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Letters to the Editor
I sent you a few bucks. Keep up the Frontiersman. —GWB, of Baxter, Tennessee
Greetings Sam As is usually the case, after I re-read the "Letter to the Editor" [January 2013] ... it occurred to me that there are (always) many more important facts — proverbially too many to include in a short newsletter article. But one that especially came to mind because writing in Kool Aid with twisted paper may not seem so difficult, was another factor I didn't mention. I welcome you to publish this too, or not to, at your discretion as you see fit. One factor which made it more difficult & even physically painful after a very short spell & unable to keep my writing & dipping hand steady ("dipping" into the Kool Aid in a hidden-double-bottom used milk carton), was that when certain guards "caught" me or even suspected I was doing this, they'd rush to the cell, pull me out, trash my mattresses (2 floor mats), what inmail I had received strewn all over the cell like a tornado had hit — all as part of their war games against the resourceful prisoner. Their main tool in this sleuthing detection was they had a ceiling camera on me 24/7 for 51 days nonstop. Never any way to tell if they were at the viewing monitors, though it was probably 35% and 75% of the time. Couldn't even use the toilet without their pervert eyes staring. Gorge Orwell would blush. So I had to do all the Kool Aid writing in a stealthy manner. This entailed having my back to the camera, thick suicide quilt draped broadly over my shoulders (though I'd never expressed any suicidal notions), & under the blanket my arms with hands protruding blocked by my body & blanket, write without much hand or arm movement, plus reclining in such a way that had the so-called bed, a metal protrusion rising about 20 inches from the floor, blocking some of the view. It was anything but comfortable positioning. Almost contorting. Within 5 minutes even a strong, muscular neck would be in pain, & I stayed at some of those letters & song writing in Kool Aid, often from 11 PM to 5:30 AM — choosing the night time, when the guards had their own agendas, less likely to "detect" & retaliate against me. I've tried to tell the prison mongering public for about 30 years that US prisons are the new USSR. It creeps more that way, in here, & subtly out there, each year. We were even forced to grow our beards & mustaches (no shaving allowed), till my mustache couldn't be kept out of my mouth, chewed on with my food, no soap allowed whatsoever for hand washing, & no spoon or fork etc for eating — so eating meals was essentially a deliberate "program" to degrade & indignify us, by forcing us to either risk a health disaster by dragging our unclean hands into the deep-dish TV dinner trays of slop, or press our bearded, scraggly faces into the food to lap it out like a dog. When picturing this, remember this was the special "mental health treatment" unit for "care" (TLC), and don't forget that just a few years ago, the California prison system changed its many-decades old name from the "California Department of Corrections" to the "California Department of Corrections AND REHABILITATION." So, this is how they "rehabilitate." (I doubt that more than one prisoner out of the past thousands run through there, poor saps, ever managed the difficult task of extracting enough unbroken suicide blanket threads to twist a nylon string that would cut a flimsy flat "spoon" out of the TV dinner trays — impossible to tear even a little with sharp teeth. When they found the "spoon" hidden in the cell, oh, all hell broke loose!). —a prisoner
The Diary of Cyber Sleuth: Day Two Fiction by Sam Aurelius Milam III You never know. Day Two was the next day after all. I guess a little background might be a good thing. OK. I work for NSA. That's National Security Agency. Worked here for about 15 years so far. While everybody else was trying to climb the ladder, I was trying to go sideways. Never wanted to get into management. Liked what I was doing. So I worked hard, learned everything there was to learn, including how to stay out of sight. While the others moved up, I moved sideways. Moved out of sight. I'm a natural hacker. It's an attitude. You still have to have the training but, most important, you have to have the attitude. Part of the attitude is I snoop a lot. Hell. My job is to snoop. Officially, it's to snoop outside of NSA, wherever the bosses tell me to snoop. I also snoop inside NSA but I'm good enough at it that the bosses don't know about it. Found an unused conference room at the end of a hallway in the basement. Full of boxes, old furni-
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ture, and dust. Bingo.
That was a few years ago. First thing, I removed that room from the design plans for the building. Child's play, if you know how. Eventually, I even got the original vellums at the contracting firm replaced with very good fakes. Room doesn't show on them, either. Now, nobody but me even knows it's there. Facilities guys? Contractors? Hell. Dozens of them worked on moving things out, building things, installing things. No problem. They never remember anything anyway. All they ever think about is football and, well, you know. Anyway, little by little, I made some purchase orders and some work orders. Child's play, if you know how. I had all of the junk and boxes moved out. Had the room redecorated. Nice walls, nice floor, new furniture, really beefy air conditioning system because I had plans for a lot of really beefy equipment. Got a security door but I went low tech. Just a padlock. From the outside, it looks like a janitor's closet. Even says that on the door. As I was getting it all done, I kept deleting the work orders and the purchase orders. Deleted all the records that anything had ever been done there. All the records are gone and nobody ever came here but facilities people and contractors. Nobody remembers the place. Gotta go. The Bit Left from The Big Lift Sam Aurelius Milam III Some time ago, I watched an old movie called The Big Lift. It was released in 1950 and told a story that was set in Berlin, during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949. So far as I could tell, the movie was accurate, historically. It was an interesting story and worth watching once but maybe not worth watching twice, except for one redeeming feature. A Ground-Control Approach operator, Master Sgt. Hank Kowalski, played by Paul Douglas, was one of the main characters in the story. He had a local German girlfriend named Gerda. During much of the movie, the Master Sgt. made a concerted effort to convince Gerda that the United States was better than the Soviet Union. From her point of view, there wasn't much difference. Nevertheless, she was a very bright young lady. She did a lot of research, a lot of reading, and learned a lot about both the United States and the Soviet Union. A conversation between Kowalski and Gerda near the end of the movie was, in my opinion, the high point of the story. Gerda, in a fit of exasperation with Kowalski's efforts to convert her, recited to him a laundry list of things that were wrong with the United States. It seemed to me to be a credible and accurate list for the time. He demanded to know where she'd obtained her information. She told him that she'd read it in a book, written by an American author. Kowalski then demanded to know where she'd obtained the book. She told him that she'd bought it at the PX. So, he told her, she read bad things about the United States in a book written in the United States, published in the United States, and delivered by the U.S. Army to be sold to American servicemen in the PX. He challenged her to go into the Soviet District of Berlin and find a book written by a Russian, published in the Soviet Union, and delivered by the Soviet army to be sold in Berlin to Soviet soldiers. It was the dawning of a great light for Gerda. Suddenly she realized the difference. Even though she considered the United States to be every bit as flawed as the Soviet Union, the difference was that, in the United States, it was acceptable to say so. As long as it's still acceptable to openly condemn the U.S. government, and to demand its termination, then there will still be at least that difference, if no other. If we can still call those filthy pigs the rat bastards that they are, and get away with it, then we can still hope. You can test it for yourself. Start getting vocal in public. Speak loudly enough to be hard at the next table in restaurants and libraries. Say seditious things over the telephone. Fill your email messages with opinions of what you think should be done to the people in government. If you get away with it, then we can still hope. Stray Thoughts
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Acknowledgments My thanks to the following: SantaClara Bob; Lady Jan the Voluptuous; my mother; Dewey and Betty; GWB, of Baxter, Tennessee; Millie, of Baltimore, Maryland; Eric, of Ione, California; and Carl, of Gramling, South Carolina. — editor
Useful Units of Measure Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by David, of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Love Notes Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by David, of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Frontiersman Subscriptions and Past Issues — Printed copies of this newsletter, either subscriptions or past issues, are available by application only. Cancellations — If you don't want to keep receiving this newsletter, then return it unopened. When I receive it, I'll terminate your subscription. Reprint Policy — Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this newsletter in its entirety or to reproduce material from it, provided that the reproduction is accurate and that proper credit is given. I do not have the authority to give permission to reprint material that I have reprinted from other sources. For that permission, you must go to the original source. I would appreciate receiving a courtesy copy of any document or publication in which you reprint my material. Submissions — I solicit letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them. Short items are more likely to be printed. I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece. Payment — This newsletter isn't for sale. If you want to make a voluntary contribution, then I prefer cash or U.S. postage stamps. For checks or money orders, please inquire. For PayPal payments, use editor@frontiersman.org.uk. In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc. I don't accept anything that requires me to provide ID to receive it. — Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor
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