The Winter of Their Indictments

A Song of Overdue Justice

tinyurl.com/winterindict

• Item: war crimes prosecuted for WWII include aggressive war (starting a war with no need to defend oneself), wanton attacks on civilian targets, and even killing helpless members of the military such as wounded and sick soldiers, shipwrecked or capsized sailors, prisoners of war, and anyone who has surrendered or is otherwise hors de combat. Thus giving the order “Take No Prisoners” is inherently a war crime.

• Item: US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, while serving on the Nuremberg Tribunal, made a major point that the very same principles imposed upon the Axis officer defendants would — if the issue ever came up — be imposed upon Allied (e.g. US) officer defendants.

• Item: Among the Axis defendants executed for war crimes was a civilian head of government, Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō.

No sirens first — no shattered glass,
but paper sealed, and hours that pass
with something gathering, cold and slow,
in rooms where buried ledgers grow.

The ink is dry. The names are set.
Each line recalls a living debt.
Not whispered now, nor cast aside —
but read aloud, and verified.

The chambers fill. The record stands.
No crown can steady trembling hands
when oaths return, no longer bent,
but sharpened into evidence.

They come not robed in myth or flame,
but clerks who call each given name,
and voices — steady, sworn, precise —
that weigh a life against its price.

No rally’s roar can reach this place,
no gilded lie can mask a face
when every claim is turned and tried
against the truth it once denied.

Impeachment spoken, count by count,
no spectacle — just weight that mounts,
a ledger balanced, hard, exact,
where power yields at last to fact.

And farther still — beyond the shore —
where older statutes wait their hour,
the crimes that crossed both land and sea
are met with jurisdiction’s key.

No single bench, no single pen,
but nations speaking, now and then,
in measured terms that leave no doubt:
the world has called the record out.

No sudden fall. No tyrant’s scream.
A verdict carried, slow, supreme —
the closing of a long-deferred
and long-resisted final word.

They stand — not martyrs, not repealed
by force, but by what’s revealed;
and in that light, so clear, so plain,
no mask survives, no boast remains.

The convicts leave. The portals close.
Not chaos — but the fate they chose:
a system, strained, yet standing still
enough to bend — and then to will

that law, though late, is not denied,
that truth, though buried, will be tried,
and those who fashioned harm as art
will pay the cost of every part.

No fire falls. No heavens break.
No spectacle for vengeance’ sake —
just something firmer, harder won:
a reckoning that does not run.

— 23 Apr. 2026

© 2026 C.M. Joserlin, “Raven”

Folk Version:

[The Suno AI has composed and performed a tune for this song:]
MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/winterindict-mp3

Rock Version:

[The Suno AI has composed and performed a tune for this song:]
MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/winterindict-rock-mp3

In the interest of candor: While working on this poem, I was in hospital with severe chest pain and had a stent placed in an occluded artery. I was also remembering people I’d met who bore numbers tattooed on their wrists by those who thought themselves immune and above the law for years — but finally, finally, were proven wrong. It is intolerable to me that our own nation might protect such war criminals from prosecution. Eventually the truth on the record, and their penalty, MUST come forth. “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, right?

The Last Storm Moves On

tinyurl.com/laststorm

(After the fall of the Warming Age)

When north winds loosed their ancient chain,
The world recalled its past in pain;
The steel grew still, the rivers froze,
And silence fell where no one knows.

The storm descended, vast and pale,
Through city spire and mountain vale;
Its voice was old, without remorse —
A god unmade yet set its course.

Four towers met the cutting breath,
Each reared to barter life for death:
One held old bones, one elder’s claim,
Two living men to meet their shame.

“Here,” cried crowds, “their works were done —
They sundered pact and poisoned sun;
The storms they sowed now reap them whole,
Cold judgment on the nation’s soul.”

The people prayed — no mercy came;
The frost entombed each vaunted name.
Ice sealed their crowns, their glories gone,
And still the storm went moving on.

For countless hands had shaped that hour;
Their comfort fed the engines’ power.
Now every hearth, each sleeping town,
Must wear the ice their choices crown.

— 8 Feb. 2026

© 2026 C.M. Joserlin, “Raven”

[The Suno AI has composed and performed a tune for this song:]

MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/laststorm-mp3

See: Naked Science video “Big Freeze: Could Global Warming Trigger A Sudden Ice Age?”

A Cantrip to Catch Killers

tinyurl.com/cantrip-catch-killers

[First posted on Usenet in December 1994, the verse has been reposted several times since, e.g. September 2001.]

---

magi...@world.std.com (Gwendolyn M Piper) writes:
| Something evil walks in Massachusetts.
|
| At ten-fifteen this morning, the thirtieth
| of December, two abortion clinics in Brookline
| were attacked by one or possibly two gunmen,
| presumably of the Fundie variety....
|
| Two are dead, seven are wounded.

The awen is upon me. Hear:

I speak no spell offending the Rede of “harm ye none”,
But chant this charm intending that justice will be done:
Let truth be found for mending the wrong these killers brought,
To infamy unending for all the goals they sought.

Let truth be told in every word, the killers’ hiding places;
Let truth be seen and truth be heard, the killers’ names and faces.

That none need longer wonder who drove them to this deed,
Provoked this fatal blunder, inspired them with a creed,
Let lies be torn asunder to show their hidden guide;
Let this be published under the tale of those who died.

Let truth be told for all to know, the guilty ones be named;
May killers and their leaders show their face and be ashamed.

Three times this charm recited, the Furies to invoke;
Thricefold these Three invited to judge the words I spoke.
“Return threefold” incited against abusive spells;
May I thus be indicted if truth against me tells.

Let truth be told, I say again, no matter where it‘s hidden;
And be they women, be they men, their full exposure bidden.

---

[As a point of ethics, be it noted that this verse is not a “curse”, as it does not ask for harm to be done to anyone, only for truth to be told... and that equitably, on both (or all) sides. Truth, goes the saying, has a power of its own.]

© 1994 C.M. Joserlin, “Raven”

[The Suno AI has composed and performed a tune for this song:]

MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/cantrip-mp3

Too Much Blood

tinyurl.com/too-much-blood

(can be sung to the tune of “Me and a Gun” by Tori Amos)

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

i don’t care any more who’s what side of what fight
who is jew who is arab who is black who is white

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

i don’t care any more who is provo who is prot
who is serb who is croat who is with me who is not

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

we can’t sleep any more with our trust in a gun
it is time to wake up and to see what we’ve done

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

it has been too damn easy just to kill what we fear
or to let others suffer just because they’re not here

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

it has been first resort it seems all of my life
send a bomb or a bullet grab a rock or a knife

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

on this day I have vowed to myself that I will
find another way to live and let live not to kill

we have shed too much blood and it may be too late
but we can’t just not try to stop all of this hate

— 25 Dec. 1994

© 1994 C.M. Joserlin, “Raven”

[The Suno AI has composed and performed a tune for this song:]

MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/toomuchblood-mp3

Gore’s Saga

tinyurl.com/gore-s-saga

In a thread over on Shakespeare’s Sister in 2006, discussing
just how hard the Democrats should fight the Republicans, Kirby wrote:

“In 2000, I wanted to see a naked and bloody Al Gore
standing on the steps of the White House with Bush’s head on a pike.
So no, nothing Dems do to fight back now would bother me.”

That was such a vivid image that it called up heroic verses in my head.

GORE‘S SAGA

Foul was the faring to ford the Potomac;
Wretches had ruined the river’s pure flow.
Deep was the darkness as desperate heroes
Sought through the city to slay their fell foe.

Drastic the deeds that had drawn them all thither,
Tragic the tale of that terrible time:
Fate had enfeebled the freedom of many,
Parting the people from power by crime.

Once had the wonderful way of the nation
Settled succession by seeking fair test;
Now had the numbers been not truly noted,
Liars had laughed as they libeled the best.

Gore had the greater of groups voting for him,
Only if honesty honoured the counts.
Fewer would follow a felon hight Dubya —
His were the henchmen that hid the amounts.

Dark was the day that this Dubya took power,
Woeful the world under wicked men’s rule:
Terror attacking could topple a tower,
Dubya would do naught but dabble at school.

Past all his prating of pet goats to children,
Courage he could not have claimed and been true.
Fearfully fled he from first sign of danger,
Crept into caverns well covered from view.

Scorned as a shivering, snivelling coward,
Laid he the lie that made loyal men gag:
He was a hero as hearty as any,
Wrapped in a robe of the royal war-flag.

Posing and prancing, this parody-hero
Sped to the sites that his sloth had betrayed,
Spoke of his strength and the speed of his vengeance,
Waved men to war... but then went home and played.

Further this failure would fetter his subjects:
Patriots, pled he, would pledge him their creed.
Bills he embellished to buttress his power;
Sign here, he said, do not seek first to read.

Soon, at his summons, like serfs were his people,
Terror and torture the tools of his trade;
Merely his marking out men made them vanish,
Pass into prisons he privily made.

Far from the field of this fetid corruption,
Loving the land and yet loathing its lord,
Hearing the horrors that had thus befallen,
Gore listens grimly, while grinding his sword.

Long, but no longer, I’ve left off my vengeance!
Strong, but no stronger, that snaveling’s role!
Weak, but no weaker henceforth, will my party
Pry back the power that prattler stole!

Blows he a blast on his bellicose war-horn,
Trump-call whose tremors would trammel a foe;
Friends, though, it finds, and they fleetly come forward,
Swords, shields, and spears by their sides as they go.

Swift was their sight of the city benighted,
Quiet and quick was their crossing the ford.
Wrathful and ruthless, they wreaked their hard justice,
Few folk could flee from the fierce spear and sword.

Liars there lay with their lips for once truthful,
Cowards and caitiffs lay calmly at last;
Traitorous torturers’ tools turned against them,
Paying back pain they had plied in the past.

Screams arose, scaring the scabrous still-living,
Panicing pundits and pollsters who’d slept;
Hacks and louts huddled in hideous terror,
Goplin-folk gripped little green balls and wept.

Where’s Rum and Wolf-o’-wits, where is Gonzales,
Architects ardent of arduous wars?
Seek ye the secrets they sought to hide ever,
Cells they concealed, tighter sealed now than jars.

What of the worst of them, wily Dick Cheney,
Karl the Accursèd, and coarse liar Rush?
Brains they had boasted, and bellies fat-laden;
Stop by the swine-pens and sniff at the mush.

What of the wicked and wastrel man Dubya?
Fear not, my folk, here‘s the finish you’ll love.
Gore went and got him, and gives us a trophy:
See, there he stands, with his spear held above.

Bare now and bloodied, but bowing to no man,
Proud of his people and pure in his cause,
Bears he the burden above on his spearpoint,
Proof that no prince safely poisons our laws.

Doom that he dreaded found Dubya the Dumbwad:
Hoisted his head was on high-waving spear;
Gutters were glutted with guts of his goplins.
Glory to Gore, all our griefs disappear!

                    © 2006 C.M. Joserlin, “Raven”

[The Suno AI has composed and performed a tune for this song:]

MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/goressaga-mp3

Note: I will confess to taking liberties with the OE text at points, in order to have both head-rhyme and foot-rhyme (and steady meter) in Modern English. Compare, for example, the original last stanza:

Ær gewarnunge, grimm grip gefeng Gēongran:
Hāfen wæs hēafod his on hēah-wafre gār;
Gutras wǣron gefyllede mid gutum his goplena.
Wuldor Gorre, ealle ūre grēotan gewītaþ!

In retrospect, I dedicate this piece to the memory of SCA’s “Svea Wartooth”, mundanely John D. Bailey, 1928—2010, who, the last I saw of him (over 40 years ago), was learning to recite Beowulf in full, by heart, in the original Old English, a feat of scholarship and skaldcraft I could only admire.

Gaming the System

tinyurl.com/gaming0system

I have been thinking about examples of “gaming the system” — twisting it from general benefit to personal profit at general cost — I’ve seen either on large, very public scales, or in smaller, less publicized contexts (in the late 1970s and the 1980s I saw it being used to change social groups* away from mutual-benefit to self-aggrandizement for some at the cost of abusing others, enough times to make the pattern clear — like hornets persuading honeybees they belonged in the hive, long enough to consume it); and about a sort of “systems analysis” to anticipate what sorts of systems are more or less likely to BE so gamed… as Frédéric Bastiat so pithily commented in his 1850 pamphlet “The Law”:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. … In fact, this has already occurred.

One of the longer-term worst cases I’ve seen is vulture capitalism, whose core concept was apparently taught senior-to-junior by students of Harvard Business School starting last century: join companies, get an influential position [that HBS MBA helps!], loot it, and take a golden parachute away. Some formed entire companies to take control of other businesses and loot them more efficiently; Bain Capital (led by Mitt Romney, who’d taken the joint JD/MBA program at Harvard Law and Business Schools) is one exemplar. (I pause to think of the SF film John Carter, with the roving city of Zodanga looting other cities, gradually killing off Barsoom.) The barbarians are inside the gates, but no shots are being fired, because no-one thinks of it as a war: it’s called “business as usual”. Honeybees now seem more likely to recognize and repel hornets which invade their hives; so many of the bees that could be fooled have already died, their young become hornet-food.

In this light, the Trump-led but lawyer-advised effort to change the 2020 election result by process tricks, like fake electors and having the VP send state results back to red legislatures (which the J6 insurrection was intended to push by intimidation), should be seen as another example of “gaming the system”, using some of its provisions against its own overall purpose of letting the people choose their leaders. The 2016 election’s manipulation by Russia, to change the Electoral-College outcome, was yet another such example. We can think back further, to 2000’s Florida debacle and the Bush v. Gore decision; the 1980 October Surprise; Nixon’s 1968 deal with South Vietnam to withdraw from the Paris Peace Accords and discredit LBJ, extending the war at the cost of millions of lives. Zodanga would approve.

I’ve long since lost any tolerance I might have had for system-gaming. We can write computer software to resist backdoor attacks, worms, and viruses — we should write our social, business, & governmental rules and laws with similar care against malevolent manipulations.
_______________

* For instance, within the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., as described in two songs:

     • “The S.C.A. Game”

MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/sca-game-mp3

     • “The MidRealm Laurels”

MP3 URL: tinyurl.com/mk-laurels-mp3

     ... and see surrounding discussion.
_______________

• Cf. 31 July 2025, Jim Hightower: “Are You Really A ‘Winner’ If You Have to Rig the Rules to Win?” (re further gaming the system in Texas)

The Fair-Minded Shepherd

Washington Post, 3/14/2018:
Senate passes rollback of banking rules enacted after financial crisis:

“... the biggest loosening of financial regulations since the economic crisis a decade ago.... ... would free more than two dozen banks from the toughest regulatory scrutiny put in place after the 2008 global financial crisis. ... it amounts to a significant rollback of banking rules aimed at protecting taxpayers from another financial crisis and future bailouts. / In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders praised the legislation’s passage. ...”

It was a hard winter, and the grass was sparse. The previous shepherd in such a circumstance would speak of “grace” and bring alfalfa, but the new shepherd said it was “only fair” that the flock should “just work harder to find whatever food there is in the pasture.” However, the men who loaded a truck with bags from the alfalfa fields seemed grateful to the shepherd.

Some of the sheep had fallen ill or suffered injuries. Thinking of the care they used to receive from his predecessor, they turned to the shepherd, but he said it was “only fair” to let the strongest survive.

While the winds and wolves howled wildly outside the fences, the flock huddled together for warmth in the center of the pasture, as the shepherd declared it would be “only fair” to show equal “grace” to all inhabitants of the field, grant them utter “freedom” by removing all restrictions, and let this “free field” determine the outcome of events... so he tore down the fences. And, who knows, perhaps even the wolves were grateful to the shepherd.

—————————————————————

The Savings and Loan (“thrift”) industry was deregulated by two laws passed in 1980 and 1982, which meant S&L managers took risks previously off-limits; 1981's misnamed Economic Recovery Tax Act led to S&Ls selling their loans at 60% to 90% of value to buy back their reduced value as bonds (for substantial fees). ... “A large number of S&L customers’ defaults and bankruptcies ensued, and the S&Ls that had overextended themselves were forced into insolvency proceedings themselves. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), a federal government agency that insured S&L accounts in the same way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures commercial bank accounts, then had to repay all the depositors whose money was lost. From 1986 to 1989, FSLIC closed or otherwise resolved 296 institutions with total assets of $125 billion. An even more traumatic period followed, with the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation in 1989 and that agency’s resolution by mid-1995 of an additional 747 thrifts. A Federal Reserve Bank panel stated the resulting taxpayer bailout ended up being even larger than it would have been because of moral hazard and adverse selection incentives that compounded the system’s losses. There also were state-chartered S&Ls that failed. Some state insurance funds failed, requiring state taxpayer bailouts.” [Wikipedia]

You notice, the S&Ls were not only no longer being regulated to manage themselves the RIGHT way, they were given incentives to manage themselves the WRONG way.

The same sort of thing, deregulation-enabling-corruption-and-collapse, happened during the George W. Bush administration, only with the main banking system and Wall Street (“Foreclosuregate” being part of that scandal), leading up to the Global Crash of 2008.

It was a swindler’s dream scheme: America lost over $10 Trillion of wealth in 2008 (per Business Insider), and once again most of those who profited vanished without ever being tracked down and held to legal account.

So it is significant that, like Trump...

• Nixon, Reagan, and the Bush family also had mob links ...

• ... so their administrations backed off “organized crime” investigations and focused on “street crime” instead.

E.g.: “Reagan...’s first opportunity to revise the federal budget yielded a one-third cutback of the FBI’s investigations into gambling, prostitution, arson-for-profit, gangland murders, and pornography — along with a hiring freeze and dramatic staff reduction within the FBI. Reagan also indicated that no new undercover operations would be authorized against organized crime or white-collar crime. Instead, the Reagan Justice Department wanted to concentrate on street crime and small drug use.”

Along with, you may recall, Nancy’s “Just Say No” ad campaign….

These had been, of course, greatly self-proclaimed “Law and Order” candidates.

Now here we go again.

Stay Free, San Francisco!

http://tinyurl.com/stay-free-sf   (The above design is presented for the free use of those advancing body freedom, or human rights and freedom in general, with my blessings; I require neither permission, nor credit, nor royalties.)

Not that I get to set anyone else’s terms, but here’s why I think the two short words “Stay Free” are the main thing that need to keep being repeated now by crowds and signs protesting this issue in San Francisco:

1. "SF" alliterates with the city name, stressing it’s a local issue.
   
2. These keep the message above the fog: it’s about freedom.
   
3. It's not about Biblical morality, despite the religious right.
   
4. It’s not about tourism dollars, despite any Chamber-of-Commerce clones.
   
5. It’s about the freedom of non-violent non-injurious non-interfering citizens to walk down the street minding their own business without being set upon violently and dragged off in chains at the orders of a Board gone rogue.
   
6. To borrow Thomas Jefferson’s argument, “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to [wear twenty garments or no garment]. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
   
7. From which it follows: the Board’s penalizing acts non-injurious to others did not use a legitimate power of government.

I thought about having the graphic show the woman wearing a black armband, like the protesters in Tinker v Des Moines (since the Supreme Court agrees that black armbands “inherently express” opinions, thus are protected by the First Amendment, unlike bare skin)... aaand I decided against that:

Someone wearing a black armband might be expressing a different topic of opinion, say, an opinion against war, but it’s a sure bet anyone going bare in public is expressing an opinion in favor of the right to body freedom, no matter what else. That’s as “inherent” an expression as any Supreme Court Justice or other judge could reasonably require.

But you know, I do have to wonder: what kind of cognitive dissonance would the good judge face if nude San Franciscans started being arrested while wearing black armbands?

It seems to me he’d have to agree they were indeed “sending a message” with the armbands, and therefore were under the First Amendment’s protection at the time....

So here’s the quandary: would all that mighty Constitutional protection apply just because of the tiny strip of cloth, and none at all only to, or because of, the entire fully human being wearing it?

Is that how Judge Chen conceives “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights”... except if I take your armband away, I’ve just alienated your freedom of speech?

Somehow I don’t think that’s what Thomas Jefferson was “inherently expressing”!

Yet... picture the interrogatory, as the Chief of Police has to explain to the Judge how the law was applied in practice — since that’s the level this dispute has come down to.

Judge: ... and it was made very clear the Board could regulate conduct but not speech, therefore traditional forms of speech, of expressing opinion, would not and could not be prohibited. I thought that much was made very very clear, Chief?

Chief: Yes, your Honor, and that’s the dividing line we followed, just the way you set it out for us. Everyone has skin, so that’s not an opinion; but not everyone expresses an opinion, so it’s the differences to look out for; yes, we paid close attention to that. And at first, when the nude protesters came out all wearing black armbands, we thought, okay, they figured out how to get by, and we weren’t going to make any arrests.

Judge: Then... why did you?

Chief: Well, all the counter-protesters, the Scott Wiener supporters and anti-nudity folks, pulled out black armbands from their pockets and put them on too, chanting “It’s a black day for San Francisco!” Now everyone had black armbands, and these didn’t stand for any one opinion anymore. As you put it, they didn’t “inherently express” any particular message. That meant they no longer had First Amendment protection, so we just started arresting people without regard to the armbands.

Judge: Chief... that’s... remarkably sophistical reasoning. Did you yourself just come up with this on the fly?

Chief: Oh, no, the counter-protesters’ armband consultant and supplier flew out from Washington DC for the event, and he was standing right beside me when I had to make the decision. His advice was very helpful, and (points to audience) you can see he’s the most knowledgeable man in the field.

Judge: I do see. It’s a privilege to have you in my courtroom, Justice Scalia. ... But Chief, then you proceeded to arrest protesters who were not only wearing armbands but carrying clearly printed signs, which at least specify the opinion they express....

Chief: Ah, yes, ah, your Honor, the Justice had also brought out a supply of signs for the occasion,... ah, for every occasion, from birthday to Thanksgiving to union protest to "will work for food",... and by the time those were all up in the air and waving around, there was no longer a sense of any one group having anything coherent to say. So it was pretty much the same situation as with the armbands.

Judge: According to the legal advice with which he then kindly provided you?

Chief: Well, I guess he’s not going to be overturned. Is he, your Honor?

Judge: We have just been blessed with help in our fair city, haven’t we?

...

The Unmarked State: Signifying Nothing?

http://tinyurl.com/unmarked-state (This follows-up my previous blog entry, The Importance of Self-Ownership.)

The Free Speech Movement’s late Mario Savio had said on the steps of Sproul Hall at UC-Berkeley in December 1964:

“[W]e’re a bunch of “raw materials” that don’t mean to be — have any process upon us. Don’t mean to be made into any product. Don’t mean... Don’t mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We’re human beings!

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

(But if someone insists you’re just "raw materials" after all — mere chattels, movable property — for whatever industrial-scale schemes they have in mind, then how are you to deny it, when you sure look packaged for shipment to processing? Unless you prove it by taking off the wrapper to show there really is a free and fully human person underneath it?)

US District Judge Edward M. Chen, UC-Berkeley AB '75 JD '79, may have passed near that spot on campus from time to time. I wonder whether he ever heard of the Free Speech Movement. His recent ruling on Hightower v San Francisco [PDF] (re the “Anti-Nudity Law”) doesn’t mention it.

And there are some concerns Free Speech advocates might have with the reasoning:

1. Dissing the Unmarked State

(Gagging the Sound of Silence)

“And the sign said
the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
and tenement halls,
and whispered in the sounds of silence.”
— Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence (1964)

“A1 (The Law of Calling):
Calling twice from a state is indistinguishable from calling once. To make a distinction twice has the same effect as making it once. For example, saying “Let there be light” and then saying “Let there be light” again, is the same as saying it once.
A2 (The Law of Crossing):
After crossing from the unmarked to the marked state, crossing again (“recrossing”) starting from the marked state returns one to the unmarked state. Hence recrossing annuls crossing.”

— George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form (1969)

Comment by Raven: the result of actively leaving a marked state is the same state as before entering the marked state — if and only if one ignores the history of changing states. A once-hopeful emigrant who returns to his birthplace is now in the same physical location as he started, but perhaps a different emotional state from his contentedly never-moved neighbor. A divorcée is as single as a virgin débutante or spinster, but the difference in experience is profound. The act of annulment makes a statement in itself about the marked state — as does the act of divorce about marriage, the act of cancellation about a contract, the act of repeal about a law, the act of overturning about a ruling, these are all value statements! — even though the effect in the present moment is merely to return to the unmarked state, the status quo ante. And judges should already know this; they deal with it often enough. It is also worth remembering that “unmarked” is as much a state as “marked”, “off” is as real a switch setting as “on”, zero as much a number as one, and “no” is as legitimate an answer as “yes” — rapists may not know this, but judges should. So if armbands are a “marked state” and nudity is an “unmarked state”... why must one be more inherently a “statement” than the other? (Armbands can be purely decorative; nudity can be explosively controversial; judges should know this too.)

Judge Chen wrote: “Nudity is not inherently expressive”

Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle translated: “Nudity isn’t speech. ... Chen noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that... nudity itself is not a statement of anything.”

By this reasoning, would someone have no First Amendment right to protest with a blank picket sign? Could he be arrested for doing so? Because unprotected while thereby “stating nothing”? (But would he indeed be “stating nothing”?)

When protesters under oppressive governments appeared in public with gags on their mouths as part of their protests, were they “stating nothing” because of that silence... or was that in itself the loudest possible statement they could have made? Could they be arrested here, because their conduct (absent audible expression) would be unprotected by the First Amendment?

We have seen religious-right-wingers argue that the First Amendment only defends freedom of (affirmative) religion, not freedom from religion — this is a claim to negate any protection from aggressive and invasive efforts to convert nonbelievers. It is distressing to see the same argument applied to freedom of speech. Can it really be true that the freedom of speech applies only to those who choose to literally speak out loud in audible words, and not those who choose otherwise? That there is no “freedom not to speak”?* That due to Tinker v Des Moines, one has the freedom to put on an armband or T-shirt... but now no longer the freedom to take it all off? Perhaps even pointedly and with emphasis?
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* Even sworn witnesses in court, under legal compulsion to speak, can appeal to the Fifth Amendment on this point.

2. Ignoring the Antonym, Antonin?

(Our Uniforms’ Message Was Clear; It’ ’s Your Nudity We Can’t Hear)

“I AM FREE.”
— painted on FEMEN protester’s nude body.

“And ye shall all be freed from slavery,
And so ye shall be free in everything;
And as the sign that ye are truly free,
Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men
And women also....”
— Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, 1899.

But I presume the Supreme Court was only coyly pretending to be culturally illiterate, just playing ignorant of the affirmative “statement” that is historically communicated and accepted in our culture: nudity represents freedom.

(This is, of course, the diametrically opposite implication from “raw material” recruits or “cannon fodder” or “property of the government [or other regimental organization]”... which, oddly enough, people put on uniform clothing to convey, an “inherent expression” I doubt even the current Supreme Court has ever had trouble perceiving.)

What does Liberty itself look like? A woman with her breasts uncovered — as in the 1916 US “standing Liberty” quarter, and Delacroix’s 1830 painting “Liberty Leading the People” (just recently defaced by a fanatic and repaired).

The nudist protesters are consistent with a very long symbolic tradition here.

(One of the most famous examples in English, or indeed all of Western, culture was not a symbolic statement of freedom at all, but quite operative... for Lady Godiva [Godgyfu, “God’s gift”] freed Coventry from her husband Leofric’s onerous taxed thralldom by her unclothed ride. “Truly Count Leofric liberating the city of Coventry from the aforesaid servitude confirmed his charter thus made by affixing his seal.” — Flores Historiarum 34, Vol. I, p. 576.)

Every conscious member in our society, from tiny children to elderly Supreme Court Justices, knows that clothing (such as a uniform) communicates social roles including dominance and submission, “property” and “owners”:

Prisoners and prison guards, enlistees and officers, workers and executives, patients and orderlies and nurses and doctors, maids and monarchs, pastors and popes or patriarchs — even bailiffs and judges, Your Honor! — state, express, admit, declare, announce, proclaim, or even collectively celebrate their status, membership, honors, shames, mastery, subordination, or other social roles: “We belong.”

So how can it be that the antonym, the erasure, the annulment of all these markings, is not a message just as clearly communicated?

“I disclaim all such roles, I am neither property nor owner of others, I am a free human being.”

Bona na croin, as the Irish Gaelic saying has it, [I’ll wear] neither collar nor crown.

(Ancient Irish warriors were famed for running fearlessly naked into battle; that sent a message!)

3. Turn, Turn, Turn

(Oh, WE Never Did THAT! Ignore The Records Behind That Curtain)

“But that’s how it always begins. Very small.”
— Egg Shen, Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

The irony is that up until 150 years ago governments in this nation let human beings be forced to disrobe at slave markets, because they were property, by law. Property had to obey other people’s orders about wearing clothing. Free human beings don’t. That’s the difference remaining: the free choice of the individual. And that’s what“s being tested now in San Francisco: are people free to choose? Or literally put in chains?

Once again, those in power assert that others must follow their orders about what to wear. At least, thank goodness, so far this time it is not silly fashion accessories like yellow stars or pink triangles — but once the principle of force over freedom is re-established, it could as easily be those as anything else; why not? That’s the temptation of power.

Today I’ll make only reasonable demands; next year, perhaps on April 1st, I might get bored or drunk and make silly demands (you must wear clown hats and red noses?); and eventually the ability to go past silly to cruel (burqas on pain of stoning? chastity belts? concrete overcoats?) may be just too clear and finally too hard to resist.

Oh but no, power-hungry leaders never go that far, do they? (Have we forgotten Jim Jones, former chairman of the SF Housing Authority Commission, once praised by George Moscone, Harvey Milk, and Willie Brown?) And their enforcers never just keep following orders that far, do they?

Yes, please tell us that, friend. Tell everyone. Tell our dead family members. We’d all love to believe you.

The Importance of Self-Ownership

First they ignore you;

then they laugh at you;

then they fight you;

then you win.

— M. K. Gandhi.

Of all the rights and freedoms that could ever be discussed in a constitution or anywhere else, it ought to be obvious that the first, most basic, underlying right has to be your right to yourself — to self-ownership — to possess and control your own body, rather than any other entity having that right.

Because otherwise you’re just a slave, and all “your” other rights are at the disposal of your owner.

This thought came to mind as the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, at the urging of a new member (Scott Wiener, a transplant from Pennsylvania and New Jersey), decided to take away San Franciscans’ control of their own bodies from them — for the public good, of course^* — and on February 1 started arresting citizens who insisted on still retaining control of their own bodies.

This was billed the “Anti-Nudity Law.”

Among those arrested, coincidentally, was Scott Wiener’s rival candidate for District 8 Supervisor (who had been a 2008 candidate for Mayor), as he was distributing campaign literature; but Wiener’s faction had insisted to federal district Judge Edward Chen, when the rule was being contested, that there was nothing “political” about it. Oh yeah?

The protesters who were arrested got a lot of mockery and insults from the brave, brave Internet lurkers and newspaper commenters for having had the personal courage to take the legal, financial, and physical risks involved in confronting an unjust law to defend a basic human right. Not least, the mockery went, the protesters were too ugly to go nude.

For those who just don’t get it; who think the nudists’ rights depend on their neighbors’ approval, that is, it would be okay if these were beautiful starlets or female models or Playboy bunnies, just not drab ordinary-looking “95% male”nudists....

Does your freedom of speech or religion depend on whether other people agree with you, i.e. think your opinion or faith is pretty?

If they disagree (“Oh that ugly crucifix!”), do you lose your right to speak your own mind or wear your own religious symbol?

That’s the “heckler’s veto” — but the Supreme Court has never upheld such a veto.

The SF nudists’ point is that they own their own bodies — so they, not others, should be the ones to decide what they themselves wear... no matter hecklers’ opinions.

You want that freedom for yourself, do you not?

Or would you want an anti-Wiener empowered to order you stripped, made to walk the city nude, and arrested if you put on clothing? One power goes with the other.

If government can order you to be Catholic, it can order you to be Protestant — that was the whole English religious-war experience that led to our “freedom of religion” rule in the first place.

If the government can order you to be clothed, it can order you to be naked — same problem, same reason to have “freedom of skin.”

As Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Another person’s nudity (or clothing!) does not pick anyone’s pocket nor break anyone’s leg. It does no injury. It is “victimless.” The legitimate powers of government do not extend here.

______________________

But, you (or the city attorneys or Judge Chen) may say, all that still doesn’t make nudity a political statement.

Oh, so you don’t get the “political” connection to owning your own body?

Maybe you didn’t see Obama’s re-inauguration Master of Ceremonies stress the history of the Liberty statue on the Capitol Dome being completed overhead, just 150 years earlier, at Lincoln’s orders — during the Civil War, while the political question was still very much to be resolved whether black human beings owned their own bodies?

Still, right now, to this very day, there are people dying in this world from atrocities because governments do not regard them as having any rights over their own bodies.

Victims of human trafficking and slavery, e.g. sex-slavery, child-slavery, child-soldiers. Women denied life-saving medicine and surgery (e.g. abortion) at the whim or dogma of men, even when death comes so quick the fetus cannot survive. Girls killed for attending school to learn to read or have careers, rather than be lifelong illiterates forever dependent and subservient to husbands. Rape victims executed for being raped, or forced to marry their rapists without hope of divorce, or to bear their rapists’ children no matter the risk of death. Non-Muslims (particularly women) forced to submit to Sharia law provisions like the foregoing. Women, adolescent, pubescent, prepubescent girls, even infants, forced screaming against their will into savage un-anesthetized genital mutilation e.g. amputation of the clitoris. Beatings, whippings, and “honor killings” — for offenses like having purportedly talked with a man or boy. How can I bear to go on?

The Ukrainian topless women's protester group FEMEN goes around the world to draw attention to these horrible shameful problems, painting on their own bodies “My body, my rules” and “Women’s rights are human rights” and other short messages — which the news cameras do not ignore, only because the signs are living flesh.

For this they have been kicked in the face, gouged, torn, and beaten bloody by armed and armored police in full view of news cameras before being dragged off, thrown hard against concrete and into vans, and at least in one case (Belorussia) taken into the wilderness, beaten more, then left there to walk back to “civilization.”

Yet they keep coming back to protest again, for the same causes, and for gay marriage, and against the Euro-organized prostitution around major sports events (sex slaves and trafficking, remember?), and always for the human rights of others besides themselves....

Now if their “bare” expression were not political and very effectively so, why would it be met with such violence? (The police aren’t storming the fashion/passion magazines, whose photos are even more widely seen....)

So sure, have contempt of nudist activists getting arrested for the cause of having rights over one’s own body.

Meanwhile what have you ever done for the sake of those people dying of atrocities?

_____________________
* As one of Scott Wiener’s conservative supporters paraphrased Paul Harvey:

“The need to control the lives of others — manifested in the arrogance of the ɘviƨƨɘяgoяq statists who believe that they can engineer the perfect society by removing our freedoms, our liberties, our choices, our responsibilities and nudging us into their desired direction through power grabs and regulatory codes — can only originate from evil.”

(See more about this topic at The Unmarked State: Signifying Nothing?)

New Year’s Wish

With a new year coming soon, I wish for my nation (and all other nations) a year:

• without shootings or other violence in the schools, the places of religion, the streets, the homes, or anywhere else, really;

• with honest and competent politicians loyal to their people and principles more than their parties;

• with news media devoted to keeping their people informed of the truths that affect their lives, not only those that inflame their tempers or prurient curiosities;

• with citizens whose idea of citizenship is not to rise up and destroy their fellow citizens, but to protect them all.

May it be so.