A Smoking Jeremiad From The Emerson Avenger Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos U*U Custodes?
The post below was originally submitted as a comment to this post by The Ranting Rev: Qui Custodet Custodes? The Ranting Rev. was understandably somewhat "uneasy" about posting this particular "smoking jeremiad" to his blog so I am posting it here instead. Unlike most U*U clergy, to say nothing of U*U bloggers more generally, Rev. Fred Wooden has been pretty good about allowing me to post some fairly strongly worded critical commentary on his blog and has been quite gentlemanly about sharing his concerns with me about posting this "smoking jeremiad" which employs my time honoured technique of adapting other U*Us' words about external injustices and abuses to internal U*U injustices and abuses.
Well, needless to say, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the general principles that the Ranting Rev. has laid out here. I have been dealing with abuse of power if not "tyranny of power" within the U*U religious community for over a decade now.
U*Us in positions of authority and "power" abusively exercised it on someone with rather less "power" and have yet to be held accountable for their various abuses of their power and authority. The abuse of power began with an intolerant and abusive U*U minister and a small handful of intolerant prominent church members but, when I complained about it, it quickly spread to the top levels of the UUA and CUC, the Board of the church involved, and ultimately to the whole congregation of the church involved. Decency was most certainly overstepped and quite repeatedly so. . . Although plenty of U*Us "could" have stopped this misuse and abuse of power by U*U clergy and lay leaders, none actually did anything to stop it. To quote the lame excuse of another U*U minister in response to my personally challenging him about his failure to hold the unmentionable minister in question accountable during his first peer review of this fundamentalist atheist “Humanist” U*U minister, "Nobody did anything." Yes, quite regrettably, U*Us have actually gone to shamefully great lengths to prove the validity of Edmund Burke's bon mot - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Common sense was, and still is. . . utterly absent.
Power without constraint was, and still is. . . a major part of the problem in this matter. No matter how small it was, and it wasn't really all that small. . . U*Us not only accepted this abuse of power but condoned it and even effectively endorsed it. U*Us thus accepted a certain amount of tyranny in the U*U world. Fear of facing some unpleasant truths and calling the abusers of power to account allowed Montreal Unitarians to aggravate the initial abuses of power by permanently expelling me from the Unitarian Church of Montreal in a kangaroo court show trial that was disguised as a special congregational meeting in which the presumption of innocence was by no means in place. I was presumed to be guilty of all of the "charges" that were brought against me by Montreal Unitarians and I was given minimal opportunity to defend myself against those questionable charges.
The same fear of facing some rather inconvenient truths (if I may borrow a phrase from Al Gore) subsequently led Montreal Unitarians to have me falsely arrested by Montreal police on trumped up criminal charges in their highly misguided efforts to censor and suppress my legitimate public protest against a variety of U*U injustices, abuses and hypocrisy. This egregious misuse and abuse of state criminal law, in a deeply cynical effort to permanently end my constitutionally guaranteed right to engage in peaceful public protest, was in flagrant disregard of Unitarian claims to be "opposed to censorship, by church, state, or any other institution". It should be glaringly obvious that Montreal Unitarians actually attempted to use the Canadian state as a proxy to impose their own censorship, indeed complete and outright suppression, of my perfectly legitimate protest activities in front of their alleged "church".
Most ironically these very Unitarian claims to be opposed to censorship by church and state etc., which have now been quite shamefully proven to be completely and utterly insincere thanks to the deeply misguided and cynical efforts of Montreal Unitarians to censor and suppress my legitimate criticism and dissent, were made by the minister emeritus of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, Rev. Charles Eddis, decades ago. . . Did Rev. Charles Eddis speak out against this outrageously hypocritical attempt by Montreal Unitarians to misuse and abuse state "power" in the form of federal criminal law to impose Unitarian church censorship of my peaceful public protest activities? Absolutely not. In fact he apparently endorsed this ultimately futile and impotent attempt by Montreal Unitarians to misuse the Canadian Criminal Code to censor and suppress my Charter guaranteed rights and freedoms by publicly proclaiming that my picket sign slogans were "injurious and untrue".
Are my picket sign slogans "injurious"? Perhaps so in that they have certainly further "tarnished" the already rather less than pristine public "image" of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, to say nothing of the "image" of the greater U*U "religious community". Are they "untrue"? Quite regrettably this allegation publicly made against me made by Rev. Charles Eddis is itself "untrue" and at least a tad "injurious" in that it suggests that I am a liar. My picket sign slogans and other accusations against Montreal Unitarians and other U*Us are by no means untrue no matter how "injurious" they may well be. Every single slogan that I have ever displayed on my picket signs is very carefully considered before I decide to publicly display it and is supported by very well documented evidence that it is highly truthful if not deadly accurate. . . This almost certainly explains why Montreal Unitarians have never so much as attempted to sue me for slander or libel even though have repeatedly accused me of slandering and libeling the Unitarian Church of Montreal and its unmentionable minister and have made many desperate but futile attempts to censor and suppress my legitimate criticism and dissent.
Making death threats, or even threats of lesser forms of physical violence against ANYONE is a criminal act, at least up here in Canada. . . Last year I charged a Montreal Unitarian with making threats against me and they stuck. . . Did he threaten me with death? Not exactly. His exact words were, "Come back here next week and I will punch your f*cking lights out." When I called 9/11 to truthfully and very accurately report the threat that he had made against me the dispatcher who took the call described it as "death threats". When I explained that he hadn't exactly threatened me with death the dispatcher responded by astutely pointing out that people don't always come to after being punched to the point of unconsciousness.
That being said it is open to some debate as to whether or not the teenage girl's posting of a graphic saying "Kill Bush" on her blog constituted an actual threat against the President of the United States. I expect that a great many people have posted similar things that could be construed as a threat against President Bush on their blogs or in internet forums, including no doubt a few U*Us who profess to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of EVERY human being. ;-) Personally I would have to agree with the Ranting Rev. that the intervention of the Secret Service in this particular case at least has the appearance of an abuse of power. Surely at the very least there were other more credible threats against the life of President Bush that were more worthy of their care and attention.
Joel - Since you seem to believe in the Warren Commission's findings, including the infamous 'Single Bullet Theory' that ensured Lee Harvey Oswald's status as a "patsy", you might want to ask yourself just why the Secret Service agents who were assigned as personal body guards to President Kennedy were ordered to stand down just prior to Kennedy being shot at. . . BTW I am no expert in ballistics but there is plenty of evidence that strongly suggests that there was more than one shooter and that at least one or two of the shots that hit President Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, including the one that quite literally blew his brains out. . . came from the front. Is it possible that a very serious abuse of power that contributed to the successful assassination of President Kennedy is recorded in this little seen video?
:If we consider any heated comment to be a threat, dissent becomes a threat.
Well only if the "heated comment", or even quite moderate comment. . . is not actually a threat as in this instance.
:And if the response to threat is to deploy force, even implied, the result is thought control.
Well U*Us are certainly guilty of various attempts at "thought control" in my case. I have been threatened and physically assaulted by some U*Us for expressing some thoughts that U*Us would prefer not to have to think about. U*Us have repeatedly "deploy force" by proxy when they call in spurious complaints about my protest activities to the Montreal police force. Besides having been falsely arrested on trumped up criminal charges in December 2000 I have had my picket signs seized and destroyed by a couple of over-zealous Montreal police officers. I intend to file a complaint to the Police Ethics Commission about that particular abuse of power. Montreal police have come to the Unitarian Church of Montreal dozens of times as a result of spurious complaints made against me by Montreal Unitarians. Even in the earliest stages of this conflict, more than two years before I began protesting, UUA President John Buehrens threatened me with civil suits and police intervention for openly criticizing the minister in question.
:Not by the authorities but by the people themselves as they realize any critical comment they make could produce a display of power.
Yes there is a certain element of intimidation involved that goes well beyond the individual targeted by the intimidation tactics. Others see the intimidation and understand that it could happen to them if they speak their mind. . .
:The distance between California and Pakistan is considerable, but disproportionate response happened in both.
Well I spent most of august in San Francisco and the Bay Area but what happened in California isn't all that distant from what has happened in Montreal in the last decade or so. . . I must say however that although I have actually been threatened and assaulted by U*Us I have never threatened or assaulted anyone. I have simply demanded some genuine justice, equity and compassion from U*Us that U*Us have so far abjectly failed and even obstinately refused to provide.
How's that for a smoking jeremiad? ;-)
Well, needless to say, I have to wholeheartedly agree with the general principles that the Ranting Rev. has laid out here. I have been dealing with abuse of power if not "tyranny of power" within the U*U religious community for over a decade now.
U*Us in positions of authority and "power" abusively exercised it on someone with rather less "power" and have yet to be held accountable for their various abuses of their power and authority. The abuse of power began with an intolerant and abusive U*U minister and a small handful of intolerant prominent church members but, when I complained about it, it quickly spread to the top levels of the UUA and CUC, the Board of the church involved, and ultimately to the whole congregation of the church involved. Decency was most certainly overstepped and quite repeatedly so. . . Although plenty of U*Us "could" have stopped this misuse and abuse of power by U*U clergy and lay leaders, none actually did anything to stop it. To quote the lame excuse of another U*U minister in response to my personally challenging him about his failure to hold the unmentionable minister in question accountable during his first peer review of this fundamentalist atheist “Humanist” U*U minister, "Nobody did anything." Yes, quite regrettably, U*Us have actually gone to shamefully great lengths to prove the validity of Edmund Burke's bon mot - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Common sense was, and still is. . . utterly absent.
Power without constraint was, and still is. . . a major part of the problem in this matter. No matter how small it was, and it wasn't really all that small. . . U*Us not only accepted this abuse of power but condoned it and even effectively endorsed it. U*Us thus accepted a certain amount of tyranny in the U*U world. Fear of facing some unpleasant truths and calling the abusers of power to account allowed Montreal Unitarians to aggravate the initial abuses of power by permanently expelling me from the Unitarian Church of Montreal in a kangaroo court show trial that was disguised as a special congregational meeting in which the presumption of innocence was by no means in place. I was presumed to be guilty of all of the "charges" that were brought against me by Montreal Unitarians and I was given minimal opportunity to defend myself against those questionable charges.
The same fear of facing some rather inconvenient truths (if I may borrow a phrase from Al Gore) subsequently led Montreal Unitarians to have me falsely arrested by Montreal police on trumped up criminal charges in their highly misguided efforts to censor and suppress my legitimate public protest against a variety of U*U injustices, abuses and hypocrisy. This egregious misuse and abuse of state criminal law, in a deeply cynical effort to permanently end my constitutionally guaranteed right to engage in peaceful public protest, was in flagrant disregard of Unitarian claims to be "opposed to censorship, by church, state, or any other institution". It should be glaringly obvious that Montreal Unitarians actually attempted to use the Canadian state as a proxy to impose their own censorship, indeed complete and outright suppression, of my perfectly legitimate protest activities in front of their alleged "church".
Most ironically these very Unitarian claims to be opposed to censorship by church and state etc., which have now been quite shamefully proven to be completely and utterly insincere thanks to the deeply misguided and cynical efforts of Montreal Unitarians to censor and suppress my legitimate criticism and dissent, were made by the minister emeritus of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, Rev. Charles Eddis, decades ago. . . Did Rev. Charles Eddis speak out against this outrageously hypocritical attempt by Montreal Unitarians to misuse and abuse state "power" in the form of federal criminal law to impose Unitarian church censorship of my peaceful public protest activities? Absolutely not. In fact he apparently endorsed this ultimately futile and impotent attempt by Montreal Unitarians to misuse the Canadian Criminal Code to censor and suppress my Charter guaranteed rights and freedoms by publicly proclaiming that my picket sign slogans were "injurious and untrue".
Are my picket sign slogans "injurious"? Perhaps so in that they have certainly further "tarnished" the already rather less than pristine public "image" of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, to say nothing of the "image" of the greater U*U "religious community". Are they "untrue"? Quite regrettably this allegation publicly made against me made by Rev. Charles Eddis is itself "untrue" and at least a tad "injurious" in that it suggests that I am a liar. My picket sign slogans and other accusations against Montreal Unitarians and other U*Us are by no means untrue no matter how "injurious" they may well be. Every single slogan that I have ever displayed on my picket signs is very carefully considered before I decide to publicly display it and is supported by very well documented evidence that it is highly truthful if not deadly accurate. . . This almost certainly explains why Montreal Unitarians have never so much as attempted to sue me for slander or libel even though have repeatedly accused me of slandering and libeling the Unitarian Church of Montreal and its unmentionable minister and have made many desperate but futile attempts to censor and suppress my legitimate criticism and dissent.
Making death threats, or even threats of lesser forms of physical violence against ANYONE is a criminal act, at least up here in Canada. . . Last year I charged a Montreal Unitarian with making threats against me and they stuck. . . Did he threaten me with death? Not exactly. His exact words were, "Come back here next week and I will punch your f*cking lights out." When I called 9/11 to truthfully and very accurately report the threat that he had made against me the dispatcher who took the call described it as "death threats". When I explained that he hadn't exactly threatened me with death the dispatcher responded by astutely pointing out that people don't always come to after being punched to the point of unconsciousness.
That being said it is open to some debate as to whether or not the teenage girl's posting of a graphic saying "Kill Bush" on her blog constituted an actual threat against the President of the United States. I expect that a great many people have posted similar things that could be construed as a threat against President Bush on their blogs or in internet forums, including no doubt a few U*Us who profess to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of EVERY human being. ;-) Personally I would have to agree with the Ranting Rev. that the intervention of the Secret Service in this particular case at least has the appearance of an abuse of power. Surely at the very least there were other more credible threats against the life of President Bush that were more worthy of their care and attention.
Joel - Since you seem to believe in the Warren Commission's findings, including the infamous 'Single Bullet Theory' that ensured Lee Harvey Oswald's status as a "patsy", you might want to ask yourself just why the Secret Service agents who were assigned as personal body guards to President Kennedy were ordered to stand down just prior to Kennedy being shot at. . . BTW I am no expert in ballistics but there is plenty of evidence that strongly suggests that there was more than one shooter and that at least one or two of the shots that hit President Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, including the one that quite literally blew his brains out. . . came from the front. Is it possible that a very serious abuse of power that contributed to the successful assassination of President Kennedy is recorded in this little seen video?
:If we consider any heated comment to be a threat, dissent becomes a threat.
Well only if the "heated comment", or even quite moderate comment. . . is not actually a threat as in this instance.
:And if the response to threat is to deploy force, even implied, the result is thought control.
Well U*Us are certainly guilty of various attempts at "thought control" in my case. I have been threatened and physically assaulted by some U*Us for expressing some thoughts that U*Us would prefer not to have to think about. U*Us have repeatedly "deploy force" by proxy when they call in spurious complaints about my protest activities to the Montreal police force. Besides having been falsely arrested on trumped up criminal charges in December 2000 I have had my picket signs seized and destroyed by a couple of over-zealous Montreal police officers. I intend to file a complaint to the Police Ethics Commission about that particular abuse of power. Montreal police have come to the Unitarian Church of Montreal dozens of times as a result of spurious complaints made against me by Montreal Unitarians. Even in the earliest stages of this conflict, more than two years before I began protesting, UUA President John Buehrens threatened me with civil suits and police intervention for openly criticizing the minister in question.
:Not by the authorities but by the people themselves as they realize any critical comment they make could produce a display of power.
Yes there is a certain element of intimidation involved that goes well beyond the individual targeted by the intimidation tactics. Others see the intimidation and understand that it could happen to them if they speak their mind. . .
:The distance between California and Pakistan is considerable, but disproportionate response happened in both.
Well I spent most of august in San Francisco and the Bay Area but what happened in California isn't all that distant from what has happened in Montreal in the last decade or so. . . I must say however that although I have actually been threatened and assaulted by U*Us I have never threatened or assaulted anyone. I have simply demanded some genuine justice, equity and compassion from U*Us that U*Us have so far abjectly failed and even obstinately refused to provide.
How's that for a smoking jeremiad? ;-)
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