The Duggar Disaster deepens

 I see that this blog is drawing in a number of people seeking information on Josh Duggar, so it's time for another update. First of all, Blogspot has announced that as of July, they will no longer be sending email updates whenever I post on this blog, so this may be the last such announcement you get. Google continues to limit my exposure, since I refuse to participate in this for mutual gain, so anything I post here will get a diminished number of views at any rate. 

Now, on to the Duggars. Josh Duggar turns out to be an incorrigible sexual addict after all, having found a way to work around every limit put on him to date. This is of course a source of deep grief to his parents; his wife appears to still be in denial (she is currently expecting their seventh child--which, if he ends up serving anywhere near the prison term he faces, is likely their last). 

Now, what can I say to all that. Well, a few things. First of all, I'm glad he got caught. As careful as he was, clearly the feds have ways of locating people who seek out and share material online that's not protected by the Bill of Rights. I'm rather astounded, though, that it was Homeland Security who investigated the matter. Obviously this sort of crimes occurred before HS was a department of the federal government, but for some reason the investigation of these crimes has been taken away from the FBI at some level and transferred to them. It is a bit of concern that a cabinet department, familiar to those in totalitarian countries as focusing on defending the ruling party from the members of the opposition, is now in charge of investigating unprotected speech. 

Secondly, I receive a lot of inappropriate emails, with (usually somewhat blurred) obscene suggestions right in the subject line. They all go directly to Spam, and I never open the images in them, or click on any link in them. But the mere fact that they are emails addressed to me means that, from the perspective of someone monitoring traffic on my server, it's possible that I look like someone who is viewing illegal material. And such material could well be sent to me disguised in such a way that I would unsuspectingly open it to view--this did happen once, several years ago. So don't be too quick to judge someone who comes under such an accusation. Josh Duggar, on the other hand, had clearly structured his computer in such a way as to hide what he was doing--even going so far as to set it up on his work computer, where he could close his office door and indulge without the risk of his wife or kids catching him in the act.

Lastly, a brief comment on the costs of fame and fortune. When the Duggars embarked on their public career, it was in the realm of politics: Jim Bob ran for an open Senate seat. He lost, big time, but the fame that ensued catapulted him into the State House, and from thence to a gig on cable television. The Duggars thought the exposure was worth the opportunity it gave them to proclaim the virtues of a godly lifestyle to the world. But was it? Less than quarter century in, it certainly doesn't look like the gain has been worth the loss. Once nice thing about poverty is that it puts a lid on one's ability to get deep into certain sins. If one has to choose between putting food on the table and purchasing an inappropriate magazine, or getting an internet subscription, it limits the temptation. So, the riches that fame brought to the Duggars did come with an intrinsic cost. And it was the laptop of a political operative that first yanked Josh out of his sheltered world and introduced him to the siren call of online pornography, so the politics that catapulted them to fame also held a hidden bite. It turns out that raising your children in an extremely sheltered environment may leave them totally unprepared for handling the real world when they are set loose in it.

I grieve with the Duggars--all three generations. It looks like those seven kids are going to pretty much grow up without a daddy, or at least with a very distant one, adultery having long ceased to be a capital offense on this continent. I grieve for the missed opportunities to have done something different, with different results.  I grieve for the failed experiment in having a lifestyle worth proclaiming to the world. But I am relieved that fame and fortune have eluded me, and my family. Whatever mistakes we have made, whatever opportunities we have missed, whatever failures we have been--it all could have been worse, far worse, had fame and fortune intervened. 

I pray for Josh--that he will not be out of the reach of full repentance. And that it will reach him before his prison term begins. 

Lisa Miller update

 Even though, as I pointed out in a recent post, her daughter is now of age and free to resume enjoyment of her American citizenship, Lisa Miller is still a wanted felon. News out of Nicaragua is that the federal authorities have committed resources to putting pressure on people thought to possibly be hiding them, even to the point of arresting and interrogating an American citizen. To the extreme frustration of all involved in the hunt, and despite winning convictions and harsh prison sentences for all charged with their escape, every attempt for the last several years has failed to uncover anything new. It is as if the Millers had vanished into another dimension. 

The Elizabeth Smart Effect

 Elizabeth Smart is an amazing woman. Abducted at age 14 through her bedroom window one night by a drifter whom her father had hired for some odd jobs, she spent the next nine months being raped several times a day. When she was finally found by investigators hidden in plain sight on the streets of Sandy, Utah, she had been so utterly brainwashed that, thinking her family would never take her back, she initially refused to even admit who she was.
But from that low point, she made an amazing comeback. After making up the year of school she'd missed, she went on to graduate from BYU and flew back from a Mission in France to testify at her abuser's trial for kidnapping and rape. Then, incredibly, she became a journalist for NBC, interviewing women like her who had been kidnapped by sexual abusers. Unlike abuse victims who desire anonymity, she has never been afraid to tell her story and in fact used it to catapult her to national attention, using that platform to advocate against sexual assault.
In honor of Elizabeth and her willingness to share every facet of her horrifying experience, I'm naming a little-understood phenomenon after her: The Elizabeth Smart Effect. Simply put, this is the tendency of traumatic rape victims not to have functioning reproductive systems during the time they are under the control of their abusers. Despite the daily rapes, Elizabeth never fell pregnant until after she had married her legal husband. How could this be?

Some may offer the obvious answer that her abuser wasn't fertile himself, and was thus unable to impregnate her. But what about numerous other victims who demonstrate the same effect? In The Slave Across the Street, Theresa Flores relates her experience of serving as a teenage concubine to an entire underworld crime network for over a year--without ever falling pregnant. And the anecdotes are countless; despite pregnancy resulting from single rapes that happened to coincide with a woman already being fertile, rapes that are part of an ongoing abusive situation really do sometimes seem to shut down a woman's reproductive system, so that she never does go through a fertile cycle until the abuse ends.

More study on this is definitely needed--but will it ever come? The political establishment, particularly the pro-abortion wing, clings desperately to the idea that women who are raped NEED the option of snuffing out of any life that results from that rape, and anyone referencing the Elizabeth Smart Effect is likely to get shouted down--or, in the famous case of Todd Akin, even voted out of office just for mentioning it. If there is a biological phenomenon behind the Elizabeth Smart Effect, isolating it, describing it, and publishing it will face some formidable political hurdles.

Timo's Trial

Things are happening pretty fast on the Miller Kidnapping Case, so I'm starting another post here for information on Timo's trial as it comes in. Word is that Timo is in Buffalo awaiting a pretrial hearing, and we will let you know how that goes as soon as we can. The prosecution may look on this as an opportunity to add to Ken and Philip's prison time by trying to put them on the stand against Timo. This, of course, would be only for spite, as they already have plenty enough evidence against him--he was first arrested for this crime over five years ago.

Timo's detention hearing was scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on October 12--then bumped to that time on the 14th. Carl Swartzentruber sent in this report: “God was very good to us, and he did answer prayers in the court hearing. The judge was very friendly and gracious. The decision was to not ask for pre-trial release for now. Jeff Conrad, Timo’s lawyer, talked to Timo about this and Timo agreed. At this point they are going to pursue a plea-agreement and negotiations are ongoing. Timo was in good spirits. He looked in good health and good condition all the way around. He was very happy to see us all there and came out with a big smile on his face. It was good to see him again as well. The judge also asked that Timo be moved to a prison closer to Lancaster County for Jeff Conrad’s sake. That was interesting and very gracious. We just felt like God was there and blessed. There was a good spirit in the whole proceeding. Now we need to pray for the ongoing negotiations so that God works everything out the way he wants it.”

A website has now been set up to collect donations for the expenses associated with Timo's legal process. Of all things, it was false charges of child pornography that got Timo whisked off a Managuan street in thrown in the dungeon. What a case of projection.

“We probably couldn't have extradited you. But that doesn't mean we couldn't get you. When we really want somebody, we work with our friends, in whatever country we happen to be. A few phone calls, a little back-and-forth, tit for tat. We get them to cancel your immigration status, and next thing you know, you're being deported.”  --American officer David Foster in Straight Flush by Ben Mezrich

UPDATE NOVEMBER 30
Timo had his day in court, and Carl has sent in another report:

"The hearing today went very well overall with good spirit among everyone involved. Timo's day had started at 3am when he was taken from the prison to go to the courthouse, but in spite of a tired body he was in good spirits as well. The early part of the day was spent in private discussion among the attorneys and Timo. During that time, Timo had a special opportunity for some very positive personal interaction with the lead prosecutor and expressed his love and goodwill for him and his desire for the well being of his soul.  It was a rather touching moment for Timo.  

"When the status hearing began the judge was informed by the prosecution lawyers that they had reached a plea agreement. The judge was favorable to that and suggested that they could hold the plea hearing later in the afternoon rather than scheduling it for another time. They recessed while the court addressed another case on the docket and then Timo's case was recalled and they proceeded with the plea hearing.  The judge was very gracious and took time to explain everything thoroughly.  Timo pled guilty to one of the two charges against him and the other charge was dismissed.  A reduced sentence was recommended and the judge set March 23 for the sentencing date when he will finally rule on the sentence.  He has guidelines to follow in sentencing but has discretion in following them as well. That should become a fresh matter of prayer.  Timo will remain in prison while he awaits sentencing.  

"There were approximately 60 people from several surrounding states who attended the court hearing in support of Timo.  It was very encouraging for Timo to see that support and it was impressive to the court staff as well.  They had opportunity to pray together in the courthouse hallway and sing together on the courthouse steps.  There was goodwill and a good spirit all around. . ."

UPDATE MARCH 1
Timo's wife and children have been provided a home in Lancaster County, PA which is still quite a ways from the Youngstown, OH prison where he has settled down for the time being. This is his address:

Timo Miller 78268083
North East Ohio Correctional Center
2240 Hubbard Road
Youngstown, Ohio 44505

Living in the Underground Church

I'm beginning another post on the topic of the month, but this will be very general, with lessons learned drawn from a variety of situations.

I've been watching a film produced by the underground Russian Baptist Church a full generation ago, at the very height of persecution, but less than a decade before it ended. When this video was recently shown to believers in Mongolia (where the church emerged only after the fall of Communism), this was their recorded response: 

They looked at the faces in that video and saw people who had genuinely given themselves to Christ in the face of the great risk of prison camps and torture. They commented that such real conviction was entirely different from the sort of 'Christianity' seen in Mongolia, where nominal adherence to Christianity and easy believism has been spread by missionaries and now by Mongolians who are encouraged by missionaries to travel the world and sow the same seed where-ever. The Mongolians who saw the video felt highly embarrassed that the character of Christendom in Mongolia is completely different from those shown on the film who wholly dedicated themselves to Christ in spite of the tremendous danger and cost. 

We in the West have much to learn from these saints, now mostly living in our midst, who can still tell us how their faith was able to thrive despite living their entire lives under incremental state opposition. For example, their leader since 1965, Gennadi Kryuchkov, went into hiding in lieu of sure imprisonment--and, for an incredible twenty years, lived in a totalitarian country tantalizingly beyond the reach of the mighty KGB, who were so frustrated in their vain attempts to bring him to ground that one of them said it almost made a believer of him. His fugitive status outlasted the KGB itself, as he led the church that entire time from behind a curtain of invisibility until he at last emerged triumphant. In fact, in an incredibly bold move, he even emerged briefly after 19 years to address a national conference, only to disappear again while the communist regime concluded its death throes.

I'd like to quote the opening paragraph of Gennadi's obituary (posted in The Guardian), and I trust my readers will see the parallels to recent show trials in the American Northeast:

It was past midnight at the end of the second day of the trial of Russian Baptist pastors Gennadi Kryuchkov and Georgi Vins. Having been denied his request for seven supporting witnesses and a proper defence counsel, Kryuchkov exercised his right to a "final address", using the dock virtually as a pulpit. "I'm happy to stand before you as a Christian ... Those brethren who are in prisons and camps are suffering, not for having broken Soviet law, but for having been faithful to God and his church. They suffer for Christ, who called them to a new life. Among them are reformed criminals."

Developing . . .

Aslan is on the move!

After one hundred years of always winter and never Christmas (as unlikely as such a situation is to conceive, without total starvation), things seemed as grim as they could get. Of the four humans sent into Narnia for some unknown purpose, one had already defected to the White Witch, and the other three were being hunted for their very lives. The beaver's home had been raided and his comrades turned to stone. How much worse could it get? Yet it was being whispered that despite all the bad tidings, a fundamental shift was taking place: Aslan was on the move!

Things are pretty discouraging right now on the front of religious liberty in the Western Hemisphere.  Whispers come at us from every direction. Whispers of Ken Miller being threatened with more hard time for refusing to testify against Philip. Whispers of Timo Miller being dragged off his bicycle on a Nicaraguan street into a waiting van and hauled off to who-know-where--perhaps the notorious Chipote Prison? Whispers of Interpol being involved, but no one willing to confirm anything officially. It's looking pretty grim.

Aslan is on the move. Yes, there is yet no outward evidence of it--only those whose undying loyalty he holds can sense it. But as the cycles of time wheel around to line up in their ultimate configuration, the current regime under which the whole world groans is developing unseen cracks. It's going down.

At first it may only look like a thaw, but Spring is coming; nothing can hold it back.

Take heart. Stand firm. Aslan is on the move.

UPDATE August 17: To those of you, especially in Nicaragua, coming here for an update on Timo Miller, I'm not going to be sharing everything I know. You probably have access to pretty much the same sources I do, and things are too up in the air to be drawing any conclusions from the data that is available. The main point is that while we may not know what is going on, God does. I will say I expect that when the kidnapping trial opens in Buffalo in the coming weeks, Timo will be present.

The Weather Channel Joins the Conspiracy

Checking the weather this morning of December 20, 2014, I saw an ad for a video clip called "Mystery of John F. Kennedy's Plane Crash Solved?" and, of course, watched it.

Incredibly, the video text itself made no claim whatsoever to have any new information on the 15-year-old crash. In other words, there was no news--just a lot of lies: JKF Jr. didn't have his instrument rating, therefore, 'when other planes remained grounded,' he took off in the growing haze to the doom of 'all three on board' after the advice of an unnamed onscreen expert to 'get more training before flying solo' "fell on deaf ears."

It's amazing how many boldface lies can make it into a single video minute. As a pilot, I know that flying on instruments is part of basic flight school. If you can't fly through haze without 'spiraling out of control,' you're never even going to get your private license. And the video shot of 'all the other planes that remained grounded?' Well, 'remaining grounded' is another way of saying 'parked at the airport,' and that's what the majority of private planes spend the majority of their time doing, regardless of the weather.

Now, it's true that JFK did not yet have his instrument rating--just as my adult daughter does not yet have a driver's license. Big deal; she has been driving for years, but has to clear so many legal hurdles to be able to 'drive solo,' the paperwork has yet to catch up with the reality of her being a capable, experienced driver.

Thus with JFK Jr. He had all of the training, most of the experience, and almost all of the paperwork needed to be a full-fledged instrument-rated pilot. No way was he still at the level where he would go into a spin at 2500 feet while on approach to a lighted runway; instrument-rated pilots have to be able to safely navigate within 100 feet of the ground without being able to see it. But he still used an instructor every time he flew in unfamiliar conditions.

So, the video hits all the talking points of the original cover-up, whilst ignoring the salient fact that rescuers were intentionally misdirected for an entire day:
1. JFK Jr. was not competent to make that flight (he was).
2. He was warned not to fly solo in hazy conditions (he never flew solo in hazy conditions).
3. The plane spiraled out of control (the plane's engine was turned off and it was flown into the sea).
4. There were three on board (the fourth person on board was removed by a covert dive team, seat and all).

Why, Weather Channel? Why?

The Sad Fate of Flight Three Seventy

I've written before about airplanes that fly into the sea, and the various reasons why this might happen. Which brings us to what may well be my final post on the fate of Flight Three Seventy.

I just ran across one theory, which doesn't seem like it would hold much water: The Electronic Fog. I quote:

The first indication the airliner may have been in trouble is when the co-pilot signed off from Malaysian air traffic control. He said �all right good night 370.� Normally he would say something like �Malaysian 370 contacting Viet Nam at 128.4 thank you goodnight.� Maybe the electronic fog had just attached itself to the aircraft so he cut the procedure short. They never contacted Viet Nam airspace and strange things started happening immediately after that last call. The fog can disable the radios. The Boeing 777 has a glass panel cockpit. All the panels could have turned off and turned blank. The pilots would have no idea of their exact heading because even the whisky compass would be spinning. They would have to rely on their mechanical backup instruments to maintain control. They are the altimeter, the airspeed indicator and the attitude indicator.

They made about a 120 degree turn to the left, apparently trying to aim for the nearest airport. It appears they went up higher trying to get above the fog and down lower trying to get below the fog but it did not detach. When the time came to the point where they should be able to identify the airport there was no visibility. They made some more turns and that would have disoriented them to the point where they are not sure of their heading anymore. Many pilots that have been in the electronic fog that crashed, went through a series of turns then became spatially disoriented and ended up entering what is known as a graveyard spiral which always ends up in death.

They may have been able to control the autopilot but the heading would have to be controlled by their input. After going through a series of turns they would be becoming disoriented so they did something similar to Flight 19. They just continued until they ran out of fuel. Also like Flight 19 they unfortunately aimed for a remote location over the ocean where they may never be found.

I think a better supported theory is that of Marc Dugain:

Dugain, a well-respected French author, argues that the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people crashed near Diego Garcia, a British island in the middle of the Indian Ocean used as a strategic air force and intelligence base by the US military, in the six-page article in Paris Match.

The US has always officially denied that flight MH370 came anywhere near Diego Garcia.

The latest theory into the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 on March 9, 2014 has all the ingredients of a spy thriller and has grabbed the French public’s attention. The former boss of Proteus Airlines travelled to the neighbouring Maldives where residents told local media on March 9th that they had seen an airliner fly in the direction of Diego Garcia. Their claims were promptly dismissed by the authorities.

“I saw a huge plane fly over us at low altitude,” a fisherman on Kudahuvadhoo island told Dugain. “I saw red and blue stripes on a white background” – the colours of Malaysia Airlines. Other witnesses confirmed the sighting.

Dugain speculates – adding to the numerous other existing hypotheses about what happened to flight MH370 – that a modern aircraft such as Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 777 could have been hijacked by a hacker. “In 2006, Boeing patented a remote control system using a computer placed inside or outside the aircraft,” he noted. This technology lead Dugain to the idea of a “soft” remote hijacking. But the writer also suggests that a fire could have led the crew to deactivate electrical devices, including transmission systems.

Whatever the initial reasons for leaving its flight path, Dugain suspects that the plane then headed to Diego Garcia, where a number of scenarios may have played out – including the US Air Force shooting it down for fear of a September 11-style attack. Dugain met the mayor of neighbouring Baarah island, who showed him pictures of a strange device found on a beach two weeks after the plane had disappeared and before the Maldives military seized it. Two aviation experts and a local military officer concluded that the object was a Boeing fire extinguisher. Dugain points out that for the extinguisher to have floated, it must have been empty, having been automatically triggered by a fire. He adds that precedent exists in which fires on board aircraft caused all passengers and crew to die of asphyxiation, while the plane’s automated systems extinguished the blaze and kept it in the air.

Okay, so we have no direct evidence of an Electronic Fog, but we do have indirect evidence of a fire on board a Boeing aircraft--along with eyewitness testimony of just such an aircraft, bearing the Malaysian livery, being where it did not belong. We know that Diego Garcia is a strategically important air base, in the center of a very strictly enforced restricted zone. By the way, the rumour that Philip Wood was imprisoned there was a cruel hoax, and easily refuted. But no one, apparently, has tried to refute the eyewitness testimony and fire extinguisher, both of which place the airliner within shoot-down range of the Naval Air Facility.

This is what apparently happened: The US shot down the plane when it looked like it was on a suicide run toward the most important US base within a thousand miles. Unsure of what they had hit, government forces didn't say anything at first, but worked to misdirect the search effort long enough to make sure they had cleaned up the crash scene. Then, realizing they could sweep the whole operation under the rug, they kept up the cover-up to this day.

You can count on official disinformation whenever there is a cover-up, and here we have it. Taking a page from the Soviet's Flight 007 playbook, a US submersible faked a sonar ping from the airliner's black box, leading search efforts to concentrate thousands of miles from where the plane was actually shot down. Everything that came out of the US role in the 'search effort' was misinformation from that point on.

This still doesn't address the question of why Flight 370 was misdirected, but the fact that the pilot had practiced simulator landings on Diego Garcia, combined with his Islamic world view, shows a man with the method, means, and motivation to set back the US War on Terror for years to come.

If he really was targeting NAF DG, there's no reason why he shouldn't have been shot down; since 9/11, it is official USG policy to shoot down a passenger jet in such a scenario.  But why admit that they did, when it turned out to be so easy to leave everything a big mystery?

UPDATE FEBRUARY 2019:
Well, the search has been called off--critically, without EVER searching in what this 60 Minutes investigation says is the most likely final resting place of the plane.

Another month, another post

Here in the USA we recently passed the 51st anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. There's always a bit of news coverage every year, but especially on the big anniversaries. I may be a bit behind the times, as I'm just now getting back to it, a year after the big 50.

It's been over seven years since my previous post on the topic of Kennedy assassinations, and in the interval the internet has filled with material on both JFK assassinations--more videos than one person can keep up with. But I have been doing some viewing--and reading--and coming to a clearer picture of what may have, or may not have, happened.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the idea that Lee Oswald fired, in less than six seconds, three bullets from a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano 91/38 in the direction of the Presidential motorcade, striking the President with two of them.

Ballistic tests proved that this was possible. Not easy, not even likely--just possible. One thing, then, is certain: if there was a concerted plan to shoot AND kill the President that day in Dallas, it is impossible that Oswald was the only gunman. As lone-wolf assassination attempts on both Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan have shown, even a semi-automatic weapon at short range is unlikely to put even a single bullet into a President's body. Oswald was not at short range, and did not have a semi-automatic weapon. His chances of hitting the president even once were very small; twice, infinitesimal--and it was only the third shot that killed the President.

If there was a concerted effort to kill the President, there was at the very least one other gunman--who was much closer to the President than Lee Oswald. In fact, I strongly doubt that any sort of organized effort would have had any fewer than three men with a bead on the President as he entered Deally Plaza.

If Oswald was a lone wolf, he was not only a remarkable marksman, he was incredibly lucky. He had one chance to shoot the President, and he was able to get three shots off--the maximum possible with that gun in that amount of time. Furthermore, he connected squarely with the second shot--then fatally with the third. And, the range to the target was farther and farther with each shot. As range increased, his effectiveness increased!

So why, a few minutes later, would he have expended three rounds at point-blank range into Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit--and then require a fourth shot directly to the head to kill him? There goes the remarkable marksman theory.

The conclusion that Lee Oswald was acting alone--that he, on a whim, took a junk rifle up six floors, stood at a window, and hit a six-inch-diameter moving target over 100 yards away not once, but twice--is simply preposterous.

Therefore, the Warren Commission was wrong. How could the Commission be wrong? Well, they used the FBI and the CIA as their investigators. The FBI and the CIA must have provided them false information.

I leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusions.

Oh, one more thing. I don't recommend that Ben Carson run for president. It's clear that the office of the president is only a position that can be filled--or at least held--by a puppet. Break free of the strings, and see what happens.

ADDENDUM MARCH 2017
Well, well. This little article hadn't attracted much attention--only 57 views in the two and a quarter years it's been up (perhaps due to having such an innocuous title)--but I return now to admit, to anyone whose hap may be to pass this way in the future, that I'm quite sure I was wrong in that last paragraph. Donald J. Trump is no puppet. Now, whether he dies peacefully after having served out a full term--that remains to be seen.

Why the government has to control the internet

The historic defeat of the House Majority Leader in a primary race goes to show that government officials can be incredibly unaware of what is going on at a popular level.

Or at least that is the story we are being told.

What is clear, though, is that the government wants to know everything about us. It is in their selfish interests not only to hold on to power, but to convince us that we want them to. Thus, it is inevitable that for a totalitarian government to hold on to power, it must control access to the truth. Fifty years ago, that meant government control of the newspapers, radio, and television.

No more.

Now, in order to suppress unfavorable news, the government will have to control the internet. All search engines must be kept from leading users to unfavorable sites--and must let the government know who is searching for them. The government must be able to read blogs like this one, and know who is writing them. The government must be able to read all subversive emails, and know who is sending them.

Right now, all of this is already possible--it just isn't being openly practiced. If we are ever to be kept under the thumb of a totalitarian regime, that will have to change. And you had better believe that right now, heads are being put together to figure out just how to pull that off.

Where is Malaysian Airlines Flight 370?

In two earlier posts, I analysed the demise of Air France Flight 447. For the last few days the posts have been getting a lot of traffic, so I updated them with reference to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Since we are now in the fifth day of this saga--long enough to have been told that many of the preliminary reports were wrong--I'll take a stab at analysing this disaster. I'm sure there will be several updates, which we shall add as information is received.

First of all, once thing is absolutely certain: The 227 passengers on board (minus the hijackers themselves) were kidnapped at 1:40 am on Saturday, March 8. That wasn't obvious at the time, but it should have been obvious by the time Malaysian Airlines declared the plane missing, an hour after it was to have entered the approach pattern to land in Beijing.

Here's what happened in the first hour of the planes' flight--the only hour we know anything about:

At 12:41 am Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, pilot of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 9M-MRO, received clearance to take off from the control tower at Kuala Lampur International Airport. The plane continued to climb out under the control of Departure Control, and set course for Waypoint IGARI, at 6° 56' 12N 103° 35' 6E in the Gulf of Thailand. National Air Traffic Control Centre assistant director Siti Sarah Lebai Abu guided the flight until turning it over to the National Air Traffic Control of Vietnam.

It was at that moment that Siti claims to have noticed that Flight 370's transponder blinked out. This should have been a cause for alarm: jet aircraft are required to keep their transponders on at all times, and transponder failure constitutes an in-flight emergency. But no alarm was raised. Vietnam's NATC never heard from flight 370. One hour into its flight, it was already missing at sea.

And at that point our knowledge of Flight 370 ends, five days in. There are scattered reports that a plane was picked up on radar in the Indian Ocean, clear on the other side of Malaysia. Or that one was heard as it passed over the eastern coast. Or that cell phones of passengers continued to ring hours after it would have run out of fuel. But none of this tells us where 9M-MRO went, or where it is now. With the fuel on board, it could have flown as far as Pakistan--or into the middle of the Indian Ocean.

The last time a plane left its flight course and went dark on the radar screens was September 11, 2001, when it happened to four different planes, all at about the same time. So we can't say that this has never happened before. What we can say is that every time this has happened, it was the result of a hijacking.

How the Feds bungled the investigation and prosecution of Israel Keyes, serial killer extraordinaire

You may have never heard of Israel Keyes, and if you haven't, it's because he wanted it that way. Right up until the very end, he preferred to operate in secret. And in control.

Israel Keyes, the oldest son of ten children raised in a Mormon household in Utah, knew he was different from other people. When he tortured and killed pets, the shocked looks on his playmates' faces told him not only that he didn't have the same morals most people did, but that he'd better keep that part of his personality a secret, or he would be in big trouble.

So, for the next twenty years Israel lived a double life. He wasn't even out of his teens when he transferred his attention from defenseless animals to defenseless people. By the time he joined the Army--which happened during a time of such relative peace that he never got the opportunity to use his license to kill--he'd already abducted and raped a teenage girl in Washington State, where he lived.

After finishing his army term, he began his killing career in earnest. The consummate serial killer, he traveled thousands of miles to hunt down random people, whom he tortured and killed simply for the thrill it gave him. After a kill, the urge would subside and he'd return to his construction business. When his girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl, he decided that little children, and parents of little children, were off limits; he only killed childless couples and post-pubescent girls. He covered his tracks so well, there was virtually no chance he would ever be caught--or that any of his growing number of murders would be solved.

But in 2012, his career started to unravel. Like all addictions, killing had gone from a sport to a compulsion that he could no longer control--even by killing. When he spontaneously chose his last victim, he broke all his own rules. First of all, he targeted a local--18-year old Samantha Koenig, whom he kidnapped from her job at a coffee kiosk in his own town of Anchorage, Alaska. Secondly, he used the girl's cell phone to text a ransom demand to her parents--although by that time he had already raped and killed her. And finally, he had the ransom money deposited into Samantha's own bank account, using her ATM card to withdraw cash in a spree that took him all the way to the double wedding of his sisters in Wells, Texas, where he nearly broke up the wedding with a defiant proclamation of his atheism. As his family members tearfully urged him to repent, assuring him that God could forgive him no matter what he'd done, state and federal police officers were already closing in on his trail. He left the wedding in disgust, a cigarette between his lips and Samantha Koenig's ATM card in his rental car.

The end came soon after his last rejected chance to repent. A Lufkin police officer identified the rental car from an all-points bulletin based on a surveillance photo of him pulling away from an ATM where he had used Samantha's card. The cop pulled him over for speeding, called for backup, and arrested Israel on what turned out to be federal charges of using someone else's ATM to withdraw over $1000 in one month. The District of Alaska took jurisdiction of the case, since that's where Samantha's bank account was based.

This is where the prosecution really began to bungle the case. Focused on the intricacies of the law that protect accused criminals, the crime investigators couldn't ask him about Samantha's murder. But when he started to open up about "other chapters in this story," they realized they had a serial killer on their hands.

For the next nine months investigators continued to ask him about his previous murders, but he was cagey. Sometimes he'd bargain with them: a cigar for a name and a place. Returning his girlfriend's confiscated property for a description of where he'd disposed of a body. Again and again his demands came back to: a swift and speedy trial, sentencing, and execution. Until he got some idea of how soon the end was, he wouldn't give them all the information they demanded.

The prosecution, looking forward to a big trial--one that would no doubt be dominating the headlines right now had it gone as scheduled--wouldn't cooperate. They kept reminding Israel that he was in jail now, and they held all the cards. The best he could hope for was a life sentence, if he cooperated.

Fools. Israel didn't want a life sentence, and told them so openly. Liars that they were, they could have told him anything he wanted to hear; and in return, he would have given them the information they so desperately needed to close down a dozen cold murder cases. But when they told him he couldn't expect a trial to even start until a year after his arrest, he pulled out the trump card and ended not only the valuable stream of data they'd been teasing out of him, but the whole prosecution: despite being on suicide watch, he killed himself in his cell on Dec 2, 2012. There would be no trial, no sentencing, no execution. The Koenig case was closed without resolution--other than that divers had found her dismembered body in an Alaskan lake, just where he said he'd left it.

Prosecutors who really want to solve a case have to realize that the only person who can say how many victims a serial killer has murdered is the killer himself, and they NEVER hold all the cards until the dealing's done.

[Random] Thoughts on the Latest Chechen Terrorist Bombing

Well, I've spent the better part of the day following the Boston Marathon Explosion, and have tried to pull back a couple of times and think this through. Some questions have finally been answered, such as:

Was this an attack by undercover agents of a foreign government, or Americans? Americans.
Did the perpetrators skip the country immediately, as foreigners were, or stay local? They were locals.
Were they using sophisticated military-grade explosives, or IED's? They used pressure-cooker IED's.
Was this an isolated attack, or part of a general war on America?

Aha. Now once we get to this question, it gets a little stickier. That the two bombing suspects are also accused of robbing a 7/11 would indicate that this wasn't an isolated incident, while on the other hand it also pretty much guarantees that they were lone wolves. Somebody being funded by an outside agency isn't going to resort to armed robbery to raise cash, especially not in their own local neighborhood.

On the other hand, this also demonstrates once again (The Beltway Sniper did if for us a decade ago) that a single pair of terrorists can literally immobilize a major metropolitan region. This was the first time probably since the Revolutionary War that the entire city of Boston was, to some extent or another, under a 24-hour curfew. I believe it's also the first time tanks have been used on American streets. And all this, brought on by a few household chemicals and easily obtained handguns.

Just imagine what this country would look like if, instead of a couple of Muslims taking out their religious angst on the Great Satan, a couple dozen--or couple hundred--gun owners methodically took out their rage on a government that tried to disarm them.

That thought must give the gun-grabbers a churning feeling in the pits of their stomachs.

I should add that although these Chechen terrorists are in fact Americans local to the Boston area, their father at least lives back in the Caucuses, and was hoping to see them there this summer. Muslim Americans who regularly travel to terror-stricken regions of the globe to visit Muslim members should probably be rated considerably higher on the suspect list for crimes like these than non-Muslim Americans who like to blow up stumps on the back 40. A mass-murdering terrorist could emerge from either group, but one is way more likely than the other.

April 20:
Well, I have a few more thoughts. One, if somebody did put these guys up to it, they cut them off after the bombing; these guys were out of cash and desperate to clear town.
Secondly, these guys were determined not to be taken alive.
Thirdly, the FBI is probably going to scale back their terrorist conspiracy sting program. There's a least a hint that this may have been a sting gone terribly wrong when they hired someone actually capable of pulling it off.

Okay, here's a report showing it most likely that Tamerlan at least was a stooge for the FBI. His brother most likely was just going along with him.

UPDATE AUGUST 2013:
More information has come out on the details, but not such as would change the overall picture; for example, their mother also lives in the FSU, and apparently it was only Tamerlan who was determined not to be taken alive; his brother was shot while unarmed and unthreatening. 

Kevin DeAnna on "Chick-fil-A Conservatism"

Christian America no longer exists.
America may have a Christian majority. The country’s heritage and institutions may be inseparable from Christianity. Many of the leading figures in our public life may even profess to be followers of Christ. None of this changes the fact that Christian Americans are losing the long struggle to define the country. More importantly, they will continue to lose as long as they pretend the country is still theirs.

Conservatives celebrated prematurely after the huge turnout of Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. The “guilty as charged” Christian chain may have set sales records and homosexual protests may have fizzled, but this was only a tactical victory in a long struggle. Leftists and their supporters are already winning more strategic victories. The first sign of things to come was the decision by Davidson College to suspend Chick-fil-A from operating on campus. The school stressed that there was no final decision but that they wanted more “student input” about building an “inclusive community.” As a veteran college activist on controversial issues, take it from me that conservatives are outgunned on campus.

At many colleges and universities, the only right-of-center group is the College Republicans, which of course is primarily interested in electing anyone who has an “R” next to his name. Leftists have a wide variety of ideological and political groups to utilize, as well as a vast network of nominally “apolitical” multicultural and sexual groups that receive large amounts of funding and official campus support. Even the other right-of-center groups that do exist are not going to touch this issue. As reported in a recent story in the New York Times, campus conservatives mostly ignore social issues, while some libertarian groups even define homosexuality as central to their cause.

While some of this is out of belief, much more is out of fear. There is a well-funded campus infrastructure in place to support progressive social beliefs, and there is nothing in support of social conservatives. It’s far easier – and safer – to limit activism to harmless quibbling about free trade. The leftist counter-offensive will not be limited to Davidson. At least 30 other colleges have had petitions started to drive Chick-fil-A off campus. It has nothing to do with what the majority wants or even freedom of speech. The fact remains that the progressive left generally has a structural advantage in campus battles, and the campus right is generally interested in economic issues. A militant minority always triumphs against an apathetic majority, and I would not be surprised to see Chick-fil-A successfully purged from most campuses within the next year.

Even off campus, conservatives face structural disadvantages. Mitt Romney was notably silent about the issue, preferring to talk about the economy. This is probably because many of his most prominent financial backers are also backing referendums to legalize homosexual marriage in several states. Nor is this some kind of an exception – the most important group in intimidating the Republican legislature in New York into passing gay marriage were the rich Republican donors straight out of an Occupy parody about the 1 percent.

 Conservatives and libertarians can take solace in rhetoric about “limited government” and “freedom of speech,” but the truth is more complicated. The hard reality is that what is and is not acceptable to say is a product of power, not free choice. Culture is a product as much as any plastic toy, the outcome of conflict and dialogue among educational, media, social and religious institutions. What Lenin called the “Commanding Heights of the Economy” are not nearly as important as the “Commanding Heights of the Culture,” and Christians and traditionalists need to realize they are all in enemy hands, especially on the campuses.

The beliefs of a society don’t just develop organically – they are imposed. This is why the left doesn’t win through open debate in the marketplace of ideas. It wins by cutting off access, funding and legitimacy from any groups or individuals that defy the egalitarian zeitgeist. This is why, tactically, they are right to oppose Chick-fil-A and drive it off campuses. This is why they were correct to pressure business into dropping support for the American Legislative Exchange Council following the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman controversy. This is why conservatives ignore corporations like Wal-Mart, Facebook, Home Depot and News Corp. (parent company of Fox News) donating to the likes of Al Sharpton at their peril. This is why no matter how many referendums, primaries or general elections conservatives win, it never seems to change anything.

Unfortunately, progressives are right. By driving Chick-fil-A off campuses, by denying funds to pro-family groups, by making where you go to lunch a political decision, they are shaping the culture (and electorate) of the future. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but the personal is political, and whether it’s controlled by the government or not has little to do with it. It’s bigger than the battle over marriage. Politics is about who, not what, and remaining neutral simply means that others will determine the kind of world you and your children will live in. It doesn’t matter if the majority of Americans are Christians or conservatives or patriots – the people in charge are not. The game is rigged. Flip over the table.

**************************************end quote**************

Only if Conservatives are willing to be arrested and jailed in such large numbers will they be able to bring about real change. And unfortunately, the Left is ready and waiting. The only way to prevent the Left from pulling off the mass internment of Conservatives is if the Conservative policemen immediately join the resistance, while they still have guns. This would throw a major monkey wrench in the plans of the Left to disarm, then jail everybody who disagrees with their agenda. Next time a policeman pulls you over, ask him if he'd be willing to arrest you just for eating at Chick-fil-A. If he says no, ask him if he'd be willing to shoot anyone who orders him to anyway. If he won't, he's already sold out to the dark side--he just doesn't realize it yet

Disclaimer: The White Man does not advocate the use of force in resisting the government. But by all means, if you are determined to do so anyway, at least do it when it will do some good.

The Curious Case of Kenneth Miller

The White Man continues to get a lot of inquiries concerning the arrest of Kenneth Miller for aiding in the "kidnapping" of Isabella, Lisa Miller's biological daughter who remains with her mother against the full force and power of the U.S. federal government. That I have anything further to add to the knowledge of this case is mainly due to an FBI document that, most curiously, is unavailable on the World Wide web except on a couple of homosecksual advocacy sites.

It's an excerpt from Kenneth Miller's arrest affidavit, which, unlike in the case of Timothy Miller, has not published on the FBI website. It mostly refers to a communication between Kenneth and Timothy which had to be translated from Pennsylvania Dutch by "an FBI Contract Linguist."

Kenneth and Timothy made a mistake that has been made many times, in many places: that is, assuming that by using their own native tongue to communicate, they were protecting the content of their communication from being understood by hostile parties. The problem is that the FBI offers between $60 and $100 an hour to its contract linguists, and at those rates, it's possible to get just about any unencrypted text translated in a matter of hours.

Encrypting a text is very easy; fourth-graders do it all the time, just for the fun of it. Now, with few notable exceptions, every encrypted text ever confiscated by the government has eventually been deciphered. But encrypting a text in another language makes this up to a couple hundred times harder. You see, it wasn't very hard, even for the FBI, to identify the language that Ken and Timo were using. Timo was in Central America, and Ken was in Europe, but they were both American Mennonites, so it wasn't at all unlikely that the language they were using was the Mennonite dialect of German, known to those who speak it as Deitsch (Pennsylvania Dutch in English). Then, all they had to do was contract a member of the Mennonite ethnic group to translate the text.*

If, however, Ken and Timo had run their entire conversation through an encryption program, the FBI would have wasted a lot of time trying to decipher it on the assumption that the base language was English. Only after multiple attempts failed would they have started working on the assumption of another base language, and to do that they would have needed the services of a contract linguist for much longer. Much has been said about the money the litigant parties have spent on this case, but now it appears that the government has outspent either side in its relentless pursuit of of a nine-year old escapee.

Just as an example, here is some information on the case (AFAIK, not known to the FBI) that I have encrypted:

TDIASZOSTN ORRYYIBESX AHBODUTHQW SANIZMRANN YHOEXANATM ELQTFIMCOZ MANUYHGEXP LAWSQBNABM EWZMPILGLA UVYMHECXBF EQLWALNTFI NCZTMOYUGO GXTPOQWWAB NZTWEADION YNINRXPILE SSQHKADLLH ZISNDIIARN ANCYOBUATX THELQLFIFC INMZIUNYGF APXKWUNBTR JYQJNIBKAW RAPGUGAVUZ SMOYCHEFXF LLYTQPALAO NENZTROYIF ISRGHINDIA KXBKUTHQGS OFIERRMENN TOZMAANTYK KESLHXFHIC MQMATUZDGE PYAWIRBPOJ RTJXABNDWQ KPUFGFZUHE MYHCANFXSL OQJHETZNAOT OYANYBRULI XTSOQHREDE SKHZHINSDI IANRAYNFOO RXALOFNGMV QUBUGTZPJU WSTBYIPNXU TIMMECQTFH ETYZMSANYY AOKDAYGCXJ YOLUQKMAHY ZGGODDYAAN WXHREQYMAI KEPZIOTYUT OTXWEEDCDI BNQMANNYWX AYVZAZTYQR AGMEHRXVYO KOTCQBAIDA DITNGWVVPX

It took me less than an hour to compose, translate, and encrypt the information. Anyone with the key (which is easy to memorize) could decipher this message in ten minutes.§ Then all they would have to do is translate it back into English. The FBI could definitely do it, should they enlist the help of the NS A. But I doubt they could do it for under $150,000. There are just too many possibilities to run through before they would hit on the solution.

By the way, I am so confident of the security of this encryption that I guarantee approval of any comment that gives the solution.

* Actually, it was just a professional linguist, not a member of the Mennonite community. That makes me feel a little better about the Mennonite community! 
§once they take into account that this message, as is often the case, has some encoded mistakes.

IRAN CAPTURES US SPY DRONE

From David Dolan:

American government officials reluctantly admitted in early December that Iran had taken possession of a highly sophisticated US stealth drone aircraft that was apparently in the middle of an information gathering flight over Iranian territory when it was intercepted. The US initially claimed that the drone had fallen into Iranian hands due to a “technical malfunction” on board. However according to an Iranian engineer who was interviewed by the American Christian Science Monitor newspaper later in the month, Iran was able to hack into the spy drone’s GPS navigational system in order to redirect it to land at an Iranian air base. If so (and most experts said this was probably the case), an electronic interception would be an extremely serious development that demonstrated Iran might be a more formidable opponent than previously anticipated if a full blown war develops as a result of any attack upon Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Known as the RQ-170 Sentinel, the pilot-less aircraft was subsequently closely inspected by Iranian officials. US defense experts said it was highly likely that Iran will share whatever information it gleans from the inspections with its Chinese allies, and possibly also with Russia as well. The Sentinel drones have been heavily deployed in recent years in Afghanistan, Pakistan and in Iraq, which is now empty of US ground forces after the last American soldiers were pulled out in December. According to the report relayed by the Iranian engineer, Iranian specialists somehow figured out that the RQ-170 Sentinels weakest point is its GPS. They apparently acquired this vital information by examining previously downed American drones in September. "By putting noise (i.e. jamming) on the communications, you force the bird into auto-pilot. This is where the bird loses its brain," the engineer told the American newspaper. He maintained that the Iranian scientific team then simply programmed the drone to "land on its own where they wanted it to." American defense experts said the Pentagon has known since 2003 that the GPS system on the high flying drones is vulnerable to outside manipulation. The intercepted Sentinel’s base was reportedly in next door Afghanistan.

Earlier last year, an entire fleet of drones was infected by a computer virus, while two years ago, live drone video transmissions to American ground communications stations were successfully intercepted by Iraqi insurgents. Israeli media reports said that the captured drone was one of the subjects discussed between American President Barrack Obama and visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak when they met at Camp David in Maryland the middle of December. However the main focus was said to be the evidence mentioned by the unnamed senior American source indicating Iran has actually begun to assemble a nuclear bomb, or is at least on the verge of doing so.

This is actually good news, in a way. It means that drones, which pose such a tremendous threat to an oppressed civilian population, can be neutralized with a bit of technical know-how. Were the US military to ever loose armed drones upon its civilian population (so far they are only being used for unarmed  surveillance), there is always the threat that a computer-savvy civilian will reprogram the drone to fire on its own controllers.

UPDATE June 2012 DEBKA now reports that it was Chinese cybersleuths in Iran who brought down the drone--no doubt finally putting into practice the information they have long been bleeding from the US Defense network in general and the drone program in particular.

Another state kidnaping case

A lot of my readers are not homeschoolers and therefore probably aren't aware of a child named Domenic who was torn from his parents' arms two years ago and held in state custody ever since. Their crime? Attempting to take him out of the country.
HSLDA has the story:

Family of State-napped Swedish Child Savors Small Victory

Christer and Annie Johansson have won a small but hopeful victory in their quest to regain custody of their nine-year-old son Domenic who was taken from them over 2 years ago in a dramatic raid while the family was seated on an airliner departing the Nordic country. Ruby Harrold-Claesson, the couple’s attorney, reported to HSLDA that the Gotland District Court ruled in favor of the Johanssons, allowing them to retain their parental rights of Domenic. “Gotland district court has ruled against the social workers and the social council and the Municipality of Gotland in their quest to terminate Annie’s and Christer’s parental rights for Domenic … I hope that this court decision is the beginning of the end of the gross violations of Human rights that Annie, Christer and Domenic have been subjected to at the hands of the social workers and the social council in Gotland,” said Christer Johansson’s attorney and President of the Nordic Human Rights Council Ruby Harrold-Claesson. Michael Donnelly, director of international relations at HSLDA, says this decision offers a glimmer of hope.

“I am hopeful that this is the beginning of the end to the horrific treatment these people have suffered at the hands of Swedish authorities over the past two and a half years,” states Donnelly. “The Johansson family has endured unspeakable tyranny over their decision to homeschool their child and then to attempt to leave Sweden. Sweden’s behavior in this case has been shocking.” The Swedish Social Services Committee first sought to terminate the parental rights of Annie and Christer Johansson in October 2011. The latest decision by the Gotland court against social services marks a significant departure from previous decisions in the Johansson’s case. Swedish courts had also previously removed Harrold-Claesson from the Johansson case. “The social services are afraid of me because I stand up to them,” said Harrold-Claesson. “There are few lawyers in Sweden who dare to. But in Jamaica where I grew up this kind of treatment of families is unheard of. Too many magistrates simply do the bidding of the all-powerful Swedish social services, and this case is no different from the scores I have litigated over the years.”

Magistrate Magnus Schultzberg dismissed Harrold-Claesson from the case in June after Gotland local authorities requested she be removed. The magistrate then appointed a public defender, Torsten Bäckstrand. However, under European human rights laws, defendants have a right to choose counsel. “I applaud Torsten Bäckstrand’s decision to resign after he was told by Christer that he wanted me to represent him,” said Harrold-Claesson. “The latest magistrate has recognized the family’s right to have me, and I applaud her decision to keep this family together, at least on paper, for now. We will continue this fight for justice until Domenic goes home.” The tragedy concerning the Johansson family began in June 2009, when then seven-year old Domenic was forcibly removed from his parents, Christer and Annie, while the family was on board an airplane bound for Annie’s homeland of India. Swedish police snatched Domenic without a warrant, placed him in state custody, and have not charged the Johanssons with a crime. Authorities have subsequently pointed to some minor dental problems and a spotty vaccination history as justification for continuing to hold Dominic in state custody.

HSLDA continues to work with the Alliance Defense Fund and Harrold-Claesson at the European Court of Human Rights representing the family in their lawsuit against Sweden. The case has not been provided any kind of schedule. The ECHR has the authority to order Sweden to pay monetary damages, as has happened in the past in similar cases, but could not enforce an order to have the child returned to his parents. The local court’s decision indicates a possible shift in the way the case is being handled and offers a breath of hope. One of the major reasons for the state-napping and continued seizure of the child was because the family homeschooled him. “Sweden’s government continues to go down a frightening path of educational tyranny as it implements harsh policies causing more and more homeschooling Swedes to flee the country. In the past several months, three families have relocated from Sweden to neighboring countries under pressure because educational officials have reported them to social authorities. The social authorities have virtually unlimited power to take children from families and cause great pain and suffering if they choose to,” Donnelly said. HSLDA has petitioned Swedish officials to reunite the Johansson family, condemning the continued separation of Domenic from his parents. As of October 2010, the Johansson’s case had been heard at the every level of the Swedish court system and the actions of social services upheld.

If you would like to send the family a note of encouragement, you may contact them at: Christer and Annie Johansson, c/o Rune Johansson, Alva Gudings 363, 623 46 Hemse, Sweden.

UPDATE JUNE 2012:
According to this CBN news report:
I received word this evening that the parents of Domenic Johansson, the Swedish homeschooled boy abducted by authorities in 2008, have won the case in which Swedish Social Services tried to have their parental rights terminated.
The five-judge panel decided 4-1 in favor of Christer and Annie Johansson, with judges reportedly questioning the grounds for taking Domenic away in the first place.
Social Services could appeal, but I'm told they usually do not when they have been beaten this badly.
The opinion was reportedly so favorable to the Johanssons that there is hope that Domenic will be returned home soon.

APRIL 2013
Domenic is still incarcerated.

JUNE 2016
Domenic has now spent most of his life in the custody of kidnapers. 

Revolt of the lesser magistrate: It's happening in Indiana

Brad Rogers, a "stealth candidate" in the 2010 election, won a stunning upset primary victory for the open seat of county sheriff over his boss, the assistant sheriff. His first priority was "changing hearts and minds for inmates and transitioning them back to the community successfully, thereby reducing recidivism" at the Elkhart County Jail where he had been Commander. Time will tell if and when that goal is reached, but in the meantime, Brad Rogers has made a name for himself in patriotic circles as one of the first local government officials in his state to send federal agents packing.

Roger’s Sheriff’s Department told the FDA to back off:

He wrote two letters to the Justice Department warning it not to conduct inspections of Hochstetler’s [Amish dairy] farm without a warrant from a local judge. In the process, he got into a debate over the limits of federal power and the U.S. Constitution with the Justice Department’s Goldstein.

Earlier this month, Rogers emailed Goldstein that there had been “a number of inspections and attempted inspections on (Hochstetler’s) farm…” He warned that “any further attempts to inspect this farm without a warrant signed by a local judge, based on probable cause, will result in Federal inspectors’ removal or arrest for trespassing by my officers or I.”

Imagine that. A federal agent doing business as usual, arrested for trespassing by the local sheriff! It may not play on the state or national level, but in Elkhart County, Indiana, there is now someone who actually takes the Constitution seriously, and has the legal means to back it up.

And Brad Rogers appears to understand the Constitution better than any federal officer taking a vow to "uphold and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

The Goldstein letter prompted Rogers to reply, in a letter just being sent today, “When you assert that federal law trumps state law, it is a distortion of the intent, content and extent of the supreme law of the land–the U.S. Constitution-seen through a myopic and misunderstood view of Article VI, section 2 (The Supremacy Clause).”
He also asserted that “the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act could be deemed unconstitutional if and when challenged vis-a-vis the Tenth Amendment juxtaposed with The Commerce Clause.” 
He added that “our form of government was based on the principle that all officials exist to secure ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’…Your ‘cosmetic’ regulations will never ‘trump’ those principles. The citizen in question is a good man and has committed no crime. He is an upstanding member of this community. He does not have to allow you access to his property for the FDA to conduct random inspections.”

Timo Miller--it's complicated

Well, Timo Miller will soon be safely back in Nicaragua, but yet another "not known to be related" Miller has been handcuffed in his place:

A Virginia man who federal prosecutors say helped a woman leave the country with her daughter so she wouldn't have to turn custody of the girl over to her former lesbian partner surrendered Tuesday to face charges he aided in international parental kidnapping. 

A complaint unsealed Tuesday said Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., arranged passage for Lisa Miller to travel to Canada before flying with her daughter in September 2009 to Nicaragua, where she was sheltered for a time by a group of Mennonite missionaries. Kenneth Miller appeared in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vt., on Tuesday and was released, said U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin, who would provide no further information about the case. 

The affidavit made public Tuesday indicated that Timothy Miller had helped provide the information that led to the charges against Kenneth Miller. The affidavit says Timothy Miller arranged passage for Lisa Miller and her daughter, paying for the tickets with his mother-in-law's credit card, but Kenneth Miller had told him he would be reimbursed for the price of the tickets.

So, it wasn't Lisa he was willing to rat on, but his alleged co-conspirator (and fellow Beachy minister). This man is much better prepared for the court battle he faces than was Timo, who was blindsided by the FBI. And the FBI isn't crowing about the arrest this time:

“The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont stated that Kenneth L. Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Virginia, surrendered today to face charges stemming from his role in the international parental kidnapping by Lisa Miller of a child who has been the subject of a dispute of parental rights in Rutland, Vermont family court since 2004.

According to the complaint unsealed today, Kenneth L. Miller contacted associates in Nicaragua and Canada to request their support for Lisa Miller as she fled the United States with the daughter she shared with her civil union partner in 2009. The complaint alleges that at Kenneth Miller’s direction, the individuals purchased plane tickets for Lisa Miller and her child to fly from Canada to Nicaragua, and transported Miller and her child from a hotel in Canada to the airport for her flights. The complaint further indicates that Kenneth Miller maintained contact with two cellular telephones that appeared to travel from Virginia to Canada in advance of Lisa Miller’s departure from Canada. A grand jury has previously returned an indictment charging Lisa Miller with international parental kidnapping.

The United States Attorney emphasizes that the charges contained in the complaint are merely accusations and that the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty. If he is convicted, Kenneth Miller faces a maximum possible sentence of up to three years in prison; however, the actual sentence in the event of a conviction will be determined in accordance with the federal sentencing guidelines and the sentencing factors of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Mr. Miller is represented by Dennis Boyle of Boyle, Autry, and Murphy, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and local counsel Brooks G. McArthur of Jarvis, McArthur and Williams.

The United States Attorney commended the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their hard work on this matter.”

I sense a cutback in the heated rhetoric that surrounded Timo's arrest.  And that everybody is being more careful--even the FBI.

UPDATE: As in the case of Timo, there is a website set up for those interested in following Ken Miller's case: www.millercase.org. The big difference is that this site is merely a policy statement and not a source of updates [UPDATE: this has since changed, as the site has grown and developed].

I should clarify my statement above, in which I used the colloquial expression "rat on." I don't believe that Timo at any point would be willing to disclose Isabella's location in exchange for his own freedom. He faced three years of detention at most; Isabella, almost ten. Nor was it so simple as a matter of him being released in exchange for "ratting on" Ken Miller. That statement was purely from the apparent perspective of the prosecution, who seem to have very little clue what this case is all about. Timo was out of the country when all of the alleged crimes were committed; thus the prosecution had a very weak case against him. However, since he was not physically in the States, they were able to proceed with the fiction that his crimes had been committed in Vermont.

Ken Miller, however, is an entirely case altogether. The man had already left the country when all this went down, thus has been out of reach of the FBI. Clearly, he returned to the U.S. knowing that he would be arrested once he reached American soil. He is not trying to run from what he did, but is quite willing to take whatever punishment is dished out, should he be found a criminal for what he did out of conscience. But since all of the activities in which the court is interested took place in Virginia, he will insist on being tried there. There is no validity to their claim that he did anything in the "Federal District of Vermont."

Should the Feds admit that Virginia is the place where the deeds were done, expect quite a few more arrests to follow. So far, they've only been biting at the very bottom of the food chain, and there are quite a few people in the chain between Lisa and Ken.

UPDATE February 2013:
I believe that the Feds still have a case against the Baptists who handed off Lisa and Isabella to the Mennonites. In an interesting coincidence, Tip Killingsworth, one of the Baptist suspects, has also gone to Ireland as a missionary in the interim. By choosing to spend the next year--at least--behind bars rather than testify against his Baptist co-conspirators, Ken has complicated the prosecution's case a little. We're still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

UPDATE September 2016:
The other shoe has dropped. But so far only half of the co-conspirators have been tried: Timo will apparently be next.

A short post, for a change

I wrote earlier about the government regulators running the Amish out of Nebraska. Now, not having any "Krauts" on which to wreak their vengeance, they've gone after the homeschoolers.