Subject: SWAT Team busts writer for his books
From: feralhouse@aol.com (Feralhouse)
Date: 1996/05/16
Message-Id: <4ngq14$28f@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.conspiracy,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.reform
The following is a letter that is gaining signatories in order that the
publishing industry trade mags, and national newspapers and magazines view
its significance. Anyone who wants to sign on the letter can do so. It
would be good to also list some professional affiliation.
Thanks,
Adam Parfrey
Feral House
feralhouse@aol.com
Publishers and Editors Defend One of Their Own
It's a nice sentiment when publishers, booksellers and librarians join
forces for "Banned Books Week." But paying lip service to the repression
of past decades must not blind us to civil rights abuses occuring today,
as is the very recent case of Seattle author Jim Hogshire.
Hogshire is a writer with books published by Carol, Loompanics Unlimited
and Feral House, and magazine articles appearing in diverse and
prestigious magazines like Harpers, Esquire and GQ. Despite Hogshire's
extensive credentials, it's not difficult to understand why authorities
would be angered by his work. His 'zine, "Pills-A-Go-Go," to be
anthologized in June as the Citadel Underground book Pharmaceutical
Nation, refuses to genuflect before institutional patriarchs like the AMA,
FDA, even the DEA. His Loompanics books, You Are Going to Prison and Opium
for the Masses, contain material with a striking anti-authoritarian
subtext.
So when Seattle police received a "civilian informant" letter filled with
obviously preposterous information - such as the whopper that Hogshire was
synthesizing heroin from the over-the-counter cold pill, Sudafed - the
authorities did not toss the document into the trash, as usually happens
to snitch letters filled with misinformation. The police instead parlayed
the obviously kooky grudge note as a pretext to conduct a SWAT team
invasion of Hogshire's apartment.
On March 6, 1996, at least two dozen masked and ninja-suited Seattle SWAT
cops conducted such an invasion of Hogshire's apartment. Heidi, Jim's wife
of five years, returned from a supermarket to discover her husband
handcuffed and pinned to the floor. while paramilitary police were
ransacking their belongings. Heidi, an employee of Merck & Co. in Seattle,
was also hogtied and booked into jail for charges that were not made clear
until more than 72 hours following their arrest. It should be noted that
both Jim and Heidi have no prior arrest records.
It's clear that the police were disappointed by what they found -- or to
be more precise, by what the could not find at the Hogshires' residence.
Seizing books, tax records, legal and collectible firearms, the cops
zeroed in on several dried and stemmed poppy pods wrapped in cellophane.
It was this batch of dried flowers, available from most florists,
nurseries and craft shops in America, that prompted the King County
Prosecuting Attorney to charge Jim Hogshire with cultivation and
possession of a Class Two felony drug. Antique guns seized from the
apartment, though fully legal, provided "sentence enhancements" for the
prosecution so that Hogshire would be saddled with additional years in
prison if he could be found guilty of cultivating and distributing a Class
Two Felony drug - those ubiquitous dried poppies.
Both Jim and Heidi were forced to spend several days in jail before
colleagues could ante up bail money. In preliminary court proceedings,
attorneys from the King County Prosecuting Attorney's office attempted to
convince the judge that Hogshire's guilt for the crime of cultivating and
distributing opium hinged upon his authorship of a book titled Opium for
the Masses. Ranted one prosecutor: "The book is called Opium for the
Masses not Opium for Me," missing, of course, the title's ironic use of
Karl Marx's famous aphorism. Pages from Opium for the Masses were xeroxed
and attached to the overreaching and hysterical search warrant, marked
"Exhibit B."
The cultivation and distribution charges pinned on Mr. Hogshire seemed so
ridiculous to the District Court judge that he spent little time
dismissing all his charges. Nobody in the history of Washinton State (or
any other state to our knowledge) had ever been convicted of cultivating
or distributing poppies, much less for possessing them. The prosecution
continues to pursue a poppy possession charge against Heidi Hogshire, and
further vows to refile charges against her husband. The Prosecuting
Attorney's office has three years in which to refile charges, and continue
its pointless and vindictive persecution.
Not content with terrorizing the Hogshires with a SWAT raid, confiscating
their property and charging the two with very serious crimes, authorities
from the prosecutor's office threatened the Hogshires' landlord with
criminal action unless she served her tenants an eviction notice. As a
result of such action, taken against individuals not convicted of any
crime, is a certain violation of the Hogshires' civil rights. As of
mid-May, the Hogshires have racked up a total of $20,000 in legal fees
that they can ill-afford to pay.
Jim and Heidi Hogshire have become the subject of intimidation and
selective harassment in large part due to the content of Mr. Hogshire's
articles and books. Such actions must be condemned and stopped before it
spreads like a poison against the bulwark of free speech protections
everywhere.
The individuals named below demand that Seattle's King County Prosecuting
Attorney's office rescind its vindictive actions against both Jim and
Heidi Hogshire. We also request that Mr. Hogshire be granted reasonable
remuneration for legal fees, resettlement, and the illegal and wanton
destruction of his property.
Adam Parfrey
Publisher
Feral House, Inc.
Michael Moynihan
Managing Editor
Feral House, Inc.
Michael Hoy
President
Loompanics, Unlimited
Dennis Eichhorn
Editorial Director
Loompanics, Unlimited
Jason Vest
Boston Phoenix
Kevin McDonough
Carol Publishing
Subject: Groundless Seattle drug raid yields nothing, ruins lives...
From: cavasin@convex.com (Vince Cavasin)
Date: 1996/05/13
Message-Id: <4n7rt5$cth@newshost.convex.com>
Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs,rec.drugs.misc,rec.drugs.chemistry,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.libertarian,alt.society.civil-liberty
hi,
this is my second posting of jim and heidi hogshire's story. I apologize if:
1. this is an improper forum for this article
2. you've seen it before
3. you agree with the cops that certain groceries justify terrorist tactics
I cannot guarantee that I will be able to answer email questions about this.
I will definitely not respond to complaints related to any of the above three
points.
I would like to thank all who have supported jim during this ordeal. He now
has a court date, but there's not much else to report.
I'd also like to thank Anthony Garcia for editing this article.
thanks for your time,
vince
-----------------------
Some of you my be familiar with my friend Jim Hogshire. Jim is a
staunch libertarian, journalist, author, and he holds a masters degree
in Italian literature. He makes his living publishing a 'zine called
"Pills-A-Go-Go", writing magazine articles (including many on asset
forfeiture) and writing books.
Jim has never hurt anyone, has no criminal record, and lives quietly
in Seattle with his wife Heidi and a bunch of birds. He is being
targeted by the government because of his writings.
Two of Jim's books that come immediately to my mind are "Sell Yourself
To Science", which is about America's hypocritical organ-donation scam
and how it hinders, rather than helps, people in need of organs (Jim
and the book appeared on the Phil Donahue Show); and "Opium For The
Masses" which describes the history, chemistry, and biology of opium,
its medicinal and recreational uses and compares opium to the body's
own natural endorphins. This book also describes how to grow poppies
and make opium tea from commercially available and legal poppies.
This preparation is as natural as any herbal tea sold by GNC or whole
foods, and has been used for centuries to treat pain, diarrhea,
coughing, stress, even diabetes. I own scores of books on scores of
topics that I consider more subversive, controversial and anti-
government than anything Jim's ever published. In fact, some of these
books were published BY the government.
Some of you may consider the following account to be far-fetched or
fictitious. I've known Jim for 5 years and I assure you, he's not
making this up. If you think this kind of shit can't happen in
America, or can't happen to you, I hope this story convinces you
you're wrong.
Jim had a previous encounter with the War on Drugs a few months ago,
when a Seattle police officer saw (legal) chemicals in Jim's
illegally-parked car and concluded that he was a drug manufacturer.
That episode resulted in Jim and his wife being held in a mobile
police station for hours while the area swarmed with cops, chemists,
and "crime scene" tape. During this time the cops tried to get them
to confess and to allow them to search his car; there was nothing to
confess, but after three hours of interrogating him and refusing to
let him go, Jim gave them permission to search. After all this the
cops decided not to search the car but kept it and finally let Jim and
Heidi go. Later that night they called him and told him it was over,
and that he could pick up the car (which they never ended up searching).
This current incident involves a nutcase fellow Loompanics writer, Bob
Black (author of "The Abolition of Work"), whom Jim agreed to put up
at his place for a night. Jim ended up throwing Black out after he
got drunk and belligerent and accosted Heidi. To get revenge, Black
contacted the cops and told them a lie: that Jim had a drug lab in his
apartment.
This statement led a SWAT team to Jim's place a couple weeks ago. They
pounded on the door and yelled at him, and when he released the latch
they forced their way in, guns drawn, throwing him against the wall,
shouting and breaking things. The *bomb squad* actually showed up for
good measure. NOTE THIS: The cops, who were heavily armed, made no
attempt to evacuate the apartment building before the raid. Jim lives
in a large, densely-populated old apartment building in Seattle.
innocent neighbors lie in *every* conceivable direction the cops could
have shot, had they shot. Ordinance commonly used by SWAT teams can
*easily* penetrate apartment walls, in some cases even exterior brick
walls. In conducting this guns-drawn raid, the cops not only put Jim
and his wife at deadly risk, they put all of their neighbors at risk
as well.
Here's Jim's account of the aftermath of the search:
They did break a window, they did leave fast-food trash all over the place,
they did smash a typewriter, they did burn part of a bookshelf with one of
their field drug tests, and they did leave broken vials of caustic or acidic
chemicals (complete with prominent warnings on them) lying around the house
in different places. The place smelled like dog shit so we thought they'd
let their drug dog take a dump in the place. It turned out to be the
chemicals.
Oh yes, I don't know how many pairs of rubber gloves were left in the place,
one pair was stuffed into a box containing stationary.
Honestly, the place was t-r-a-s-h-e-d ! Drawers pulled out, dumped and
thrown around. A chair tossed on a bed along with carefully kept records
and files absolutely strewn around the house. Some of them walked on.
They also kindly left two phones off the hook so we could not receive any
messages.
They hauled Jim and Heidi off to jail, held her for 2 days and him for
3. No charges filed and he wasn't allowed to see the search warrant
till after he got out. Eventually Jim was charged with "posession of
opium poppies with 'intent to manufacture or deliver'", Heidi was
charged with simple posession. Their apartment contains no special
manufacturing or delivery equipment. Opium poppies are legal in
the state of Washington and Jim gets his at the GROCERY store.
Jim is also charged with the "enhancement" of "committing a crime
while 'armed'". THIS IS NOT A CRIME IN ITSELF, SIMPLY A WAY TO ADD
YEARS TO A PRISON SENTENCE RESULTING FROM CONVICTION OF ANOTHER
CRIME. The gun in question is a Marlin camp carbine--a gun that is
actually *exempted* from the assault weapons ban! The gun was
unloaded and stored in a closet. This is the kind of insane law that
our friends at the NRA lobby for to prove that they're "tough on
criminals who use guns". Even when the criminal's only crime is
buying groceries.
Jim and Heidi's landlord is trying to evict them from their apartment,
because of the police charges. They are appealing.
Jim and Heidi's lives have been turned upside down. Not only must
they defend themselves against unjust charges, they must defend
themselves against their landlord, they must pick up what's left of
their apartment, they must explain things to their neighbors and they
must beg for money to pay legal bills in order to fight these charges
(and they are very committed to fighting--and winning). I, never one
to be very charitable, have avoided donating money to even the most
worthy causes in the past few months because I've been on a bill
payoff/saving kick, but I plan to send Jim a check that represents not
an unnoticed pittance but a real sacrifice. Why? Because I can
easily see myself in a similar situation. And I bet you can
too. Imagine the hopelessness of facing the prospect of several years
in prison, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, being evicted
from your apartment, having most of your possessions broken or
confiscated, having your spouse--who's only crime was living with
you--spend time in jail and facing the same charges as you, having
your income cut off (Jim is self employed, but how much time can he
devote to writing now? And what employer would let you keep your job
if they found out you were charged with multiple drug/gun felonies?).
Jim has set up a legal defense fund to receive donations, and promised that
any unused funds (if he should be so lucky; he's already spent close to $10k
and I know he didn't have much in the way of savings) will be donated to
organizations fighting oppression like this. PLEASE, if you can send Jim $5,
$10, $20, whatever, please do it, and do it today. If you can't send money
he'd appreciate words of encouragement. If you are religious he's asked that
you pray for him and Heidi.
Make checks payable to "Hogshire Defense Fund" and send them to:
1202 E. Pike No. 916
Seattle, WA 98122-3934
you can reach Jim via email at:
pagg@speakeasy.org
but please don't inundate him with questions. He can't talk much about the
case right now.
If you are interested in purchasing any of Jim's books, the number at
Loompanics is 1-800-380-2230. You can order over the phone for around
$15 per book.
Thanks for your support.
-Vince Cavasin
P.S. I feel compelled to remind you here that, if you ever find yourself in a
similar situation, DO NOT COOPERATE NO MATTER WHAT. NEVER give permission for
a search and never answer any questions without a lawyer present. 90% of the
time the cops are counting on you to cooperate or trip up and incriminate
yourself whether you're guilty or not. They are trained to make this happen.
Don't give them the satisfaction.
Subject: Black On Hogshire
From: capri
Date: 1996/06/10
Message-Id: <31BBF812.44EB@global2000.net>
Newsgroups: alt.slack,alt.zines,.alt.discordia
The following is an essay from Bob Black. I do not endorse, nor condone
any activities contained within. This is for informational purposes only.
MY DATE WITH JIM HOGSHIRE
by Bob Black
A blind date -- with Jim Hogshire! I was fired with
anticipation. It was arranged by our mutual friend, Mike Hoy of
Loompanics, so I knew everything would be all right.
I went to Seattle, in fact, en route to Port Townsend where I was
to do a story on "the people behind Loompanics" for a new magazine,
Curio. To make the trip financially possible, I had to kill a couple of
days before showing up at the Loompanics compound. Hoy suggested I "hang
with" Hogshire, a rising star in the Loompanics firmament with three
books in print, including Sell Yourself to Science and Opium for the
Masses: A Practical Guide to Growing Poppies and Making Opium.
Complementary topics, I noticed . . . you could get an organ transplant
with the anesthesia built in. The HMO's are always looking for shortcuts
like that.
After six arduous hours airborne, I arrived in Seattle on a
Saturday in mid-afternoon. A young woman held a sign with my name on it.
"So you're Bob Black," I said. "You're not at all like I imagined you."
It was Heidi, Jim's wife. Jim, she said, was asleep. She explained
that he kept irregular hours. She was the main breadwinner, working as a
"drug rep" -- a dream job, considering! -- but she wanted to quit and get
on SSI. Since I know something about the applicable law, we discussed
her claim (diagnosis: depression) in some detail. A med-school dropout
from, like Jim, a rich family -- his threw him out at age 17 -- Heidi met
Jim at college back in their native Indiana. He was already publishing
his well-known zine Pills a Go Go. As is typical of the declassed
bourgeoisie, the Hogshires cling to certain remnants of affluence despite
their modest means. Heidi, for instance, has never ridden a bus. And
then there are the drugs. Are there ever!
We got back to the Hogshires' $800/month apartment (across the
street from what they call "the fag building") in Seattle's hippest
neighborhood and I met Jim Hogshire himself -- a tall, thin,
fair-complexioned fellow with dark blond hair in a ponytail. He looked
older than he must have been. He wasn't noticeably happy to see me, but
at least there wasn't a pistol in his pocket. (That was later.) As I
was soon to learn, the restrained reception didn't mean anything. It's
just that Hogshire does not like to submit the way he feels to chance and
circumstance. He engineers his emotions pharmacologically. "One pill
makes you larger and one pill makes you small," and Hogshire not only
knows which is which but how much larger or smaller it makes you, and he
combines his pills for specific effects as a painter mixes paint on his
pallet.
A cup or two of opium tea put Hogshire in an agreeable, indeed an
expansive mood. It turned out that neither of us was all that familiar
with what the other was up to in the marginals milieu. Until then I'd
never seen Pills a Go Go, and he'd never seen most of my books. I gave
him a copy of Beneath the Underground. As authors, we agreed that
Loompanics was a peerless publisher: "They always play straight with
you," as Hogshire put it. I told him about some of my other publishers
who didn't, usually out of ineptitude, not malice.
As we'd already conversed at length by phone, Hogshire was
familiar with my mission. I said that the least I could do in return for
his hospitality was to talk him up in my article (after clearing anything
incriminatory with him first). So are you, I asked, a typical, or
legendary, self-empowered macho Loompanics author? With a triumphant cry
that, frankly, from what I'd seen of his condition and physique, I would
have thought was beyond him, he made a grab toward the wall for something
I hadn't noticed: the rifle that was leaning against it. He raised it
aloft and shook it with some further ululations of the sort I associate
with Muslims celebrating by firing into the air. In this impression I
was, as it turned out, much more disconcertingly right than I wanted or
expected to be. Jim said the gun was an M-1.
The conversation was frank and far-ranging. Hogshire left the
impression that, as befits a Loompanics author, for him nothing was
off-limits. He drank maybe two quarts of opium tea over twelve hours.
His flirtatious wife has lower tolerance, except for him, and drank less.
I've seen some real zoners in my time, and I don't pretend to be
straight-edge, but I've never met anyone whose life was so completely and
by conscious contrivance organized around drugs. For him, addiction is a
cause, not a curse, and he is apostolic about it. The opium is
Hogshire's baseline consciousness control -- his default setting. When
he wants to rouse himself to some major effort -- such as making a
telephone call -- he takes, not less depressants, but more stimulants.
Jim goes in for immediate gratification. He doesn't swallow
Ritalin pills, he powders and snorts them. He doesn't just wash down
Dexedrine pills, he chews them first for faster impact. And he knows a
lot about drugs, almost as much as he thinks he does. (Glue-sniffing,
he's written, destroys brain cells, "but so does breathing the air in any
city or town." As redwoods cause air pollution.) He boasted, "I can
make heroin out of Sudafed!" Just what the world needs. This man has so
much to give.
The Hogshire lifestyle is more than a little unusual, and I was
admitted to some of its mysteries in graduated stages. I'd already
noticed that Jim doesn't sleep the way most people do. Instead, he nods
out and in as the drugs dictate. He wasn't at the airport to pick me up
because -- in mid-afternoon -- he was zonked out. A few hours later he
nodded out again, complaining of a migraine. As he has a slave-girl to
pay the bills and run his errands, Jim has no reason to do anything but
surf the chemicals coursing through his veins and dabble in writing every
so often.
Stranger still was Hogshire alimentation. They do not, they
explained, eat meals, and mostly they don't even eat food. Jim pointed
out a huge pile of boxes of powdered, chocolate-flavored protein
concentrate, the stuff they feed to anorexics and AIDS victims. That and
vitamin pills are what the Hogshires live on. All they ate when I was
there was a bag of potato chips. There was nothing in their refrigerator
but what looked like the fossil remains of a pizza and a few beers left
behind by somebody else. (Alcohol, which Jim calls "crude," is the only
drug I know for sure he doesn't do.) The part about the irregular sleep
patterns I'd taken in stride, but as a food fancier, now I was taken
aback. Was this indifference to food (I asked) a drug side-effect? "I
never liked eating," Jim explained.
As the speed and the Ritalin kicked in, Jim warmed to me, or
maybe he just warmed. He expatiated upon his hobby, telephone
harassment, at great length and with obvious relish. I only remember one
of the anecdotes he related, but it was representative of the rest,
except for its anti-Semitic spin. Jim gained access to a Jerusalem
telephone book from which he gleaned some numbers. He placed a collect
call to somebody over there and (he recounted) had his fun with him:
Oy, Moishe, this is David from New York! We met at the airport.
Uh . . . I haven't been in New York for five years.
Of course not, we met at the Tel Aviv airport! (etc.)
Jim was just unable to contain his mirth over this witty prank. His
laugh began as a wheeze and rose to a modest cackle. Politely I nodded
and smiled. I was, after all, his houseguest. Jim also related
many tales of practical jokes perpetrated by his friends. One of them,
for instance, has a feces fetish. He loves talking shit -- on the phone.
The gentleman called somebody he knew wasn't home so as to get his wife
instead. He was (he explained) a medical researcher who had some
questions concerning the husband's stools. The wife was unable to supply
any specifics. "Well," said the caller, "maybe I can ask you a few
questions." How often do you defecate? What color are your feces? Do
they float? And so forth. Jim thought this was even funnier than his
own Jerusalem jape.
Why Hogshire hates Jews I learned a little later. The little
lady early on sounded me out to see if I was (as I am not) Halachically
Challenged.
It got to be very late at night in Seattle, which was three hours
later than in my time zone, and twenty hours after I'd gotten up. I
really wanted to crash, but my date Jim still had so much to share with
me. Specifically, his religion. Jim Hogshire, wasted WASP by birth, is
an Islamic fundamentalist. He claims to have converted five years ago.
His wife finally embraced the Faith a year ago. Bitterly he railed
against the Jewish-owned media which demonize Muslims. He showed me what
was in his in-box for current reading, a reprint from an anti-Semitic
publisher of an obscure old volume by a Russian Orthodox priest
collecting anti-Christian assertions and injunctions from the Talmud.
Why this was of interest to Hogshire, an anti-Christian himself, was not
clear. It certainly held no interest for me.
Elaborating, My Date complained at length about the way
the West abandoned the Bosnian Muslims to the tender mercies of the Serbs
and Croats, proof positive of the timeless anti-Islamic animus of all
Westerners. (Oddly enough, by then the Western powers had already bombed
the hell out of the Serbs and coerced them into a peace agreement which
greatly improved the Muslims' situation. Go figure.) But why was he
laying all this on me? I oppose the arms embargo and all other outside
meddling over there. I told him so early on, as I found the topic
tiresome and I was tired enough already. I am not well-known for my
influence on American foreign policy. Warren Christopher never returns
my calls.
Hogshire had, however, other examples of infidel iniquity to
deplore, notably the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980's. He thought it was a
distinctively and characteristically wicked Judeo-Christian plot to get
Muslims to kill each other. I thought it was the routinely ruthless
balance-of-power politics which all states practice on each other, until
the peoples rid themselves of all states, including Islamic states. I
don't think Muslims need much more encouragement to kill each other than
they need to kill anybody else. Nobody forced the Iranians and Iraqis to
slaughter each other except their own Islamic governments. Regarding
covert American support for the aggressor, Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
regrettably I had even less influence over Reagan and Bush than I do over
Clinton. Kissinger never returned my calls either.
What all this was leading up to was a junk-driven
jihad's-day's-night that caught me by surprise. I only wish it had
caught me napping, for that was what I wanted to be doing.
I was drawn into an argument which, I belatedly realized, My Date
was treating as an argument about religion. For me it wasn't. I'd gone
there assuming I was linking up with a writer like myself -- somebody
like me, somebody writing was important to -- a practitioner of the
Craft. For such as ourselves, what's crucially important are words,
meanings, connotations, contexts -- interpretation in the widest sense.
To read is to interpret. To write is to interpret. Reading and writing
are intellectually the same activity. Text is no more self-explanatory
than it is self-written. A recipe or a rule is as necessarily subject to
interpretation as a poem or a novel. If there is an omnipotent God, He
has the power to reveal Himself immediately to our understanding, as
mystics claim He's done for them. But if He appoints a human Messenger
to deliver the Message in the words of a natural language, be it Arabic
or English, He commits His Message to an interpretive community of
fallible humans. God knows this, since God knows everything. He must
expect us to try to understand His words, to take them at least as
seriously as any text of only earthly origin, using the best interpretive
tools at our disposal. God deserves no less. Lord Jim denounced me for
my "Western way of thinking."
In retrospect, it was absurd of me to expound hermeneutics to
Hogshire. Even if he were sober, sane and secular, this hophead wouldn't
have a head for ideas anywhere near that level of sophistication --
although they're really not so terribly sophisticated, at least they
shouldn't be to a professional writer with a masters' degree (according
to his wife) in Renaissance Italian literature. I thought I was steering
the conversation away from his Muslim manias toward a place where
dialogue was again possible. Either I was too late or it'd been a set-up
all along. I suggested we call it a night and agree to disagree, but it
was too late to calm Poppy Boy down. The uppers, not the downers, were
definitely ascendant in his bloodstream.
Instead -- this was maybe 2:00 A.M. Seattle time --
Hogshire ordered me out of his apartment. He was, as he later put it,
"screaming" at me to leave. It will be recalled that the only reason I
was there at all was because I had nowhere else to stay until I moved on
to see the Loompanics people in Port Townsend three days later.
(Hogshire saw to it that I never did.) Hogshire knew I was "sleepless in
Seattle," helpless and alone, just where he wanted me. He had me at his
mercy, and he made the most of it. I had nowhere to go, but I had to go.
If Hogshire were a real Muslim, not just a poseur getting back at his
parents, he'd know that hospitality is one of the foremost social and
moral obligations for Muslims. Even an unmannerly guest is to be
accomodated once you have taken responsibility for his lodging and
safety.
In the middle of the night I was ordered out of Hogshire's
apartment into an unfamiliar area of an unfamiliar city 3000 miles from
my home. I had no choice but to go, but I couldn't pack my bags fast
enough for the miffed Mufti. The surly Sunni ran up to me and tried to
grab me and, I suppose, overpower me. He was in no condition for that.
As gently as I could, I pushed him away from me, which, happily, I was
able to do without even hitting him. This Musselman is no muscleman. It
was bad enough what was going on without somebody getting hurt.
But the muddled mullah wasn't finished with winning our argument
the only way he ever could, by force. Now he grabbed, not me, but his
M-1 rifle, and he trained it on me. What made this even more crazy than
the rest of the encounter was that at this point Poppy Boy took up a
position between me and the exit. Was I supposed to jump out the window
or what?
It's just as well I hadn't read Hogshire's contribution to the
1994 Loompanics Catalog winter supplement, "I © Saturday Night Specials."
There he explained why shooting people with small-caliber guns, "the
coolest guns," is even more fun than shooting them with the expensive
"hand-held cannons" the gun stores push:
Small caliber ammo will bust into a human body just as well
as any other bullet, then, unlike more powerful ammunition, it loses
a lot of energy, gets deflected off bones or even solid tissue and
from there it's anybody's guess where it will end up. While a
larger caliber might punch right through causing a beautifully
scientific "wound channel," the .25 caliber might tunnel around a
person's innards, chopping up an intestine here, fragmenting into a
lung there, before lodging itself alarmingly close to a vital
organ.
Such a wound does more than sting a person -- though it
might not kill him. Not outright.
Such wounds might be exactly the type you want to inflict.
Why limit yourself to fatal wounds only? It's not always necessary
or desirable to kill someone, after all.
Even if not instantly dead, the person stands a good chance
of dying unless he gets immediate medical care. In many ways you,
the shooter, are the one who decides how fast that medical care will
be coming [emphasis added]. A few .22 slugs rototilling the abdomen
have caused serious internal bleeding. And it hurts a lot. It is
agony. Such a sight might be even more pleasing than a corpse,
depending on who you shoot.
And so what if the guy lives? He ain't never gonna be the
same again. Perforated intestines, a chopped up pancreas and the
like cause pain and debilitation for years, probably for the rest of
the dude's life. There are going to be operations to remove the
slugs and slug fragments from him, more operations to sew up all the
rips and tears and piece together the severed veins and arteries.
Hell, they might have to give the guy a colostomy!
These are the words of an armed sadist eager to shoot and kill or, better
yet, cripple somebody (an "even more pleasing" sight) as soon as he
thinks he can get away with it.
I turned the tables on the Muslim maniac. You know how the
towel-heads are always taking Westerners hostage? I took one of them
hostage. When Jim pointed his rifle at me, I grabbed Heidi as a human
shield. Whereupon (you surely suppose) he put his gun down. Not so! He
trained his rifle on his own wife! "The animal did not seem to care!" as
he wrote to Junto, referring to me, but describing himself. He was wired
up and fired up to shoot her if that's what it took to shoot me. Which,
come to think of it, is consistent with how Muslims regard women -- as
disposable. And with how junkies regard their junk -- as their top
priority. I suggested he (rather, I dared him to) call the police to
sort the situation out. "There's nothing illegal here," he said -- but he
didn't take the dare, and I was pretty sure that if I went over to the
phone, he'd shoot me. In retrospect, I'm totally sure. There was a lot
of "illegal" there, more than I was aware of, and not just the opium --
he had a bomb on the premises!
I was in a bad situation. It was a very real possibility that my
enraged, doped-up date would kill me whatever I did. I didn't want Poppy
Boy to hurt or even kill his wife, but that was at the very least a risk
he was prepared to take -- and for what? To eject a trespasser? All he
had to do was call the cops if he thought I wasn't leaving fast enough.
But he couldn't do that because he had all these drugs, all this drug
paraphernalia, four guns and a bomb to hide -- much more than I was aware
of at the time. (What he meant to do with the bomb, Allah only knows.)
Think about it. The drug lab was more important to Jim Hogshire than
human life -- not merely my human life, but even his own wife's life.
Unlike Poppy Boy, I'm an anarchist, but our society is not
anarchist. Poppy Boy got the drop on me with a rifle, otherwise, I'd
have taken down the spindly junkie on the spot, which would have involved
no effort at all. I thought I had a few anarchist comrades or colleagues
in the vicinity to help me (such as Mike Hoy and James Koehnline) but it
turned out that I didn't. Once out of the apartment, I called Koehnline,
who'd offered to put me up if I needed it, and tI explained that I did
need it. He reneged. Hogshire induced Hoy to cancel the interview for
which I was out there. All things considered, my direct financial lost
was about $800, much more than my monthly income. With some difficulty,
and more expense than I can afford, I made my escape from the area.
According to the Koran (surah 109):
Say: "Unbeliever, I do not serve what you worship, nor do you
serve what I worship. I shall never serve what you worship, nor will
you ever serve what I worship. You have your religion, and I have
mine."
Fair enough.
Was the whole thing an ambush, a set-up, a king-of-the-mountain
game whereby Poppy Boy publicized his sleazy self at my expense? I can't
be sure, but I have my suspicions.
Lord Jim Hogshire has written three books. I've mentioned two of
them. Like some Loompanics books, they promise more than they deliver.
Like a few Loompanics books, their legal advice is dangerously
unreliable. Hogshire's claim that "there's nothing illegal here" is now
in the courts. There was plenty illegal there, and his readers deserve
to know it in order to make their own informed decisions about the legal
risks they choose to take. There's something prescient about Jim's
latest book: You Are Going to Prison. He probably will. And it
couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Bob Black
PO Box 3142
Albany, NY 12203-0142
APPENDIX (NOT TO BE REMOVED):
TOP TEN REASONS TO BUST JIM HOGSHIRE
Direct from the home office in Croatan, here's a list of the top
ten reasons to bust Jim Hogshire:
10. To generate subject-matter and publicity for his next book.
9. So he can hit up suckers like Mike Hoy and Adam Parfrey for
big bucks.
8. Test case for his claim that it's legal to possess poppy pods
with the intent to manufacture narcotics from them if you bought them at
a florist shop.
7. To test his claim that withdrawal from opium addiction is no
worse than having the flu.
6. A felony conviction disqualifies him from legally possessing
firearms.
5. Being a bad man's boyfriend may perk up his sex life.
4. To take his rifle and 3 Saturday night specials away.
3. To take his bomb away.
2. To make sure he doesn't shoot his wife the next time somebody
uses her as a human shield.
And the No. 1 reason to bust Jim Hogshire:
1. He fucked me over.
A FUN(D)-RAISING APPEAL
I, Bob "Dice" Black, hereby announce the establishment of the Bob
Black Victim Compensation Fund. Donations large and small are invited
which will be applied to two purposes:
(1) Defraying the cost of reproducing and distributing copies of
"My Date With Jim Hogshire" and other materials explaining what really
happened that night, and what's happened since;
(2) Offsetting the direct financial losses inflicted on me by
Poppy Boy's publicity stunt. These include expenses in (and getting out
of) Seattle, payment for the article on Loompanics I never got to write,
and payment unreceived for an unrelated article written for, and
previously accepted by, Loompanics which was kicked back to me in
reprisal for offending Jim Hogshire. When you have no savings and an
annual income of $6,000, an $800 loss is a tremendous hit.
??
Subject: Re: Israel Confiscates Firearms
From: pagg@speakeasy.org (Jim Hogshire)
Date: 1996/02/23
Message-Id: <4gj88i$6e@eve.speakeasy.org>
Newsgroups: misc.survivalism
EXTRA! EXTRA! ZIONIST PROPAGANDA DISGUISED AS "CONSERVATIVE" "NEWS"
Virginia McMillan (jinks@u.washington.edu) wrote:
: C O N S E R V A T I V E C O N S E N S U S (tm)
: *****************************************************************
: Events * Analysis * Forecasts * Commentary * Readers' Opinions
: *****************************************************************
: N E W S F L A S H ::: World, National, Regional
: Distribution: World
: Editor's Desk
: Copyright 1996 by Conservative Consensus, ISSN 1074-245X.
: I S R A E L C O N F I S C A T E S F I R E A R M S
** WHAT?!! That's sounds like Big Brother alright! Even *Israel* is
confiscating firearms! Yowzah! Just read right here! *******
: ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES have ordered the security officer of the
: community of Yitzhar (Shomron - Shomron Regional
: Council) to collect all guns that are in the
: possession of persons that have not served in the
: IDF. This affects mostly students and new
: immigrants. The settlers stated that this places
: them in danger because they are now required to
: travel unarmed. [Source: Shomron News Service]
: _________________________
wait a minute what's this "all guns that are in the possession of persons
that have not served in the IDF" [IDF=Israeli Defence Forces]?
: ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY: It is both sad and disturbing to see what
: is happening to individual liberties in Israel, as pressure for a
: "peace plan" at any cost mounts. We think it is important for
: subscribers to understand fully the price that is being paid in
: Israel for the peace plan. At some point the question must be
: asked: if the plan is such a good deal for Israel, then why is it
: so hard to convince her citizens?
A DIFFERNET ANYALYSIS would be to see who the confiscation affects...
Well, since there is a draft in Israel for both men and women, anybody
old enough to serve gets to keep the gun. This is not new.
WHO DIDN'T SERVE in the army in Israel?
1) Any Arab. Any non-Jew. Even if a citzen, born and raised in
Israel, the military is *Jews Only*.
2) Draft evaders
3) People who are Jews but not yet 18, that is not yet in the military
4) Maniacal "settlers" (mostly from overseas, especially the US) who
have moved to Israel specifically to take the land away from Arabs. It's
the "chosen people" thing. God gave them the land. Alas, many of these
people (who have killed their share of Arabs, mind you) have not yet
served in the IDF. Many have.
Many of the US-born settlers have served in the Israeli military and keep
their American citizenship. In every other case American law revokes
your citizenship if you work for a foreign government let alone join its
military. Any settler who stands to lose his gun has only to join the
army like all the other Israelis.
: MANY THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE believe the peace plan is a prescription
: for disaster in the Mideast. It forces Israel to give up its
: buffer territories, an action which makes Israel less defensible.
: We are now hearing speculation that Jerusalem itself will be
: given up to some form of international control.
many thoughtful people don't fall for your whining even though you say
the right phrases ("gun rights" "conservative", etc.) n And Jerusalem
has always been under "some form of international control" from the day
the U.N. declared Israel a country. Israel owes its whole existance to
the UN, what's the problem now?
: AS ISRAEL DIVESTS itself of the buffer territories surrounding
: it, we almost guarantee that the next skirmish in the Mideast
: will resort to nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons as a
: first strike. There simply will be no time for an incorrect
: response. This encourages Israel's enemies to resort to the same,
: first.
translation: If Israel is hampered in its expansion there's gonna be
nuclear war. An interesting threat since only Israel has nukes. And
even Saddam didn't use any of the things you say "Israel's enemies" will.