You Are a Suspect. John Poindexter is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. By William Safire. [Headlines From The NY Times]

According to this editorial, the "Total Information Awareness" program that the Pentagon wants to implement is included as part of the Homeland Security bill now being approved by Congress.  As described by Safire, the plan would open a number of commercial databases - not just the banking transactions, phone records, e-mails and travel plans mentioned in my previous post on this topic, but also your grades, credit card purchases, websites you visit, prescriptions medications you buy, magazine subscriptions and various events you attend - and allows them to be crossreferenced with any information the government already has - drivers license records, passport information, any judicial or divorce proceedings, complaints made to law enforcement officals about you, and so on. 

Something interesting - and more than a bit disconcerting - is the person behind this idea, and who, presumably, would be running the program: former Admiral John Poindexter. 

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

I probably shouldn't be surprised that he's still in government service, but I am.  The felony charges against him were not dismissed because they were not true, but because they weren't allowed to use the incriminating testimony he gave to Congress against him. Given the collective Republican hissy-fit over President Clinton's lies regaring his private life, it seems more than a bit hypocritical for them to have appointed an admitted liar to run the "Information Awareness Office", a department of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Even those who feel that the loss of privacy is acceptable in light of the need for safety should be concerned about a program being created and implemented by Admiral Poindexter.  He has already shown that he lacks good judgement and considers the truth disposable if disposing of it furthers the aims of the government.

Usualy, when I hear that some fundamentalist or conservative Christian group is promoting a boycott of some childrens' book or books, I just shake my head a bit and wonder why they don't think that parents can actually control what their children read as opposed to needing the material to be made unavilable to all children, even those who's parents wouldn't find the book(s) to be objectionable. 

So when I first heard, today, that Ex-Witch Ministries and Focus on the Family were promoting a boycott of Scholastic Books (the publishers of the Harry Potter series, among others), I figured this was just another example of the usual tempest in a teapot these things turn out to be.  It was with a bit of surprise, then, that I found myself agreeing with them on one of their major points. 

In this particular instance, they are not asking for a boycott of all Scholastic products, nor are they trying to get any books pulled from regular bookstores.  Their specific issue is with the Scholastic Book Fairs, in which children can purchase books through their schools, and frequently, the books offered at these fairs also have lesson or discussion guides available so that the teacher can use the books in class.  Their specific concern is that some of these books may be teaching Witchcraft, "New Age" beliefs or Wicca, and that religion should not be taught in schools (though I have to admit, they're not as quick to object when its their own religion being taught, but I'm going to let that slide for the moment).

Most of the books that they indicate having concerns about - including the Goosebumps series, the Harry Potter books, and Midnight Magic - are pure fantasy, and don't do anything to promote or teach about religion.  There's a big difference between fantasy magic - the typical witches, wizards, goblins, ghosts and other denizens of the night - that populate many of the highly imaginative childrens stories that have been popular throughout the ages, and spiritual magick (spelled with the "k" on the end, to help make it easier to tell the difference when reading something), which is the kind of magick practiced by modern Witches, Wiccans and many Pagans.  Fantasy (or "Hollywood") magic is all about flash and sizzle, shooting lightning bolts from your fingertips, flying, creating objects out of thin air and other such powers.  These are not things you will see a spiritual Witch doing.  Spiritual Magick is more about focusing energy and will on a specific goal to bring about a desired change.  It involves recognizing and attuning to the divine energy that is in all of nature as well as within the self.  No flying brooms, no disappearing in a "poof" of smoke. 

Recently, though, there's has begun to be a melding of the two kinds of magic(k) in fiction aimed at teenagers.  While it's still a fairly small market, these books use the flash and sizzle of Fantasy magic to catch the attention of the teens, and then promote spiritual magick as part of the storyline.  The most blatant series of thse that I've seen is the "Teen Witch" series by Silver RavenWolf, which are published by Llewellyn publishers.  While I'm not fond of the "Teen Witch" books, they are being published through one of the largest occult publishing houses that exist and are written by a noted Pagan author, so its not that big of a surprise to find that there are themes throughout the books that help to teach kids about Wicca, Witchcraft and/or Paganism.

One similar series, however, appears to be the "T*Witches" series published by Scholastic and offered through the school book fairs.  Now, I've not read these books personally, but after looking through the website for them today, I actually have to agree with the Ex-Witch Ministries in saying that these books are not appropriate for sale through the school.

The first thing that caught my eye is that the website uses the "magick" spelling, which is something I've rarely seen outside the Pagan community.  I then looked at the "Spellbook" section, and was rather surprised at what I found there.  The site offers "Magick Tips" for kids wanting to write their own spells, and then gives kids the opportunities to post the spells they've written for other fans to read, and, presumably, try.  The "Magick Tips" does have a few suggestions that, from the standpoint of a spiritual Witch, are rather "out there" - for instance, rhyming isn't mandetory when writing a spell -- it just makes it easier to remember, and making up "nonsense" words won't accomplish anything.  But most of the other suggestions - talking about the moon phases and timing of spells, the use of herbs and working out in nature - sound like they could come straight from any Witchcraft 101 book. 

Reading through some of the spells in the "Spellbook" section, I have to say they don't sound or look all that different from some of the spells I've seen from full-fledged Witches and Wiccans.  Now, granted, while providing tips on how to write spells, they don't (at least on the website) to into such depth as to provide lists of correspondences (i.e. Herb "A" is good to use for Issue "1"), so it seems that the kids doing the writing are sort of just "picking" specific times when their "spells" should be done or what herbs to use, but the basic concept is still there. 

One thing I did find very irritating is that the website has a catagory for "love" spells, but no discussion of the ethics of that kind of working.  In most Wiccan or Witchcraft traditions, casing a spell to cause someone to do or feel something that goes against their own free will is considered highly unethical.  Love spells intended to cause a specific person to fall in love with the caster fall under that category and are strongly discouraged by many Witches, Wiccans an Pagans.  If the people writing these books and running the website wish to teach spiritual Witchcraft through these books, it would be good if they could teach the ethics that go with it as well.

So, this, then, is where I actually agree with those planning the boycott.  These books, from the way they're promoted on the website, appear to very definately cross the line between being an entertaining and imaginative fantasy into promoting or teaching a specific religion.  I know I'd be very upset if some "Christian" Teen novels made their way into the schools, and I can't blame Christian parents for being upset about this particular series.  There has to be consistancy on this kind of an issue for the Constitution to mean anything.