Seems the store models are equipped with cameras. The dummies are watching. It’s not only Indian casinos that identify your face as you walk in the door. Now some stores do it, too. Using facial recognition, the Macy’s system recognized her, where she was in the store, knew what she usually shopped for, and offered her a discount coupon on her cell phone, since that’s the department she was shopping in.

Grocery stores where you use the so-called club card know what you eat. Stores in the national Kroger conglomerate send that data to a computer in Cleveland where individualized coupons are printed up and sent to you, based on what your past buying history is. The coupons are useable only by you.

Cell phones act like a recording GPS, and can track your movements. When the Boston bombers hijacked the SUV, the escaping owner left his cell phone behind in the car. It took only minutes to locate it for the shootout that brought the incident to a blazing end. That tracking method was also used in a jewel robbery case when the cell phone records proved the movements and location of the robbers. If you have a cell phone, they know where you are.

If you value your privacy, your only hope is to get off the grid. You have to think like a spy or a criminal.  Get rid of the cell phone. No more texting. You also need to never use an ATM machine. They keep a record of who was there, with their photos, how much they withdrew, and when. Avoid them. But what about checks? No good, either, for your bank statement shows what you bought, how much you spent, and of course the sales slip lists what you paid for. Oh, and by the way: get rid of the credit cards. They track your purchases and the time and place they were used.

So: no cell phone, no credit cards, no check book, no ATMs. But there’s more: your web surfing is recorded, and all your tweets are saved by the NSA. We already knew email was screened. Best not to use a home computer connected to the web in any way. .No more internet on line shopping.  They know what sites you visit and who your Facebook friends are.

So what is left? You have to go back to a strictly cash basis. This makes it hard to buy an airplane ticket or make a hotel reservation, but if you are trying to preserve your privacy,  this demands some sacrifice. Like my son-in-law with no bank account or credit card, you live out of your pocket.

Ah, but what about that scene in Macy’s? With no cell phone, you can’t be offered that in store coupon. This gets us down to the facial recognition program. We have to do something about your face. Maybe wear a burka?

Changes in Food Choices

1695foods/ 728 words

April 18, 2013

                                                        Our Changing Foods

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

Food choices have changed drastically over the years. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s the typical restaurant menus offered, besides steak and pork chops,  liver and onions, chicken and dumplings in a white sauce,  meat loaf, half a roast or fried chicken, scalloped potatoes and various generic soups like chicken noodle or tomato. You could find ham or pot roast.  Hamburgers were White Castle sliders or Wimpy, inspired by Popeye’s burger gulping pal. You could order a grilled cheese sandwich,  egg salad or a hot dog.  Fish? Well, there was perch or cod.

Outside of cities where there were large Jewish populations, there was no such thing as a bagel. You had to find a delicatessen to get a pastrami sandwich with an authentic kosher dill pickle.  Only Jews heard of lox and bagels with or without a schmere of cream cheese.. Only in places like New Jersey did anyone ever hear of something called pizza. Even chili was relatively new, an import from the Southwest. There were occasional Chinese restaurants serving not authentic Chinese foods, but American chop suey and chow mien. How much has changed since then!

I never heard of a taco until I visited Bob, my best friend from high school, who had moved to California in 1949. A taco was ethnic Mexican food and didn’t reach the Midwest until later. He also introduced me to giant prawns at a restaurant near the Salton Sea.

Today there are bagels in every grocery store, though the New York aficionados will deny that they are authentic unless boiled first. They come in all flavors, plain blueberry, whole wheat, and “everything.” Now, of course, prawns and similar shellfish of all sizes can be had frozen in the big grocery stores. Tacos are everywhere, and MacDonald’s and Burger King, Wendy’s and other burger joints compete  with upcoming Subway which cries “eat fresh,” a comment on the places where burgers  may sit, waiting for customers, until their company-designated expiration time runs out.

My first exposure to pizza was in Newark, New Jersey in 1953 when I visited a roommate from college while on my way to Germany and army service in Heidelberg. That pizza was a memorable, milestone meal. Now they are everywhere, in all sizes with your choice of toppings.

Today you would be hard pressed to find liver and onions on the menu of most restaurants. There are occasional meatloaf offerings, and chicken is Southern fried, dipped in batter. KFC dominates the Southern Fried Chicken business and is all over the world.

We have become foodies. Portland, Oregon, for instance, has become the foodie capital of the world with literally hundreds of ethnic food carts clustered wherever there is sufficient foot traffic. A food cart, being on wheels, is taxed only as a vehicle, so there is no property tax, much to the chagrin of real restaurant competitors. At least, those offer dining indoors. 

Those early Depression days of basic meals are over. We have become epicureans. Now, thanks to the post Vietnam War influx of immigrants, we have Thai, Indian, and Vietnamese dishes in additional to previous waves of immigrants with their ethnic foods like Poles, Germans, Russians, etc. The English bought us fish and chips.  The food carts offer just about everything you can take away.  Sampling a different place every day you could indulge literally for years.

It’s all about choices, but if you long for a dish of liver and onions or chicken and dumplings, you may have to look a long time. As for fish, thanks to depleted stocks, cod has almost disappeared. Now we ubiquitous farmed seafood: salmon, steelhead, tilapia, prawns, and hush puppies grown in ponds and pens. They are crowded together in water polluted with their own excrement. To counteract the bad effects of swimming in their own filth they are fed antibiotics which we get to absorb second hand.

In those early days of the Great Depression we ate locally grown foods. Now my menu includes melon from Costa Rica, bananas from Central America, tilapia from Thailand, pineapple from Indonesia, various foods from China, even lamb from New Zealand (when I can afford it!). The list goes on and on. To paraphrase Dorothy, when it comes to food  we aren’t in Michigan any more. Our stomachs are world travelers and we don’t even have to leave town.

Premise of the Second Amendment

The Premise of the Second Amendment

a letter by

Harley L. Sachs

All this imbroglio about gun control and gun ownership justified by the Second Amendment misses the essential condition: “In order to establish a well-regulated militia…” None of those gun owners are members of a well regulated militia. The Second Amendment was created at a time when memories of colonists under an oppressive foreign government were still fresh and there was a need for resistance. This has been extrapolated by the NRA into a fear that our own government will take away our guns.

Some will argue that the states already have a militia, which is the National Guard under the control of the governors, but the Federal Government has the authority to mobilize the National Guard, and has sent our state armies to foreign lands to fight. The National Guard, then, cannot be construed as a militia to protect us from our own government.

What the Constitution appears to enable is a home guard. We have no home guard, and we have no well regulated militia. Being part of the official militia should be a condition for ownership of military-style firearms.

Job interview for an Intelligence Agency

This was prepared as a monologue for a playwriting workshop:

1066 words

The Job Interview

Good morning. I have your application for employment with the agency and I’ve read your essay with great interest. I understand that you are keen to serve our country’s intelligence service. Your minor in interpersonal relations and your foreign languages skills are a plus. I also see that you are aware that 95 percent of this work is rather dull research, not unlike what you experienced in graduate school. One difference, of course, is that for us as a field agent you will deal with primary sources. But there is a caution, which you must be made aware of before we go any further with your application.

I’m sure you are familiar with the James Bond movies. Double-O-Seven is his code number and he always identifies himself as “Bond, James Bond.” In this business you will never reveal your real name. You don’t know mine, and your application has only a number identifier keyed to the date. We do not number our agents, for if there is a Double-O-Seven there must be an O-Six and so on.

Ours is the name that is never spoken. You are never to mention the name of this agency. If in Washington should you meet people socially, the most you can say is you work for some government agency, but not us. In fact, for all you know, we might be some other agency than the one you think you applied for. But I assure you that I do represent a United States agency, and not the Mossad or the Venezuelan Embassy. Granted, in this business you can never be a hundred percent sure of anyone or anything.

James Bond carries all sorts of weapons and is provided with a fancy car and various gadgets. You will never be armed. No Beretta, no tear gas fountain pen, or any of that gadgetry. Your only tools will be your camera and your pencil. Unlike those folks in the World War II resistance, you’ll not be trained to use a secret radio transmitter.  You will be trained in tradecraft and possibly the use of certain ciphers.

 In the movies James Bond kills dozens of bad guys. Did you notice that they are killed, but never get hurt? And Bond is never arrested for involuntary manslaughter, not put on trial, doesn’t go to jail, and is not executed. Nor does he attend the funerals of his victims or meet his victims’ families. James Bond is a comic book super hero. If you have fantasies about being a super hero, forget it. This job is not for you. It is best that you are invisible.

We will provide you with a cover story. It will be something innocuous, but plausible. For instance, until her cover was blown by Mr. Cheney, Valerie Plame ostensibly worked out of a Washington law office. Her outing cost seven of our agents their lives.

 Your pay with be two tiered, your public pay, and the real salary. For instance, if your cover is to be a homeless person who sells Street Roots, you will live the life of a homeless person and spend only what you gain by begging and selling the newspaper. The rest of your pay will be held by us in escrow until such time as you leave the agency, retire, or die, as the case may be.

Partly because of current budget concerns, we can only offer you a position as a contract agent. That means you are a private contractor and not an official employee of this agency. We do that for several reasons. You will be subject to the self-employment Social Security tax. Therefore, you do not qualify for any benefits such as vacation pay, health insurance, unemployment, disability, or the pension plan.

If you spend lavishly, far beyond the means of, for instance, your cover as homeless person, you will be suspected of being a drug dealer or of doing something else illegal. To avoid that temptation, we withhold a portion of your pay in case you mess up or decide to go over to the opposition. In that case, your savings with us are forfeited. The longer you work for the agency, the more you risk losing should you mess up.

You will be required to sign the Official Secrets Act and all your activity will be classified. No one, not even your spouse or partner, not your mother or your father, is to know what you really do or what your real job is. It is a double life, not so very different from the life of a man who has a mistress or is a criminal. In fact, you must be aware that when you are working outside this country espionage is a crime. You are a criminal. If you are caught, like Gary Powers when his U2 plane was shot down over Russia, we will deny we know anything about you. Since you are not an official employee of the agency, we do not know you. You will be hung out to dry. If convicted and imprisoned, as Powers was, you may get lucky and be traded for one of their spies that we have caught. Under the Geneva Convention, if you are a soldier in uniform and captured you need only reveal your name, rank, and serial number. If you are not in uniform and are a spy you may simply be shot.

There’s an international trade meeting coming up. Should you be hired, we may ask you to attend as your first assignment. We may point out certain delegates we would like you to cultivate. Be friendly. Listen to their problems and their stories. If you are successful, they will soon think you are their best friend. You will report everything to us. You will never know what we do with your reports. You will not know what action we take as a result of your activity. It is possible that, because of their contact with you, a foreigner, they may be in jeopardy. They have their own security people at work and if they suspect that your target has betrayed their country, he or she may be arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or killed. You, by betraying their confidence, will have betrayed them to us. Can you, for the sake of our country, betray people?

 Now do you still want this job?

The Sachs Firearm Bill

The Sachs Firearms Bill

Preamble

Though the 2^nd Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms for a regulated militia, ownership and use of a firearm is also a responsibility.

Who Shall Own or Possess a Firearm?

Whereas the Constitution provides that a citizen shall be permitted to bear arms, that right shall be restricted to citizens who have not been convicted of a felony and are deemed mentally competent to pass a psychological background check. Undocumented (illegal) aliens may not own or possess a firearm of any kind. Foreign tourists with hunting licenses may possess a rifle or shotgun during the hunt.

Classification of firearms

A hunting rifle or shotgun may be owned or possessed by anyone holding a valid hunting license. Hand guns are not considered hunting firearms and no one under eighteen may own or possess a handgun. Unlike hunting weapons intended for killing game, the primary purpose of handguns is to kill people.

Registration and Insurance

All firearms must be registered with the police and insured for liability. For instance, if a gun is stolen, the gun owner must report the theft to the police within seventy-two hours. Should the stolen gun be used in a felony, the gun owner is culpable as an accessory and liable for damages and subject to prosecution, just as if he were the driver of a getaway car for a bank robber who kills a clerk. The driver is also guilty of murder.

If a gun owner lends a firearm to someone the owner is still responsible for damages resulting from the misuse of said firearm. Renters of a firearm for hunting must take out a liability insurance policy for the duration of the hunt.

Insurance of all firearms is to protect the gun owner from losses through theft and misuse. Should a person be accidentally wounded, the insurance policy may provide some liability protection in case of a lawsuit for damages or wrongful death. Such coverage may be attached as a rider on a home owner’s or renters’ policy.

Firearm owners must be prepared to show proof of insurance and registration at all times when the firearm is in their possession. Owners with carry permits must be prepared to show proof of insurance, license to carry, and registration just as a car owner must show a valid driver’s license, proof of registration, and insurance in a traffic violation.

Endorsed by

                                      

                                             Name of elected official or representative