The Smith-Suprynowicz Freedom Test

I found this in the current issue of the online magazine, The Libertarian Enterprise.

* Would [you] support the right of a nine-year-old girl to walk into a hardware store and, without signing anything or producing identification of any kind, pay cash for a submachinegun, several hundred rounds of ammunition, and a supply of morphine? If [you] wouldn't, then whatever [you're] in favor of, it isn't freedom.

When I first read this, I muttered, "Huh? What would a nine-year-old girl want with a submachine gun?"

Then, recovering, I reasoned that as long as she doesn't use it to initiate force against me or someone else, it really isn't any of my business. Or anyone else's.

Same reasoning goes for the morphine.

One of the biggest things we can do to enhance the police state that now governs us, is to believe that what other folks do that we may not like or understand (in the absence of initiation of force) is something that needs to be controlled.

I justify this by means of the requirements of man's life qua man, but if you want to justify it by means of the Second Amendment, all you have to do is read it. The right isn't limited by age, race or gender. Arms can mean guns, knives, swords, truncheons, brass knuckles, nunchuks or anything else. As long as they're not used to initiate force.

There is no limitations mentioned as to where one might bear arms. If one has the right to be in a place, one has the right to defend oneself there.

As for morphine, there is no mention in the Constitution anywhere that allows government to tell one what he may or may not ingest.

Remember: VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Tragedy of the Commons--Malibu Style

Southern California leftists are gnashing their teeth over the fact that the heavily socialized beaches are becoming as violent as prison exercise yards.

News of the strife has been reported daily , the past week or so, of the event at Malibu in which several feral photographers followed popular actor Matthew McConaughey to the beach, at which he planned to do some morning surfing.

Photographs of celebrities of Mr McConaughey's status sell for upwards of $1000 each--often much more. We've all heard of these photographers, called paparazzi (I know not why), following celebrities around in packs, and we've all seen the photos on tv, the net and 'pon the printed page--even if we don't peruse the idiotic tabloid newspapers and magazines at the checkouts of the supermarkets.

The current dust-up, as reported even on the national news, is a result of the fact that dozens of local surfers took umbrage at the intrusion of these very unhip interlopers and expressed their dismay in a number of unsubtle ways. Several cameras were destroyed and a number of individuals were bruised and contused.

Since not all the cameras were destroyed, visual records of the incident are everywhere. Local surfers promise more of the same if these invasions continue; paparazzi clamor for legal intervention.

In 1972, leftist airheads prevailed in convincing not terribly intelligent Californians to approve a referendum called Prop 20, the Coastal Initiative. 55% of those who voted, mostly leftists, hippies, people who want the use of the property of others for free and some beachside property owners who sought advantage by means of cronyism voted for this proposition. People who respect the right to property, a minority, vote against it. Once again, the dumb people prevailed.

But, what did they win? A huge, taxpayer-funded commission and bureaucracy that has a near-absolute stranglehold on all land within 100- to 200-yards of the Stalag California coast (the expropriated territory has since amended numerous times to include anything they can get away with--including entire coastal towns such as San Juan Capistrano). You can't build anything, building, fence or wall, remove or plant a tree in the coastal zone without the approval of the Coastal Commission.

Returning to the beach at Malibu, it's important to mention that among the many other provisions of the referendum is the requirement that public access be provided to all beaches and coastal areas (except, of course, areas the Coastal Commission decrees "off limits" for "environmental" reasons). This has required some property owners, in densely built areas and formerly exclusive beach communities, to lose a slice of the edge of their property to build accessways from the street to the beach for the public. Beaches, you see, are now public property.

Beachfront property owners have absolutely no control over the beaches adjoining their property--which should properly be a part of their owned land--which they'd otherwise maintain and keep neat just as they do the rest of their lot. They could also control the numbers and kinds of visitors to their homes, as do we all. Some could allow public access, as might be their desire, perhaps for a fee to offset maintenance costs.

Mr McConaughey and his friends could surf mostly undisturbed in the Malibu area, on a beach kept private by the residents for the use of themselves and their invited guests--a right they paid for when they bought property in that very exclusive area. They can, and would keep themselves free of the paparazzi, rampaging fans and people they would try to avoid on the street. Rabble like myself, and the many others who have chosen not to live on the beach can, on the one or two days a year when we go there, enjoy beaches in areas made available by their owners for public use.

One could pick a beach on which there are beer and margarita kiosks, or a beach where smoking is allowed, or one where there are no amenities at all. There might even be beaches where fat people in teeny swimsuits aren't allowed--as not to scare the whales. One suggestion is that the reason the occasional whale beaches itself is sexual desire, caused by a sighting of a group of fat chicks sunning themselves.

I find this preferable to the average Stalag California public beach, at which the bathrooms are hideous toxic waste dumps and rarely maintained, if they exist at all, there are no food nor drinks available, or the kiosks seem to be exempt from all cleanliness requirements, and the litter of "No Littering" signs obscures one's view of the waves.

One of the very best examples of The Tragedy of the Commons in Stalag California (and around the world) are public beaches and parks. Next, the California Coastal Commission plans to expropriate land near the Colorado River and Lake Tahoe.

He who thinks he owns property in Stalag California is delusional.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Climate Wars: The Revenge of the Algorians

Yet another of the US federal government's paid shills for the global warming hoax is calling for imprisoning Americans for their opinions. According to a story--one of the many stories that the US news media fail to notice--in Guardian.co.uk, Dr Robert Stadler James Hansen, a pseudo-scientist for NASA, the government agency charged with the task of making sure no one else is able to make it into space, is sacrificing whatever professional reputation he might have, for whatever future bones he might be tossed by algorian politicians for his professional treason.

Additionally, he doubles as the evil Algore's science advisor (according to his Wikipedia page), so I guess that takes care of any bit of honesty and objectivity that was ever part of his makeup.

Well, he's going to speak before Congress where he's going to recommend that oil company executives be prosecuted for "spreading doubt about global warming." He also says he plans to work to unseat uncooperative Congressmen, as well. I'm sure that'll go over well in the committee room.

First, in the absence of any other information, that bit tells us that Mr Hansen is a leftist. Only leftists (well, not only leftists), would think that dissent is a criminal offense. This also in view of the fact that the algorians have never even begun to prove their case.

Of course, they've never proven that second-hand tobacco smoke, as encountered in normal situations is harmful either.

The Big Lie. If enough influential people tell a lie enough times over a long enough period of time, it will be believed by many.

Let them freeze in the dark.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

While We're Talking About Oil

Greg Perkins, over at NoodleFood, found some wonderful technological news in an article on the TimesOnline website. Seems LS9, a computer firm in Silicon Valley, California, has genetically altered a microscopic "bug" which eats biological waste, such as wheat straw and wood chips and excretes petroleum. At a time of worldwide oil shortages, LS9, and other firms working along the same lines, could turn the OPEC nations into minor players in the energy production industry.

At a time when global oil demand is increasing daily and our anti-productivity Congress is keeping the world's most productive nation in neutral, inventiveness of this sort could restore America to its normal place as the world's leader in technological development. All LS9 has to do now, is keep the government out of it.

Call me a fan.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

.....And Now For Something Completely Different.....

After having placed B Hussein Obama in precise company with both Democrats and Republicans who long for a neo-feudal society of starving peasants, rendered immobile by government policies robbing them of the ability to own private vehicles, and even get approval to use public carriers, I now find myself in the very uncomfortable position of having to offer a limited kudos to the unsavory gentleman.

For months now--indeed years, neocon pundits have been talking about the need to treat captured al queda savages as we would enemy soldiers in a conventional war. Leaving aside, for the moment, the very flawed rationale for attacking Iraq in the first place, if we were going to do this, well, in both WW's I and II, combatants found out of uniform were considered spies and simply shot. POW camps were strictly for captured uniformed soldiers.

Instead, the Bush Administration, with the approval of the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the neocon media, has rounded up the usual suspects, seemingly irrespective of any proof of guilt, and stashed them in cages in America's little corner of the People's Paradise of Cuba. Forever.

No charges, no due process, no trials, no finite sentences. Forever.

Today, also on the afternoon tv talk shows, B Hussein Obama was quoted as saying, "Why can't we just follow the Constitution?" or words to that effect.

Hooray!

Well, why can't we just follow the Constitution? We'd have to observe due process. We'd have to find proof that each of these individuals actually committed a crime. We'd have to bring him to trial in which his guilt would have to be demonstrated to the satisfaction of a jury.

If the Administration has no proof of individual wrongdoing, why are we holding these individuals? Where does it say in the US Constitution that its tenets apply only to Americans? Is our Republic on such shaky ground that we can't stand to apply these principles of Jurisprudence to all?

Or should we simply shoot them as spies?

Thanks, Senator, for a brief moment of lucidity with respect to the Principles under which we (ought to) live and which (ought to) constrain our sadly misguided federal government.

First you will be given a fair trial, then you will be shot.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Drill For Oil? That's Incredibly Naive!

I don't often watch Keith Ubermann--who wants to listen to an ex-sportscaster with a minor speech impediment talk about politics? Ok, as a good, politically correct libertarian, I have to apologize for calling him an ex-sportscaster. Problem is, I went to Fox to watch O'Reilly, but he started right off accusing "the evil oil companies"of price fixing, monopolizing, trying to profit at more than 4%, and probably child dismemberment. When it comes to anything sexual or anything involving oil, O'Reilly must have serious issues. There is no rationality whatever in the man's head regarding either of these issues.

So, I switched to MSNBC and the Ubermann show.

The topic with Ubermann, predictably, was oil as well. He showed a clip of McCain suggesting that it would be a good idea to allow offshore oil drilling. He still, stupidly, won't admit drilling in ANWR is a good idea, which must be a concession to his famed reputation for bipartisanship. Still, drilling off the coast of the Stalag, as well as Florida, the Caribbean, the Gulf and other places, would help. He then showed B Hussein Obama saying that "drilling won't have any effect on the price of gas today." I'm pretty sure this is an exact quote.

Of course it won't, dummy. We aren't drilling today.

The Aussie sang, "If you want your boomerang to come back, first you've got to throw it." The proper counter to B Hussein's proclamation is, "If you want the price of gas to come down, first you've got to drill it."

Aside: A clip of B Hussein at a campaign stop in Iowa where volunteers were filling sandbags. He said (subsequently cut from the clip), "I can do that! I've seen shovels before!" At which point he took up a shovel and slowly, deliberately placed part of three or four scoops of sand in and near a sandbag held by a swooning supporter.

The blushing Democrat then put the bag in the trunk of his car, saying he was going to have it bronzed and hanged on the wall in his den.

Back to the point. I don't know how many times lying leftists have quoted, word for word, the mantra, "We can't drill our way out of the gas crisis."

Well, yes we can. Drilling, in fact, is the only way. Developing an inexpensive, universally available high quality replacement for petroleum to fuel our vehicles, heat our homes and supply fuel from which to produce electricity will happen, but not today. Not tomorrow. And if government gets involved, not for a long, long time.

The truth of the matter is, most political officeholders, both Democrat and Republican, want to immobilize Americans. It's been observed that most feudal serfs never traveled more than ten miles from where they were born. They were far easier to manage that way.

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of the people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Kroozin' the Boulevard--A Criminal Offense

Two stories appeared one after the other on KTTV Fox News At Ten this evening; laughable in the stupidity so ably illuminated.

The first story has been an ongoing lie on the part of local government: apparently our New York/Boston import Chief of Police, William Bratton still believes that gang murders and other gang activity isn't racially motivated. In the same story, LA County's Sheriff Lou Baca, who rarely utters any other comment that that his department needs a larger budget, disagrees He says that some part of gang criminal activity is racially motivated. Duh!

The underlying message of the Police of El Pueblo de Los Angeles is that they really don't want to seriously attack gang activity. El alcalde, Antonio Vinaigrette, after all, was once a gangster himself before he found it more fun to be a philanderer.

Instead, the city police, the county deputy sheriffs and the California Highway Patrol (all ordered to extract the maximum possible legal tender from every possible motorist, to help mitigate the deficit) have decided it would be far easier and more fun to make driving, as Chuck Berry says, "With No Particular Place To Go," illegal on Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards.

Over the years youths, including myself years ago (hell, who am I kidding--I still do it once in a while!), enjoyed kroozin' the various major boulevards in LA just to see and be seen, check out the chicks (who are checking out the guys), and to stop by Tubby's for a burger and fries. For an idea of what I mean, watch the movie "American Graffiti."

Van Nuys Blvd, Whittier Blvd, Bristol Blvd and many others have been favorite Kroozin' streets over the years, and all have been rendered illegal Kroozin' streets by cops with nothing better to do (while real criminals run rampant, virtually unchecked).

Now, it's the natural kroozin' circuit--up on Hollywood, back on Sunset. The bastards.

I'm wondering if there's an attorney who will sue the agencies for gas taxes and license fees for our having been deprived of the right to the pursuit of happiness.

Cops say it's because the Kroozers make a lot of noise and disturb neighborhoods. I'm pausing to clean up the Diet Coke I splattered all over my screen, laughing when I heard that! If you've ever been in the Hollywood/West Hollywood portions of those streets, there ain't no quiet. Ever. Well, maybe between three and five in the morning you'll hear not much but the drunks, snoring on the sidewalks.

There's no fine for that.

But there is a minimum $275 fine for Kroozin'. And, they've doubled it for the duration of the state, county and city deficits.

They've killed Freedom! Those bastards!

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Finally Giving Up On Another Leftist Hoax

I've known it for twenty years, as has anyone who has a brain, and who's paying attention: AIDS in heterosexuals is rare. A story in The Independent, via Drudge, gives us the details. Dr Kevin de Cock, (gentleman that I am, I will resist the temptation to make an insensitive comment here) the head of the WHO's department of HIV/AIDS said that there is no HIV/AIDS epidemic among heterosexuals outside of Africa.

I remember the sense of helplessness and fear most folks felt as we learned of the horrors of AIDS, back in the early 1980's. I was in a committed relationship at the time, and canceled all plans to cheat. As we learned that AIDS could be spread by blood transfusions, I'm sure some folks had serious difficulty with accepting blood from an unknown donor during that period, and we all knew or knew of a few individuals who contracted AIDS in that way. Fortunately, the medical community adjusted very quickly and eliminated that path.

Women had fear for a time that a casual lover might be bisexual and might have the virus from a previous male partner. Men worried that a casual female lover might have had relations with a bisexual man. Remember the old public service announcement on radio and tv: If you have sex with a person, you're having sex with everyone that person has ever had sex with? Remember the full-body condoms illustrated on comedy tv shows?

We were very afraid.

The fact that it very quickly put an end to the Sexual Revolution started by Hizzonner Hugh Hefner pleased the religious zealots so much that for a short time, I thought it might be they who imported the virus. Fer cryin' out loud, I thought Dr Laura was going to have an orgasm over the fact that she could now say, "Dooooon't do it!" and have people take her seriously.

Well, in spite of the millions donated by everyone from Bill Gates to the lowliest leftist schlubs in Berkeley and Hollywood, almost all of which was wasted or misappropriated, we've never had an AIDS epidemic among the heterosexual persuasion. It was a hoax. Much like the algorians' global warming hoax.

Please don't take this to mean that I'm anti-homosexual in any way. Among male homosexuals, there was an epidemic. I lost a friend, a neighbor and two other friends lost partners to the disease in the 1980's. Whether those two other friends are still alive, I don't know. I lost track of them when I left San Diego in 1992.

Back to The Independent story, Dr de Cock will not admit that the heterosexual AIDS epidemic was a hoax, and cites the high AIDS rate in sub-Sahara Africa. Pardon me, but the largest parts of those countries are awash in prehistoric savagery and have rulers who think nothing of committing genocidal murder sprees when they wake up in a bad mood. Awake and aware folks in those countries should simply leave--even if they have to walk.

The whole point is, there is no heterosexual AIDS epidemic. There never was much of a heterosexual AIDS problem. It was a hoax developed by AIDS activists so that mainstream Americans would donate money to scammers who want to enrich themselves and keep Americans in a state of fear so that freedom-limiting legislation can be enacted.

It worked for a while.

A fool and his money.......

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Open Letter to California Congressman Howard L. Berman, (D-Calif)

I don't suppose anyone will actually show this letter to the Congressman, the Baron of the lands that include what I chortlingly (post KELO) call my house, home and castle, in view of his Democrat (ie, leftist) mindset, so I'll circulate it in other places as well.

Everyone who's read entries to this site over the months and years knows that I love cars and I love to drive. In fact, I took a twenty-odd mile drive around the Central Valley this afternoon--kroozin' along Ventura, Van Nuys and Sepulveda Boulevards, looking at the other cars, the buildings, the businesses, the girls and the other scenery.

Losing the ability to do this will seriously piss me off.

Hence, the first of (perhaps) a number of these missives:

Dear Congressman Berman:

Today, most gas stations are selling regular gasoline for around $4.50 a gallon. Diesel, for reasons I can't fathom, is even more. News stories are beginning to come out that gasoline and diesel are being stolen from cars, trucks, farms and construction sites. Yet, the federal government refuses, in the light of all this, to see reason, to get out of the way and allow oil companies to drill in US territory.

There will be alternative energy someday. It'll happen faster if government stays out of it and allows entrepreneurs and investors to allocate funds intelligently. But, it'll take some time.

In the meantime, the United States government holds billions and billions of barrels of oil off the market....for what? So that Americans will have to return to a hunter-gatherer society?

What's next? Americans shooting those they see siphoning gas from their cars? People unwilling to go to work because gas is too expensive to make their drive to expensive to be worth the effort? General strikes?

I ask you to reconsider your opposition to a prosperous America and lead an effort to free oil producers to drill and refine oil for the use of Americans. Voters like myself are watching America deteriorate, and we don't like it.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

[Col. Hogan]
Sherman Oaks

We'll see whether he represents those of us who commute in cars, or whether he represents himself only.

People shouldn't be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

All the Sports Unfit to Report

There's a sports program on ESPN called Mike & Mike. I guess it's on radio, too. I rarely watch it because....well....who would watch a sports talk show on tv? I occasionally go to a particular pizza-sandwich shop for lunch near where I work. Pretty good Phillie steak sandwiches.
While I waited for my sandwich, Mike & Mike were on the house tv.

It was unbelievable!

We're in the middle of the NHL hockey playoffs, well into the NBA baxabaw playoffs (if anybody's noticed) and well into the big league beisbol season. Mike & Mike aren't talking about any of this. They're talking about foopbaw. And they're not really talking about foopbaw, they're talking about.....get this.....Brett Farve's locker. I'm not sure who Brett Farve is, but I know who Brett Favre is.

They weren't talking about Brett Favre, but somebody named Brett Farve. Well, they were talking about Brett Favre, but sometime in Favre's ancestry, somebody started mispronouncing the name and, being from Mississippi, no one had the intelligence to correct him.

Back to the point. Mike & Mike weren't talking about Brett Favre, but about Brett Favre's locker up there in the dungeons under Lambeau Field's grandstand.

Those two sports dorks spent at least fifteen minutes arguing over whether or not Brett Favre's locker should be retired as a shrine!!

For my part, as very little as I care about it, I think it's a stupid idea, since there have been numerous foopbaw players of Favre's stature in the Packers over the length of the team's history. They'd have to move the players to a nearby barn to dress--all of the lockers in the dressing room would be shrines.

But, even that's not important. What I don;t understand is how a pretty good sports tv network can give dopes like these a tv show when there are so many hockey, lacrosse, rugby and pistol target matches going untelevised.

Well, this entry is a mite outside of my usual area of discussion, so I'll leave it there.

Now, we return you to your regularly scheduled rants.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Highjacking At T-Shirt Point

First, allow me to suggest that all of this airport security is really a scam to put in place a system by which all prospective travelers must be cleared by government to leave their current location. Additionally, it gives them the information as to just where they're going. The Third Reich did just this sort of thing--in a much lower-tech fashion as befitted the time--in Germany during the period leading up to WWII. Looking at the way the US federal government (and others) is arranging things, it parallels the German model fairly well.

Although, as we all know, the whole of what is sniggeringly called "Homeland Security" is dressed in the trappings of keeping Americans safe from terrorists.

First it was guns. Then it was knives. Then it was anything that could be remotely imagined to be able to break the skin--such as pen knives, nail clippers and--I kid you not--knitting needles. I haven't yet heard whether they confiscate blind folks' canes. Then, they started inspecting shoes. May their hands all develop athletes' foot. They started confiscating bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste. They started feeling up people's genitals and women's breasts. Checking out pregnant women's abdomens.

I remember when the airport people would open the door. They'd check each passenger's ticket and let them walk out to a portable stairway that led to the door, where a stewardess would take a look at your ticket and give directions to your seat. Ah! Those were the days. The only federal sloths at the airport were safely confined to the tower, and were rarely seen.

'Tis true that the airlines, who have a true, rational interest in keeping dangerous individuals from interfering with the plane's flight to its destination, were very lax concerning their responsibilities along those lines. Several highjackings to Cuba should have lit a bulb somewhere, but didn't. I suspect there were federal restrictions as to what could be done, that interfered with the airlines' best interest.

Making a long entry even longer, I have to refer you all to the most moronic (not by far, but still, pretty dumb) event along these lines. It happened at London's Heathrow (where else?) and has cause groans of derision and peals of laughter all round the civilized world. As reported in Thisislondon.co.uk, a young man was refused boarding on an airliner and threatened with arrest for wearing a t-shirt with the image of a Transformer!! A Transformer that has some sort of machine gun for an arm.

Let's pause for a moment to allow ourselves to get up off the floor and recompose.

During a day in which there were at least a two teen-agers killed in knife attacks reported 'pon that same news page, whose murderers (if caught) face no more than a couple of years in stir, Heathrow officials are worried about a bloody (to use local vernacular) t-shirt!

This in a country in which self defense is illegal.

Englishmen! Englishwomen! Run, don't walk off that island, where insanity rules.

V, where are you when we need you?

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Half a Vote Is Better Than Following the Rules

The Democrat Party, rather than being seen as "disenfranchising" the voters in Florida and Michigan, are going with the same kind of compromise used by the attendees of the first Constitutional Convention in the 1780's, as the delegates from the Original Thirteen tried to cobble together a document that would replace the Articles of Confederation. Because the southern states had relatively sparse populations, it was thought that they'd get the short shrift regarding the number of Representatives they could seat in the House.

Since black slaves weren't thought of, back then, as citizens--or even as fully human by some--they weren't counted. And since a great percentage of the populations of the southern states were slaves, it was finally decided to call each slave 3/5ths of a person for apportionment purposes.

In that light, since most southerners were Democrats back prior to the suffrage and integration of blacks into the full society, one wonders why the delegates of Florida and Michigan aren't given 3/5ths of a vote at the Democrat Convention, rather than half a vote. It seems like a sort of aesthetic consistency, doesn't it?

I don't know how it came about that the Democrats required no state (with exceptions) to have its Primary election prior to Super Tuesday, but they did. I don't know why the officials of Florida and Michigan decided to blow the ruling off and have their Primary early, but they did.

Florida's and Michigan's delegates should not be counted at all. To do otherwise is to change the rules in the middle of the game. Any school child will tell you that changing the rules in the middle of the game isn't fair.

Democrats, as we all know, aren't concerned over what is or is not fair. Democrats live in the world of emotions, not of reason. It doesn't feel right that the voters of Florida and Michigan, and the delegates for whom they voted, shouldn't count.

Well, why can't the Dodgers, finding themselves on the short end of a 9-1 score in the third inning, declare that for the rest of the game, each Dodger run counts as three. It doesn't feel right that a great team like the Dodgers should be that far behind.

Well, as dubious a distinction as it's turning out to be, we all, including Floridans and Michiganers do get to vote for the unprecedentedly poor choice of candidates for the most powerful office in the world this November. The most powerful office except, one might assert, that of the Pope. A lot of very good Roman Catholics don't get to vote for Pope.

My suggestion is that the Democrat voters of Florida and Michigan turn their ire toward the individuals who decided to flout the rules of the Democrat National Committee and hold their Primaries earlier than the Democrats' rules allowed.

Or, they can call each delegate 3/5ths of a person.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California