America: Prisons, Slaves, and Religion

America: Prisons, Slaves, and Religion

For the past thirteen years, and since having this incredible insight into the reality of this energy behind all life—and energy behind all non-life that has not been created by the hand of man, I have openly and with eloquence and self-less intelligence rejected organized religion and the nonsense of any messianic religion. During the early times after this insight, I was heavily involved in the various Twelve-step Programs after being forced to attend per a court order, and I had been involved with them for four and one half years prior to this sudden insight that came upon me like a bolt of lightning. Upon having this insight I began to work the twelve steps in this program and over the next several years I would go through all twelve steps with incredible results. I have been sober ever since and I learned to be honest with others and I’ve done miraculous things in my life, only for them to be destroyed by those that have no insight, and that live a life based on the evils of these false belief systems and the contradiction and hypocrisy that they so often possess.

I continued on with this effortless awareness and to surrender to this creative energy, which I may choose to call God, and I would help others in their recovery along the way, at times becoming their sponsor. I noticed one remarkable aspect of those I helped in recovery. Those that would stubbornly hold on to their organized religious beliefs would continue to struggle with confusion and would continue to relapse, and those few that abandoned these beliefs and simply surrender to God and began to be honest with themselves and others, went on to stay sober and to a life that was built on foundation of reality. A few of them would openly credit their new life to me, and I would always rebuke such credit, and tell them never to give credit to me again, but rather to give credit to this energy behind all creation, or God, and to themselves for being willing to listen and to enquire with an open mind. I had taught them the power of this energy behind creation and how to question everything, including me, in order to each become his own authority and to understand who he is.

I built a home improvement business that was based on honesty and integrity. At about seven years of sobriety, I met a woman that seemed to have this self-less child like intelligence and we began to see each other. Eventually we decided to build a home that I had originally designed as a ranch style house, and I found this piece of property that was adjacent to Corps of Engineers property, which by God’s grace was one of my father’s and families favorite places to come camp, hunt, fish, swim, and go boating all of my life. It turned out sadly that the owner changed his mine about selling us this beautiful lot and I bought another piece of property on a very steep grade that backed up to Corps property as well, and it tuned out to have been deemed un-build-able by the county because it had been turned down by Environmental Health for a septic system because it was on such a steep grade. Both the owner and the attorney lied to us about this lot when we purchased it, but over time and with my persistence and knowledge, I got the lot approved for building, and I developed it with a foundation and septic and a beautiful home sits on it today. Many miracles kept coming my way, as long as I maintained my persistence and integrity and surrendered to this energy behind creation—although because of my openness about my rejection of the Bible and organized religion, I was often the target of rejection, ridicule and threats and violence. I can only wonder how many times that I was warned by someone, after saying that the Bible was not the word of God, not to go around saying that because someone was going to kill me.

The lot that we had bought was on the same easement as the other one, and one day a man came up the hill and said that he had just seen the nicest lot he had ever seen and that he was going to go and buy it. Lucky for me this turned out to be the very lot that we had wanted before, with even a better layout than before, so I called up the owner as soon as he left and I was able to get their first and put a down payment on the lot. We bought the lot, but before the bank would consider giving us a loan, I ended up having to do an entire new set of working drawings on this ranch style house, and make it into a two story house. This lot was also considered “impossible” to build on by the banks, so I did an entire massive foundation, septic system and had a 500 foot deep well put in, before we finally got approval for our loan.

This was a beautiful 4800 square foot home with a double authentic Tennessee Stone fireplace and a six-foot cantilevered front porch, on the side of a mountain. A radical Christian fellow and practicing alchoholic that was living with my neighbor and working on his house, and a few other Christians along the way, put up every roadblock I had during the process of building this house. I knew these people were Christian, because I would ask. Then my wife’s ex-husband, who was Catholic, made it very difficult on us, and blatantly said that this house would never get built. When I let these “Christians” know with no uncertain terms that I was not a Christian, they would subtly or even radically try to detour me from my dreams.

Not only did I personally design this beautiful home on this awesome lot and do the full set of working drawings to build it, I also physically did much of the work or I worked with the crews for two years full years in order to get her built, and she was built like a ton of bricks. My father, who was a builder, said that it was the best-built house in the country.

My wife became very difficult during the final process of building this home and she would hit on me and become physically and verbally abusive. I understood that it was difficult for her as we were now living in a motor home on the property whith her two great kids while I was building our home. Again, it took two full years to build, working 15 to 20 hours a day. She broke down completely just as I got the “Certificate of Occupancy” on our home and after passing every inspection along the way. I was her fourth husband and I found out that she had been physically abusive in her past relationships, and now she was wigging out on me completely and began to recite her Christian beliefs that she had never brought up before. We ended up getting the divorce that she had brought about with every motive she could use to bring me harm and after a long process and some false allegations from her, I won the battle with the help of some information from others about her past. I was able to keep my home and I was able to assume the loan and put it in my name, but I gave her her cake and let her eat it too in order to do so.

I got into another rebound relationship, and she seemed very intelligent at first, but soon I learned that she had a drinking problem. I helped her get sober and things went good for several months, but then because of her “Christian” beliefs along with her two teenage juvenile diligent “Christian” children, accompanied by her radical left winged fanatical Christian twenty three year old son, all honesty and sanity when out the door. She also filed false accusations against me in an attempt to extort money from me, and even though I had taped conversations and an eyewitness proving her to be a liar, the word had apparently gotten out that I was not a “Christian”, and I’m sure it was this radical fundamentalist nut case that believed that Timmothy McVey did the right thing that perpetuated the story. It soon became obvious that the Sheriff’s Department was out to burn me at the stake. In fact, I later found out that they believed me to be an atheist. Here I was someone that talked often about my Creator, and even gave this energy credit to all my accomplishments—being labeled an atheist!

I somehow made it over this hump only to get into a two week, off and on relationship with a woman that turned out to have some mental issues to say the least. Again, this unbalenced woman was a “Christian” and as soon as she found out that I did not believe in the Bible and did not consider myself a “Christian”, her motives to get me kicked in full steam. This low class biker type woman ended up beating me up when we went to do our first skydive just after the September 11th attacks, and then she put me though a nightmare from hell and created hell on earth for my family and me. I filed a report on the same day of this incident and she filed a report some three days later with nothing but false statements made against me and turned everything around to make me the perpetrator. After little to no investigation as all and ignoring the eye witness at the scene as well as the fact that the accuser’s story changed dramatically. Then, at the direction of the detective, a recored conversation that proved my innocence was doctored by the transcriber to elliminate this proof and, of course, I ended getting arrested. I was charge with Simple Assault, Obstruction of 911 and Simple Battery, and then another piece of exculpetory evidence was ignored and then altered to illiminate this next piece of critical exculpetory evidence and, because of this crooked detective named Preston Peavy, the “Grand Jury” upgraded my charge of Simple Assault to Felony Aggravated Assault. This woman also filed a false Stalking Temporary Restraining Order, and this was full of nothing but more false allegations. I never stalked this woman or made any attempt to follow her, and after refusing to sign a “Consent Order”, I went before a judge on this and, thank God, he saw the truth and dismissed the Staking Temporary Restraining Order for insufficient evidence. In fact it would later come to past that this woman would be stalking me! The question of me being an atheist was now a question that was asked of this woman by Detective Massey in a recorded interview. These were blatent crimes committed by the now former Detective Peavy by purposly not interviewing the only witness at the scene and having a professional trascriber alter the transcript from a recorded conversation with the alleged victim that would have proved my innocence-- doctored to end just before critical statements were made by the alleged victim and the accuser that proved that she was violent and a liar. Then this, the now “former” Detective Peavy that is now a deputy in Uniform Patrol, committed more felony crimes against me and my family by ignoring critical evidence when it was collected that would have proved my innocence. Then at my trial on November 19, 2002, this evidence that had been altered to eliminate critical evidence that was now the crux of my defense, was brought into the courtroom. It was at this time that my attorney, Jeff Rusbridge, and I noticed that this key peice of evidence had been tampered with. Someone had committed the crimes of Felony Tampering with Evidence, and all the facts point to this crooked cop! The fact that this crime was committed against me was made light of by Judge Sumner and nothing was done to look into this serious matter. My trial came to an end with Attorney Jeff Rushbridge becoming another witness for me and I heard nothing about my case from the courts for well over two years. I then took a letter to the Assistant District Attorney that was now, (after my case going through another prosecutor that had now left Cherokee County), the prosecutor in my case, and I gave him evidence to the fact that this unbalenced female was in fact stalking me and asked for my charges to be formally dismissed. I just got a letter in the mail a few days later from the District attorney, Garry Moss, givng me a imidiate trial date. This nightmare drug on for nine more months and, after putting me and my family and loved ones through so much more pain and suffering, the state would never give me my day in court. My charges were finally dismissed on November 23, 2005, but I did not receive the order in the mail until two weeks after the death of my dear, sweet and talented mother. The death of my mother under the insanity of this case and the insanity of these crimes committed against me by the government, is the real tragedy in this case.

Without question, the biggest roadblock to this intelligence that goes beyond self is the aspect of the conditioned mind, and the ego and self-centered, selfish, and dishonest behavior that comes out of it. Out of all the many deterrents to learning that I have observed in my lifetime, this fact of the conditioned brain is the most powerful. In truth, most people don’t even understand how they are conditioned or even that they are conditioned to believe certain points of view and to have certain beliefs. If fact, there is a paradox here; the very conditioning of the brain prevents most humans from realizing the fact of this conditioned brain. The psychological response to anything that disturbs the mental contentment brought about by any specific belief is for the brain to clam up and refuse to deal with such a disturbance through the process of rejection or some other unhealthy reaction. The selfish brain wants nothing but pleasure, and anything that comes along and disturbs this pleasure seeking mechanism is rejected. This process of rejection can manifest itself from anything such as a simple act of rejection, to a reaction that is very harmful or even violent. All the roadblocks to this art of living over the past thirteen years have been from those that believe in Christ and this so-called Holy Bible. The pressure from my radical and closed minded family members in an attempt to get me “saved” has been constant, and when I don’t get “saved”, they simply rebuke me in the name of the Lord. My mother never pressured me in this way, because she lived her faith, and my father never impossed his beliefs on me and was understanding with me when I chose not to get involved with Masonry. Late in life my father became a Master Mason and I could go on and on about the conflicts between these so-called Christians and Masonry.

What few people understand is that I have been “saved” a dozen times in my life, accepting this religion in its fullest form. But it would only be a matter of time after this total and complete acceptance, that further inquiry would bring further doubt, culminating in the pain and confusion associated with the observance of the truth and the fact that this religion was false.

There pressures did not come only from certain family members, but it also came from society on every front. My probation officer, not being able to openly shove this nonsense down my throat, would put out these little pamphlets hanging over the back side of his desk, so that those that he monitored could have one for the taking. These were the more radical pamphlets that made clear that we had two choices because no one was perfect in God eyes, and that God demanded that we accept his SON, born of virgin, and that rose from the dead—Either accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior or BURN IN HELL FOREVER!!!!! I also felt that this black man was definitely pulling off reverse discrimination against me, because of his attitude towards me when I would not PRAISE THE LORD, as he wanted me to. This kind of nonsense exits at way too high of levels for this time in our history and with the information we now have to learn the truth.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a deeply religious man, and I am a holy man, and I'm not taking about the deeply religious person. My mother was deeply religious and she belived in this faith, but she lived it. Yet this is the person they destroyed at the most difficult time of her difficult life.

I should point out that I got into another relationship during this battle with the government and this crooked cop, but this relationship was healthy, as this is a good woman. The only problems in this relationship have come about because her daughter, who lives in Texas, married a devout Catholic, and her brother-in-law is a redneck that believes the Bible to be “The Literal Word of God” and I have had to deal with the games that went with that.
What I have come upon has nothing to do with the closed minded rejection of the existence of God or this energy behind creation, as is the conclusion that so many “Christians” obviously jump to. It is a spiritual understanding of life and its energy and an understanding that by dying to self we become energy, or spirit if you will. It is an understanding that brings about an intelligence that will bring no harm to another or any motive to bring such harm. If everyone understood what I understand there would be no violence and there would be no war. Because of my ability to go beyond self in this selfless observation during my studies of the Bible and all aspects of religion, I know for certain that the Bible is definitely not the “Word of God” and all religions are man made. I am convinced that this belief system is the major cause of neurosis and psychosis in our society, and that this energy behind creation, which I may call God, is real, yet it is unknown and mysterious. If we can open our minds and go beyond ourselves, with it’s conditioning, and get past this enormous fear, we can look at history and see that what I say is true and the truth shall make you free.

When Cristobal Colon’—a lias Christopher Columbus—with his ninety or so assorted crewmen, set out for the new world, it was with the intent to get away from what he considered to be the conditioned mind of a people by the Orthodox Church and the tyranny of the government. Columbus viewed the beliefs of the Orthodox Church as nonsense and felt these beliefs were astray from the true God. And although he mislead his intentions to the Royal Family in order to get needed support and to cover the cost of very expensive ships and cargo, his dream was to find a new world in which the powerful conditioning forces of organized religion were abandoned and there could be spiritual freedom to walk with God without the tyranny of the Church and the power and control of royal authority.

What Columbus did not realize was the power of conditioning and the fact that, although many shared his dream of spiritual freedom, over time the masses would come and they would bring their orthodox fears and conditioning with them. Although Columbus was not without conditioning himself and was accustomed to harboring humans as slaves, the unfortunate result of the conditioning of others was to affect the very spiritual freedom that Columbus had at least conceived, and to begin to inject into society the same nonsense of orthodox beliefs from which they had hopefully escaped. Basically the same thing, in varying degrees, was being set up over here.

Another interesting fact about this voyage of discovery was that some of the crews were made up of convicts. How many former prisoners made up the crews of these ships will never be known because of the secrecy from which they were selected. The conditions on these ships however were not a far cry from a prison cell, because once they were on the open sea they were subject to flogging and other punishments if any man were to get out of line, and the cramped vessels were as isolating as an iron cage and nobody was free to go or to do as they please.

On the moonlit morning of October 12, 1492, at two o’clock in the morning, Rodrigo de Triana, a watchman on the Pinta, spotted land on the horizon and shouted, “Tierra! Tierra!” The other ships were notified and at dawn an armed search party stepped from a boat and waded onto the island, which turned out to be simply one link in a chain of islands. Having mistakenly believed he had found the fabled Passage to India, Columbus named this chain of islands the “Indies,’ and when a band of mostly naked, tawny-skinned natives appeared, they were called “Indians.”

These friendly natives or “Indians” as they were now called, would share anything that they possessed and the well-proportioned and receptive woman mingled easily with the bearded men. Columbus and the Spanish people soon realize that they were intelligent and learned quickly, and that they would make good slaves. In fact after bringing some natives back to the Spanish ports, these exotic-looking “Indians” were now bein g referred to as “slaves.” Other voyages would bring back hundreds of Indian captives and Columbus reported them as “a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned, and very intelligent, and who, when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which they have been accustomed, will be better than any other kind of slaves.” The natives that were left on the islands contracted measles, smallpox and other infections and diseases left behind by the whites that would spread among their villages with fatal effect. Spain’s discovery of precious ore deposits led to further exploitation of the natives and it is estimated that war, disease, overwork, and suicide brought about the deaths, according to historians, of at least 300,000 natives, and one recorded estimate from a Catholic priest who lived during that time figured that fully three million Indians had died between 1492 and 1508, comprising one of the worst genocides in recorded history.

On one of his voyages of as many as seventeen ships with as many as fifteen hundred men, many being convicts, Columbus set out to start a major slave trade. At first, the Spanish Crown rejected his appeal to open a major slave trade, but the government did order the enlistment of three hundred convicts, thirty of them women, and gave authorization for the justices to ship away any condemned criminals who might be convinced to go. Many of these convicts and others that made up his crews were left behind on islands or abandoned abroad. He also had to deal with a settler’s revolt and to head off an even more dangerous Indian rebellion. But Columbus got his due, for in 1500 the Spanish sovereigns dispatched a new commissioner, who arrested Columbus on corruption charges and hauled him back to Spain to face inquisition. He entered Cadiz still in chains and was taken to Las Cuevas monastery in Seville, where he was kept locked up for months until finally being stripped of his powers and released. Like his idol, Marco Polo, w ho had written his epic journal in prison, Columbus had “discovered America and they put him in jail for it.” Oddly, the lands he had discovered came to be known to Europeans, not as “Columbus,” but as “America,” in honor of another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci of Florence, who claimed to have reached the New World a year before him, but who really had not done so till a year later. Not only was Amerigo a bad liar, but many claimed that he also had a criminal past, prompting Ralph Waldo Emerson to comment, “Strange…that broad America must wear the name of a thief.”

In an effort to save the natives, Bartolome de Las Casas, who was horrified by what was happening to them, vowed to devote the rest of his life to securing “the justice of those Indian peoples, and to condemn the robbery, evil and injustice committed against them.” Unfortunately his attempt to save the Indians was by diverting the attention of the slave trade to the Negroes, arguing that “the labor of one Ne gro was more valuable than that of four Indians.” The king agreed, and in 1517 the first asiento was arranged, enabling four thousand blacks to be imported to the West Indies over the next eight years. African slaves started arriving a few months later, and by 1540 an estimated thirty thousand men, women, and children had been taken to Hisponiola alone. In his old age, Las Casas came to realize he had made a terrible mistake. Black slavery did not save the Indians but merely added another oppressed race—and the colony became even more dependent on slavery for its survival. From their base in Hispaniola, Spanish conquistadors under the fanatical Christian leader Hernando Cortes plunged into Mexico and liquidated the golden Aztec empire, destroying any and all foms of knowledge, believing, as the bible teaches, that if it is not from the bible it is of the devil. More conquerors sailed up to Florida and fanned out into the Texas panhandle, Santa Fe, Mississippi, the Grand Canyon, and California. Among their earliest constructs in North America, Spanish soldiers in 1570 erected the first substantial prison, at St. Augustine, Florida.

By then a few brave Spaniards had begun to criticize the slave trade publicly. Bartolome de Albornoz attacked it as morally and legally wrong, but his views were officially suppressed. Tomas Mercando condemned the trade as being based upon deceit, robbery, and force. Alonso de Sandoval declared, “God created man free…Slavery is not exile, but also subjection, hunger, sorrow, spiritual death, insult, prison, perpetual persecution, and, in short, is a Pandora’s box of all the evils.”

Nevertheless, more explorers of the New Word brought more convicts, and Africans and Indians whom they held as prisoners. Many Spanish and French accounts used the terms “prisoner” and “slave” interchangeably when referring to the captives. The conditions only got worse over time and the treatment of the slaves decade with the abuse of woma n and children and with adult male captives often being tortured to death. In the minds of these so-called civilized Christian masters, these “slaves” were looked upon as being no more important that the proverbial slug in the garden or that insect that sucked their blood.

Before long, other European nations began competing with Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, and they too utilized convicts to fill out their crews. Jacques Cartier of France combed the jails for fifty convicts, men and woman, whom he employed on his expedition to Newfoundland in 1542. Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, and Samuel De Champlain used convicts as sailors on their northern voyages. Blacks accompanied French explorers into Canada and the Mississippi River Valley.

During the 1560s, John Hawkins and Francis Drake started trafficking slaves between England, Africa, and Spanish America, and Richard Hakluyt later called for a large-scale conscription of criminals as a better way to sett le the New World. But England’s colonization efforts waned until 1606, when policies abruptly changed. Sir John Popham’s venture at Kennebec, or Maine, was stocked “out of all the gaols [jails] of England,” prompting one critic to complain, “It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people, and wicked and condemned ones, to be the people with whom you plant.”

That same year, the Virginia Company, a Christian based organization that would practically monopolize the slave industry, landed several hundred miles to the south. One of its voyagers, Captain John Smith, was captured by the Indians as he foraged for food. As he later told the tale, just as he was about to be executed, the Indian emperor’s favorite daughter “got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death.” The Virginia Company authorized its colonists to seize native children wherever they could “for conversion…to the knowledge and worship of the true God and their redeemer, Christ Jesus.” One of those abducted—Smith’s rescuer, young Pocahontas—was ransomed, taken as a wife by one of the Englishmen, and brought as a trophy to London and displayed for money, where she soon died.

This was a time that most voyagers that headed up these expeditions were Bible believing Christians, and some of them had a peculiar habit of actually reading the through the entire Bible and others would often listen as another would read. Something we see little of in our society today, as now most prople read only specific verses out of the bible, and yet claim it to be the Word of God.. In these readings they would learn the implications that God had upon those that did not believe in “Christ” and the subsequent orders to torture or kill those that did not accept or follow this belief system. More slaves were being beaten and tortured, often to death, at the hands of the company officials and at times by the colonist themselves. The scriptures they read not only justi fied this cruelty, but also they specifically directed this inhuman treatment of these people.

Company officials ignored the colonists’ urgent pleas for better living conditions, insisting instead that greater discipline was needed. In 1610 a tough new governor, Lord Delaware, arrived and imposed a dictatorship. His successor, Thomas Dale, was even more severe. Under his regime, Virginia’s colonists were literally held as prisoners, and punishments became more and more harsh for the slaves, and now often included the colonist themselves. For uttering “base and detracting words” against the governor, Richard Barns was ordered to be “disarmed and have his arms broken and his tongue bored through with an awl and [he] shall pass through a guard of 40 men and shall be butted by every one of them and at the head of the troop kicked down and footed out of the fort; and he shall be banished out of James City and the Island, and he shall not be capable of any privilege of freedom in the country.” Men caught trying to escape were tortured to death in front of others as an example. Seamstresses who sewed their lady’s skirts too short were whipped. Governor Dale pronounced his methods justified and the company backed him up. Back in London, an official said that the Virginians were “dangerous, incurable members, for no use so fit as to make example to others.” This nightmare of power, dominance, and control meshed with these bizarre bielfs systems had turned on its own people.

Having learned about the use of tobacco from the Indians, the trade in tobacco began on a very evil air of success. The use of this one product shows the difference between the spirituality of the Indians and that of western man. The Indians used tobacco in an extremely moderate fashion, using it on occasion and usually for special circumstances, whereas those of European decent used tobacco habitually and it became an obsession for them. By the early seventeenth century tobacco smok ing had become so popular in England that many a young nobleman’s estate would be altogether spent and scattered to nothing but smoke, and he would waist whole days, even years, in a constant habit of smoking, even to the extent of smoking in bed. Soon the leaf’s value equaled that of silver and the cultivation of tobacco in the New World, especially in the vast area of the fertile soils of Virginia, would be the center of colonization and growth.

Eventually, however, the Virginia Company underwent a shakeup that put Sir Edwin Sandys in control. Under his direction the company launch an intensive promotional campaign to attract more investors, settlers, and servants. Publicists wrote enticing broadsides, promising everything from daily sustenance to eternal bliss to anyone who would go to Virginia. Drummers marched from village to village, beating up interest. Hustlers combed the fairs and groghouses, enlisting recruits. Minstrels sang seductive ballads. From Parliament to p ulpit, Virginia’s colonization was depicted as a noble effort of Christian reformation, for, as one pious supporter asked, “What can be more excellent, more precious, more glorious, than to convert a heathen nation from worshipping the devil to the saving knowledge and true worship of God in Jesus Christ?” Sandy’s offered a promise of something that was generally not available in England: an opportunity for upward mobility. Piece by piece, he and his image makers created their illusions of the American Dream.

The reality was that this upward mobility would be based on selfish ambition under the disguise of the strange yet, for the most part, unquestioned beliefs of the Christian religion. Many more convicts were brought from the prisons of England when it was decided that the overcrowded prisons often made criminals more dangerous to society. The English prisons were breeding grounds for typhus (“goal fever”) and other diseases, which often spread beyond the walls, endangering the whole popula tion. Sir Francis Becon described goal fever as the “most pernicious infection, next to the plague.” Thousand of lives were lost and this helped give rise to the notion that all prisoners were dangerous and that their diseases, as well as their criminality, might contaminate any one around them. This reinforced images of prisons as “schools of crime” in which younger pupils became corrupted by older, more hardened offenders. It was believed by many Christians that Satan motivated the criminal mind. In fact, many believed criminal behavior to be of demonic inheritance. In any case there was little hope of recovery or for the prospects of change for a criminal in the minds of most Christians.

From this perspective even quarantine seemed insufficient; banishment out of the country appeared more sensible. Surely such rabble were of no use to society in a civilized society. In America, on the other hand, criminals could at least be put to use earning a profit for company and crow n, and they could possibly serve the interest of Christendom at the same time. Having already established the “reformative” control of colonization for heathen savages, it required no great leap to apply this standard to others.

Thus it was that the royal commission concluded that any felon, except those convicted of murder, witchcraft, burglary, or rape, could legally be transported to Virginia or the West Indies to become servants on the plantations. Those prisoners who were physically able to work, or whose “other abilities shall be thought fit to be employed in foreign discoveries or other services,” were henceforth authorized for banishment beyond the seas. The plan to transport “notorious and wicked offenders that will not be reformed but by severity of punishment, in order that they may no more infect the places where they abide within our realm,” was the subject of a royal proclamation dated December 23, 1617. Almost immediately prisoners were selected from county ja ils and prisons “to yield a profitable service to the Commonwealth in parts abroad.” The economic purpose of this policy was clear from the start. In one case, a man convicted of manslaughter and condemned to death was reprieved “because he was a carpenter and the plantation needed carpenters.”

Soon afterward Sandys commanded the sending over of maids as breeders, “that wives, children and family might make them less movable and settle them, together with their posterity in that soil.” The costs of passage could be paid for by the planters who took them as “wives.” A scandal arose from allegations that some maids were being taken by force or bought from their parents for a few pieces of silver; some even whispered that King James himself had receive a kickback (“royalty”) for the scheme.

The king had also begun sending children away as servants as well. Sandys reported to the Crown that the council had “appointed 100 children from the superfluous multitude to be trans ported to Virginia, there to be bound apprentices for certain years, and afterward with very beneficial conditions for the children.” More and more children were transported, but he was careful to request legal authorization that would enable him to coerce the youngsters.

Once the procedure had been worked out, roundups became routine. Soon the Virginia Company’s request for another 100 children was quickly approved and another batch was swept up and sent away. It is unclear how many boys and girls were taken, but company records indicate that additional cargos were authorized, at least in 1620 and 1622, and a letter of 1627 mentions 1,400 to 1,500 children as being shipped to Virginia. The policy of allowing, even encouraging, private companies to forcibly apprehend, detain, transport, and sell into service lower-class children was legitimized by every branch and level of government and praised by the highest church officials. This seizure (or “napping”) of children (“kids” ) for shipment to America as servants became so well known that the practice acquired a new name: “kidnapping.” Its original practitioners and defenders included government officials, corporate executives, clergymen, and, although often reluctantly, parents.

This process continued and increased over time and many women were seized as well. Once persons disappeared, their relatives or friends had little chance of finding them again. Even if a victim managed to tell somebody that she had been taken against her will, she was not likely to be freed. Officers of the law were expected to apprehend persons, not release them. Moreover, England lacked a professional system of police, so that the powers of law enforcement, especially arrest, belonged to those with the right political connections—in short, to those who were behind the scheme to kidnap human beings. The line between kidnapping and arrest was literally paper-thin.

The number of maids and children combined did not rival the number of prisoners and slaves being brought to America. Starting in the early seventeenth century and continuing for 150 years, an organized, international prisoner trade, of which the African slave trade was just one important part, provided the foundation for England’s colonial wealth and America’s identity. To the extent that American history is the story of immigration, then American colonial history is largely the story of the immigration of prisoners and the importation of slaves.

It was during the Restoration (which began in the summer of 1660) that the prisoner trade really became a moving force of English colonial policy. People were captured and imprisoned by an army that was composed primarily of “common cheats, thieves, cutpurses and such like persons.” The return of Charles II to the throne inaugurated an age of great monopoly in which the prevailing powers ruled by using kidnapping, violence, and imprisonment on a massive scale. Plans were made for e xpanded trafficking in felons and Africans, and the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa dispatched its first forty ships in search of gold and slaves. It was a system that would thrive for more than a century. General James Edward Oglethorpe, the “prison reformer” who founded Georgia in 1732-33 with colonists obtained from English prisons, was a director of the Royal African Company.

England’s trafficking of prisoners would continue for generations, outlasting most of the kings and businessmen who temporarily controlled it. Without the seizure, imprisonment, shipment, and sale of human beings to America, immense fortunes would not have been made from tobacco, sugar, and rum.

Prisons were an essential part of the prisoner trade, whether the captives were Africans, servants, convicts, or pressed men. After a person was taken into custody he or she was brought to a holding place near the shore to await shipment abroad. At that time some prisons from the twelft h century were still in use in England. The way a prisoner was treated was all based on how much money he or she had, and those with no money were placed in the prison’s “common side” with rogues and rabble, and often new prisoners would start out in shackles, iron collars, or fetters until they paid a special fee to ease their irons. Those wanting to receive visitors had to pay and those wanting any form of special treatment better have the means to pay for it. Just like the modern prisons of today, it was mostly about selfishness, greed, and money.

During the time after the English Civil War, there had arisen several new forms of religious movements. One of the more radical religious sects that formed during this era was a group of persons who called themselves Friends and whom others called Quakers because they “quaked and shook with zeal.” Its founder, George Fox, spent much of this time locked up for his beliefs, and it was in prison that he convinced many others to joi n his sect.

In 1652 a group of Fox’s converts, the Valiant Sixty, began to spread his message aggressively, hoping eventually to convince the whole world. Quakerism spread among the middle class with astonishing speed. The converts met in remote homes and open fields, attracting anywhere from a few dozen to a couple of hundred people. By the winter of 1655-56, Friends were meeting in almost every county, despite severe repression. The more they were imprisoned, the stronger their resolve; the stronger their resolve, the more converts they gained; the more members they attracted, the more threatening they were considered and the more of them that were imprisoned; and the more they were imprisoned the more converts they made. Thus it was that the prisons became their primary meeting places and suppliers of most of the new members. Fox himself was frequently shifted from one prison to another in an attempt to head off his efforts, but these efforts had little effect on his cause. The more he and his followers were mistreated, the more they seemed to thrive. Thrust into a dark cell among toadstools and rats, young Ann Audland wrote glowingly to another Friend, “This is indeed a place of joy, and my soul doth rejoice in the Lord.” Shortly before he died of his own ordeal, William Dewsbury exulted that he had “joyfully entered prisons as palaces, telling mine enemies to hold me there as long as they could; and in the prison house I sung praises to my God and esteemed the bolts and locks put upon me as jewels.”

If nothing else convinces us of the unbalanced illusions of religion, the attitudes of these people should.

There seemed to be no better place to find ready converts than in the prisons. They also attracted streams of visitors, some of whom asked for permission to trade places with their captive sisters and brothers. As their deaths in prison mounted, word of their martyrdom spread like wildfire. Some captives composed reams of writs and tes timonies about their suffering, and tracts were taken out by visitors and passed on, hand to hand, to waiting printers. Fox himself saw published several books that he had dictated in prison.

Other sects began to form, and the next two hundred years would see some two hundred and fifty sects, some more radical and bizarre than others, that could be counted. Some of these sects became very popular and profitable and many of them are still in existence today. It has been noted by some historians that the easiest way to get rich quick during this time was either to rob a bank or start and new Christian sect. Some of the leaders of the more radical sects would preach the end of the world and it was taken so seriously at times that people would quit their jobs or stop planting their crops and feeding their livestock. Where life was so uncertain and so difficult that the gullibility of the masses was abundant and stifling, and the confused and conditioned minds that existed in per petual fear could be easily manipulated, especially through the use of organized religion.

Over the course of time more and more “real” punishments were intentionally painful, and the criminal law of the period often resulted in the death penalty for minor offenses. Outcries for such policies were almost non-existent, except from some of the radical sects such as the Quakers and the Tories, and support for the death penalty for so many crimes, some as trivial as damaging trees or stealing a silver spoon, or poaching fish, may have been as strong or stronger among the lower classes as it was among the rich. The public seemed to feed off the misfortunes of others and public executions remained immensely popular with the masses.

Just as in London, a hanging day in America would start with the somber toll of church bells. Visitors streamed in for the occasion, drawing pickpockets from miles around, and hawkers would sell the day’s “last dying confessions” to throngs who l ined the winding route to the gallows. Capital punishment might have been viewed differently if the government strictly enforced the capital laws. But it did not. Seventeenth-century courts continued to recognize the benefit of clergy, so that a convicted felon was entitled to “call the book”—if he was able to read a passage out of the Bible, he might escape death and have his thumb branded instead. Some illiterates in a last attempt to save their own lives would drop to their knees and recite the “neck verse,” usually the first verse of the Fifty-fist Psalm. Accordingly, Parliament later removed the literacy requirement, but made a list of twenty-five felonies not subject to clerical intervention.

Outside of this process of quoting scripture from the bible, the working of this process of “mercy” could be extremely complex and mysterious, at times occurring behind closed doors. Above all it became a system of discretion, and, in fact, many of those condemned to death in the eighteenth century did not go to the gallows, they were pardoned. Loyalty, patronage, and influence were integral, as a man without them discovered with his hopeless demise. For without a person of consequence to speak in his behalf, a condemned felon’s doom could be quickly and irrevocably sealed.

With the new established laws the threat of execution was held over a large portion of the population. With mandatory death sentences for a wide array of offenses, the effects of class distinctions grew less and less. The spectacle of public trials riveted attention on individual transgression and gave the impression that it treated every defendant impartially. Pomp and solemnity filled the air. Everyone in the hushed courtroom sprang up as the judges, bedecked in wigs and robes, paraded in, and everyone sat after the judges had ascended to their perch. Great pains were taken to make the law seem magisterial and the courts incorruptible, impartial, and venerable. Knowing that the judges had the power of life or death in their hands, defendants strained to appear cooperative, penitent, and even thankful during the proceedings. They clung to etiquette even as they were being sentenced to death, in the hope that their good behavior would ultimately help to spare their lives, which, on rare occasions, it did.

The entire legal system in America was based on the English system and the laws passed by Parliament. Technically the judges were not empowered to grant pardons; they simply could recommend clemency. A pardon had to be sealed with the Great Seal and issued by authority of the king or the Privy Council. If a judge was not disposed to recommend a pardon, his conscience could always be eased by the belief that a convict might still petition to a higher authority up until and at the moment of execution. In this way neither the lawmakers, the judges, the king or Privy Council, nor any other authority would have to accept personal accountability for an ex ecution. They held solace in the belief that everything happened for a reason and, as the Bible said, it was all part of God’s plan.

Jails were among the first public structures built in colonial America. Besides being an essential part of the prisoner trade and a useful receptacle and staging place for arriving reluctant emigrants, they were an integral part of the system of servitude and slavery. As such the various kinds of jails were a key component of the system for disciplining unfree laborers and convicts. The conditions in the jails were horrendous, and many lost their heath and other died because of the cruel environment and conditions of these jails.

Benjamin Franklin’s brother, James, printed an early newspaper. One edition carried an article that was deemed seditious, and when he refused to reveal its author he was committed to Boston’s stone jail. He remained there for months until a physician certified that his health had suffered from confinement. Writing from the same stoned jail thirty years later, another incarcerated journalist complained, “If there is any such thing as a hell upon earth, I think this place is the nearest resemblance of any I can conceive of.” Many inmates from the jails of this era complained about the cold conditions. Many suffered severely and many more died from the effects of hypothermia. That same winter in New York the debtors issued a public appeal that they had not “one stick to burn” and were freezing to death.

Several Christian sects had developed from the Puritans and among those Puritans thought to be the most threatening and dangerous were those that claimed supernatural powers. They would come to be called “witches” and they were dealt with harshly. Margaret Jones of Charlestown, who claimed to have healing powers, was hanged in Boston in 1648 after it was claimed that she “had a malignant touch…and that her harmless medicines produced violent effects.” It was a strange time indeed, and as it is still true today, a time when most of the people professed a belief in the Bible, yet at the same time, religious radicals were judged harshly and more and more severe laws were enacted against the “heretics.”

Many forms of torture were performed against the “radicals” and if not torture, fines and other punishments were bestowed upon them. Boston’s government proclaimed that any Quaker male or other “heretics” who returned there after being banished “shall for the first offense have one of his ears cut off… and for the second offense shall have his other ear cut off.” It is strange that the radical acts of these “religious fanatics” were being met with even more fanatical and radical behavior. It is even more interesting to understand that scriptures in the Bible gave support to these bizarre behaviors.

America was “discovered” by a self-serving individual that was a liar and a manipulator, and this country was named after another liar that was in all likelihood a criminal. America was infiltrated by men of greed and flooded with convicts and slaves, and men, women, and children that were taken against their will. I am not putting down this counrty. These are true and simple facts.

Because so many people were brought to this country in a haze of secrecy with no records made, there is no way to know just how many convicts were transported to America. A more recent study by A. Roger Ekirch concluded that well over 30,000 convicts were transported from England to America between 1718 and 1775; he set the number sent here from England at 36,000. Adding more than 13,000 shipped from Ireland and another 700 sent from Scotland during this same period, Ekirch put the number transported from Britain at 50,000 and concluded: Convicts represented as much as a quarter of all British emigrants to colonial America during the 18th century. But even these numbers are low, since they may underestimate the numbers actually sent as well as the numbers sent from Britain before 1718, ignored debtors, and do not inclu de criminals transported by the French, Spanish, and Dutch.

In any event, the convict trade to America was big business and our country was infiltrated with criminals. Some of the larger convict traders also dealt in indentured servants, sometimes carrying them and dry goods in the same ships. On their return voyages, convict vessels often brought colonial exports like tobacco, wheat, and pig iron back to Briton. Some ships were also engaged in the African slave trade. Jonathan Forward’s Anne and Eagle carried slaves, servants, and convicts during the same period. So did some of Samuel Sedgley’s ships out of Briston and James Gildart’s from Liverpool. Profits sometimes exceeded 30 percent. One leading convict trader wrote to his partner that their business “if properly managed will in a few years make us very genteel fortunes.” The reality is, as much as historians have attempted to dismiss this reality, we are largely a race of convicts.

We also come to the realization that our mentality, for the most part, comes from belief in the Bible and this concept of God. One cannot study the history of America or the history of religion without coming to the reality of this observation. The only books that were allowed inside the jails and prisons were Bibles. The hardened criminals were often not allowed to communicate with anyone except the chaplain. Clergymen would often be present along with the politicians in the groundbreaking ceremonies for the new prisons. In the early 1820’s the legislature authorized prisons to furnish the inmates with Bibles. Yet in the same breath, prisoners were treated worse than animals and were kept in the direst of conditions and often tortured. The conditions of prisons would take toll on the health of the prisoners. According to one prison physician, their “sedentary life in the prison, as it calls into aid the debilitating passions of melancholy, grief, etc., rapidly hastens the progress of pulmonary disease.” Many prisoners break down at the onset of being incarcerated by the very fight or flight mechanisms of the body, and become sickly because of the shutting down of the immune system do to this process, and never fully recover from it. Many prisoners have simply gone insane due to the treatment and long periods of incarceration. Records have shown cases where prisoners cell doors were opened and the prisoners leaped from upper story levels onto the stone or concrete pavement below. Others have bashed their heads against the masonry walls and others have slashed their wrist or hung themselves in their prison cell. None of the realities of how the prison setting can affect a human being are considered by the Christian society that institutes the caging of human beings for such long periods of time.

Then there are those that it seems are not affected at all by being incarcerated. They seem to have the mentality that accepts their fate and in some cases the inmate will willingly confess that this is were he belongs and he will be obnoxiously happy living in this caged invironment. This is what makes incarceration such an unfair punishment, when one person suffers so severely by the process of being caged and having lost his or her freedom, and another person actually seems to enjoy the prison environment they are placed in and actually thrives in it.

Our culture has beat to the heartbeat of the chaos of religious beliefs for over fifteen hundred years. There have been some ten thousand battles in the last thousand years in the name of Christianity. The pages of history are stained blood red from the behaviors that have been spawned out of this belief in this wretched book called the Bible, and our conditioned fear prevents us from reading and learning what this book really says. (Can you imagine that? It is the “Word of God” but I’m afraid to read it and see what it actually says!) We incarcerate more people that any other country including Russia, and our system of injustice is a tragedy, yet the general population looks with blinders or cataracts on their eyes and do not see it or they are afraid to look or they are apathetic. In America, our media is so superficial that they will rarely print anything that deals with the reality of the state of our country and the neurosis that stems from the religion we believe in. Some 86 to 92 percent of americans in this county when asked their religion will say they are Christian. (But other polls taken have shown that if a person is asked by the statement, “I'm not a Christian, but I believe in God. Are you a Christian?" Many will give some form of answer to the negative.)

We are a rip-off society and everywhere we turn there is another scam and more corruption. Collectively individuals tout their beliefs in Jesus Christ while simultaneously being deceptive in business or even running scams. We have the highest rate of homicide, the highest rate of child molestation, the highest rate of rape, the highest rate of violence, the highest crime rate, the highest rate of child abuse, the highest rate of domestic violence, the highest rate of alcoholism and drug addiction, and the highest rate of suicide—and, don’t kid yoursself—we have one of the most corrupt (in)justice systems of any other democratic country—all in the name of a religion that is a fairy tale and based on a very strange set of false beliefs.

Sex is made into something so bizarre because out of these false belief systems that it is nothing short of sickening, and yet our culture is eaten up with it. It is actually against the law and a crime to have sex in some states in this country if you are not legally married, and Georgia is one of those states with this strange law on the books. That means when a man makes love to a woman or a woman makes love to a man, and they are not “legally married” they are breaking the law and committing a crime! Many other laws come straight from the many demented scriptures in the Bible.

As I surrender to this energy behind all creation, I surrender the illusions of self with all its fear, and God allows my mind to question those things that man has claimed to be from God. Our Founding Fathers were, for the most part, Deist, and they believed in God, but they did not endorse any specific religion, and gave us the freedom to worship our Creator as we choose, or even to be free from such worship. Christianity in of itself is a violation of this very freedom because imposition itself is the very makeup of this religion. The greatest thinkers throughout history have warned against organized religion and the very aspects of religious dogma. George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, were all Deist and in many of their works they questioned the divinity of Christ as well as the Bible. Abe Lincoln was also a devout believer in God, but rejected the Bible as being infallible and the messianic religion connected to it. But society and the public always had to be fooled into believing they were dutiful church going, Bible believing Christians, in order to get elected to office. These beliefs for most of these men of greatness were kept private, and those that came public with them, just as the destruction of other great thinkers throughout history, would never be elected to office, and were ridiculed and tormented by those that had these strange beliefs.

In fact Thomas Paine, who believed in our Creator the same way that I do, was imprisoned and ridiculed until his health failed him and he went to his grave being branded an atheist by the Christian fundamentalist. But many historians and the public alike always want to slant things to please themselves and mold these great men into minds of mediocrity and ignorance. Plus, as John Elton Trueblood, the most popular and one of the richest Christian writers of this century made clear late in his life—that he accepted this belief only with constant doubt and that we tend to accept what is popular and go where the money is. Or, on the other hand, those with the motives to win the popular vote, make these men of integrity into minds of mediocrity in order to secure the popularity of the masses. Most of us tend to be skeptical of such beliefs at some point in our lives, but the pressure of others upon us and the pressures of society upon us often cause us to give in to them. It is difficult to stand alone, but the root meaning of the very word alone is “all and one”, and the definition of alone means, “single; solitary; separate from others or from the masses; without the presents or aid of another.” We tend to run in herds, like cattle or sheep. If we could each understand who we are and if each one of us can learn to stand alone and become our own authority, we will understand what it means to be united and to stand together.

The Revolutionary War was brought about for the same reasons that Columbus originally set sail—to get away from the imposition of orthodox religion and to be mentally and spiritually free from the tyranny of government and that of the Church. Our Founding Fathers sought to free our country from the tyranny of a government and to be free from a country that was embodied in the imposition of a specific religion but, at the same time, was so cruel against human nature itself. A clause of Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a passage that attacked the Crown for waging “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” But this section was deleted at the request of South Carolina and Georgia. The final version cited a “long train of abuses and usurpation,” some of which plainly involved the prisoner trade. They included complaints that the Crown had obstructed the administration of justice, sent swarms of officers to harass the people, deprived many of the benefits of trial by jury, transported persons beyond the seas for fabricated offenses, and committed countless other injustices. Having failed by peaceful means to gain an end to these oppressions, the “Representatives of the United States of America” solemnly declared their colonies as “Free and Independent States.”

The one thing that our Founding Fathers did not take into consideration was the power of the conditioned mind and the fixation of habit. Our new country was full of people that were already programmed to certain beliefs and traditions, and lets face it, slavery was still part of the plan. Virginia’s Patrick Henry, patriot and slaveowner, rose to advise his fellow legislators. Standing with his head bowed and his wrists crossed, as if to imitate a manacled slave, he asked: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” After a pause, he shouted: “Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take. But as for me—give me liberty or give me death!” Benjamin Franklin, Richard Henry Lee, and some others argued against slavery, but the motive for Lee and many others was to protect their investment and prevent new slaves from coming in so that the slaves they owned and that they were being taxed for, would retain or go up in value. John Dickinson talked of freedom and liberty, yet he had been one of Philadelphia’s leading sla veholders. No wonder that Dr. Samuel Johnson asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

Just before the signing of the Declaration of Independence Washington and other leaders of the independence movement openly asserted that the British government was attempting to implement a deliberate plan to enslave the colonies and bring them under arbitrary control. John Adams described his fellow colonist as “the most abject sort of slaves.”

Look at how we treated the American Indians with such vile acts of arrogance and cruelty. There is a story of about how an officer asked a Cherokee Indian Chief about his belief in God. The Chief replied with a story of how the Great Spirit was the energy behind that squirrel, that rabbit, that deer, the butterfly and the flower. He said that it was unknown and mysterious and yet we have learned to live with it. The officer laughed a loud boisterous laugh and said something like—What you bel ieve is fable! Let me tell you about the Lord Jesus Christ, the one true God, that died for our sins and was resurrected and that was born of the virgin and was God Almighty in the flesh!— I can only imagine what this great Chief thought about the mental state of this man.

The famous speech by Chief Seattle in 1854 has long carried a deep significance to many that read it. In a moving excerpt from one of the several different versions of his speech the Chief said, “It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter...A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? ribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. All things are connected. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.”

We are living in a time that organized Christianity and what many now refer to as “Corporate Christianity” is being imposed upon society. The Politicians are all making sure the public believe them to be Bible beliving “Christians” and they are portrayed as regular churchgoers. The Christian religion is being injected into every walk of life, and a person who rejects such beliefs is thought to be without character and of an immoral or even criminal mind. We can’t sit in a restaurant without having to listen to songs on the jukebox or on the radio about Jesus or the devil. Our government is now waging a cruel war against human nature itself, violating the most sacred rights of life & liberty, often without any due process of law, and often with the tactics of vile corruption and obstruction of justice. I submit to you, history shows us with undoubting accuracy that it is the Christian religion and those that believe in this demented book called the Bible are the true criminals and the true obstruction to freedom and to the art of living. The intelligence of man can never come into operation under the stranglehold of religion.

We should simply learn what it means to be nothing and to live a life that dies to self and brings about goodness and love with the creative intelligence that comes out of it. Out of this examination of the self and the understanding of oneself comes intelligence and then there is no substitution of something else. The moment you substitute religion for it, religion becomes another means of self-expansion, another source of psychological anxiety, and a means of feeding oneself through false beliefs. So when we die to ourselves there is intelligence and there is no substitution; and when there is intelligence, then nationalism, patriotism, identity through organized religion, which is a form of stupidity, disappears.

I would like to ask you to close your eyes and observe the fact that thought has created, invented all the religions of the world. Upon picturing this reality, at this moment you will free yourself from the conditioning of all false religions and you will look into the very eyes of this energy behind all creation, which is this energy behind all creation. This brings about the insight that is the intelligence that goes beyond self, and that walks with death and life together, which is the only way to a life that has it foundation in goodness and love, and this is the most sacred thing in life. Without goodness and love one is not educated, no matter how much knowledge you have. We are not going to change society until we each change inside our own hearts and learn what it means to die to self, without suppositions or beliefs. In the dying is the living. This is not a product of effort and we cannot achieve it by any religious practice. It is a natural state, and the moment you attempt to achieve it by any method, you will not succeed. It is the truth that frees, not your effort to be free. This is the only true revolution.

Our society is latent with corruption and everyone is seeking pleasure through his or her own ambition. We much join together and stand up for life, liberty & freedom. United we will learn. Divided we fail. Together we prevail.

We have come to be where we were in 1761 and where we don’t want or need to be. We have come full circle. It’s time to take a non-violent stand. It’s time for a revolution.



Put together/written by Kerry Walker
July 31, 2005


Note: If I may I would like to suggest a book by Scott Christianson, entitled “WITH LIBERTY FOR SOME—500 YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT IN AMERICA.”

To read A COUPLE QUESTIONS at the link below and learn the truth about the bible...

http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=D646612&entry=10050&mode=

Religion v.The unknown energy behind all creation

Religion v. The unknown energy behind all creation.

By Kerry Walker

When we talk about God when dealing with the origin of all Creation, we are talking about our Creator. We are not talking about Christ or Christianity or any specific religion. Our Constitution made this very clear. This is also made clear by Jefferson (although almost always misread)-- who did not believe there should be a wall between God and state, but only between an established religion and government.

Justice Hugo Black had laid the groundwork in Everson v. Board of Education (1947).
He wrote:


"The 'establishment of religion' clause in the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against the establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.'”


A New York State law had taken a big step in forcing religion on others and mixing religion and state affairs when it passed a law that required school officials to open the day with a Christian prayer. The next big break from this violation of the Constitution came in 1962 when the Supreme Court in Engel v. Vitale struck down the law. Justice Potter Stewart’s dissent cited examples of the “deeply entrenched and highly cherished spiritual traditions of our nation.” As Justice Stewart also noted, we “are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” What Justice Stewart failed to emphasize was the fact that these prayers were based on Christian beliefs and a belief in Christ.

Justice Douglas concurred in the majority but, on a strange take, he noted its implications:


"What New York does on the opening of its public schools is what we do when we open court. Our Crier has from the beginning announced the convening of the Court. “God Save the United States and this Honorable Court.” That utterance is a supplication, a prayer in which we, the judges, are free to join, but which we need not recite any more than the students need to recite the New York prayer. What New York does on the opening of its public schools is what each House of Congress does at the opening of each day’s business."


First of all saying “God Save the United States and this Honorable Court” does not involve any specific established religion. Of course I must point out that the word “God” here certainly leans towards the “Christian God” and one may question whether the "court" is honorable. This is not a “prayer” in the same sense that was taking place at the opening of the New York public schools, and the fact is that if a child does not indorse this prayer or the established religion that this prayer supports, then a child could be hurt psychologically over the course of time by having to be the only one that does not recite it. Don’t you think the very act of not reciting this prayer would bring attention to this child? Don’t you think a child would feel awkward by not reciting it? This could further open the child to ridicule and alienation, which would bring further injury to the child. In fact, it could escalate into the child being verbally tormented or, in the worse case, physically abused or even killed. The House of Congress should take note that if their prayer endorses an established religion, it is in violation of our Constitution.

In the 1963 decision Abington v. Schempp, the Supreme Court ruled that Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional. This was something that was a little more than obvious, yet to the educated and learned Christians nationwide this case is widely regarded as the decisive break in which the Court began to use the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to drive religion out of public life. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The theme that God can remain in public life as long as it does not endorse a specific religion was first established in this case. But again “Christians” were not satisfied and felt that this was an attempt to lessen the meaningful and practical impact of their religion and the personal and national “salvation” they believed in.

But, as we come to find out, the fact that the word “God” had been viewed as having less meaning and less impact is what saved the Pledge of Allegiance and its reference to "God", and this may have very well been the motive behind it. In this same case Justice William Brennan noted that patriotic exercises such as the Pledge of Allegiance were fine because “they had lost any religious significance through repetitive usage.”
Here is Justice Brennan’s reasoning:


"The general principle might also serve to insulate the various patriotic exercises and activities used in the public schools and elsewhere which, whatever may have been their origins, no longer have a religious purpose or meaning. The reference to divinity in the revised pledge of allegiance, for example, may merely recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded 'under God.' Thus reciting the pledge may be no more of a religious exercise than the reading aloud of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which contains an allusion to the same historical fact."


So these so-called “Christians” had made such a ruckus that now we even had to make light of "God" in order keep the use of the word “God” in place. Our Founding Fathers would not have wanted the use of the word “God” or the use of the word “Creator” to be forced as a means of imposing the religion of Christ or the teaching of the Bible as the literal “Word of God” on anybody. The use of the word “God” was used by these deist to discribe this energy behind all creation and was a name given to this energy behind all creation or our "Creator" and would encompass any believer’s concept of Creation or God and virtually any bible, but the provisions made would also allow for a person to refrain from such beliefs, i.e. we would all have "freedom". As Justice Brennan also stated, “A too literal quest for the advice of the Founding Fathers upon the issues of these cases seems to me to be futile and misdirected.” In no way was this meant as a break from the Founding Fathers and American History, as many Christians have made and continue to make claim.

I should point out here that any discussion on any topic and any dissertation on any topic will be swayed by the believers or conditioning of the person involved. Obviously if a Christian undertakes to do research on this specific subject, he will lean toward support for his beliefs, and on the other hand, someone that does not believe in religion but believes that this energy behind creation has nothing to do with a specific religion, his analysis may lean towards evidence to support this view. This is human nature. My goal has always been to get myself out of the way as much as possible, and to do an objective investigation into the facts. In fact I say that it is possible to die to self so completely that we can go beyond most of our conditioning, and then the observer is not filtering the observed. It is like three good scientists looking through a microscope and seeing the exact same thing. Having said that, let us look at the other side of the coin.

“Justice Joseph Story in a speech at Harvard in 1829 claimed, ‘there never has been a period of history in which Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation.’” Now from my studies of history, this is certainly not the case. What is unfortunate is that in most every case in history that a man of importance did not believe in the infallibility of the Bible or in the divinity of Christ, he was ridiculed or he kept his beliefs private, or his beliefs were covered up or altered to fit the popular beliefs of the masses. Although there is the fact, as many learned Christians believe, that the Christian religion is part of common law, this sad fact has produced many of our laws, some more bizarre than others.

“In 1890 the Supreme Court ruled against polygamy by asserting, ‘it is contrary to the spirit of Christianity and the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western world.’ Not that I that I'm an advocate polygamy, but I certainly would not judge another that practiced it or put him in jail for it!

In 1892 the Supreme Court stated, ‘Christianity, general Christianity, is and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania....not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men...this is a Christian nation.’

In 1931 the Supreme Court cited its 1892 language ‘We are a Christian people,’ and asserted that the government must make decisions in the belief that these decisions ‘are not inconsistent with the will of God.’” This is the most troubling statement that one can make. To think, in our human fallibility, that every government decision is the “will of God,” is a recipe for disaster. That statement conjures up the Christian belief that states there is “no law that has not be laid down by God.” We all know this to be false simply on the basis that our laws very so much from state to state, as well as the absurdity of some laws. God would not be such a fool.

A state law had been passed in New York and in 1952, and in the act of sustaining this law, students were allowed to be released from school for the sole purpouse to participate in Christian activities. How bizare is that?!

The trouble with the public is that they just want contentment and to seek pleasure. No one wants to face the sorrow of what goes on in the world today. But, I tell you the only way to go beyond the sorrow, is to face the sorrow. We must be willing to be discontented with what our government and our legal system is doing and to remain with this discontentment until the masses are discontent. We must stop these judges that depart from the Constitution in applying the law. Judge Bork once stated, “A judge who departs from the Constitution... is applying no law other than his will. Our country is being radically altered, step by step, by Justices who are not following any law.”

Neither Christianity nor Christ is mentioned one time in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or the Bill of Rights. The fact is our Founding Fathers were Deist, and they believed in a Creator that they chose to call God. Just look at the culture we have today, or the lack thereof, and ask oneself if these strange belief systems are working. Our governmnet, our justice system, and our laws have evolved from the mingling of the Christian religion and the confused teachings of the bible and have overshadowed the truth of our Founding Fathers. These belief systems are out there in la la land and are as strange as the Twilight Zone, and they are standing right there along with our insane and unjust and selfish government and the often unfair and unjust legal system it has created.

In most states, if an eighteen year old falls in love with a fifteen year old and they have consensual sex, the eighteen year old can go to prison for life for statutory rape. In most states for a man and a woman to make love to each other and not be legally married, they have committed a crime! I could go on and on with some very strange laws that have come about only because of belief in the Christian religion. Who are we as human beings to place such strange judgments on others? They come only from this bizarre believe in the fables of Christianity.

Many of our laws have evolved from belief in this book called the “Holy Bible” and I submit to you that if you read my work with an open mind, there is no way that you would give such credence to this book. In fact you would understand as I do that this book is false and has been the result of untold human suffering and torture. It is indeed a wretched book when studied in its literal context, and if a religion is false it is evil and evil will all too often come out of a belief in it. Just look at what we did to the natives and the American Indians. There have been 10,000 wars in the past 1000 years in the name of Christianity. People have been tortured and burned at the stake in the name of this "god" of "religion" and countless injustices have taken place because of this "religion".

You may doubt or question the bible in private, but are afraid to do it publicly. Your wife may leave you if she knew that you no longer were the bible believing man she always thought you were. The best way to sell a lot of books and to be accepted is to believe in the Christian religion. Our goal should be not to make others accept us or to please other people, but to go beyond self and walk effortlessly with this energy behind all creation. What is more important, to please others or to walk in truth? It is the truth that frees, not you effort to become free.

The latest trend is to create a new majority on the Court that will reestablish earlier precedents and make school prayer the law of the land along with the right to post the Ten Commandments, and other rights that would reestablish the right to recognize and promote the Christian god in public places.

Just look at how angry many of you are getting by reading these words. This is simply because I am encroaching on your conditioning and this agitates you. You may want harm to come to me or you may want to see me suffer or even dead. There is no difference between you and an Islam that will kill when I say anything negative about the Koran or about his religion. The pages of history have been stained blood red with the belief and the fear that has originated from these books we call bibles.

Look at how these “Suicide Bombers” with their belief in God and in the Koran are willing to die for the chance to go to Heaven. In an interview with a “Suicide Bomber”, in the July 2005 issue of Time, this faith in the unreal is made clear. “While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. ‘First I will ask Allay (God) to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans,’ he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shipping list. ‘Then I will ask him to purify my soul so I am fit to see him, and I will ask to see my mujahedin brothers who are already with him.’” He can’t wait to die so he will be happy and when speaking about his friend that is getting ready to go on his mission he says, “he expects his final weeks to be a period of euphoria rather that penance. ‘My friend was happier than I had ever seen him,’ he says. ‘He felt he was close to the end of his journey to heaven.’” He goes on, “I pray no innocent people are killed in my mission, but if some are, I know when they arrive in Heaven, Allah will ask them to forgive me.”

The fundamentalist of Islam hate Americans and they want to kill as many American men, woman, and children as they can. They believe it is their right to reach parity with us, simply because of what we have done to them. The radicals of the Islamic faith and believers in the Holy Koran consider America to be ruled by Satan. They are unwilling to tolerate the beliefs of another or the freedom of speech, freedom of religion or from religion, or the freedom for women. I must ask myself as I sit here observing the world as it is—How are the demands of religion reconcilable with the modern world?

The fact is there are seven “Holy Bibles” on this planet, and all claim to be the only way to God. The person brought up under and conditioned by a specific belief, almost always tends to believe that belief to be the true belief. There are over 250 sects of Christianity and there is no way that you can believe in all the beliefs of any one sect without being in contradiction of another. There are six major translations of the Bible and each translation is radically different from the former and there are contradictions throughout each translation and between these different translations, and they are full of scriptures that promote wrong actions and scriptures that portrey a violent god. No one religion is ever going to rule this world.

An American Indian once told me, “God created the world and everything that is in there and does not dwell in temples made with men’s hands. The kingdom of God would come to live in man and not in buildings. And how is he worshiped by man---God does not need your worship. He creates all men of one blood and put them in the habitat he wanted them to be in and to live in harmony with. All men are equal and any man that is cut, they all bleed red all the same.”

Thought has created many good things in life, such a surgery, medicine, better transportation and so on. But thought has also created some bad things, such as better means of killing, prejudice, greed, violence and so on. And thought has created, invented all the religions of the world. This is a fact. It withstands any open minded argument. This energy behind all creation—which we may call God, has not written one book or created anything that has been created by the hand of man, yet this energy that we may call God has created everything else. But we must also understand that the name is not the thing—the description is not the described.

Our strange government is encroaching on our freedom concerning our spiritual beliefs, or the lack of such beliefs more and more as time goes on...We are now teaching the bible is public schools in some states and we even have the "year of the bible" set aside by our government. The impositions of organized religion on each one of us is in every walk of life, and this is simply wrong. Any intelligent man or woman that has ever read the entire bible will come to the same awareness that this "god" is NOT the loving "god" as preached, but a violent and dangerouse "god" created by man. This energy behind all Creation is unknown and mysterious and has nothing to do with any man made religion and all of this nonsense.

The only hope for fighting the neurosis and injustice in our society is to first be willing to be honest about what is causing it. We must not fight the very monsters that exist in this society and this government and legal system with the same belief systems that created them. I believe it is not until we fight the corruption in our government and our legal system head on without any reference to established religion that we will begin to fight together and to bring down this wall of injustice.

July 12, 2005

If you want to learn what the bible says then go to
http://www.opendiary.com/entrylist.asp?authorcode=D646612 and read
"A Couple Questions"

Georgia is a Police State-America is a Police Nation

Georgia is a Police State-America is a Police Nation

By Kerry Walker

It is very difficult to believe that I was arrested over four years ago, over a week after having the crap beat out of me by a violent, unbalanced, and controlling nutcase and after being put through the purest form of physical and psychological torment, virtually all night long. But this is the America I have come to know.

I have fought a relentless battle for my innocents and I have put together a defense that could not be beat, with witnesses on top of witnesses, and documented evidence upon documented evidence. Had I put all of my faith into the hands of attorneys alone and in the process of our so-called justice system, I would most likely be sitting in a prison cell wondering how this could happen to an innocent man—a man that was in fact the VICTIM of this violent unbalanced female and not the perpetrator.

I have never gone to trial, after my first trial was interrupted before seating a jury by the fact that evidence that was the crux of my defense had been altered to eliminate this thick layer of dust on the shaft of this crossbow that was definitive proof that it had not been cocked or loaded as this woman claimed. This woman alleged that, for no reason at all, I just walked into my bedroom with a smile on my face and picked up a crossbow and cocked it, loaded it, and pointed it at her.

But Judge Sumner made light of the fact that this evidence had been altered and stated it “was a broad stroke to paint” to insinuate that an Officer of the State would alter this evidence. But because of this evidence being altered, my trial on November 19, 2002 ended before it got started and, by my decision not to go forward, my attorney of record, Jeff Rusbridge, became a witness in my case.

Why would a judge make light of such critical evidence being altered, especially when an expert witness, Wade Pittman, from W. D. Archery in Carterville, Georgia, could testify to the fact of the condition of this evidence and to this being proof beyond a mathematical certainty that this crossbow was not cocked or loaded as this woman claimed, and my attorney of record had also witnessed the condition of this evidence along with this expert witness a short time after this alleged incident had occurred? On top of this, the State had been notified to preserve this evidence after the now former detective Peavy had ignored my pleas to consider this critical fact about the condition of this evidence that was proof of my innocents when this evidence was collected by the State. Because of this detectives dishonesty my bogus charge of Simple Assault was upgraded by a Grand Jury to Aggravated Assault, a felony. And on top of all this, this now former detective Peavy had ignored all the evidence at the scene that pointed to my innocents and, on top of that, he never interviewed the only witness at the scene as well as to ignore the reality that this woman had contradicted every statement in her Police Report, (that was not filed until several days after the alleged incident), by her very statements in her interview with Peavy just before my arrest. Yet I was still arrested!?

Then on the day of my arrest and my subsequent bond being posted by a friend, I was able to talk to this woman on the phone and get critical statements that proved that she was both violent and a liar. But Peavy not only ignored this information, but he had the transcript doctored to end with me saying “Bye” just before this information by the alleged victim was given that contradicted her story and then Peavy made sure that the tape would never be found. But I had recorded the other end of the conversation and had proof of his criminal behavior and Obstruction of Justice. And on top of this I had recorded a conversation with Peavy that same day where he stated the very pretense to his motive for this behavior when he said that the truth “don’t concern him one way or the other.” He made it very clear in this recorded conversation that he was not concerned that he had ruined my life with this false arrest and that he was the type of dishonest personality that would do what ever it took to manufacture the guilt of an innocent man—a man that was in truth the VICTIM of this controlling, violent and demented woman’s behavior and not the perpetrator of violence of any kind.

But what does it mean for an Officer of the State to commit such crimes against a law abiding citizen that had turned his life around nearly nine years before this incident and now nearly fourteen years ago? Absolutely nothing! A citizen’s complaint about crimes committed by an Officer of the State means absolutely nothing to the authorities, and, believe it or not, this is the law.

I have written to many representatives and senators, and congressmen—all the way up to the Vice President and President. Rep. Byrd lied to me about having my case investigated and I can prove this by our taped conversations and emails, and her husband Mike Byrd, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, never even responded to my Certified Mail asking for an outside investigation, yet this town violates the integrity of our Founding Fathers and our Constitution and post the Ten Commandments, with reference to the Christian Bible, in our courthouse.

Derick Corbett, from John Linder’s office, was the only one that inquired about my case and that did anything to try to help me.

Incident Reports filed by me have always left out critical information that I stated to the responding officers and my attempts to file Supplemental Reports were met with refusal and even the threat of arrest. The Secret Fraternity and the Code of Silence brings about a band of thieves that answer to each other before they answer to this energy behind all Creation, which is God. I filed a report on Peavy’s actions and this report did not even contain his name and a Supplemental Report that I attempted to file six months later was again refused and then the report filed by Corporal Sims contained false information and outright lies, and I have absolute proof of this by means of a recording device used in plain view of this dishonest officer.

I have reported Peavy’s actions and the details of the facts to Captain Edward Lacey of Internal Affairs. I have written to Sheriff Roger Garrison, with no response received. I have asked the District Attorney, Garry Moss, twice to investigate Peavy’s actions and then to have an outside investigation done and he never responded to my letters. I have asked the Attorney General’s office to investigate Peavy’s actions. I have asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to investigate Peavy’s actions. I have written Governor Perdue several times and talked with Governor Perdue and the Special Assistant to the Governor, Ben Fry, in person about his actions. And even though Governor Perdue sent a letter to me and to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation asking them to “review” my case and report directly to me, this means absolutely nothing, unless Governor Perdue ask them specifically to “investigate” my case, and this he apparently will not do. So in simple terms, the Governor and Mr. Fry played me for a fool.

I have been given back the evidence collected by the State in my case and I have been told that my indictment is being dismissed. Of course the “Chain of Custody” of this evidence has conveniently been doctored to leave a blank in the “Received By” space on November 14, 2002 and just before my trail on November 19, 2002. This break in the “Chain of Custody” makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to determine in hearings who altered this evidence before it was brought to my trial. I was told by two attorneys and by Holly, the assistant to the prosecution in my case, that my case was being dismissed and then after attempting to talk with the prosecution, Wally Rogers, about leaving the State of Georgia in order to work in Florida as an Instructor with the United States Parachute Association, and apparently because I took some pictures, with permission, of the Ten Commandments being displayed in our courthouse, I’ve now been told by Holly, (which contradicts her recorded statements to me beforehand that my charges were being dismissed and that she had prepared the order herself and that it was with Judge Harris waiting for his signature), that my charges are still under consideration and the order is still with the Assistant District Attorney, Mr. Rogers.

This low class and unbalanced woman has tormented me and this crooked cop has tormented me with the help of his buddies with a badge and these big egos to go along with it, and now I’m being tormented by the District Attorney’s office by means of Wally Rogers, and they just keep on playing games with me. I think this is pure and simple harassment and further displays the malicious and biased attitude, with extreme prejudice, of the prosecution and the District Attorney’s office towards me.

I have never thought about this state where I was born and raised in the light that I do
now, and I have come to the truth and the reality of how politically demented this country that I thought was so great really is. When we go beyond ourselves and observe with the truth of discontented eyes and listen with the truth of discontented ears, we can’t help but see the sad reality of a Police State and a Police Nation, and the reality that, as a citizen, or as an individual, I am no more important than the proverbial slug in the garden or that insect that sucks their blood.

http://walker.patrickcrusade.org