RCP Complete




        I wanted to put all of RCP in one page here but it would have been too long so I decided to do this as an index page to tie it all together. 

       There are things that I would write that I know ahead of time. Ideas which come at once which have a lot more depth to them than just an idea, almost like remembering an entire book by the title, except sometimes for me they are of things I have not written yet. I just remember them almost whole. RCP may or may not be one of them. Life, the external environment, just selects which ones actually will get done, made, played out.

        The Notes I keep have a lot of ideas which I know in shorthand that represent things which are very long and complicated which I have not written yet, many which I never will, and some I would not even want to.

         The Radioactive Cereal Principle began with the sentence, "The Radioactive Cereal Principle first appeared in my notes about a year ago as a paper to be written at this time. If unsuccessful, then this is to try to put things now in a better perspective without saying too much now." The first sentence was actually originally even more overly-dramatic. As it was first written, it ended with, "...written at this time if all is lost." I scratched that last part out because if all was really lost, what would be the point of writing it? Writing it was in effect, an effort to reverse things, change direction. It was last-ditch, throwing everything I hoped to accomplish over years into one missive, one punch.

        As I have said in it above and in anything written about it, it is always a question of what to say and what not to say. I don't think it was as successful as I hoped, nor that it was ineffectual. It simply ended up like pushing everything back to be settled later. When I think of the ongoing problems it tried to address, I say later is not good enough, but that is not yet my call. I can think I should have tried harder, maybe if I said something more or said something differently, clearer results would have been possible. It was, I think, appropriate for the time.

        At the time I was about to try to obtain political asylum. It was well known both in my government, the United States, and in the country I applied to, that that was what I was going to do. If I got that far, to be registered, some measure of protection would go with that status, that of a political asylum seeker. That modicum of protection, real or imaginary, against possible retribution, real or imaginary, that my country might take for my trying to speak strongly about such things, freed me up to put as much into that paper as I dared, thinking if I handed it in with my asylum application, at least someone would read it, no matter what might have happened to me next. That idea that a record would be preserved which could not be as easily wiped out as people can be, emboldened me.

        I had no idea before applying of what it would entail in regard to citizenship, only that if it was accepted that I could stay longer, and that I might have to forfeit my US citizenship, which I would not have wished to do. The potential reaction of my government was the ultimate wild-card because under the present Administration, it has all the understanding and intelligence of a rabid dog, so returning might not have been possible either. Those who doubt that, that might call it paranoia, there are American citizens who simply have traveled abroad who cannot return without being told why, just as there are thousands who are not allowed to fly on airlines without being told why. At least if there was unwarranted blowback for me, unlike those others, I would have at least had an idea of why.

        I can say what it was not. It was not a stunt, not a bid for attention, not an attempt to evade anything. It was a legitimate request which ironically became more legitimate because of asking, that going out on a limb, and having it granted becoming more necessary the more likely it would have been to be accepted. Because it was not likely to be accepted without "permission" from my own country, it de-escalated. It ended up like a game of chicken in which neither side had to blink because the parameters changed. I was in a situation I would have rather had avoided but was determined to get to a hearing to put as much on record as I could, even if it was not to be made public, and that to get there I was willing to risk everything.

        So on November 13, 2005, I wrote the Radioactive Cereal Principle as a supplement to my political asylum application, not the first time I felt I was writing for my life, but more intense. I gave it with the paperwork the next morning. It took a lot of trips to Stockholm and probably discussions behind the scenes to 'allow' me to apply for political asylum in Sweden.

        France, where I should have been allowed to apply and even should have been allowed to be transferred to under the Dublin Convention (France was the first EU country I entered) wisely wanted no part of it, especially since under their law they probably would have had to grant it, or at the very least have given me a hearing. More friction with the US or being set up for embarrassment from the US they did not want and blocked it.

        The Venezuelan Embassy, with their country even more in a bad position in regards to my country's behavior and threats, (Chavez was saying that week that France had just told him he was about to be invaded or attacked) more or less prevented me from even going inside, having someone at the door repeatedly saying they were closed when calling repeatedly said they were open. It was probably wise as there is no telling what might have been erroneously alleged I might have said if I gone in. Yet by such repeated attempts to apply somewhere, almost anywhere, I showed I was not going to back down, and then was helped to apply for asylum there in Sweden before trying other raw nerves such as the Russian or Cuban embassies.

       And then, everything began shifting under my feet. That day the Army admitted to using White Phosphorus as a weapon. Later the New York Times broke the story on the not yet re-named "Terrorist Surveillance Program", aka the felonious illegal wiretapping at the direction of the President program, tripping off a few months of a constant barrage of scandals any one of which would have and should have brought down any other government by forcing resignations.

        But I still was not about to give up. I thought I might get a hearing still in December and was given a date to supposedly make a statement. Hoping I would get a chance to get something else on record, I wrote The Radioactive Cereal Principle Part II, or RCP2, the day before the interview, on December 7th, and tried to go much further, far enough I thought that it would not have been possible to turn back. "If I hand this in," I thought, "I may never have any free choices ever again," the course of my life would be preset, determined by that one choice.

        This time I emailed it a bunch of places first. Again, I just wanted a record of it preserved if things did not go well for me for having written it, to say the least. And then the wait began, a long agonizing silence while my fate was being decided. I don't know if I said too much or too little but most likely the right amount. With possibly some negative repercussions eventually let up, I was allowed back, so evidently did not go too far. I am comfortable that I was not intimidated or afraid to push it as hard as prudently possible, so I don't think I pulled back too much either. From the outset, I was told getting asylum was virtually impossible, so that caused me to see it in that light. But even knowing that, being on record was the point and not backing down was the point.

        Months in limbo later, the situation in the US was greatly different. Everything was in flux. An excerpt from a letter here written at the end of February 2006 sums up the frustration I felt of being in a helpless situation, with my life and fate to be decided by others. I was then shortly thereafter more or less told neither asylum nor a hearing would be given, but that a no-promises return might be arranged. Since I had been gone years now, had done what I set out to do, and had seemingly gone as far as was permissible for me to go, I returned, but intended to write a third part, this time regardless of the consequences, and focused instead on that.

        Things in the US continued to change. By the time I was ready to (and able to, still pissed off about that) write a Part III, the Democrats had won both houses of Congress, and it really had become pointless. The tide had turned, it no longer seemed necessary, and it was time to get back to other things. Exactly one year to the day after the "will work for peace for food and shelter" letter, I wrote a post on my blog about how much things had changed. The environment had shifted and I acknowledged such.

        Still, I went back to the beach where I would have written RCP3, and tried to sum it up as best I could. I have put that here as Not RCP3, because it is not, but it aims the same without the punch. What I can't say, perhaps should not be said. But there are always other things which can. Just because the environment is not the same as I expected, in many ways much more receptive to change and much less need for confrontation as before, that does not mean that all is settled. This is one of the greatest periods of change in American and world history, and now the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction. Not because the hapless Democrats have taken over a corrupted system, but because people are beginning to realize the need to be told the truth, and hopefully in government, they recognize the need to tell them.

        Democracy requires stewardship not by the legislators but ultimately by the public informed about what is really going on. Right now, not even the legislators are being told what is going on and they have made it quite clear they prefer to be out of the loop. The lies must end. The free ride is over.

        Without the public demanding both political parties in the US to actually represent their interests over corporate interests, other countries interests, the defense and oil companies interests in ways to the detriment and endangerment of it citizens, then it would be time to admit, the grand experiment in democracy, at least in the United States, is over and exists only in rhetoric and lies, about as factual as the disinformation and propaganda being served to them nightly by faux news broadcasts and talking point op-eds.

        The American Spirit of democracy and self-government has been asleep for so long it has rightly been mistaken for dead. Whether that is the case has yet to be proven, but if not, the acting has been uncanny.

4/18/07


 

 

© 2002 by Jared DuBois