What was the DC Madam case about?

With the blessed passing of yet another election cycle, we might reflect on another one from the recent past which resulted in a significant routing of the GOP by the Democrats: the deeply contentious 2006 national midterms. There's at least one major political sex scandal that takes down a significant politician in the United States every election cycle, generally speaking, two years, with overlap for higher office.

After the fall of the Director of the CIA at the hands of the surveillance state, we might reflect on the DC Madam case and look at the same themes and actions at play.

Jeane got this, maybe more towards the end:

Bil… yes, I saw it. This further supports my belief that escort and adult services – which cater to powerful and influential clients – are being used as the new "hunting grounds" in American politics. –Jeane PS if interested, I will be on Geraldo and Coast to Coast Radio (10:30pm PDT) tonight. Newsweek also has done a piece on me, that is coming out in Monday's edition. It should be available online, by late tonight/tomorrow.

Yet, it appears that the GOP practically brought their own scandal to the attention of the American public. This kind of calculated stupidity is completely in character for them. I walked away from this train wreck a few days after this email. This all began with a leak by federal prosecutors to Bill Bastone and the Smoking Gun, they wanted it out there.

Why do this? Damage control knowing that you can redefine a problem. 2006 had a lot to do with corruption, how much the public will take of it, and damage control rather than the willingness to change or to take responsibility like adults. There are no adults, don’t kid yourself. You look at events differently once you’ve been on the inside of them. Whether others like it or not, Jeane allowed me to take in a lot for a purpose. She invited me to sneak a peek behind the curtain, and indeed, some impotent clowns resembling the Wizard of Oz were incompetently pulling levers that affect people’s lives, tripping, falling over each other, and they were just as blunderingly human and frail as I expected them to be. What the case was about is right in front of your eyes, every day, therefore invisible. It wasn’t a mistake that defense and intelligence technology contractor SAIC and the CPU giant Qualcomm were in Jeane’s phone records, or that they were visiting my website any more than it was that so many arrows pointed to San Diego and numerous military personnel, many of them officers. It wasn’t coincidence that put Lockheed Martin in her phone bills for her escort service, that a World Bank executive was in them, that a major league GOP operative like Jack Burkman was too, and there were many others, others I haven’t even included in my account of what I believe happened and what the case meant. Judge Kessler saw no coincidences when she granted Jeane subpoena power over the intelligence community.

This was a tale of partisan politics and statism, but also where the lines blur in those constructs, because interests overlap, making for the strangest bedfellows of all. Why the 2006 midterms? I believe this election is the key to understanding why an interim-appointed U.S. Attorney named Jeffrey A. Taylor decided to move on Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the press-dubbed “DC Madam,” only one month after she’d shuttered her escort service. I’m assuming here that someone tipped her off. Why waste millions on a small escort service like that? This was first of all about damage control for the part of the public that can be reached when presented with stupid things like facts and corroborated evidence, empiricism, stuff that's not entertainment. Without wanting to, I have no faith in the rank-and-file of either major party, and I think Palfrey’s own apathy about politics and her ignorance of it was instrumental in her undoing, word to the wise. Being the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind doesn’t elevate you to the throne.

She knew some significant things about her predicament and her place, but clearly, not enough. What still surprises me is that before I brought the timing of the search of the Vallejo residence to her attention, she, her counsel, and others assisting her, hadn’t considered it—not even journalists she was encountering were expressing their observations of this. For an openly partisan Republican prosecutor to move on a suspect who, perhaps unknowingly, holds information damaging to his party and other related interests, is an unmistakable political act. Breaking the law to achieve damage control and to protect the defense and intelligence contracting game was implicit to their theater and the media was only too happy to play along.

Not even a nearly unprecedented economic crisis was going to overcome the racist backlash over the 2008 election of Barack Obama and it temporarily breathed new life into an ashen GOP, perhaps for the final time, since it was coming from a demographic of angry, aging white Americans whose political significance has been rapidly eroding over the last few decades. In their bigotry, they fear this massive influx of Hispanic refugees, most of them desperate Mexicans fleeing social chaos, generations of poverty, the militarization of the drug war, corrupt federales, goons, police, the cartels, and enslavement in the maquiladora factories that line the Free Trade Zone along the border, and now, private security, the CIA and drones. Such a happy family relationship between nations brought the dictator Porfirio Diaz to remark, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States.” Yet, thanks to this ruthless repression and exploitation, there were some unexpected results: a new dynamic where Latin Americans are now heading towards being the future of politics, and possibly the labor movement, in the United States. And with this realization among the nativist rabble element came the inevitable Know-nothing reaction of hounding immigrants, which, like lynching, is a time-honored American tradition. Does the public ever truly learn? Which one would that be in a divided nation when these racists are becoming the minority? They're also the staggering idiots who tolerate an emergent police state and runaway defense spending while at the same time painting themselves inaccurately as rebels. That's called a fool. This is why it wasn't surprising to me that these same people--if you want to call them that--run to conspiracy theories that never truly touch on those power centers. Chasing ghosts and being ineffectual is the safest thing in the world. 2006 wasn't especially different from now.

At this, the halfway mark of the second and unfortunate term of George W. Bush, when the future Tea Party members were cheering the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and police state tactics in the war on terror, Republican Party officeholders were paying the price for more skeletons in their closet than the Marquis de Sade or Al Capone. The litany of corrupt acts, antisocial behaviors, and general high weirdness, was widespread enough in their elected ranks to warrant decades of inquiries, yet, no, according to President Obama, we must “continue to look forward,” sounding as much like Scarface as the Republicans. Of great note, one of the cappers that went over the line was Florida congressman Mark Foley, who was accused of pedophilia. This is all about breaking the law and surviving through until the next ever-tightening election cycle. Controlling the DOJ never hurts. Besides, you can always fire your Attorney General and appoint another one the public can grow to hate as an arch-criminal the more they get to know about them. Almost a year earlier the profoundly illegal warrantless wiretapping program that bypassed the judicial oversight of the FISA court (housed at the DOJ, and I suspect they knew), initiated by the White House, was no longer being sat on by the traditionally submissive New York Times. (They had done this for a full year, so that the 2004 elections could pass by safely for the GOP, at least regarding that particular skeleton.)

You know that there’s a political crisis going on when the culture of politics has shifted so far to the right, that all the partisan hacks can talk about is a non-existent center. Most of what you’re going to be hearing from the official channels when a system ossifies is unbridled crap and lies, more obfuscations, apologies to power, ignoring the growing herd of elephants (the only one), until this game no longer works. Rather than looking at all of what we’re learning about rampant corruption as an excuse to cop-out (pun very much intended) and run to the temporary safety of jaded apathy, we should be glad that we know about these crimes at all, because knowledge really is power. But then the problem is that you’re forced to decide to do something about it. I made that decision getting involved in this case, hoping that I could bear witness to history and to accumulate whatever materials I could for the record. I was successful in that endeavor. Too often, the residue of events is lost to the ages. Collecting these materials was done so that the information could be out there and the public has the option to discover, more generally, how the private sector and government collude, and I've put it out there, with more to come.

An incredible effort was mounted to neutralize the destructive potential of what the charges against the late Ms. Palfrey were really about. To re-frame a story, and by doing so, redefining it, is a common practice in, ours, the most propagandized modern society outside of the former Soviet Union and China under Mao. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." This is why corrupt government contractors need to operate in the dark, and that’s what the DC Madam case, a branch of Hookergate, was about: to hide their criminal behavior and bury the evidence of their much greater crimes. When you keep raising this glaring discrepancy between how Palfrey was treated under the law on the one hand and how her privileged clients were on the other, and it’s never addressed in any substantial sense by government prosecutors, career spokesmen like P.J. Crowley, those clients like Senator Vitter, law enforcement, the hierarchy at the DOJ, you begin to realize the fix is in. Mind you, this was being said by many of us during the proceedings very loudly, and to no avail, because the mainstream press did its best to let it die by its own hand, and I mean that literally, because they also knew that Jeane was suicidally inclined. Brecht couldn't have dreamed this nightmare up. That's not murder, it's willful negligence

There had been a very serious scandal in 2006—one of many—that eventually fizzled-out named “Hookergate,” the standard cigar and hooker parties that are held in and around the Beltway for hungry contractors, to obtain coveted, high dollar jobs and assuage the seething addictions of sociopath Republican horndogs (as opposed to Democratic ones) with a taste for the high life on your dime. Yes, this is all about the war on terror and the moronic, runaway militarization of America, the biggest buyer of unnecessary, clunky military hardware in the entire world, six hundred times the spending in this area than of all the other nations of the world combined. That’s pretty stupid—nay—exceptional. We not only have the right to blow our balls off in this manner, but we still somehow have the right to speak about it thanks to a historical accident that began during the Colonial period, freedom of speech and the press. Things working out will never be good enough for the species. In our meanness and selfish tendencies that have been fostered into the emotional equivalents of plutonium, another poison we’ve refined, so as to illustrate our collective wretchedness, we have contaminated the world with our greed. From the moral rot of John Jacob Astor, to the senseless greed of the speculator Jay Gould, America’s first millionaires, on down to the Robber Barons like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan, men who childish fools have emulated ever since, we compromised with the bad guys and lost our way long ago as a nation, and we’re finally running out of road for the last time. This is our last chance. All of this is what the DC Madam case was about, the culmination of generations of baseness and barbarity. Either this is the beginning, the end, or both, but we’ve undoubtedly come full circle, which is rarely a good sign for the little people out there, the rest of us out here in television land.

This has happened before. Our out of control defense spending is doing to American democracy what it did to that system in Athens, first, by bankrupting their Treasury, then the inevitable collapse into anarchy and dictatorship, wrought by irrational military adventurism. Ask the Greeks how long it’s taken to come back from that one. And, so today, we have a similar situation in place thanks to the same kinds of criminals bent on power at any cost: a crisis on several fundamental levels—political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental. Not so long after Jeane died I conveyed to her former counselor Montgomery Blair Sibley that she may as well have stayed alive since, what with the encroaching economic catastrophe, she could have walked out of prison once there was no money to house her anymore (it elicited no response). What was the DC Madam case about? The fall of America by militarized self-immolation and general greed, nihilism.

let the dead bury the dead is now available!

At present, the book is now available at CreateSpace (a subsidiary of Amazon): 

All the information on it is there, but I can state that, at least for the present, it's 27.95 USD, plus shipping. At 622 pages, it's reasonably priced. There will be sales after it's gone up on Amazon US, and in the weeks after, in the EU. 

I'm hoping there will be a lot of interest in the book, what with how popular the US is there now (I jest). That could help, actually, the anti-American sentiment, because Let the Dead Bury the Dead doesn't paint an especially pretty picture of America as a nation and a culture. That, of course, isn't my fault entirely, it's shared. We all own a piece of this mess. What the reaction to the book will be is beyond my ability to know, but I suspect that it will be mixed. That's fine, and I have to say here that it doesn't matter either way when you're dealing with a historical account. There are no rules here except to be as sincere and as accurate as it was possible at the time. I've gone gone above and beyond the call and honored that. 

There have been a few nibbles already from media and interested parties who want to do coverage. I welcome any and all interested parties who are thoughtful, who are receptive, and who at least know a modicum of the facts surrounding the case. It would be unfair to expect prospective interviewers to know as much as I do about the case, because most of what's in the text is out of view, or not well-known at all. Then, there's my unique take on it and my analysis, which I believe is actually more explosive than the primary materials in the book itself. Not a lot of people share my vantage in all of this for reasons of career--mostly selfish reasons. That's their problem, and I will not be humoring anyone with an obvious agenda. I also won't be answering questions from the conspiracy nut crowd, so save it. I don't recognize any legitimacy of these right-wing clowns. You will be ignored.

As for review copies, they will be provided only in the event of an actual review being written. Tiny blogs--like my own--will not be getting any copies, I'm not a charity. Serious inquiries only, the rest I will ignore...

you can have fries with that: amazon updates on let the dead bury the dead

The "Look Inside" function is now enabled at the Amazon page, and I like how they did it: only so many pages from the first chapter, almost all of the preface, or all, the index, table of contents, and a bit more, but not enough for the deadbeats. Generally speaking, I've been pretty pleased with CreateSpace, thus far, and have been surprised at the ease of their setup. Now, you can see a little for yourself. 

I'm planning some future e-books too. They will not be of this book for the foreseeable future. Be glad: books never crash, only burn, and that takes effort.

Finally, I've been sending out a number of review copies. If you're a member of the press/media and are actually serious about discussing the book and its implications, drop me a line. If you're not, don't go changin'. I'm certain we don't have to worry about that.

Other issues from the flesh

I haven’t worked out all of the particulars yet, but I’ve set aside a few copies of the book for later. As you might have expected, I’m not making the parameters effortless, or easy for the contest. There will be a few hoops, but the winners will receive a free signed (as opposed to singed, what some of Palfrey’s former clients probably want) copy of the book, and my blessing, the latter of which means absolutely nothing whatsoever. Anyone capable of proving the DC Madam doesn’t need anything from me, not that I think that’s ever going to happen, like Jesus returning, nutty, crazy primitive-minded shit like that.

We’re only in the first week of the release of the book and I’ve already brushed up against more high weirdness. This brings me to other matters…

As a result of these little elves, pixies, and gremlins flitting about me yob, I’m going to make things crystal clear: I will not continue to live this nuttiness surrounding the Palfrey case and narrative. I am turning my back on it with the completion of this text. I will be more than happy to answer any serious questions. However, I don’t want to hear your gossiping about people who were part of or related to the case itself. Any logical corrections that can be proven/corroborated (your job, not mine) will be appreciated and noted. I don’t give a shit anymore about the story and owe nobody nothing regarding the DC Madam. That responsibility was discharged writing the book.

My role in this is over, done, unless there’s some burning reason otherwise. If you have questions, ask the book first, consult it. This isn’t to slam anyone with good intentions. I will discuss the case and am open to interviews. However, I’m not tolerating any bullshit, and it’s literally no effort for me to ignore you, the easiest thing in the world in fact. This isn’t my usual jokiness, it’s dead serious. If you don’t get it, I don’t care, but you’re going to be humiliated twice, first by yourself, then by me, and I will air it publicly naming names.

Anyone I’ve communicated with recently has nothing to worry about. The book is the best bargain the American public are likely to have for some time. You’re most welcome. Witche, ye haave been foun' guilty 'a commerce with thee Devile.

dc madam trial transcripts

Ed.--These files are not complete, although they're complete within themselves. There is no voir dire. I also believe the evidence was poorly documented, but it wasn't necessary to the documents. Insofar as I know, this will be the first time anyone, anywhere online has uploaded these for public consumption. Read 'em and weep, I did. The trial was a farce, hence why the transcripts aren't readily available, in my opinion. I don't give a shit who has a problem with it. The bottom document is related and covers a lien placed on Jeane's former residence over legal bills.

Postscript, 12.22.2012:  Does any of this read like a real trial where Anglo-American principles of justice were being applied? If so, I have a bridge and swampland to sell you. What the hell was Preston Burton thinking beyond having to work with his peers again after this bullshit charade? This is where Sibley was at least genuinely adversarial. What did Burton do to convince Jeane to lay down and die, to agree to mounting no goddamned defense at all? 

To be fair, and I can only look at this as a layman, his cross-examinations of the witnesses were solid, appropriate, what you'd expect, but little more was done beyond that. Was he on the side of the defendant at all? This wasn't a trial, it was theater, the political kind, to cover for the GOP and various selfish interests. Shame. Pathetic. This is how not only democracy dies but the human race. You got it: no one gives a shit. RIP America.

an open letter to former pamela martin

Ladies, if I may be so forward, or so foolish, to address you as such:


You turned your back on Jeane. Maybe she wasn't the nicest human being to work for, but she was a human being, and you either knew or should have known what you were getting yourselves into. The fact that somewhere in the range of fifteen of you turned snitch to save your skins was despicable in light of how well you were paid. Admittedly, I only know so much about how you were treated, yet none of you were willing to come forward to educate me and others on any of the details but one, the woman who courageously attempted to establish contact with Ken Silverstein when he was an editor at Harper's. That woman was a hero and she has my deepest regards and respect.

As for the rest of you, the others that went into hiding, believe it or not, I get it. That being said, it doesn't excuse your kicking the late Ms. Palfrey to the curb. Many of you had moved on after more than a few years, and that's a good out, it's fair. Nonetheless, a number of you, the ones who testified against her, are scoundrels. You own a piece of her death, you are rats, scum, filth, indirect killers. I despise you. 

You see, what a number of you did helped bring PMA to its knees and Jeane to hang at the end of a rope. You are Judases. Not a lot of you were in any specific need to become escorts--there was little desperation involved in it, more a desire for a soft, materialistic life that you felt entitled to. That doesn't make you much different from the rest of the entitled whores that overpopulate this country, but it makes you lower than a streetwalker who's run out of options and finds themselves in the profession. Yes, I don't want to see the government and some of the elements you serviced victimizing you further, there's no point to that, and there's been enough suffering in all of this. But the fact remains that some of you, some of the over one hundred and thirty escorts that worked for PMA over the years, are going to have to live with what you did.

I was fair to you in my book, maybe too fair. But don't expect that I was letting you all off-the-hook completely, because I didn't. For the dozen-plus of you who turned informant, you have no sense of honor. It pleases me that this will cause you a certain degree of pain for the rest of your natural lives. A woman died, as you know, as we all know, and there's no going back from what happened. My hope is that some of you learned something from this and changed, but I'm not an optimist about people and their ways. My assumption is that this will haunt some of you psychologically in some way, yet it won't result in any real shift or transformation in who and what you are, selfish pigs, and that you're going to continue on your merry, indifferent ways just as before. How lovely for you.

Some idiot claiming to be one of you, Andrea Detty, made a limp attempt at undermining the book by suggesting that I hadn't contacted you, therefore, how solid could my attempt to chronicle what happened. That wasn't my job. My job was to tell what I experienced and learned, my part of the puzzle and to try to make as much sense of that as I could. That included obtaining more information. A lot of this was so that I was able to move on from my role in the last year of Jeane's very short life. That kind of an attempt is the act of a scoundrel, a liar, and a psychopath, exactly what I'd expect out of a genuine informant. There's nothing lower than that. Who is this magical person or persons that was able to speak extensively with the former escorts? If they exist outside of a government job, they're sitting on it, and at this point, now that a lot of the smoke has cleared, their behavior is incredibly unethical. I put out requests long ago on this blog for information from you women with no results whatsoever. The onus is on you. It wasn't even a nice try, "Andrea."

You women are the past, and what's past is prologue. I you want to clarify things, great, then do it, otherwise, shut the fuck up, forever, you have no legs to stand on, no credibility.

I could go on endlessly about you, but let me sum it all up: life is short, and the truth will one day come to light. One day we'll know precisely who the worst were, who were the heroes, who at least tried under terrible circumstances to do what was right at the time, and really, who the fucking animals were. Jeane is dead, and I am one of the caretakers of her legacy, one of the few who can bring her voice back from the grave, one of the only people in the world who can at least begin the process of allowing her to point her dead hand at the guilty. There never be a place to run. There is no place to hide from a sun that never sets. Dwell on that for the holidays.

2012 WAS THE YEAR

This was quite a year for me, perhaps a watershed in some ways, but one that will at least allow me to truly move forward in my life and to be a free of the terrible stress expediting the completion of a historical account. There are no rules for that, and only a few guidelines. In the end, you're the only one who knows what you experienced, and even then, that's not always a given. You know what you were told. You know what information was conveyed to you. You know what you experienced during these interactions, but they're fragmented, obscured, and questionable in one way, completely credible in others. That's navigating a labyrinth. 

This wasn't just 2012 for me, it was the last five years of my life. What was real? I discovered many things that were, many more that were not, and more than all that combined that remains a mystery to myself and others. The terrible part is to then extricate yourself from the narrative continuum to continue on with your own life. There are apparently some out there who don't want this to happen, but I have news for them. It is going to happen.

I'll promote the book, and I'm open to interviews, all that's fine. However, I won't be dragged into other people's agendas, and there have already been attempts to do this, right out of the gate of the release of Let the Dead Bury the Dead. When else would it occur? There will be more. Interestingly, the phony cease and desists have halted, a form of harassment that I've experienced from the beginning of my involvement with Jeane's case to the present, several months ago, then once more just weeks ago. The fact that they've now become silent in their legal harassment from the shadows tells me what I always assumed: it was all predicated on scaring me out of publication. That was never going to work in a nation where prior restraint has been ruled unconstitutional so many times that it's solid precedent. A first year law student would know this, and so too would many millions outside of legal profession. Were I to discover their identity, I could sue them in a civil court, and maybe even hit them with criminal charges of harassment--that is, if it's not the government, then the funhouse rules come into play.

Is this a story many don't want to be told, Jeane's story, the information that I and others came into possession of? It was uncanny how often the information was coming to me, not the reverse. There were many times that Jeane would mistakenly send me entire email-chains between herself and counsel and others, and doing so when I wasn't even part of the defense as a researcher. Was she trying to let me bear witness? Sometimes, she was, unquestionably, but I don't think the chains always were. When she Cc'd her exchanges with journalist Jason Leopold, whom I bear no ill will mind you, she was most definitely doing this. There were other occasions, sometimes to bounce my opinion off of things counsel was conveying to her. What did I think of this crafted motion? Did I trust counsel? Did I know more about their and numerous other players' backgrounds, sometimes collective, interconnected ones? The answers were always varied. Sometimes I was able to find out, many other times, she was simply asking the impossible out of desperation. This all had to be written down and chronicled before it gradually vanished from my memory, and the memory of others, because so much is lost to history when this kind of action isn't taken immediately. It escapes into the Aether, subsumed by darkness, assimilated into the Abyss. You can bet that a lot more is sitting on a hard drive at some "fusion center" in the continental United States. An FOIA isn't going to free it up anytime soon.

I'll continue to answer questions to the best of my ability on the subject, because I think it was a far more important case than most of us realized at the time. It took a great deal of after-the-fact research on my part, a lot of reflection on what happened when Jeane was alive, what my role, my place, in it all really was, and to question, question question, and that includes myself, my assumptions. It turned out that many of my earliest ones were either correct, or that I was on the right trail.

The public has a right to know what's being done in their name and how their taxes are being spent. This is why my account is important. Besides being a historical chronicle for the historical record, it can be a starting-point for further inquiry. Because of the information I came across, I'm not naive enough to believe that this is going to happen. Our political system is in what I consider terminal crisis that's borne out of the natural lifecycles of democratic societies. They have a shelf-life, and we're around the time of the expiration date. 

The cycle, as one would imagine, is a circle. I recommend looking at the democratic and republican experiments in ancient Greece and Rome. Western societies appear to begin with warrior king leadership that grows into some general form of feudalism, then to forms of republicanism where it's primarily based around land ownership, often headed by a senate, some parliamentary structure, and on into wider forms of democratic franchise, popular democracy of some sort. Unfortunately, and the ancients saw this firsthand, democracy is also the most fertile soil and prerequisite for tyranny, either by the masses or a dictatorship. Because the general population is usually uneducated, ignorant, stubborn--holding all the human frailties related to pride--there's a tendency towards an overemphasis on the military. Appetites, often arising out of inequality, must be fed in order to rule, and so, it's not simply leadership that demands empire, it's the people, the working-class wage slaves, the populi, the plebes. Military adventurism becomes a virtual inevitability. 

Because of the social reality of a minimum degree of democratic rights, the franchise, the vote, a say in how things are done, we must have bread and circuses, the mob must be placated and diverted away from a real voice in the operation of society ruled by some form of aristocracy. More often, people want to be told what to do thinking that it's easier, and too often, they want a strongman leader to show them the way. Sadly, I see us at the end of this cycle and heading towards dictatorship. The American public will hold just as much of the blame as the current rulers when things disintegrate into this. Can something better arise out of this? Eventually, if we can survive. The Greeks are still waiting for democracy, so there's a good idea of how long it might take.


Do I see much change in our course in the United States, to avert what no other democratic society was able to endure, besides maybe the Swiss? No, I'm afraid not. We're going to continue our military adventurism, until there's no more money left in the Treasury--what happened to Athenian democracy--or someone creams our ass, more likely a combination of both, which has many precedents. Democracies die of neglect. When the 17th and 18th century liberal thinkers spoke of revolution, it was as a warning, not a threat, that there must be reform or that things will collapse into chaos and violence. This is what the social contract is about. We either work together, looking out for each others' well-being, or we will surely die together. Apathy and indifference towards others is a ticking bomb, and it's why I have a serious problem with American Libertarianism, a subject barely worthy of comment for its obvious irrationality. Thinkers such as John Locke were saying that breakdowns of order happen when a society becomes so dysfunctional from misrule, and the missing-ingredient is the public, that people begin killing each other. But the public too often is unaware of their power. They're apathetic, divided over petty squabbling, generation after generation, making the exact same mistakes. Worse still, the public is very often wrong like their rulers. Now, you, the thoughtful reader, will know why my book is only going to reach so many people. The truth hurts. And now on to other related things that happened in my life this year...

2012 was the year that I:

...finished and published the manuscript of my experiences in the DC Madam case (and beyond it, stories never end, or ever die). Let the Dead Bury the Dead can be traced back to an exchange in the New Testament between Jesus and a disciple who said that he needed to bury a loved one before he could go with them on the road. I was unaware of this at the time I decided on the title. It has become an idiomatic phrase throughout the world over the centuries, and there is no agreement on what Jesus meant by it. Some say he meant to let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead in a dead, fallen world. Others say that it means to move on from the past, to not dwell on it, to not live in the past. I don't claim to know what he meant or originally said, but I think all the meanings relate to me and the book. This is when you begin to realize that you've hit on some very fundamental truths, and not merely artistic truth, but truth itself. So much of this has been serendipity to the point that it cancels itself out, it is no longer coincidence, but the truth, however terrible, liberating, or great. I can only feel humbled by it all.

...was asked to research the Wikileaks StratFor emails cache, along with many others of course. This didn't come to be, unfortunately, over technicalities I'll go into one day. To be asked was very exciting. My opinion of Assange is yet to be finalized. On an interpersonal level, I'm sure he can be a pushy asshole. On the other hand, it's probably worth it to kick people who aren't serious to the curb, which he has done on numerous occasions. The amount of information coming out of governments around the world? I can tolerate a lot there. The people Wikileaks is working against are the worst in the entire world.

...began watching the great works of cinema as much as I'd been wanting to for a very long time, and when I purchased a Blu-ray player when my old DVD-player croaked. Watching a cinematic classic in HD is maybe one of the few great technological achievements of the current era. If it serves the dissemination of the arts, information of value, in a better way, I'm all for it. There is nothing more important than cultural expression when it's the truth.

...noticed that for some reason I'm aging well. This is probably because I rarely drink and smoke and get regular exercise. Why stress didn't contribute more might have to do with the fact that my family has naturally low blood pressure. The other good side is that the more I grow older, the great my resemblance to Oscar Wilde, and that's not a jest.

...realized how wonderful my mother's parents really were, and how their home is truly my home. America is my home, I cannot leave her. As fucked up as she is, I still love her, or I wouldn't be trying to save her from herself. At some point, it doesn't matter what the odds are. You must act out of decency and honor, armed with knowledge and a sense of persistence and the long view.

...found that many of my fellow Americans are a pathetic embarrassment that far exceeded my worst opinions of them. This includes many Democratic voters and supporters who refuse to criticize the president for committing war crimes and wrecking the Constitution, all but gutting the 4th Amendment, the right to privacy. He has yet to restore habeas corpus. We are not facing the threat to public safety and order that President Lincoln had to when Southern politicians and officers committed treason over his election in 1861. Why doesn't anyone become alarmed by this? Congress just re-authorized the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program for another five years. See how well they can all get along when they want to? What the hell's wrong with the public, where's the outrage over these encroachments on our rights? Much of it is ignorance, but it's also the desire for a strongman leader who has "taken-off the gloves," who is no longer restrained by the law. These people are the worst kind of citizens of any society, in any era of human history, and are scoundrels. Many American look at politics like it's a football game. This makes these people incredibly stupid assholes.

...realized how much I value living outside of cities in what could be best described as a "light rural" area. I've been here for over a decade now and love the lack of many people.

...realized what a genius Pier Paolo Pasolini truly was, one of the greatest artists in the span of Western civilization.

...installed my Tor browser (thanks Wikileaks). I suggest everyone do the same and to learn more about encrypting your online communications.

...got to know my wonderful niece Zofia better. Picking her up from the bus stop every day for the first five months of the year is something that I'll always treasure. It showed me a little window into how my late grandparents, especially my mother's mother, loved spending time doting over us. She's a great kid, very intelligent.

...learned that blood not only isn't thicker than water, but that it's often the consistency of liquid-shit.

...remembered why I hated school, church services, and anything so boring that it begins to kill your soul: it's someone controlling your life, and wasting your precious time.

...recalled what an inhuman asshole my ex-wife really was in-sum.

...learned how much I love our new miniature schnauzer, Lily.

...found a lot of old books I thought I'd lost.

...stopped trusting almost anyone outside of my family and a small circle of friends.

...felt vindicated when former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was found guilty on over forty counts of being a pedophile. For anyone who's been a victim of this, you know what I mean. I'm hoping the SOB gets shanked in prison, or beaten to death. There's no reason to show mercy to these terminally-pathological pieces of shit. They should be watched and tracked all of the time once they've been identified by society.

...saw the combined effects of de-institutionalization of the mentally ill and the wide-availability of heavy weaponry on the lives of 20 schoolchildren, and six of their adult caretakers, in Newtown Connecticut. The time to reopen our state mental health institutions is now. We have no real mental healthcare system, and it must be part of a socialized medical infrastructure. 

...still hate the idea of ever going back to Seattle for any reason.

...was reminded that most so-called "upstanding citizens" are more criminally-minded than so-called "criminals." To be accused is not to be guilty. We have something called the right to due process. The public and the press seem to have no concept of this. Put the 6th Amendment on the same critical-list as the 4th, and more recently, the 1st with the attacks on dissent and independent journalism.

And there was more. There was a lot more. Wish us all luck in the next year, because we're going to need it.

news on the upcoming e-book edition of let the dead bury the dead

This is going to be through Amazon Books partners. The e-book will be PDF-only for the time being. I'm not a fan of Amazon's Kindle at all, it ruins layout and adds more cost because of reformatting. Also, I think it's a shitty platform and that this e-book craze is just that, a craze that will pass, and so too will most everything on it without some kind of data-migration. Besides that, there's no burning economic reason to do it, this isn't that kind of a book. Read some of the .99 cent books on Amazon, and you'll find what a friend described so well as "sixth-grader level of writing skills," which is true there all over the place.

Yes, I'm a Luddite and not the biggest supporter of this nutty idea that there must be unbridled technological innovation. I don't see a lot of it as inherently liberatory (why does Blogger have a lower vocabulary than me? It can't spell the preceding word). You could make a great argument yesterday that it's destroying the world simply by coming into being.

The book is indigestible to the mindless consumer crowd, maybe as much as Pasolini's final film, Salo. Yes, it has many moments that could be described as entertaining, and without question, as I'm being told by a few readers, it's a page turner. That's what all true crime books and works about the world of intelligence and politics should be. There are a lot more reasons--important ones that affect all of our lives--contained in the text that should motivate potential readers, especially those living in North America: a dearth of primary information within the covers that falls under the public's right to know, and a good percentage of it could be evidence either pointing to, or of, specific acts of corruption in the appropriations process in Washington DC. The greatest waste of all is in defense and intelligence spending for a reason. It's the easiest trough to gorge from thanks to the reactionary tendencies of the American public when it comes to warfare, and yes, I'm hitting the South with a lot of the blame.

The e-book will be presented exactly as I intended the book to be experienced by the prospective reader. I'm a big fan of PDF for this and many other reasons, but mainly because it doesn't ruin layout. I'm pricing it at $9.99 USD and there will be periodic sales on it. Like most e-books, it will contain the cover art. That's it, yo, there is no 'mo.

and we have a facebook page!

Thanks Andrea! I tried to give her a book for free, but nothing doing! Who wants to take bets on how fast DHS or trolls abusing the complaints system there get it taken down? Doesn't matter, all the content you need is right here, so hit those labels! (DC Madam, Palfrey, Montgomery Blair Sibley, Pamela Martin, David Vitter, Jack Burkman, Brent Wilkes, Randy Cunningham, Thomas Kontogiannis, and so on.)

all soul's day

I knew without planning it that the account was going to be finished on this day. That's not just serendipity, it's the architecture of fate. Rather than the dead burying the dead--part of why we have historical amnesia in this country--I, the living, am burying my part of Jeane. Why she picked me to assist her I believe is complicated. For one, I know she didn't want me pissing in the tent and preferred me pissing outwards. You could say she wanted to keep me on ice during the proceedings, most certainly a good possibility there. That means I was definitely onto something, maybe many fundamental somethings about her case. The problem was, not a lot of that was exculpatory. Such is life. Her suffering is over, ours continues until we meet our own endings, like a story. Anything ending tends to choke the best of us up, it's got a sadness to it that's part of the human condition. And so it goes. I'll probably even lay out a meal for her, and all of the people who I and my family have lost--who everyone has lost, because that's what All Soul's Day is about, remembering, honoring, and continuing on.