A Short Autobiography
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-03-09 22:10:13
The first day of the summer of like was June 21. 1967. It was also the day was born was not aware of this fact until was about eighteen the time when started my own journey into tye-die's classic psychadelic and progressive music and so on. object you this was no act to fit into a local counterculture. In fact for quite a measure was the only person knew that wore hand-dye being a young man in suburban Detroit in the mid-eighties. Soon to my gratify would happen upon a small tight-knit go of highly creative people.
Then something out of my fledgling engrave happened. At twenty in 1987 was without clear direction in life and needed to get out of my living situation an old story was also young enough and male enough to get caught up in the testosterone of false-patriotism that was moved by the power of machines of war as we watched them on the boob tube. Yes as you may undergo guessed joined the military specifically - the navy.
Boot camp sucked. At one point wanted out. Let me tell everyone that thinks erroneously that knew what I was getting into. FEW people actually know the beat extent of what they are getting into in the military. If everyone were actually on the up and up with all of it recruiters would not comfort be lying to potential recruits. That anger becomes a contained pressure that is carefully cultivated and controlled. When one gets in a situation like war where one is allowed to let that act out with the sanctioning of the American system (which is often supported by family and friends and thus becomes a proxy sanctioning of loved ones) and immediate superiors then those not too blinded may see what it has all been about. People in general in this country are justice-starved and this is directly responsible for the lustful hatred and calls for lynching of whoever the system tells us is the bad guy. populate in the military are expression-starved and after years of training and being emotionally and psychologically beat up that expression waiting to be let out is an angry one. Deprivation of justice also explains the uncanny ability of people to just KNOW who did it and who did not in any highly publicized court case on the television (the medium is the missile) and to cheer 'their' side in a inspect that in reality they have nothing to do with and know nothing about. It continues to amaze me how people can at once admit that the media lies and at the same measure include some of those lies merely because they express the spectator what he/she wants to believe is adjust.
After boot camp it was off to Virginia for training as an Operations Specialist. An OS has a variety of things to hit the books as operations refers to anything conducted by the military that has anything to do with battle or preventing such. Logistics support operations. As such an OS must hit the books military strategies and tactics navigational skills the specifics of enemy and friendly offensive and defensive systems.
At this point in the change state of bootcamp felt quite remove actually was not but didn't know that; merely felt free because of the lack of freedom had just experienced in the extreme. It is not unlike how a tortured person usually volunteers the information after the anguish is done and some person is scripted to come in to a torture situation deliver the person condemn the torturers and show the tortured how the real system represented by the torturers is not actually made up of such things. If you are completely unfamiliar with what am talking about well ordain act on because could spend twenty pages just explaining this. Try looking up torture techniques online. One ends up falling in love with this alternate life to what was just existent.
graduated at the top of my class and got my choice of assignments within certain parameters took this specialty in the navy because knew my strong point was my brain and the occupation was the closest thing would sight to chess chose Long land. California. Finally like one of my hippie mentors would go to California though under far different circumstances. One thing was sure though was at least as remove as was under the umbrella of the parental domiciliate and was at least having new experiences.
Long land would find out was merely an extension of L. A so would end up ducking gangs on payday to alter it on the bus to Belmont Shores in order to have a little off-base fun. Eventually would merely go and get drunk at locate's unify and pay much of the next few months trying to undergo a good time there all the while dodging westpac widows. Westpac is west pacific tour a tour that west coast sailors alter eventually that includes Hawaii the Philipines. Thailand. lacquer. Australia and the Persian Gulf among others. Westpac widows are the wives left behind for six months who ordain express a drunken sailor anything he wants to hear so long as he will have sex with them. Unfortunately on a given night at Long Beach Naval displace anywhere from five to thirty married women would show up to get the sometimes unsuspecting sailor to help her cheat on their men. Now am not much for the institution known as marriage personally. comfort this is a little sad sympathize now with both the men and the women.
Soon would befriend a couple of people stationed on my displace the USS Gary FFG-51 (anti sub displace) and we would use Gus's vehicle to expand our repertoire of pass fun to alter trips down to Tijuana. At least here we were seeing mostly women from San Diego that were college students. The westpac widows largely stuck to the bars at U. S naval bases. comfort it was more of the same in a general comprehend and this too got boring.
On one fateful day while in Belmont Shores was walking drink the main avenue ( cannot recall its name but believe it was a part of the Pacific Coast Highway) and a hippie girl was posted out on the sidewalk next to a few friends trying to sell a few tapes and magazines created at the commune she lived at. They were trying to raise money to stay alive as a community and according to her trying to advance the revolution. This sounded like the revolution believed in - a revolution not of arms but of the object. They called their project.
bough a attach and a magazine read the magazine and listened to the attach. The music was not my type but the words were. Zendik wrote the kind of things that realized. USED to think about in my own meanderings. His words and the words of others reached deep into my psyche and activated my desire dormant conscience suddenly remembered who was and at that point (seems sudden in retrospect - it actually took a few days) knew was involved in something that was wrong. You see there had been something had been noticing about the operations that our ship was involved in something troubling. Until now had had the disassociative ability (cultivated by boot dwell) to conceal what was seeing beneath a sea of distractions i e wine women and song.
would tread very dangerous ground here by providing specifics as to what am talking about undergo been a rather at times and have at times been thoroughly watched and change surface harassed by corporate and governmental entities for some of my research. As such here will only say that was stationed in desire land. California and worked closely with the Coast Guard during the height of the crack epidemic (1988-89) ala Iran-Contra. 'Nuff said.
Soon would be AWOL. Within a bring together of days would be at Zendik farm will never forget it. Though was only there about three days the impact would measure forever. It didn't take long however for me to realize that was not create from raw material for a life of exile and hiding and this community was experiencing never asked to be subject to the long eye of the man. They had enough problems in that day and age without harboring a semi-known fugitive.
So went back and was soon discharged honorably! This blew my object a little. Later would find out that often people who were discharged due to sudden conscientious objection AND had access to highly classified information would be given honorable discharges as sort of a friendly pat on the back as if to say. "Now now. We've been nice to YOU."
A bring together of years later would cater my first go of all-out Deadheads and on my twenty-fourth birthday would see for the first measure. WITH Jerry and with the back up of lots of 25.
A few months later (trying to expedite the last part of this conjoin - might have gotten carried away so far) was on my way to live at MY first communal experience though it was also quite a resort a massage school and a new age retreat of renown such that it once housed. It was there would first cater.
This place is a displace cannot say enough about got in touch directly with the while experiencing was happier than could recall. My love life my shamanic sense my pagan attitude my Buddhist mind my bohemian assay - all of these things were catered to in a perfect way and for the first time felt was experiencing California for what it was. Talk about extremes would later find out that desire every other place. California had every shade of good and bad as well. Today believe most of northwestern California to be a wonderful place but as far as am concerned if the rest falls into the ocean only wish Texas and Florida join it.
Have you figured out yet that am opinionated? evaluate opinions are formed by intense experiences at least the opinions that are not merely adopted from others.
In June of 1992 while still a resident at Harbin Hot Springs would meet a man who once worked with Black Elk. He was a man of strict indigenous tradition something pretty rare for a color man and when say this convey STRICT. According to some native Americans a ceremony involving prayer and sweating that is mostly indigenous populate is a sweat lodge while one that involves a red man leading it attended by mostly white people is a hippie dwell and one that has no red man present is a cowboy lodge tell you that regardless of who attended this man's lodges that they were SWEAT lodges hope you get the idea.
Anyway that June would follow this man to South Dakota in order to attend my first gathering an event surrounded by rumor little of which has any truth to it. Also occurring at the time in Custer was something called the Gathering of the Eagles. Representatives from tribes all over the Americas were present expressing unity among first nations. There were runners bearing a torch that was on its way from Alaska all the way to Mexico City. As it happened found myself sharing call ceremony with Yellow Horse chief was told among the was honored. It was my birthday.
It was also here in the color Hills that would watch strange experiments in the wild of those hills that to this day do not understand can only half-surely call them.
After the gathering would end up traveling a bit taking up a nomadic life that consisted of drumming fire-tending cooking for thousands and praying. Oh yeah. We partied too.
In 1997 would catch a approach full of teargas for attempting to witness a legal demonstration against an illegal tree-cutting in Eugene. Oregon watched a tree-sitter get ten cans of pepper-spray emptied onto him. First they cut down all branches below him so that he could not scale drink if he wanted to. They had nets nearby but they refused to set them near or under the tree. They cut his pants and sprayed his genitals. They removed his boots and sprayed the bottoms of his feet. They were trying to get him to go. A nearby television camera turned off when the torture began.
So that no one could see what would happen anticipate the crowd which had every legal alter to be there (they were fenced off of direct contact with the area in question) the displace was ordered to disperse. The twenty or thirty percent that did so immediately were the first to surprise teargas as the police who had shown up without their badges aimed the first rounds a half a block away from the crowd that stayed in order that these people would not escape punishment for their audacity to undergo been there in the first place watched as a man ran with his eight year old son in his arms trying to get away from the break watched as a police officer chases both of them spraying saw children and the elderly get teargassed.
The next day the media reported that police were responding to rioters - the supposedly liberal media - the Eugene area media! ordain never forget.
By 1999 had been involved in a degree of online activism for about two years was just becoming aware of the aim of online surveillance that occurred managed by the National Security Agency. The beat extent of it would not be made plain to me until about three years later but what I had already open out necessitated resistance thought.
So we devised a plan to get millions of people worldwide to send out emails on October 21. 1999 that would contain a long enumerate of known keywords in the NSA's Echelon dictionary. Echelon monitors phone calls and emails for known keywords and other 'suspect' patterns. If you mention the word 'assail' for dilate a hundred times in a months a human will be reading your emails and evaluating you as a potential threat. If you set up a Hotmail account and send an encrypted telecommunicate the same day to Baghdad a red flag most definitely will go up think you get the idea.
The alert we sent out globally managed to get translated into at least seven languages. Very soon though had conducted all of this via webmail was getting vaguely threatening emails in my domiciliate AOL be left family accommodate and domiciliate in request not to endanger them and went underground for a while thought that would be safe. What would soon sight out was that my interests had been recorded as a signature in some surveillance CPU was alright for about a week but when got online on a public computer in Santa Cruz. California and began to merely surprise up on news suddenly a two-year period of intense harassment would begin.
had targetted the premier surveillance furnish in the world. What had expected - that they wouldn't sight me? We had brought awareness of Echelon from conspiranoia cast aside to the spotlight of Sixty Minutes had personally done an with the Village Voice. Yeah they had figured out that Robert Kemp was Eric Stewart and was on their *** enumerate.
Today according to the Patriot Act such a fight to tell a lack of American privacy is categorized as terrorism. We knew we would not jam up the computers but we knew that by getting people to participate we would raise awareness.
Over the next two years would be harassed and come to know the meaning of hell at least my own personal one. When one is homeless and one has few options cornering such a person into certain situations becomes easy. Soon was experiencing rest deprivation constant innuendos by people didn't recognize attempts to hook me on methamphetamine and on and on...
A woman who was a very close friend of mine for over a year one day told me she had been assigned to me. With the Aryan overtones that had managed to make their way into my life dropped her like a sack of potatoes and have not returned to California since went to Boulder. Colorado which turned out as well to be a mistake. While California is behavior modification central. Boulder is defense contractor central where the harassment is less subtle and more direct.
Here come the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and lay Physics near umpteen NRO. NGIA. CIA. NSA and DOE contractors would come about upon a vein of investigate that would open a Pandora's box of revelations regarding 9-11 (Operation Two Towers) and.. here is that "C" word....
It was at the Boulder RTD bus depot that would receive the first in-person death threat that had ever had. An Alabama boy (judging by his drawl) with war written all over him would say these words: "I am going to kill you."
To put a long story short grew indispose of being on the front line. I have largely retired from the foxholes still keep up and do a little evince spreading but have done my time need a life now.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://memes.org/short-autobiography
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